Living, For Once, in China

Today was an extremely good day. I don't know what happened, but somewhere during the last few days I actually got over the biggest chunk of my homesickness and culture shock-related misery; it's too late, for sure, but I want to enjoy the rest of my time here as much as I can. I'm getting so used to the life here that it's a little strange to think that we'll be leaving in less than two weeks, and that we won't be coming back. I've gotten used to the shower filled with tiny bugs, to the tiny washer machine and the clotheslines on the roof to dry our clothes, to rocking out til the early morning with Joyce to the greatest hits of, uh, the Backstreet Boys. I have not gotten used to the food, however, as my stomach decided to throw me a super curve ball today, meaning I spent a good part of the latter half of it not straying too far from my bathroom, but otherwise life is good!

Today was one of our older student's birthdays, so Joyce and I went over to her house. I had such a good time! I have some pictures up here, on pages 2 and 3, if anybody (Mom?) is interested in seeing.

In other news, the whimpered out "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M GOING TO DO BECAUSE I KNOW I'VE COME TO THE END OF THE ROOOOAD" part in the song End of the Road by Boyz II Men still makes me crack up every single time. (OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. HELP ME OUT A LITTLE BIT, BAAAABY.)

An In-Progress List

Joyce and Melissa's China Playlist

• Don't Stop Believing, Journey
• End of the Road, Boyz-2-Men (or however it's spelled)
• All I Have to Give, Backstreet Boys
• The Gaston Song, Beauty and the Beast soundtrack

More coming soon.

(Did I mention we now are in possession of a loud set of speakers?)

One Month!

Wow! I've officially lived in China for one month today. This is a little ridiculous (my new favorite adjective), but I feel good today. I thought two days into this trip that I'd have to hightail it home, but it's been a full month now, and while I'm still battling numerous stomach bugs and insect-bugs, I no longer feel that intense compulsion to get the heck out of here. Also, despite how slow time seems to go while experiencing it, I am a little shocked that it's already been a full month -- I guess time flies, and I know these last two weeks will fly by even faster than I'm expecting. (With or without net.)

This trip has been a definite test of character, to be sure. It's stripped me down to my very basics, it's taken away all the vestiges of power that I meekly claim in my home country, it's made me try to rebuild myself from the ground up. These aren't the most comfortable of things, to be frank, but I think I'm learning more than I let on -- even if all it seems I've learned from day to day is how to ask for food and how to not fear crazy guys in rickshaws and motorbikes while peddling my (already falling apart) bicycle to the south campus.

Mosquito bites turn into bruises if they're nasty enough. This is another lesson I've unfortunately learned. I look like I was the victim of some violent right-leg-offender's most recent kick attack, but really, it's just those damn mosquitoes leaving their lasting mark.

There's so much I want to write about (even though a lot of it may, admittedly, be things many people have expressed great lacks of desire to read about), but it'll have to wait for later, since I am hungry and need to find myself some food.

Take care, and I'll be around in a while.

Sick of being sick

In three days, it will have been a month since I left America for China. For the 27 or so days I've already been here, I have been absolutely nothing but sick, sick, sick. I'd go into the details, but let's just say that I've been alternating between one, erm, toilet problem to another at a fairly rapid face. Try as it might, my stomach just can't adjust to any food here. I've heard multiple stories of foreigners coming here having to spend weeks in the hospital from the food. I'm not that bad, thankfully, but good God, fatty, crappy American food is going to be like heaven to come home to.

I'm sick of being sick, because that means that I spend most of my days not straying all that far from the toilet. I'm sick of being sick because I know people assume I'm using it as an excuse, when really, the times I do decide to throw caution to the wind and go out and try to live a little, I always end up rushing back home because I need to use the toilet so bad. I'm sick of being sick because it drains me of my energy, makes it difficult to sleep, and just hurts. I have seventeen more days here, but I know I'm going to spend most of those either in my room or feeling paranoid about how close I could find a western toilet to wherever I'll be, and that's not fun at all.

Today we had to teach some little kids, and it was kind of a nightmare, because I don't speak Chinese and the kids were all at different levels and, surprise surprise, we weren't given any sort of plan at all. I need to find a generic plan that will be easy for the real little ones without being boring for the more advanced students. Sigh.

Our AC is broken.

We lose net around July 10th, so if I disappear in a week, please don't worry too much about me (if you're inclined to, that is). Til then, all I want to do is plug the Firefox plugin "Tor" (Google it), because it has absolutely destroyed the Chinese firewall. I can visit websites again! If I don't get sick first.

A Little Over Halfway

I'm always writing fairly depressing entries in here, which is pretty disappointing to me. I'm not always so gloomy and down -- it's only when the minutes seem to drag by like hours and I am either bored with absolutely nothing to do or being forced into doing something against my twenty-three years of will that I get upset, and both of these feelings seem to be par for the course lately. (You can thank part of that on my digestive tract, which has hindered many of my efforts to Just Get the Hell Out and Do Something, Melissa over this past week or so.)

So, I wanted to write something a little more upbeat, both for my sake and for everybody who's been following this little blog thing of mine. This might not be the deepest or most profound entry, and some of these discoveries I've made may not seem like the big, Earth-shifting ones a journey to a foreign land like this one is supposed to inspire, but eh. Anything is better than nothing, and, frankly, I get sick of really self-important people pretty quickly.

...

...wait, we have fucking cockroaches in our room now?! Okay, this is not cool. (But, for what it's worth, I actually walked over and killed the damn thing instead of screaming and crying as per usual, so that has to count for something. Something. Maybe even a little something? They better not be in my clothes, though, or I am going to have the largest hissy fit this side of... Singapore?)

(WHY cockroaches, WHY?)

Okay. Enough with the roaches. Lessons I've learned from China after 3-and-some-odd-weeks:

• I really want to get serious about cycling again. Not soon, because America, unlike China, does not have decently built bicycles for 20 dollars, so hence I can not get a dispensable one in the US like I managed to here. However, maybe when I return to Japan for my planned year-or-two stretch I might be able to start training. This has nothing to do, really, with fitness or anything like that; bicycling is just pure fun to me, and I really want to take a long trip via bike sometime in the distant future.
• I prefer Blogspot to LiveJournal. Hahaha. How much of this has to do with the fact that my mom can comment on my entries here has yet to be figured out, but I'm sure it's a pretty significant part. The lack of Blogspot drama is also quite major, though, I have to admit.
• ...WHY COCKROACHES, WHY, WHY, DEAR LORD, WHAT DID I DO TO YOU?
• According to this torrent of "Top 250 Hits of the 90s" I mentioned in my last entry here, Savage Garden is responsible for quite a few of the 90's top hits. Also, some songs are much, much younger than I thought they were, which somehow makes me feel real old. I'm not sure how that works, but there it is.
• Mosquito bites can and will bleed if you scratch them too much. Also, I am pretty allergic to Asian mosquito bites, as one bit my thumb yesterday and the thing has swollen to even thicker than its usual plump proportions.
• I want to teach Japanese. I want to just speak Japanese, really. I want to do everything in my entire life in Japanese, because I love Japanese, because I realized early on that for every thought I want to express in Chinese (and can't), I can come up with at least three ways to say it in Japanese, and this is extremely frustrating. I need to be there. Soon. (Or home. I will speak to Japanese people at home. I mean it, this time.)
• I need to stop being shy when I feel like the weakest person in a crowd, because I thought I was over that BS, but apparently not. I think I need to feel like I have authority or I shrink like a withered flower. When I don't feel I have any authority -- like, when I'm the token white girl from America who doesn't speak Chinese in a second world country -- I feel awkward and grow silent. This needs to stop.
• ...the cockroach I killed is gone, now. DON'T TELL ME IT WAS STILL ALIVE. I am so upset by this that I need to end this post, because I no longer feel happy and positive. Look at how easy I am to change, hahaha. (There better not be any more. I knew we shouldn't have left the door open so long today!)

I'm homesick. This post isn't helping. This is ridiculous. I want to be better than this. How can I expect myself to do anything if I can't even see this through?

Blah. In good news, though, I found out that the student center on campus is practically a miniature shopping mall, and I was able to buy some very strange sliced bread there. Maybe if I go shopping a lot, I'll feel better, huh?

Try to Keep Your Head Up to the Sky

I've been downloading a collection of the "top 250 songs of the 90s" off of BitTorrent, and the first song in the compilation is Des'ree's You Gotta Be. Listening to it brings me back to 1995, when my hair was even wilder than it is now, and my glasses took up half my face; I used to fall asleep with the radio on, and the blissful hour or so before my body finally plunged into sleep was my favorite time of the day, since I could just lie there, in the (relative, thanks to my night-light) darkness, and dream up scenarios for each of the songs that would be played.

You Gotta Be was one of Lunar's songs. I'm not particularly sure why it was one of Lunar's songs, but it was, and my mind would become filled with images of her adventures whenever the song came on the radio. More than that, though, it was one of my songs, because, as campy and awful as it may be, there was something in the song that part of me needed even twelve years ago.

Today's been a bad day for me. To be honest, the past few days have all been bad days for me, and while most of the time I can't pinpoint exactly what is wrong (save my current, erm, physical issues), I just haven't felt as happy as I know I should be. There's nothing wrong, there's no real reason for me to be depressed, but all I want to do is hide away in my air-conditioned room and be left alone.

This is dumb and this is pointless, because 19 days is really not all of that long a time (we board the plane early morning 20 days from now, so 19 more full days is a valid count, I think), but in my current state it feels like forever. (Although, I admit, writing it out like that did put it back into much needed perspective. Thanks, BlogSpot.)

I haven't felt so constantly depressed in well over a year. I've been thinking about it, and I really do think it comes down to two things: my inability to take care of myself here (because of both bureaucratic reasons and linguistic ones) and my lack of decent friends. I'm not looking for real great friends, because that's being unrealistic, but just somebody I can talk to for an extended period of time without feeling stupid, annoying, or frustrated. I'm sure being antisocial isn't helping any, but today it's just been hard to find the energy.

It makes me realize that the two things most important to me are my independence and my loved ones, because, seriously, life sucks without either. If I had the ability to converse or a close friend here, my experience would be much different, I think; I'm an explorer at heart (blame my star sign) and I'd love to be able to really relish this. And on some days I can, even with my broken Chinese and my awkward conversation.

But today, I just feel like crud, and this endless stomach bug is not helping me any.

Maybe 23 year old Melissa needs this song too, huh?

Listen as your day unfolds,
challenge what the future holds
Try to keep your head up to the sky
Lovers they may cause you tears
Go ahead release your fears
Stand up and be counted,
don't be shamed to cry
You gotta be..

You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold,
you gotta be wiser
You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough,
you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm,
you gotta stay together.
All I know, all I know
Love will save the day

Stephen King's Wizard and Glass and Other Stories

This is unrelated to China, and I don't know if anybody will care to read it, but oh well.

I finally finished Stephen King's Wizard and Glass today, after trying to force myself through it for over a year and a half now. WaG is the fourth book in King's seven book "The Dark Tower" series, which my mother asked me to read back in January 2006. I sped through the first three books, as the first one is very short and the second and third are actually startlingly good (this is high praise from somebody who normally does not dig Stephen King's general writing style), but I skidded into a full halt with Wizard and Glass, and it took knowing I'd have a month and a half of fairly carefree time in China to finally push me through it.

WaG starts out strong. The first part of the book is the ending of the previous book's cliffhanger ending, and it features some of my favorite storytelling in almost any book, ever. However, Wizard and Glass drones its way through the exceedingly long mid-section of the book, which consists of approximately five hundred pages of background story for Roland, the series' main protagonist. The story is long and complex, and while it definitely picked up in the last two hundred or so pages of its telling, the first three hundred were almost torturous to wade through.

I think this is because the Dark Tower series is Stephen's little lovechild. In his introduction to the books (and in many of his afterwords), he mentions how the story has been haunting him, piece by piece, since he was nineteen years old. It took a decade between book three and book four, and he admits in the afterword of WaG that after a point he couldn't tell if the book was good or bad anymore, but just that it needed to be written. While I do have some major issues with his writing style, I admit to a bit of fondness for King due to his extreme honesty when discussing his relationship with the story; most of Roland's back story took place when Roland was fourteen years old and in the throes of early teenage love, and King admits that he really faltered when trying to write it, because he'd been so far removed from that feeling for so long that it was hard to try and reclaim. Indeed, I think most of my problems with those three hundred or so pages had to do more with my inability to take the characters seriously than anything else. I thought that King's writing was unnecessarily flowery and reeked of amateurish effort; it took a while for me to realize that this was precisely the effect he was going for, because what is teenage love but overly dramatic and stupendously meaningful? Especially in a romantic age such as Roland's, could one's first (and ultimately tragic) love be anything but melodramatic?

By the end of the story, I understood why it had to be as long and drawn out as it was; I remember asking my mother (please tell me you, at least, are reading this!) multiple times if I could just "skip Roland's past" and get back to the story I was interested in -- the one of Roland's present, with Eddie and Jake and Susannah. She hesitated to tell me I could, and now I know why. By drawing up the story to such dramatic heights, the force of its savage ending completely explains why Roland acts and feels the way he does about so many things. I knew what was going to happen (it is hard not to if you pay attention), but I still found myself teary eyed at the end, heartbroken (as I am want to be) over the tragedy suffered by young Roland. It was an absolutely chilling story, and King's intended effect hit dead on -- Roland went from the cold-blooded, almost robotic gunslinger to an incredibly moving human in those five hundred pages, and that is enough to make me want to read on.

It is not perfect writing. A lot of it is actually quite sloppy, and there are pages worth of description and thematic writing that could have been better served by one or two concise paragraphs. There are times when it is difficult to remember which background character is which, which is especially frustrating when they suddenly become major players in the end. You can tell sometimes that Stephen is just desperate to get the words out, because once they're out, at least it's over.

But, in the end, it's effective writing, and that's all that matters at the end of the day. Writing should sound beautiful, yes. But above that, it should be emotional, and that's what Roland's tale in Wizard and Glass was for me.

I feel a connection to the Dark Tower series for more than one reason. I understand how Stephen King must have felt about these books, because I've been carrying around my own Dark Tower for about twelve years now. Unlike King, however, my story has no real form; it takes a form but soon changes it, like a sort of creative amoeba, and while my biggest dream in life is to actually pinpoint what the story is supposed to be and write the damned thing, part of me knows that's about as likely as, well, everybody in Roland's new story turning out happily ever after.

My story began when I was eleven years old, and found a picture of an unusually styled female character in a review in some video game magazine. I now know that it was an anime styling, but Japanese pop culture hadn't hit America hard yet back in 1995, so all I knew was that the art style was somehow infinitely compelling. I took out a piece of manila-colored paper (I seemed to have an endless amount) and scribbled down a picture of a girl in the same style; she was skinny, with long, messy hair (which I immediately knew was red) and big, doubtful eyes (piercing green). I also knew, instinctively, that her name was Lunar. Pretty standard juvenile fantasy fluff, I now realize, but to this day I'm still unable to really change any of those first few characters that came to me; as ridiculous as they may be, Lunar will always be Lunar, and Will will always be Will.

My first story with Lunar and Will was pretty awful. It had to do with magic pendants, but it read more like a video game script than an actual story; there was perhaps one big twist intended at the end, but otherwise it was almost painfully linear. First they'd go here, then they'd go there, and eventually they'd end up where they had to be. Middle school happened and I gave up on the quest for the four pendants, but it always remained somewhere in the back of my brain.

As much as I want to teach when I get older, I'll always want to write a little bit more. But I don't think I can really properly devote myself to any writing project until I at least get some headway on the Lunar story. My main problem, however, is that as I grew older, I began to realize more and more just how important structure and purpose is in a story, and, looking at Lunar and Will scrambling through their fictional kingdom to find four conveniently placed pendants, I realized my story had absolutely none. No structure, no purpose. I loved stories that seemed well planned; when I realized JK Rowling had name-dropped Sirius Black in the first chapter of the first book, despite him not becoming a major player until book three, I knew that the Lunar story (affectionately titled "Sun and Moon") had to be completely reworked.

But I didn't know how. And I still don't know how. Because as much as I may try and change the form of the story, something inside of me refuses to give up on the most constricting of points. I can't, for example, get rid of the pendants. I can't give Lunar a better name. There has to be some physical form of divinity. It has to be a goddamn fantasy story, a really, really trite and uninspired fantasy story. I have tried everything to make the story work. I've changed the setting, I've changed the time, I've made bad characters good and good characters bad, but nothing works. To be honest, I can't even tell you why Lunar and Will need these damn pendants so much, but I know the story falls apart without them.

So I understand Stephen. I understand this obsession with a story. And I can even forgive him three hundred pages of would you please get to the point already because I'm sure that, if Lunar ever deigned to tell me what it was I needed to be writing about, there'd probably be parts where I just had to get through it, be it good or bad writing in the end. (If it's me writing, it already defaults at "pretty awful.") My only hope is that, if I ever get to chasing my pendants like Stephen chased his Tower, I can manage to create a story that is as moving and heartbreaking and simply touching in parts as his (and Roland's) own.

...okay, so nobody read that at all, but that's fine. Hi Mom! Hi guys! I'll be back three weeks from today.