Little Place called Home

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Well Happy Chinese New Year to those of you who celebrate it or even know what it is. I'm sure Dalian is completely lit with fireworks today as the number of fireworks has definitely been increasing over the past couple of days. Also the amount of red one sees has been increasing (and no, I'm not a bull).

Yesterday I had a really awesome day. I woke up to Michael calling me and asking me to open the door for him. He moved the last of his stuff into the extra bedroom in my apartment. Then the two of us went over to Starbucks (yes, the American one) for breakfast where we met one of his friends who is Chinese but goes to school in Australia. Michael and I have been hanging out with each other a lot more over the past couple of days. He's a really great guy and has a lot of really cool experiences and things that we can talk a lot about. However, he is addicted to coffee so I have been drinking more coffee recently. Strangely enough there's some coffee that he bought a while ago that he makes at home and the two times I've had some my right hand has acted up and started hurting really badly so I think that I will have to stop drinking the stuff. Anyways, we had breakfast together and then hung out and people watched until Stone came and met us for lunch. The combination of the three of us is really rather strange. Michael likes to joke a lot about things that Americans joke about (like American movies, TV shows, sex, drugs, other things) so Stone can follow it but definitely doesn't understand the humor of it. So Michael ends up talking to me a lot. Then Stone and I haven't stopped holding hands for a couple days now so he's over holding my hand to which Michael doesn't respond at all (which I think is great).

We had lunch and I went and taught my class. I was really excited because Helen was teaching with me instead of Milly. Helen and I have taught a twice a week class before and it worked out really well. There are words every now and then that she's not able to understand but otherwise she knows what to explain almost before I finish explaining it to the kids in English. It's her job to explain things like directions in Chinese to the kids. However, Milly is a different story. Her English is definitely not as high and so I try my best to do the directions and explanations with what Chinese I know. Every now and then though I can't get what I mean to say across in either Chinese or English and then I have to stop the flow of the class almost entirely while I explain things to Milly (at an extremely basic level) so that she can explain it in Chinese to the kids. This is a really annoying process that causes the discipline of the class to be lost almost entirely.

After class I went back to my place and Stone, Michael and I hung out again watching a movie together and then I walked the two of them over to the train station. On the way to the train station Stone thanked me for walking him over and there were a bunch of fireworks set off behind the train station - which was really awesome looking. Stone and I have become really close and I think if I am able to relax myself into the pace at which Stone is going into things (instead of the faster pace which I am used to) I may really have an awesome boyfriend on my hands (knock on wood).

Anyways, later on that night Camillo was doing my hair and I explained to him about Stone. He told me that he was really happy and that he wanted to congratulate me about it. I was really thrilled about this because I didn't want him to be at all jealous of Stone. Camillo asked me why he would need to be jealous of Stone and told me that he was really happy because that meant that he could relax even more around me (which he continued to do as the night wore on). Camillo, Paul, Cat, Craig and I ended up going to Noah's to get some drinks and then Camillo really wanted to go dancing so we all went over to Banana's (a club) to go dancing. Camillo really loosened up and is starting to become the relaxed Hispanic feeling of two people hanging out (with physical contact but no sexual ideas - which I really like).

Last night I packed and then got one hour of sleep and then got up to go to the airport at 5:45am. I was a little nervous about going to the airport in Dalian because I really had an awful time at the airport in Beijing (simply because my Chinese at the time was absolutely despicable - and I thought I had about 10 minutes to get from one international flight to a domestic one). But this morning my Chinese got me through everything I needed and I was early enough that I they could do whatever they wished with me and then I still had some time before I got on the flight. I slept the entire flight - literally didn't wake up once to see either the take off or the landing (typical me sleeping on planes). Then at the airport in Incheon I went through customs and got my luggage and Chris was waiting for me at the other end. We took a long taxi ride (probably about 40 minutes) into Seoul from the airport and got dropped off next to the military base (Yongsan). He then checked me in and I got a temporary ID pass for the weekend. We then went and I met Chris' roommate Brian and Brian's friend Molly before we went over to get some Korean money and go to a pretty sweet almost fast sushi place for lunch. We then came back and I talked with Brian for a good while. Brian is 26 and has a three year old kid and wife in the States. He's a military police officer (MP) and is about to start working as one of the general's bodyguards (or a "bullet catcher" as they nicely call them here).

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