Hey Everyone!
Welcome to my blog, entitled The Life Rarefied. I will try to be brief on here but keep it interesting. As of right now, I'm in graduate school in China and am happy to say I've been making a lot of changes to make my life more healthy day by day. This was my 2010 new years resolution and I am determined to stand by it!
China is a very interesting place to live, by the way. There are new happenings every day. Just for flavor: I saw a man accusing a woman of being a prostitute in front of the Shanghai train station and to prove her point, she took off her shirt (red underwear) and started yelling that she was a prostitute all around the square in front of the station. I even think she did a cartwheel. Welcome to Shanghai, guests.
At any rate, my professor recently made a good point: You can live in a place for years and not understand anything about that place if you don't go out and let things happen to you or find your own excitement. I agree. You have to do things to get a feel for what that place is, exactly. From randomly having tea with old men in the park to being on a Chinese game show, I'm trying to go out there and be exposed to this country, learn from mistakes, and ultimately understand what life means on my own and away from home.
Now for a little boring stuff: I am currently looking for jobs I'm excited about the new prospect of teaching Chinese instead of going out and finding a cubicle job. The job market is especially tough for us, new graduates! It's one thing if our resumes aren't stacked enough ... but it's just not fair if we have great looking resumes and the only thing holding us back is that we just aren't old enough to have a Masters and 1-3 years of work experience. Woof! That get's me heated! Yet, never fear.
I have faith that the US and the world will come out of the financial crisis. I believe this will happen sooner rather than later. That doesn't mean that all the corruption and health care issues will be solved, neat and pretty ... it means that we will survive and live to tell the story, because that's what we, as humans, do. We survive.
To end this, I will leave you with Chinese Story Time. These won't come every blog, but they will be posted here and again to show snippets of what funny things happen when you live abroad.
Love to all!
Natalie
CHINESE STORY TIME:
Last weekend we went to a bar to chat with friends. Afterwards, we found ourselves in McDonald's. As my friend Paul asked me to order for him, I noticed something... The guy at the register looked exactly like Wang Leehom (for those of you who don't know who Wang Leehom is, he's an American-ethnically Taiwanese pop singer. In short, I love him.) I got very excited!!
So, I tell him this (that he looks like a pop star. I think I made his day.) and then I realize that his surname is "Zhang" (pronounced Jang, in English) and in a rare moment of unadulturated wit, I realize that Zhang rhymes with Wang and proceed to say to him, "You're last name is Zhang! We can now call you Zhang Leehom!" -->For those of you who are unamused, this is actually quite a silly exchange. Apologies if you don't 'get it'.
All of his co-workers start calling him Zhang Leehom and we, at our table, also call him by that name. In a fit of sheer silliness, I write "Zhang Leehom, I love you. <3 <3 Nathalie +my phone number" on a napkin and my awesome friend, Paul, grabs it from me and tells him I was too shy to give it to him myself. A bit later, we left, and the night was chalked up as a WIN.
Two days later, Zhang Leehom called my phone.
Some photos for your enjoyment!
Panda, of course:
We must be quiet around the pandas:
Getting my ears cleaned in Chengdu, Sichuan Province:
Natarie!!! I love your blog!! Especially the story about Zhang Leehom. amazing. i expect nothing less of you. It looks like this comment is going to come up as jiefang, which is presently confusing me, as i don't remember telling blogger what my chinese name is, but whatever.. it's steph, in case that doesn't become clear somehow. love and miss you!!!!
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