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.

Shouldn’t you be in school? [18+19]

First, the good news – the swim competition was changed from Friday to Wednesday! Courtney, despite her clever ploys to be exempt from the competition, has been sucked back in and enjoyed her first day of practice on Wednesday. The company paid for us to go shopping for bathing suits, goggles, and caps. I think this is the first time I’ve actually used a cap and goggles. Mike, a Chinese employee here, took us to this tacky mall during work today. It had life-size nutcracker-like models of Santa, reindeer, pandas, and any other silly figure you can think of, wrapped in Christmas lights, lining the exterior of the mall. So, our reason to go was so that we could pick out our own gear, but that wasn’t quite the case. The salesgirl (I swear, she was no older than 10), saw the caps (with the Chinese flag on them) that Brian and I picked out and said that we shouldn’t get those. She also nixed our choices in bathing suits (Spandex… oh yeahhh) and picked out plain black ones for us. The goggles? Plain black. So glad I took time out of my day to go along for that trip…

Practice was a lot better than day 1, but I was still dying after a few laps. Our next and last practice isn’t until Monday. Not that any amount of practice will get me anywhere near ready for Wednesday…

Courtney and I went back to the noodle place for dinner Wednesday night and got two of the dishes that Chris advised us to get Monday night. I’ve been eating the leftovers ever since. It’s such a good feeling to have a menu item that I know I’ll actually enjoy (for days)!

I skyped with my BFF Annie from home the other day, and it was amazing! (Annie: An alternative title to this blog was “Sorry, I can’t read.”) I can’t even imagine studying/working abroad without the technology we have today. Honestly… so far, I’ve talked to my parents and friends for a relatively low cost, watched live performances of Bonnaroo, blogged to all my hordes of followers (sarcasm), and done plenty of other things that would be otherwise impossible a couple decades ago.

Walking home from the office last night, I saw this ferret-like animal cross the road. I need to ask someone here what the hell that thing was, because it’s the first foreign animal I’ve really seen. Annie said that her Chinese partner from Fudan was enchanted by the squirrels in Boone when she visited, so maybe I shouldn’t make a big deal out of it to avoid looking stupid.

Nanlan, one of the editors here, gave Courtney and me an event to cover this weekend. It’s a film festival with two different films – A Farmer’s Struggle and The Children in the Depths. I’ll be viewing and writing about the latter. It’s kind of sad, but I’m kind of living for the weekend right now. Our week is a bit of a drag with not much to do in this part of town except for eat and work out. Hopefully I’ll have fun stories to recount in my next post.