What Are You Looking At?! - by Chris Schave, CE Adviser in China

Every time I travel this happens to me. About two weeks out from going home, I start making plans with people for when I get back. This makes me excited to get home. Then, I start getting annoyed about things that didn’t bug me before. In Iceland this happened, but thinking back, it didn’t in Europe. The people in China are starting to bug me.

I understand that they may not see that many white people, so I don’t mind everyone staring at me a little bit. Last night when we were waiting to get off the ferry, two Chinese couples just stared at us and laughed for about twenty minutes. I just put my headphones in and ignored them. I guess there is a difference between curiosity and being rude. To me, this was the ladder of the two.

The bad thing is that now I am annoyed just by people staring at me for extended periods of time. Now I know how the elephant man felt. Or even Cher for that matter. I’m not sure which one is more hideous. My money is on Cher, gross!!!

School went pretty slow today. It’s hard to get twenty kids to be excited about learning about past participles.

Yesterday, the ride back on the ferry went well. I read a book called Killing Yourself to Live, by Chuck Klosterman. The book is about Chuck traveling the country visiting places where rock stars died. The reason for this adventure is so he can write a story for Spin Magazine.

I remembered something that I have felt for a very long time as I read this; I am very annoyed by people that know way too much about music. It gets on my nerves when people compare everything to a song, or an album. These type of people are some of my least favorite people. Another thing that I dislike about them, is that they generally have ZERO musical ability, yet they praise and critique people with talent. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the book. However, a few chapters were heavy on the musical talk. If it would have taken me more than three days to read, I don’t think I would have finished it.

ANYWAY (something ol’ Chuck does a lot of in his book), The boat ride was long, but I did get a lot of work done and I am on schedule to finish my internship paper this weekend.

Chris- Adviser Abroad China

Cultural Embrace @ www.culturalembrace.com

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