Mike In China

Ok, I'm going to try this again and see if blogger pisses me off enough so that I have to start a new blog on some other site... WOW. It's been over a month since I lasted posted (mainly because my post was shot down everytime for some trouble connecting reason). It sucks to because there have been plenty of small interesting stories I felt I should be sharing with the world! I will try to quickly catch you up on everything that has been happening here (or maybe not so quickly). The Halloween party was actually a blast! We mostly just played drinking games in the school with Halloween decorations all around us. It was pretty funny because all the Chinese women that work in the office got really wasted. It was really good to see them doing something other than telling us what we are doing wrong teaching our own language! I took a "diagnostic" LSAT test to see how I would score on the LSAT. I didn't do too hot, but I also accidentally skipped one of the sections. Ooops. I have been a huge bum lately so I haven't gotten myself to do much other studying yet but I hope to kick back into action here soon. The weather finally changed away from hot everyday. It was cool for two weeks and now its starting to get pretty cold and it rains almost every other day. It still isn't quite Wisconsin cold, but it is hillarious how many layers the Chinese parents put on their children!? We were talking about clothes in my first grade class and every student has on long underwear, a shirt, a sweater, a vest, a sweatshirt and then a winter coat! I don't understand how they can put on any more clothes and I'm assuming its going to still get colder. Nathan came down from Beijing on business a couple weekends back and so we hung out a bunch. It was GREAT to see a friend from home. One night we went out with a friend of his who is from Shanghai and after getting pretty drunk we were walking down the street and they were having me say things in Chinese. I'm pretty sure they were having me ask homeless women if I could touch their boobs, but seeing as how I don't speak Chinese I can't say for sure... On top of that we got to sit down and discuss our AMAZING TRIP OF A LIFETIME that we are going to go on in Februrary. I won't give out the details yet because we are still talking about exactly were to go, but lets just say that while you are all freezing your asses off in the fridgid Midwest Februrary I will be relaxing and seeing the sights somewhere in balmy Southeast Asia! I got completely addicted to LOST for awhile. It was actually quite sad. I bought the 1st and 2nd season on DVD and pretty much spent two weeks doing nothing in my spare time but watching episodes. I've cut myself off for awhile so that I can be productive again but the next TV show on my list is Prison Break. Very exciting news; I started taking a Chinese class. I realized I wasn't picking up on the language as much as I had hoped and I don't want to walk away from living here for a year barely speaking anything. Because I'm in Shanghai its decently easy to get through life speaking only English. The class is somewhat expensive because most of the people that take them are businessmen with big salaries but so far I think its really worth it. Once I learn all the basics I feel like I will pick up on the language must faster. Thanksgiving here was ok. I went to an American Sportsbar with some friends and their friends from their work. I got the whole turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy meal so that was AWESOME. I haven't really been eating all too much western food but for the time around Thanksgiving I decided to indulge on everything American eating most of my meals at McDonalds, KFC and PizzaHut. Now I've been back on the Chinese but on Monday night this week I'm pretty sure I got food poisoning, FROM THE NOODLES GUYS!? I'm really depressed because I eat there at least 5 times a week and now I don't want to go back because I got so sick. I have to completely re-arrange my eating habbits now and I don't know what to do. Other good news; Barone (a friend from highschool) is coming to visit in early January. The plan is to spend sometime here and then hopefully I will be off of work so the two of us can take a train up to Beijing to visit Nathan. Then right after that my mom is coming to visit for the end of January. She is coming for two weeks and after spending a week showing her around Shanghai we are going to head down to the Yunnan province of China to escape the cold. It is supposed to be one of the most beautiful provinces in China. From there she is going to fly back home and I am going to hop on a plane to meet Nathan for our trip. If you've been doing the math (or just in case you haven't), that's right, I have at least 6 AWESOME WEEKS planned (and most if not all of them off of work) of train riding and jet setting all over China and Southeast Asia. All my time here I've been trying to live cheap and find jobs/activities that will set me up for some amazing traveling and its finnally going to happen! I think that is all the big news. Hopefully this works and I can start posting more little stories of living in China because I can never think of them off the top of my head and when I want to write them down I can't. Also feel free to post questions. I hope everyone hasn't given up on checking my blog so that someone actually reads this!