So, it's been an incredibly long time since I posted. I could state the reason for not writing was that I had nothing to write about, but that would be a lie. I had many good stories, but none of which I was able to write down well enough to put in a post. Apparently, the cure for shitty story telling is to be laying in bed with strep throat, because at this point I'm on so much medication that I can't tell my writing is terrible. So, instead of promising to write more, I'll promise to get strep throat more. I'm terribly lazy, and it's much easier to promise plague then anything else.

My time in China over the last couple of months has been interesting, to say the least. My company is a very interesting place, in that half the time I have no idea what's going on and in the other half I'm wrong. Case in point, it took them over 3 months after we got there for them to show us the actual hierarchy of the company. The good news: I know who my bosses are. The bad news: Really? Her?

I'm in charge of the Science and Virtual P.E. curriculum, which for those of you that know me should be laughing. If there was one subject in particular that I've always been terrible at, it was science. Obviously, my Political Science degree has the word "science" in it, and therefore I know enough to plan to teach kindergarten kids. So, now I get to come up with games and experiments for little kids to teach them about such exciting ideas as colors, medicine, water buoyancy, and my personal favorite: breathing.

That's right. I need to fill a 50 minute class with games about breathing. Now, this might sound like an open invitation to get kids to hold their breath until they pass out or use balloons to show how you can breath in, but as I was told balloons are unsafe(Jury is still out on the first idea). Prior to coming here, I had thought Gettysburg College had some weird thoughts about safety. However, my school has taught me that not only do children break easily(wadded up pieces of paper will give all the kids paper cuts), but the periodic table of elements is wrong. When planning for two parties for the kids, we were told we couldn't use helium balloons because they might "spontaneously combust". With that statement, I think I can understand why they put me in charge of science. I can at least remember from early high school that helium doesn't explode that easily. Then again, this is China and nothing here would really surprise me anymore.

I think my "surreal" sensor is off. Everyone has this sensor, when they look at something, and just go "What the fuck". China has warped this sense for me beyond all belief. Around a month ago, I was taking the bus somewhere, and on the same ride I saw a man holding 18 USB cables, and a giant map of Korea just walking down the street. This was immediately followed by two city workers shoveling snow. One city worker was shoveling the snow from the base of a tree onto the street, while the other was shoveling from the street onto the base of the tree. Prior to coming here, I would have found that to be incredibly surreal, but I've reached the point of being able to rationalize this quite clearly. The best way to recover from an economic downturn is to create jobs. The Chinese Government made it snow(using rockets and aluminum!), and then hired two poor unemployed guys to shovel that particular corner. In fact, it's a genius solution to the snow problem, because eventually the snow will melt mid-air! Now, it might turn into ice, but that's the problem of another ministry. See, it's easy! The only thing to recently confuse me was seeing a man over 70 years old driving a motorized razor scooter with his wife, who also was over 70 on the back. The surrealness wasn't so much the old people being active, as all old people walk around like Splinter from the Ninja Turtles, but the fact that they make MOTORIZED razor scooters. Now, all I can imagine is that 70 year old man cranking the giant engine, and going down a half pipe to do mad tricks before zooming off into the distance to fight other old men.

Coming back to the States eventually is going to be very interesting. I've developed an extreme aversion to being around white people that I don't know here. Part of this is due to the fact that, as one of my friends put it, all other white people here are incredibly ugly mutants. Another part is the fact that I feel kinda unique. Aside from my flatmates, there are days when I see no other white people. Seeing someone else in "my area" evokes an almost animal response of territorialism. Some of it stems from the fact that a lot of the people here are terrible ambassadors of Whitey everywhere, and are mainly the reason that Americans are hated abroad. The rest usually stems from the fact that they are buying the last piece of whatever food I need.

At this point, this is turning into a giant medicated ramble, so I'm going to cut it short. I have more ramblings to post, which actually might get done tomorrow as I won't be allowed to work. All in all, I've been really lucky here so far, you know with the exception of that whole Strep throat thing.