Some Stories

Story #1

A few days ago I was subbing at this center where I hit it off with the Chinese assistant I was working with, Chloe.  We were having so much fun teaching together and at lunchtime we decided to go out for pizza.  We were sitting in a booth and she was in the middle of telling me all about a recent trip she had taken to Las Vegas, when this boy in the booth behind her started making faces at me over her shoulder. 

I laughed and said, “I’m sorry I can’t focus, this boy behind you keeps looking at me.”

When she turned around to see him, the boy screamed something at her in Chinese, let loose a peel of maniacal laughter and disappeared behind the booth.

Me: What did he say?

Chloe: He said, “The foreigner is here!”

Like I was Godzilla. 

It was pretty funny :)

Story #2 

Shanghai is such an international city that, even though the Chinese occasionally stare at me, they aren't that surprised at seeing foreigners.  However, the other day I had to sub at a center that was located an hour from the city center.  Evidently it is an area that's not used to Westerners because people were gawking at me everywhere. You should've seen the people on bikes and mopeds rubber-necking as they rode by me.

I got off the metro and had to take a bus to the center, something foreigners don't do much I guess, and as I got onto the bus I could feel everyone's eyes on me.  I knew what they were thinking, "What the hell is that white lady doing on this bus?"   

I sat down and pretended not to notice their leering.  After awhile I saw the young guy across the aisle from me elbow his friend and nod at the street behind me.  I turned to see what they were looking at and I realized that there was a camel walking down the sidewalk.  A CAM-EL!  We were in the middle of the city!  There were buildings, sidewalk, cars, buses, and for no apparent reason a CAMEL walking_down_the_street!  I looked around to see if anyone else was as shocked  as I was and found that, while a few people were watching without expression, many others had glanced out the window and gone back to texting or talking to their neighbor.  

What is happening?!  Have I fallen through the looking glass??  Why is there a camel walking down the streets of Shanghai?????? And why is nobody alarmed?

I saw two more camels while I was on that bus, and nobody reacted.  And I thought: Oh sure, camels are nothing but ME they stare at!  Oh, China.

For whatever reason, a camel on the street was common place in this area but I was the unusual thing to be seen.

Story #3 

Two things that made me nervous about coming to China: Japanese Encephalitis (a brain disease spread by mosquitoes) and The Plague (a real thing, spread by fleas on rats and other animals).   Though I know these things are really more of a risk in rural areas I can't help but be irrationally afraid that I will contract one of these diseases and die alone in a Chinese hospital.  

A few things have fueled my irrational fear:

-I have seen many people with nasty mosquito bites all over their legs.  Not just a few bites, like 30 bites that appear as swollen welts.  I got bit a few times and it took days for the bumps to go away.  These bugs are vicious.

-I find little nats and things in my hotel room all the time and one my friends actually had a roach, which she caught in a bottle and marched down to the front desk. 

- Chelsea told me a story about how when she lived in Guangzhou she had a rat in her apartment. It was big enough that it dragged her partially filled trash bag from the kitchen to the living room and hide it under the couch! 

-One night I was walking down an alleyway with Stacy and we saw a huge rat!  She screamed and it scuttled away. Though I pretended to be cool about it, I'll tell you what, that rat got into my head!

 

So it's no really a surprise that I spent the better part of one night laying in bed imagining I was being eaten alive by bugs.  I kept feeling like they were crawling all over me.  After about two hours of tossing and turning and scratching at bites that didn't actually exist, I got out of bed and sprayed my entire body down with insect repellent I'd brought from The States.  

I climbed back into bed and buried myself down in my blankets so that none of my skin was exposed to those bloodsucking jerks.

I was laying there trying to will myself to go to sleep...when it happened.  I heard a rustling in my room.  I sat bolt upright in the dark

Oh God.  There's a rat in my room.  Theresaratinmyroomtheresaratinmyroomtheresaratinmyroom.

  

RUSTLE...RUSTLE...RUSTLE

There's a rat_in_my_ROOM!!!  What am I going to do?!     

Should I make a run for it?  What can I use to kill it??? Ahhh!!!! Don't be a coward, Ashlee.  Just deal with the rat!

I reached over and turned the light on.

Turns out it was just the air conditioner blowing onto a plastic bag.

Crisis averted.