*UPDATE for all those curious: I take back the ‘facing the hole’ comment in my earlier post. I talked to my aunt, who burst my bubble of self-congratulation and informed me that in fact, you just face outwards. Who knows what the right way is? If you encounter one, just take a second to think about what’s happening and try it out yourself.
Anyways.
* * *
I slept with the air conditioning on the entire night last night, which apparently you’re not supposed to do. While my Chinese has gotten better, it still hasn’t reached the point where I can see what all the buttons on the AC remote say without bothering to use a dictionary. I played around with some buttons and set it at a balmy 27°C (80.6°F) thinking that it was already cooler than that so the AC would automatically shut off soon. I guess I was pretty tired, so I fell asleep pretty quickly, and ended up having a dream that someone had stabbed me in the left shoulder. When I woke up, I felt this sharp pain on my left side, so that I couldn’t look over my left shoulder without wincing. Poot. When I told my aunt, I got the expected reprimand for leaving the AC on all night. Must find the scientific principle that explains this soreness from wind. Erg.
* * *
In other news… I took my first bike-ride as a faux-Beijinger this weekend! I went with my aunt, the pro, around noon. Not a ridiculous number of cars out, so I felt I had an 80+% chance of coming back alive.
As soon as I got on that bike, suddenly the world became FILLED with cars coming out of nowhere, scooters going the wrong way (more on this later), strollers, pedestrians, and worst of all…CHILDREN! Baaaaah.
Oh man…I’d write here what was going through my mind as different bikes/scooters/people/Audis dinged/honked/HEY’d/beeped by me, but I fear it is unfit for a casual blog such as this. I don’t know why more people aren’t killed on the streets. Chinese people must have amazing reflexes. Everyone is prepared for the old granny who’s standing in between two major lanes. And the car that decides to U-turn on the wrong side of the intersection. And that truck that’s barreling down the bike lane.
I guess I have a little more ways to go before I’m comfortable tackling this commute to my language study campus.
eep. I don’t know if I can continue to rely on this blog as a trusted source of information on China.
hee. I just got the pun in your title. cute.
Haha, learning experience for you and me both
And heh, I do like my jokes with a side of corn.