Worst Night of my Life

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Let me precede this by saying when one is drunk all of their inner feelings are spilled out on the table in a crazy mess just like pick-up sticks. This is exactly what happened to me on Monday night. It all started out with a really great party at Las Tapas - a great Spanish restaurant. (This hurts to write about so it may take me a little bit.) It was Laura's birthday and everyone was there with bells and whistles on. I was sitting at an end table with Natalia, Adam, Kelvin, Cat and a new woman named Sandy who is from Tennessee. Adam and I were having a nice friendly eating contest to try and eat everything on the table and in the midst of it I realized that I really liked the wine that I was drinking. It was the first time in my life that I actually liked wine. I normally have hated the stuff (and with good reason). Unfortunately wine works just like bai jiu on my body (which means that you don't feel yourself slowly getting drunk - like beer - you just all of a sudden are drunk). After a little while at the restaurant a bunch of us went to Alice's Bar. I had some fun dancing around and chilling for a little bit but then I found myself drunk and a wreck. Unfortunately my heart is not very happy here in China and as of recently it has been getting worse. I also have been clinging to any part of home and what I like about home that's possible. So when I was drunk I started crying (and couldn't stop - for probably a couple hours). Cat was trying to calm me down when Craig insisted that I go home. Unfortunately when I'm drunk the thought of being alone at home really does scare the living buggies out of me so that didn't help at all. Anyways, not to try and go into it all but I really screwed up my relationships with a lot of people (mainly Markel who was the one person who I really wanted to be closest to here as he's the only one who speaks Spanish). That night I spent the rest of the night sleeping at Craig's as I really couldn't handle being alone.

It was absolutely awful and looking back on it really makes me want to cry. I apologized profusely to everyone in the morning. Adam told me he felt slightly responsible as he was the one who said he wanted me to have a hangover in the morning. Craig forgave me almost immediately and it's going to take a little while longer for Kelvin and Cat to do the same but I think they will. Laura isn't worried about it but Markel hasn't talked to me and Adam won't even speak to me about Markel. I talked with Craig, Camillo, and Paul about it and we are all on the same path of thinking right now. When I first came to China everything was lovely - I loved everything here. I never understood how foreigners could say they hated this place. As time has gone on I have slowly started hating everything myself. To the point when it's really hard for me to keep this hatred down in me. Craig told me that this beginning period is the "honeymoon stage" when everything is wonderful. I told him that I don't remember this phase with any other country and then I started remembering how much I really did want to go home when I was in both Costa Rica and India. There were certain things that just needed to be changed for life to be okay in both of those places. In India it was the program - I just needed to get out and be on my own. In Costa Rica it was the family I was staying with - I just really couldn't stay with them. The only difference is that in China there's no one thing I can put my finger on and say "that's it, change that and everything will be okay". Also China is the one and only country that I've not really made many friends who only speak Chinese. In all of the other countries I was practically begging to be away from other foreigners. I asked Craig why this country is any different from any other country. Why have I been able to go to all of these other countries and make everything okay and make so many friends there and not here? He told me that China is too similar to the US. It has everything we all hate about the Western world here. Camillo told me that this is the only communist country I've ever been to (which is true). Paul and I agreed that if you're unhappy on the inside it definitely can start getting worse and the more unhappy you are at one place the more you really don't want to be there and can't get anything productive done. When I first came here I was happy, my spirits were up and so was my learning. I learned Chinese way faster than ever. Now that my spirits aren't that high my learning has started to decrease and my Chinese hasn't been improving that much.

As for our new house Russell and I have been finding a lot of things wrong - the phone doesn't work, his door is permanently locked, the pipe to the sink randomly falls off and one of the chairs that was there broke the second day. The joke is that we're going to tell the landlord and he's going to tell us that the sink is fine because it has a bowl under it catching everything. That's how China works.

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Comments

[Dad]

What a lousy night...
Jenni, I'm so sorry you had such a crummy night. While it's easy to say that we all have such nights, it still doesn't make your's any better. I hope you can appreciate the fact that you have already decided not to stay in China for any great length and take what good you can from the rest of your stay. It is a lot different and that is what you'll eventually get out of this. As for booze, generally I'd be a lot careful about it- it has done terrible things to members of my family, over time... Hope you're feeling better about yourself. Love, Dad