I Got Egg on my Face, but Don’t Call Me an Egg Head (Bonus points if anyone can guess the reference I twisted to get my title from)

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GOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING (insert your city/town here for a more personal connection to this blog) Last time we had a triple threat of Temple of Heaven, embassy “fun”, and then the Summer Palace. And to top it off, I left a little foreshadowing of my hell week to come. And it was hell-tastic. A Fail-tacular if you will (aka: prepare for a lot of whining). Also, I have discovered that one of my fellow CET classmates had discovered my blog (Hello Christina!) Alright, lets get through this.

July 11th:
Many fruitless attempts to figure out my visa situation. However, my Gong Fu (Kung Fu) class is a nice stress release. I haven’t talked a ton about the class so let me go into a little bit of detail. The style is Wushu, and since that means nothing to y’all, think about Bruce Lee/ Jackie Chan style: useful, but also a bit flashy (which is exactly why they make for excellent movie action stars). And while fun to watch, and cool to learn, some of the sets that we learn are kinda boring, or more accurately the practical side of me just wants to stop a set, wind back, and let loose a punch (or swing) that the guy couldn’t block using the set pieces. This is probably a good portion of the wrestling side of me that was taught to react on instinct than memorize set pieces and reenact them (which if someone does Wushu competitively, they would do a solo set piece and be judged on style, technique, bad a$$ery, etc.) That being said, we’re also doing some more practical things, like banging our forearms together. Seriously. That’s part of the training. Actually, despite the writing techniques I just previously utilized (aka: mind control – wahahahahahaha) there is a purpose to this: pain numbing. I’m not 100%!s(MISSING)ure on the details, but basically a body limb/segment has to be hit a bunch of times repeatedly before calcium builds up in some part in the place of contact, which then starts to numb the pain of getting hit. Also, learning to use a 6’ bamboo pole is kinda sweet, especially since I know I have a 6’ titanium pole at home (thank you lacrosse – Jay, Goalie practice just became a lot harder).
So after the class, a game of pick up basketball ensued and of course I had to get in on that. Especially since the French were playing. (Quick note, I have nothing against France, except that they aren’t America – the same way that England, Ghana, and any country that isn’t America must realize that America is awesome, cause we are dang it! Now where’s my hot dog?) So If I haven’t explained the why there are French people there, France is also having some academic program being hosted by the same school that’s hosting CET, but theirs isn’t a language program, so most of them don’t know more than super basic Chinese. But basketball domination knows no language (ask Yao Ming). Long story short, my center skills are joyce and I dominated the rim like a fat person dominates a buffet table. Which is even easier when you have Ke’rai’je on your team. Ke’rai’je is a graduate from Dartmouth, and is easily the most popular person on campus. Like he seriously can’t walk anywhere with out someone yelling “Ke’rai’je!!!!!!” Multiple times this has developed into a full-out chant. Part of this popularity comes from the fact that he started this program with 0 knowledge of Chinese and at the beginning of the language pledge, would go around to everyone and say the little bit he knew/ask the little bit he knew just to practice/be sociable as possible, which was not lost on CET at all. He also happens to be really good at basketball. So between his flawless shot and my ups/box out – we sent the French back to cry over baguettes so they could actually become soft enough to be edible (that was about as racist as I could get – and I find it funny that I go straight to food.)
So now with my pro-America rant out of the way, I also learned from this basketball game that the pollution is really evident in China. It’s one of those things that when your walking around, you don’t really notice it, unless it’s really bad (we had 1 day that was a 475 out of 500 in the first week). But when your doing something more active than walking, laughing, or walking and laughing, it starts to hit you hard. I had a cough for the rest of the night, and despite what multiple studies I just made up say, this doesn’t increase productivity or knowledge retainage.

July 12th:
Long story short, I had a huge headache, probably because god hates me. Or the Chinese discovered/translated the title of my upcoming book mentioned in my previous blog. This did not help studying anything, memorizing the speech I had to give for a contest the next day, or talking with my family about visa issues (God dang it Taiwan and/or China!).

July 13th:
Well, this might have been one of the most embarrassing days of my life. I forgot my speech. Straight up, couldn’t get past 3 sentences. So in front of all of my classmates, and the class below us (btw this is equal to ½ of CET) I stood up, walked up to the front, and just blanked. I don’t think I’ve ever been so embarrassed or hit such a low in my Chinese career. And I know exactly what happened too, and I’m not sure why I didn’t see all of this coming. I knew my speech wasn’t memorized to the character, due to previously mentioned headache, but I knew I could stumble through my speech, and then done, whatever – no oral test after my written test. But when I walked up to the front, the teachers were right there on the front row, staring at me. I don’t know why, but this freaks me out a lot, and whenever they do something, like write something down, or even nod their head in agreement to what I’m saying, I start focusing on that, and not what I’m saying/regurgitating (problem numero dos). At UNC whenever I have to give a speech in Chinese or do an oral test, I’ll bring my ball cap and lower/adjust the brim so I can’t see the teacher and then just focus on my speech (brilliant? I know, you can tell me whenever you feel like, or if you need a suggestion on time, now). But when the whole first row is teachers judging you, there’s no escape.
So after I bombed, I was pretty livid with myself. After the contest, I basically bee lined to my room so I could get a grip and go back to the award ceremony an hour later (and during that hour, I also tired to get some progress done with my visa – failed.) So I went back to the ceremony with a cooler head and listened to the academic direction talk a bit and then give out first, second, and third tier prizes. And I got a third tier prize. Which I declined, cause under my reasoning – if I didn’t finish my speech (let alone the first dog gone paragraph) I shouldn’t get anything. Not fair to everyone else. I figure this is sound reasoning. Remember this, this will come back shortly. Though my friend Tonny won the whole thing with an awesome speech about his identity problems in China (he’s Chinese background, but an American so native Chinese think he should know Chinese, but is then really confused when he’s not fluent. A few people have asked him if he’s Korean due to their disbelief. More things I couldn’t make up if I tried.) And then I went back after all of this stress, and studied for my midterm the next day, as well as a oral test I suddenly had (god dang it.)
July 14th:
Took my midterm, and that went…not great honestly. Did fine on the oral, but thought I’d do a lot better on the written part. I gotta go back and figure out what’s going wrong. But anyway, after powering through a midterm on 5 ½ hours of sleep plus an oral that wasn’t originally on the schedule, I finally hit my first culture road block. So after my oral, Liu Laoshi (the head teacher of my skill level) pulled me aside and basically said something along the lines of “Hey, I know you were mad yesterday, but not accepting the prize (which I should probably mention was a little book that says something about yay for making progress and some little trinket ) was rather rude to Chu Laoshi (the academic head).” Now I was kinda surprised that she thought that I didn’t accepted it just cause I was pissy, because a) while yes I was rather mad with myself when I bombed, I know I was level headed at the award ceremony, and I thought I was carrying myself in a level headed manner (still think I did) and b) Come on, really? I’m 20 dang it. So in some broken Chinese I explained that while I appreciated the gesture, it wasn’t fair to my classmates for me to accept a prize. So then Laoshi understood the cultural difference and explained that the prize was more of a “Keep up the work” token more than anything. So that drama solved, I accepted the little book thing (admittedly because it’s easier just to take the prize than to fight it, I don’t want/need any drama to my name.) and then found Chu Laoshi and explained why I didn’t originally accept my prize the day before. Problem solved. I think (assuming my Chinese was good enough to convey the fact that there was a difference in culture).
But then things turned around cause Tucker Mills came to visit!!!!!! For those of you who don’t know (and shame on you if your one of those people. Just kidding. Maybe.) He was 2 years ahead of me in High School and then we both ended up at UNC, both Chinese majors. Basically he’s my older brother, and I’m his younger brother (this is actually how we explain it to people.) So his visit made my day. We caught up as he told me about life, and his new apartment (he’ll be teaching English to kindergarteners in Beijing this coming school year), as well as catch up with some of his teachers. It was great to see him again, and kinda the pick me up I needed after this hell week.

All right, I’m running outta words again, so I’m going to stop this blog and write another one about the actual weekend – in An’Yang! Alright, things to thing about:
At what point does racism stop being funny and start being mean? I’m not sure, but I’m sure mom will tell me I crossed the line in this blog (I politely disagree).
What other ways can I find to make a total fool out of my self and my Chinese skills at the same time?
Do you think it would be easier to buy a fake Taiwan visa on the black market at this point?
--Robby

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