The Ride is Almost Over

What began over a year ago is down to seven weekends. I've planned mini-trips for two of them. One is my birthday weekend (yay!), and one more I'll have a going-away dinner at my place. (On the advice from a friend, it'll be a Chinglish party ...)

Seven weekends. Really?

Yup. Unlike the last time I faced expulsion from China, I'm ready to leave now. (I've really  got to stop wanting to add "... and continuing my life" on the end there, as if this trip in Shanghai was somehow an interruption, a blip, in my life.) I'm pretty excited about going back to Austin. Just now I happened upon the flickr group for said city, and I had to stop myself from looking at it, because I would just get overcome with homesickness at a time when that's already increasing.

Don't think I dislike Shanghai or China -- far far FAR from it. If I knew I was staying another year or two, I would be thrilled. But since I've known for six months now that I'd be coming back in January, the excitement and anxiousness over returning has grown. It's just that, you know -- the US and Austin feels like HOME. (At least it does from over here.) And you can't replace that feeling, no matter how hard you try.

At the same time, I'm really sad about leaving. To say this experience has been amazing would be a understatement of the grossest proportions. To say I've learned new things about myself and others would not even be a fraction of the story. To say ... well, honestly, there's just no way to put it into words. There just isn't. Even if you have read all my blog posts and looked at all my pictures and talked to me on the phone billions of times ... and even if you've visited me ... there's just no way to transmit that experience. I could try, but I could never get it perfectly, and that would be frustrating, so I won't even try. Actually I'm worried about this feeling affecting me when I return. 

I hope I don't sound too elitist here. Each person's life is like this, I suppose -- unable to be perfectly conveyed to others. Chalk that up among the lessons I've learned here ;-)

Ah, I get very meta and grandiose at times like these, so I'm sure that before I leave I'll post one long super rambling post of that nature. But now's not the time :-)

Onto more mundane matters: I got home Saturday night (ok, really, Sunday morning) and realized I'd lost my ATM card!! This was a little disturbing, as it's not like I can go to the bank and withdraw money without it. (I am dependent on CCB ATMs.) But I was pretty sure that I'd left it in the ATM earlier that night when I went to withdraw funds for the night's activities. The bank was closed Sunday, but I called their help line and spoke to a nice woman who said she would alert the bank branch about it. She suggested I alert my own bank for safety reasons -- but I didn't, because I'm lazy and because I was pretty sure that my card was tucked safely inside the ATM. (Unless some unscrupulous ATM tech happened upon it, I suppose.) Probably not the smartest decision (or lack-of-decision) I've ever made, and to be fair, I did check my online balance numerous times to make sure no one had withdrawn my life savings out from under me. But, as I mentioned before, I'm lazy and didn't want to cancel a card that has funds automatically withdrawn from it (for bill-paying purposes) and have to deal with the hassle of asking my bank to, like, overnight me a new card because otherwise I'd have to eat at KFC 3 times a day because they take my Sodexho card that has buttloads of money on it and borrow money from the other Americans here and feel like a doofus. 

Yeah.

So this morning I waltzed in the bank at 9 AM and walked over to the nearest person I saw. She was busy with someone else and told me to wait for a moment while she went in the back room to talk to someone about something else. When she came out, I told her my problem and -- glory of all glories -- she already had my ATM card in her hand!! Lucky me. After a quick inspection of my passport, she handed it over, and I was on my merry way. 

Lesson learned? I dunno :-)

Halfway Home

While walking home tonight I realized something: as of April 4th (next week) I'll have been here for three months. That means my time here is halfway up. Strange.

I reflected back on it a bit. I've done many of the things I came here to do -- and more than a few that were entirely unexpected. I've seen a buttload of great music. I can muddle my way through a conversation in basic Chinese. I even can read a couple characters. I've eaten some amazing food. I've taken almost 4 GB worth of pictures and videos. And pretty soon I'll get to see Suzhou, Hangzhou, Beijing, and Tokyo at the very least. I've had some invaluable experiences at work.

Perhaps understandably, I'm not necessarily super excited about going back to Austin. I think it's more of -- I'm extremely curious to see how I'll feel, what I'll think, what it will be like to interact in a non-textual manner with my friends again, and so on, what it'll be like to sit in a restaurant and understand people's conversations around me. Will anything have changed? I suppose by definition, many things will have. But I don't think any changes will be too drastic -- not even myself. I'm still who I was when I left, at least, if such a measurement can be qualified :-)

Over here, they call this "reverse culture shock." They say I'll notice mainly two things: 1) how fat Americans are, and 2) how many people have blond or red hair. You don't see many fat or blond people in Shanghai, let me tell you . . .

Eating Mexican food, lounging out by Lake Austin, driving down Mopac at sunset -- hell -- driving anywhere, tromping around Red River St. at night, shooting pool -- these are all things that I - well I guess I miss them, but I'm pretty content/fulfilled in Shanghai, so it's more like I see these experiences as "different" as opposed to "irreplaceable". Again, it's more like, I'm curious as to how those things will feel after having spent six months in Shanghai.

Yeah there are some things I don't like about Shanghai, like the friggin' slow-ass Internet everywhere, but on the whole it's been a hugely positive experience. Which is great :-) I don't even miss my car. I never thought that would happen. In fact the only time I interact with a non-taxi vehicle is if I'm dodging one that's about to flatten me, so I think my opinion of cars is now rather negative.

Speaking of which, buses are obviously the biggest vehicles on the road here, so you'd think their drivers would be the most cautious, right? WRONG. Buses don't stop for ANYTHING -- except, er, I suppose to let people on and off. But if you are crossing the street when the light turns red, and a bus is about to make a right hand turn in front of you, YOU better stop -- because the bus will not. Now that I think about it logically (stupid brain) I suppose that's because no one's wearing seat belts and the bus driver doesn't want all his passengers flying forward.

Dang. I figured out a logical reason. So I guess it kind of makes sense. But still - they shouldn't be going that fast in the first place. There, now I feel better :-)

All right, I suppose I'm being disingenuous. There has been talk of extending my stay in Shanghai. For how much longer, who knows, and if it's even a possibility when the time actually comes to decide, I have no idea. We'll see how it goes. It's strange because I don't even know whose decision it is, when these people need to decide, what factors are involved, or if I'll even have a say in it. Well I shouldn't say this is strange, because that's what my life was like for all of 2007. So I'm kind of used to this feeling by now (kind of).

And that's fine -- one of the reasons I took this assignment is because, if there's ever a point in my life where I'll be okay with living in such a state of flux, it's now, and not when I'm like 35 and married with a house and kids or something like that. Now is the time to do these batshit-crazy things, like live in Shanghai for six months and eat fried bees for dinner. Mmm. Speaking of which, I'm going to stop talking about that and fucking do it this Friday night.

So I'm not complaining :-) I'll roll with whatever happens. I mean, it's not like Austin is a cesspool or something that I'd be unwilling to go back to. Far from it. So really, I can't lose either way :-)

What it comes down to is this - I'm not ready to leave yet. So it's a good thing I still have some more time here :-)

But regardless of how long I stay here, I'm pretty sure that I'll be back in Austin at the end of June for at least a couple of weeks. So -- get off the road, because I'll be renting a car ;-) Sheesh, do I even have my driver's license? I think it's around here somewhere . . .