lord lord mother

last night i dreamt that we had a ton of dirty dishes

waltz across texas

i find myself sort of irresistibly attracted to the chinese boys here

metric - police and the private

privet

the boys have been viciously poking my bruise. my knee is throbbing. i met two russians in the village today (i was minding my own business. i don't hunt them they just come to me) and they invited me to the russia pavilion bar tomorrow night. moscow mule?

status of the bloodspread. hank says his go-kart bruises are all gone, so now it's just me

ernest tubb

i would waltz across texas with you

visiting navy

tons of young russian navy running around expo yesterday. they were around 18 19. some were buying souvenirs like the stuffed haibao in a box. some were eating burgers at our quick service restaurant. two showed me on a map where their boat was parked on the river. i asked them why they were here and they told me that the president was coming to the russian pavilion at 15:00. i ran to russia around 15:15 in my rain slicker and saw the masses of security, the long procession of black cars, the chinese government officials, and medvedev waving at the crowds from the front of the pavilion.

eurasia

yesterday on our way home after work ryan and i went to uzbekistan, kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan, and bangladesh. we complimented one of the kazakhstan pav workers on his uniform, a gold long-sleeved shirt with a blue vest and gold shoes. he said that it was too hot in the summer. we told him that our outfits used to be too hot for the weather as well, but everyone became upset and the outfit became polos and shorts instead. the kazakhstani barked a laugh and said, such a democracy! that we could complain about our uniforms and have them changed.

henna from bangladesh

liquor factory

i should work on my pool skillz. this farce will only further repel boys.

turnstiles

i have reached a zero-tolerance policy for chinese people who tell me that i am not an American. being an asian-american here is like being a second-class citizen. in limbo - not a real american and not a real chinese person either. i do not know why it is that when you anger a chinese person (ie by making him wait to enter the next show instead of this one) he retaliates by attacking your nationality and thereby, your authority. a man yelled at me this morning and i yelled back. a friend commended me for my restraint (for not socking him in the face as he deserved) but i do not feel like i was restrained at all. on the flip side, a younger, unaffiliated man subsequently apologized for the crazy motherfucker and the abusive tirade. every day we come home exhausted and talk about how the chinese people treat us bad.

besides that, i had a very nice day at work.

we ate at shishman again and the turkish manager man giggled all over the place when he didn't know how to answer our questions in english. also spent three hours sitting on a fence talking to the bao an about dead bodies we've seen, places we'd like to visit, the mid-autumn festival in their home province anhui, siblings, hair dye, fights they'd been in, american halloween, how they can't afford girlfriends or to get married, how the company that employs them takes 3/4 of their paycheck. conclusion is that it is difficult to be a young man in china.

shishman

yesterday a student ambassador measured my blood sugar while we were getting doner kebabs for lunch. he lanced my finger and squeezed the blood out for me and the turkish manager man at shishman came over and watched. i thought it would hurt like a bitch the way the prerequisite finger lancing for blood donation does, but it really didn't hurt at all. it did sting. 106 - normal.

pambassador

from a china daily article about people competing to be panda zookeepers for a month:

"The 'pambassadors' will also learn how to set up wooden ladders for pandas. Climbing ladders is a favorite pastime of captive pandas and setting up ladders will be part of the competition," Wang said.

lord. they are trying to escape, obvi

mid-autumn

last night was the moon festival and it was so cloudy you couldn't see the moon at all.

chatty cathy

re-inspired to study after meeting an armenian on a bicycle last night and having only russian as a common language. number of russian speakers running around expo is astounding. my inability is frustrating

re: new hair cut

aquarium day photoblug

after the pearl tower, the next most famous buildings are the world financial center (left) and the jin mao tower (right). people are pretty evenly split into two camps in regards to which is their favorite. i side with the bottle opener.

hank josiah and i went to the shanghai ocean aquarium. i remember seeing the construction plans for this aquarium three years ago, when i visited a much jankier shanghai aquarium out in the middle of nowhere, as opposed to this expensive structure right in the middle of the city.

i saw the giant chinese salamander. look at the face on that thing! like a monster.

one thing i found disconcerting was that many of the animals looked like they were in containers too small for them. the dejected babies killed some of my joy.

this escalator went through a tank. rad.

descending.

sawfish. gnarly.

afterwards, we went for a stroll along the Huangpu.

i commissioned a 20 RMB (2.9749 USD) portrait of hank for our living room.

last night we went go-karting. i tripped going up the stairs and landed on my knees, which are looking terrible. the boys have driving bruises.

two nights ago, i was totally off my face when i played with this dog at kedi.

sake hangover

ma says the new trend in taiwan is wigs on dogs

i don't have two daddies - my father just likes to use my ma's e-mail account for some reason

peacekeepers

our security, our 保安 bao an, are all young men, college students in their early 20s, clearly overqualified for standing around, opening doors and unlocking things for us. most of them are not from shanghai, but from the nearby province of Anhui. they're charming and strangely affectionate with each other in that youngchinesemanway that baffles americans with force fields of personal space. they go by nicknames that they give each other. one is Chrysanthemum, because when he laughs his face looks like a chrysanthemum. they just smile at you when you complain about being tired and wanting to go home, since their workday is twice as long and twice as monotonous and they are probably more deserving of being tired and wanting to go home.

since one of their positions is standing next to the spot where we introduce ourselves to guests over and over with our same tired introduction spiels, they've memorized tidbits of information about each of us, like what state we're from, where our families are from, where we went to school; they'll surprise you by mentioning personal facts about you in conversation that you never directly told them. we like talking to each other. a few bao an like test-driving their english, but most would prefer to put up with/giggle over my childlike mandarin. one says that if america opened its doors to all chinese people, half of the chinese would choose to leave china in search of something better. they teach us useful phrases in chinese, like "i'm going to smack you so hard that you'll go bouncing back and forth between the two sides of the Huangpu River." they ask us about America, about weed, violence, homosexuality. A bao an asked that if americans are allowed to own guns, do you see people on the street pointing guns at one another and shooting? i explained that it's more likely for a man to be shooting from a moving vehicle at someone on the street.

neuneu

last night sat outside watching bats swoop low over a man-made lake.

traveled for over an hour to get to the nordic lighthouse today. it was closed for an event.

mortal

sick again. one of my apartmentmates has just introduced me to the pleasures of peppermint tea. yesterday morning on my way to work forgot i had a lighter on me. stuck it in my bra to get past work security. forgot about it for twenty-four hours until this morning when i was undressing to shower and it clattered to the bathroom floor.

uffie-neuneu

you say potato

a group of tibetan children led by a chinese man came through the pavilion today. my co-worker and i referred to the children as tibetan. the chinese man corrected us and said they were from "Xizang" - the China phrase for "Tibet Autonomous Region." he told us that our use of the name "Tibet" was greatly offensive. the three of us fell silent. we all three looked at the floor. i said, "well this is awkward."

post-plum rain season

quite thundery this morning. they talk about spring rains and summer rains in shanghai, but in truth it just rains here all the time. pours, even.

luse tong dao

at work i spend most of my time at the fast access line. it's the line that will let you bypass the 1.5 hour-long regular line and leads you straight into the next show. officially, the people who get to use this are: the disabled, pregnant women, expo employees+2 guests, volunteers, reservations, employees of any of their sponsors+whatever legion of people they choice to bring because we are completely sponsor funded, wheelchairs+2, strollers+2. unofficially, if you know someone at our pavilion and can prove it by getting him on the phone, and probably if you bribe the person working with pins (the ridiculous currency of the world expo) or other gifts. a man working in fast food offered to bring me a meal or vouchers. i shot him down. one of the biggest problems is that seniors (with old age identification cards) and citizens (our visiting Americans) do not have fast access, which they do at other pavilions. any deviation from these rules usually results with someone furious in your face. the americans tend to be the worst. whenever ambassadors see white people walking up, we start trying to pass them off on one another. you help them. no you help them. we sigh with relief when they open their mouths and turn out to be europeans. we turn away the truly oldest-looking, hobbling people i have ever seen and make Father Time and Mother Earth wait in line but let in strollers and wheelchairs simply because they do not fit through our turnstiles.

got into a screaming fight with a chinese man at fast access yesterday. he was trying to physically force his group's way in when he should have been in the regular line. i blocked him and he started immediately screaming inches from my face. while fighting with him, i realized i had raised my right hand up and was holding it close to his face. i would never hit anyone. but even this defensive gesture shocked me. at one point i yelled at him, do you really need to be this loud?! i've learned here that when someone raises his voice with me, i am not the collected person who can calmly but firmly deal with him and piss him off further. i always yell back. i wanted to tell him i wasn't scared of him, but i actually was. that he would sock me in the face.

coincidences at the flying elephant

went to dinner at a russian restaurant in puxi and was seated next to a table of old danish men. talked to one named knud. realized one of the kazakhs from the village was seated at the table diagonally. we exchanged awkward what are you doing here glances.

feet hurt

feeling exhausted from work, skipping three parties, eating a delicious pomegranate, watching infomercials on tv

this is not better city better life

spent the night drunkenly begging danish boys to let me borrow their bicycles

sat on a delivery truck of frozen food from australia back to the village

stuff chinese people like

2. kobe bryant, 科比 (ke bi)

as i lived my quiet life in los angeles next to the staples center, i had no idea that kobe bryant, and the lakers, but mostly kobe bryant, were such an incredible phenomenon over in china. every day, kids come to the pavilion completely decked in the kobe basketball outfit. people ask all the time when 科比 is coming to the pavilion. the answer is never. last week i visited a shanghainese home in xuhui and the 20-year old girl living there had a huge poster of ke bi dunking on her door. i was at work one day walking the stilt walker, who measures a good nine feet tall on stilts, and one of the volunteers asked me if ke bi is that tall.

friendship trip

had lunch with a Zimbabwean and a Ghanaian. they said that at the African pavilion, some Chinese people will use a finger to try to rub the black off of their skin. the Chinese don't believe their skin color is real because their palms are lighter in color. the Ghanaian said that he has been asked whether his blood is red. i was amazed by the Africans' patience and general graciousness. i certainly do not exhibit the same good-naturedness whenever expo visitors do not consider Chinese-Americans to be real Americans.

i asked the Germans what Hamburg is famous for and they said they have a very notable red light district, the Reeperbahn. women are not allowed in past its gates. if they go in, water and condoms are thrown at them.

on the three-hour bus ride home, an Iranian man asked me whether my friend also on the trip, ryan, was my husband and told me that LA is actually Irangeles because of the two million Iranians who live there. i loled.

back from taizhou

i used to be this no-nonsense, one-pillow sort of person. but i've recently discovered that i need four.

i am currently overwhelmed by the dichotomy of how fucking good irish cream tea smells and how terrible it tastes

morning sights of donghu

the Fijians, liberally tribally tattooed, are dancing shirtless on their balcony and drinking Budweiser at 9:45 in the morning

i want to wave to them from my 11th story kitchen floor-to-ceiling windows, sort of an urban version of the morning neighborly wave over the picket fence

stuff chinese people like

1. crocs

i counted thirteen pairs of crocs on my way home today from jing an district. a german girl told me that, in germany, people only wear crocs while gardening. well, they are serious footwear here.

i've been drinking weaksauce maxwell house instant coffee for so long that when i had starbucks today my heart almost burst out of my chest.

angryface

Missy may not like the flash light, I guess. She did not say or complained!

Dad

morning lol

i'm going to become a blogger

I write today to wish you well, but also to encourage you to contribute to the student ambassador blog that Pete edits. I do this because I know that you’re likely to have experiences and insights that others would benefit from reading about and also because it’s embarrassing that although ___ administers the student ambassador program and ___ has had the greatest number of ambassadors of any school, none of them are contributing posts or photos to the ambassador blog.

née superstition

donghu has both a fourth and a thirteenth floor. because here we ain't scared of nobody.

the tip of the tongue taking a trip

clearly i should have become a fluent russky before coming here. i spent a large part of the day on a bus with belorusians and ukrainians. i had lunch at a table of moldovans and a chinese girl who was so fluent that i didn't even dare to pretend to speak or quote hedgehog in the fog. if i were daniel tammet, this would be under control by now. also, i have been trying to pick up some phrases in shanghainese at work. but it is really really hard. i can barely count to six.