Walking

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If I ever hear another American whose not working 12 hours a day complain about working long hours I'm going to strangle them until ... wait, I'm not a violent person, really! But seriously people here work freaking crazy hours. The L Salon boys work 9am-9pm and then have class at the Salon until around 11pm every night. The construction workers at the building in front of mine work from around 7am-10pm every night and then sleep in the building they're working in (like in little tents). Taxi drivers work all around the clock - they sleep in their taxis and if you wake them up it's their duty to take you. I told Cat the other day that I remember a long time ago here when the two of us went with Russell out to Xinghai Beach and we were waiting for him to go to the bathroom and ended up sitting on some benches that were outside and talking. I was laughing a little bit and then Cat and Russell told me to be quiet because there were people sleeping there. I was a little confused at first because I didn't see anyone but as I looked around I realized there were a bunch of tents scattered here and there and sure enough there was sign that people were sleeping in them.

Today I was talking to Sally's mother - which is always an interesting ordeal. I end up speaking in English which she understands almost perfectly and she feeds her half of the conversation through her son in Korean. The only way I know how to describe it is by saying it's like talking to a deaf person. You're having the conversation with the deaf person but their translator is the one talking to you. You end up not knowing which person to look at. Anyways, I told her that I really want to stay here until January but I don't know if I can because the semester at Rockies ends in February. She asked me why couldn't I just stay there and tutor instead of working at Rockies. At first I responded that I wouldn't be able to do that because of the Visa but then I realized I could just get a tourist Visa and stay here on that. Even if I were to just work 25 hours of tutoring a week at the price I'm working now I'd still be making one and a half times as much as I'm making at Rockies now. (Wow, I never really saw that number that's a little crazy.)

May holiday is coming up and I'm thinking about going to Guandong and/or Sichuan. I really have wanted to go to both of them for a while (for one reason or another). But they're provinces so we'll have to see what I have time for. I'm mainly looking at Chengdu, Hong Kong, Macau, and Guanzhou if anyone has any suggestions.

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