I fear that these little projects I assign myself during the weekends won't be enough in the coming months. During the weekday I busy myself with teaching, and obviously there's a sense of satisfaction in that, but on days where there's no work and the other teachers are busy with their own stuff, the lack of social interaction begins to wear a soul down by the end of the day.
Today was a bad example, I guess. I spent a lot of my time figuring out some computer stuff, and when i forced myself to go out I got on a bus at random and it took me to the middle of a damned residential development. No shops, no nothing. Just other people's apartments. I ended up taking a taxi and trying to explain "the belltower" or "the center of town", but when that fell through I just ended up coming home, eating dinner while being stared at by Chinese people, and spending my friday night "in".
The good news of it is I have promises of cell-phone acquisition tommorow, which is something to do, but if I'm going to be this disconnected from other people, I'm going to need a much bigger project.
Language tutoring will help. It'll give me the tools i need to have easier interactions with the world around me. Lighten the load somewhat. But even then, there's gonna be downtime. As the reeling horror / novelty of China wears off, I find myself where I hoped to be a week ago: settled. It's the next step from here that I need to figure out. It's not fear that keeps me in my apartment anymore. It's inertia more than anything.
So, it's come to this crossroad. My language skills are about where they were when I left China. Either I start learning Chinese and take up a big, impressive project to fill the gaps where work and social interaction can't go, or I went halfway around the world to be lonely.
Maybe it's time to get started on that biography.
2 comments:
i hear the whole loneliness thing. I dunno what the situation there is, but brazilians are like crazy open and love foreigners. so, my suggestion to you is not to get on a random bus, but to walk into a random bar and start fumbling around in your chinese with cute girls. forcing strangers to meet you halfway in terms of language is fun, and chances are they'll want the practice.
by the way, do you guys have "Bob's"? I mean, speaking of selling an image, this place's name is very american, and portuguese doesn't use the possesive " 's " so it's clearly trying to look like a US franchise, and the stores are like dirty mcdonalds's's's.
I would discourage the cute girl element, but I think Dave is right and that you should just bombard people with your Chinese and charm. I still think trying to find (paid or no) work with an NGO or Google or something would also be a good idea and further sexify the resume.
Soon enough i'll have i-nets capable to video chat, so hopefully that will help a bit with being lonely :)
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