Kelly's Excellent Adventure

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I'm keeping this diary to remind myself of my life in years to come, to remind others that I am still alive, and because I don't like the idea of group emails.

I haven't travelled very far at the moment. In fact, I'm in my bedroom in Birmingham and am actually confined within the West Midlands for the next week, having been 'grounded' (does that word still exist these days?) for the first time in my life. Apparently this is meant to make me organise my life, but so far all I have done is gone shopping in Birmingham lots and attempted to buy loads of things over the internet.

My plans for the next year, before I sell my soul to Rothschild include teaching in China, feeding baby lions somewhere in Africa, not getting shot in Zimbabwe, riding llamas and elephants, and finding out how to pronounce Ouagadougou. I aim to travel 4 continents and more countries than I can name, so no wonder this has been so difficult to organise. I think I'm going to be spending half the year on planes.

China is the only part that has been vaguely organised. I will be leaving in a week to be a Visiting Lecturer (they sure do like their fancy titles over there) in Southern Yangtze University, Wuxi, which is just outside Shanghai. Armed with the ability to speak English, I will probably be preparing rich kids older than me for undertaking an absolutely useless degree abroad. Term finishes at the end of January and I hope to make it back home sometime in February.

During this time I aim to do to the following:
- Improve my Chinese
- Buy an iPod Video 80G because they’re ridiculously overpriced in Britain
- Get food poisoning less than 5 times
- Realise that people in Southern China actually speak a different language to the good old Northerners (am still in denial about this)
- NOT get my hair artificially straightened/permed/coloured by a very skinny heterosexual man with crazy hair, drainpipe trousers and a tight pink t-shirt (or anyone for that matter)
- Smuggle in books that are banned in China (starting with Mao by Jung Chang)
- Ask my students what they think about democracy /Tibet/Taiwan/the Falun Gong
- Lead a student revolution against the archaic iron fist of the Communist Party
- Get arrested
- Run away to spend 7 years in Tibet

According to my parents, China is a very dangerous place. My mum frequently warns me of the danger of spending time outside the university campus, where I will inevitably be kidnapped and sold to some peasant in the countryside who doesn’t have enough money/isn’t attractive enough to get a real wife due to the shortage of women in China. I bet the communist party didn’t think of this problem when they came up with the one child policy. And just in case I can’t type this word after I enter China, I had better do it lots now: democracy, democracy, democracy!

Perhaps I should go to bed. The next time I post something, I should be in China, unless I get really bored before then. Also, just in case anyone was wondering, it’s not offensive when I say bad things about China because I’m Chinese. It’s actually all a form of respectful humility.

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Comments

[Char]

I already tried the iPod thing there... not much difference in price, I'm afraid! :( Ah well, maybe you'll have more luck! Haha -- look forward to hearing of your adventures!! x