Sino-psis

been cavorting around shanghai orienting myself to his new situation, trying to be all that i can be and not destroy young minds with my lack of teaching skill, assessing my Chinese language skills and searching for appropriate tutelage to mend said skills. i am in shangrila and its all that i imagined it would be. everyone here is enthusiastic and amiable, i haven't yet met one of the so called rude shanghaiese. today a couple of us were walking and some stopped to look at cheap cds. a pengyou of the stall owner came up and began to talk to us in perfect americanese which he picked up by listening on the radio to voice of america since the sixties for at least two hours a day, teaching himself what everything means and learning amazing pronunciation. he also was a diving instructor and taught someone who taught someone who got a gold in the 80 something olympics. it seems as if he'll be around a lot, so he'll prolly be trying out his english a lot more on me and other americans. i just thot that was ridiculous, learning a language from a radio program. but it seems familiar, as if i read a book in my chinese anthro class where the protagonist did something to that effect. it's too bad that class wasn't more engaging or i might even remember the name of that book. ah well.

ate the best korean food tonight, spicy, colorful, filling. this i must learn how to cook. first day of class will be the first and i hope to be ready for it by then. tomorrow i get my class schedule so i'll finally know what i'm teaching, be it most likely english, possibly geography?, and who the aitch knows what else. signed the contract today and so am stuck here until the end of june ostensibly. unless i skip outta town like buddy did last semester, grabbed a girl and snuck down to malaysia. contracts are for the birds says the chrissie in me.

lunch at the cafeteria today was less than satisfying. free, but about as far away from the gratified feeling that a free lunch provides that a free lunch can get. but i figure i can eat it, if i were picky i never would have left the us.

i've said this a bunch to myself lately, but would like to reiterate to the vast internet, i am so in china. this. is amazing.

god bless not america.

e