Hiking and L Salon

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Yesterday I got up to go take my pants in to get tailored (since they were too long for me) it was an exhorbedent price of 6 kuai total (about $0.75). Then I went over to Russell's place to talk to his maid about coming over next Tuesday to clean my place. It hasn't been cleaned since I got here and while it isn't too bad it definitely does need a bit of cleaning. I think I may have her come once a month or once every other week. Then Russell and I went to meet Craig, Cat and Craig's tutoring student's grandmother to go shopping at Parkson's (a fairly expensive department store nearby). Craig got a pair of nice PJs and we all came back to stop for a quick bite to eat. We were a little late getting back to the school but everyone was still here to meet us to go hiking.

The hiking trip was a little crazy. We started at the beach that we went to with Joan and began to walk up a fairly steep road. Then Wayne just started randomly going into the woods and all the girls were like "what is he doing? Where are we going? I don't think I can do this!" Anyways, we ended up walking in the woods most of the time. It was fairly comical because I learned how to say phrases they were repeating over and over again like "graveyard", "watch out!", "thorns" and other things like that which normally one wouldn't say. We had a pretty great time. At one point Russell, Shina, Cat and I decided to take a hill that was way too steep and I practically slid down half of it. In the end we walked all the way from the first beach that Joan showed us to Tiger Beach (which took us quite a while - probably 4 hours total). It was a lot of fun. I hung out with Merry most of the time, haven't seen her in a little while cause she's been off work for 3 days. I think Russell and Shina definitely have a little fling going on which is fairly comical only because Russell is the neighborhood "handsome boy". No matter where we go with him it seems someone ends up calling him that. Yesterday the joke was we were going to have a race and whoever was in the front was going to get a kiss from Russell. I don't really think he's that handsome but the Chinese girls do. He's also been warned numerous times not to date any of the Chinese women here (but we'll see if that stays true).

After the trip we took a bus back to Olympic Square. I decided to grab my stuff from home and go to Peace Plaza where I worked out for a little bit. I did a really stupid thing (but fortunately only one or two people saw me do it). I did my bench pressing after I did my other arm weights and did one too many reps of it so I ended up dropping it. It didn't hurt me too much and someone was there to help me but it taught me that I need to push myself but not too hard.

After HaoSha (the gym) I went over to the L Salon as I've normally been doing. For the first time I actually hadn't brushed my hair or blow dryed it so they took the opportunity to do so themselves. Half way through the one guy slowly blow drying my hair the guy who had been working at the Salon the longest decided to take the opportunity to use me as a model to teach all the other guys a better way to blow dry hair. At any given point there were at least four or five guys standing behind my head watching one person blow dry it or getting a lesson from the one guy teaching everyone. It was really comical because it took about half an hour to blow dry my hair when it really was dry in about 15 minutes. I was just laughing most of the time. It was perfectly fine with me. I'm just there to hang out with them, had no where that I really had to be and am getting a free blow dry each time. But it still was pretty comical. After my really long blow dry Camillo practically cornered me to beg me to teach him some English. It really made me understand how little Chinese I really know. We had fun making fun of his English. Truthfully Chinese and English are fairly similar at some points so I just had to keep telling him "how do you say x in Chinese?" "now how do you say it in English?" and he would do a little better translation than he had the first time. I enjoy teaching people as long as I'm learning at the same time (which I was) and am having fun. He's not paying me but I don't really mind. He took me home afterwards and treated me to dinner so he basically did pay me. It was fun, we ended up studying for about 3 hours straight without even noticing the time go by. The whole mall had closed by that point and it was 11pm. His two roommates Eason and Alex were there with his boss, the man who had done the teaching with me as the model earlier, Camillo's brother and a few other people to have a meeting. Apparently the mall closes at midnight for those people who work in the mall (for everyone else it closes at 9pm). Although Camillo was supposed to be having a meeting with everyone else they let him study with me instead. They just kept calling him over every now and then. In the end the manager of the place (the woman I keep talking about) told Camillo that it was late for a foreigner to be out and that he should take me home. Everyone teased Camillo for a little bit that he was being ordered to take me home. He then took me outside and just before we got into the taxi asked me if I was hungry. I of course answered "um ... are you hungry?" and he quickly said yes and asked if I was hungry. That went on for a bit longer and then we finally decided to go eat. He paid for the taxi to the restaurant, the food and the taxi to my place and back to his place. We had a good dinner. I really like him a lot and would date him in about two seconds if not for the language barrier. We are both very conscious of it and are going to try very hard to work with the two languages. I asked him if he was free today and he said yes but that he had to work from 10am-10pm so I was a bit confused but he asked me if I would come there today. I said yes but as it looks right now I won't be able to go over there. I will have to apologize for that later (maybe it will give me the opportunity to ask him for his phone number).

Two things about China - living here is a bit typical. If your family lives nearby you live with your family. If not you live with your friends. Surprisingly enough Camillo's brother lives in Dalian and works at the L Salon but Camillo lives with Eason and Alex (his two good friends). I'll have to ask him why that is. Also I think if I were to date a woman here it would be literally impossible. As it is for a man to date a Chinese woman is very hard. Most Chinese women only date one man in their entire lives and it's their husband. So when a man asks a woman out for dinner it's a HUGE deal and normally is like asking if she wants to marry him. As for the men I think men here are much similar to those at home. I also think men here are conscious of the fact that foreign women are different from Chinese women but we'll see about that.

Learning a lot about Chinese customs, Chinese people and Chinese itself. Teaching is teaching me a lot about how to teach, kids and how to learn. Am overall starting to really enjoy myself here besides the very obvious language barrier.

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