Just dance, gonna be okay [Random]

People from home keep asking me how things are going over in China. I wish I could say that everything is great and I love my life here, but right now, that is not the case. Everything seems to be frustrating me. I know that lots of people go through this when they go abroad, so I'm not too concerned, and I think it will pass. And I know that there are lots of less fortunate people going through really tough things right now... but when I think of the opportunities I turned down for this internship... grr. For now, I'm going to get my frustrations out via blogger.

I work for a news website. You would think that a company whose main business element comes from computers would have a good server, internet connections, and equipment. This company does not. Most of today's relevant content comes through the internet, you don't need to be a journalism major to figure that out. Why, then, does CIIC not have proxies installed on every computer to get around censorship? Yes, we are a government-run company, but I'm sure the government has ways around the blocked sites. Otherwise, how would they know what to block? I sometimes have no access to most of my friends at home, no way to upload pictures, and no way to update this blog. Frustrating. I've had IT fix my computer more times than I can count on one hand by now for various reasons. The printer won't work, or the internet won't connect; it's always something. I still haven't found a fast way to upload pictures. So frustrating.

I'm in BEIJING, CHINA, and I'm stuck inside for eight hours a day. Today at work, I had NOTHING to work on. I could be making BANK just being a white person who speaks English in China, but I'm stuck surfing the net aimlessly for hours instead. I could be experiencing things that I might never have another chance to experience. Honestly, the only thing that is keeping me here is that they are paying for my apartment, and I will get to THAT later. Yes, they are letting me report on events around Beijing, but those are mostly on the weekends, which are my only times to travel and sightsee. And they're making me do this stupid swim competition tomorrow morning. I have to get to work almost an hour early. Am I getting paid overtime for this? Nope. Frustrating.

If I could contact only one person from home, it would be a no-brainer. I'd want to talk to my mom. She has yet to figure out Skype, and our schedules put us at a further disadvantage. It has been almost a month, and I have yet to have a conversation with my mom that lasted more than five minutes. Frustrating.

My largest purchase in China has been a gym membership. Come to find out, this gym is a miserable place. No air conditioning, no place to fill a water bottle, no toilet paper in the bathroom, no sense of sanitation, and they play the same five songs all the time. They don't even bother to fix machines that are broken for a couple of days. Frustrating AND a waste of money.

My apartment. OOOOH, my apartment. We started off by finding out that there was no gas in the apartment. Then we figured out that we can get locked IN our apartment. Then we lost all hot water. Now we have a huge puddle of water in our kitchen because the hot water heater, which was JUST fixed, has a leak. The doorbell doesn't work half the time, so I have to scream up in hopes that a roommate is home and left a window open. All of these repairs are coming out of our utilities budget, which is apparently almost depleted. I don't own a key. We share two keys between five people. The gate is locked at midnight, so we have to climb a fence to get in or risk being yelled at by our landlord for waking him up to let us in. Just damn frustrating.

There's so much more that I could rant about, but I can't even post here because of people who might be reading this. Hoping I feel better about all of this soon.