Amy Adoyzie Enjoys Life and Junk

I've been sitting in front of Zie Zie for a couple hours, typing away on a story, pretending to lesson plan, and just killing time when I noticed that my left eyelid felt funny. The crease in the lid wasn't folding in right and had a bit of pressure on it, but I didn't think anything of it until an hour later when it still felt weird.
Finally, I got up to take a look in the mirror and sure enough my left eyelid has a noticeable, slight pink swell to it. I got a bug bite on my freakin' eyelid!
It's not pink eye, because it's doesn't itch and my eye itself is fine. It isn't a zit, because zits don't swell like this. It's just a good ol' fashioned bug bite on my freakin' eyelid!
I dealt with the vampire-y bites on my neck by wearing a collared shirt. When I was feasted upon in Changsha, with my legs looking like they'd been attacked by a maniacal Chinese midget, I covered it up by borrowing pants. I was even a trooper when some bites showed up on my booty! But now this. Bug bite on my freakin' eyelid!

Halloween is coming up, so it might be a great excuse to teach with an eye patch. That is if I can find one in Huarong.
But seriously though.
My eyelid. China is effin' with me so hard.

Two of em. On the right side of my neck. Red and swollen.
Like some ancient Chinese hopping vampire, dressed in the traditional black and blue brocade gown with a rounded hat, a long black braid slithering down his back as he bounces up and down, put my neck between his fangs and took a bite.
It's real classy and sheez. These mosquitoes are on top of me like... yup, white on rice.

What are the chances of having such fantastic luck of locking myself out of my apartment, getting four bug bites on my butt and then realizing that I ate an entire jar of peanut butter in just two weeks?

- I left to eat a MSG-marinated dinner at the teacher's cafeteria tonight and forgot to bring my key. A local locksmith was called in to disassemble my front door, where he stuffed some type of gauze in my key hole, jiggled it a bit and them turned it with a screwdriver. It looked like it would be very easy to break into my abode. Fantastic! Then I even owed him a 40 kuai bill for letting me back into my home. Yippee! That's a week's grocery right there.

- It might have been that I left my laundry to hang on my balcony for too long and some buggers made their home in my panties, because I've got four ginormously swollen bites to prove that something's been hanging out at the panty line of my booty- and they didn't even buy me dinner! The longer I stay in China, the more and more my body takes on the scars of a diseased whore. Believe me, these bites will leave scars. Sexy! Grrrowllll!

- Then I just realized that I nearly inhaled the preservative-saturated Chinky Skippy peanut butter that I got just two weeks ago! I even snack on it! It's not nearly as good as good ol' fashioned Trader Joe's all-natural peanut butter where the only two ingredients are peanuts and salt, but it's still PB! I bet that this stuff's got MSG too. It got me to thinking about whether I went through PB that quickly in the States. It didn't seem that important because Trader Joe's was just a short bike ride away. But since it's now a 4-hour bus trip with really loud Chinese people seemingly arguing about everything under the moon as they sit right behind me while I'm trying to sleep, I'm really rationing my PB intake. Is it also possible that Chinky Jiffy may be less dense than the TJ PB? Which makes it so that I am consuming more at one time because it's fluffier? Or am I just talking shit to justify my voracious appetities for the butter of peanuts!



Don't those two peanuts look like their scheming to screw you over with less densely packed PB? I fink so's.
Bastards.

When I quit that awfully adult career-job-thingy a year ago, I donated my quasi-professional wardrobe to the Goodwill. Slacks and beige were forever banned from my closest as I escaped officeland. Then when I got this job, as a foreign English teacher, I refused to succumb to the pressure of professionalism and replace my t-shirt and jeans uniform with clothes that might require ironing.
I was stubborn and only packed jeans and skirts. I figured that I would just wear skirts the first couple weeks, and then revert back to my thrift store chic after everyone stopped caring about what I wore. What I wasn't expecting were the hordes of insects who found my flesh to be enormously appetizing and feasted upon them until my legs looked like a very short Chinese man beat my shins with a very small baseball bat. During our teaching practicum I had to borrow a pair of pants from my field director, Jenny, because I couldn't wear jeans during that first week nor could I wear a skirt for fear that the students may have thought that I was a diseased whore whom the Hunan Board of Education found in the gutters and rehabilitated to become an English teacher. Just before we left Changsha, I went to a nice swanky store and dropped 99 yuan for a pair of black pants that I could teach in.
But I realized that my stubborness is now reeking some clothing havoc in that it's just a pain to find a pair of normal pants (without glitter, lace and ruffles because the Chinese lorve that shit) that will fit me in Huarong.

I celebrated my 26th birthday yesterday and I was going to splurge on some more teaching clothes, because even though I'm more than a quarter century old I am still continually mistakened as a 15-year-old Chinese middle school student- thanks in part to my immature wardrobe. However, shopping in Huarong is devastatingly frustrating as I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that while I am a size small in the States, I am a hefty large or extra large in China. No joke! I bought a pair of the FOBiest purple sweat pants for pajamas, and that tag clearly states that I am extra in the large size. The only reason I bought the sweat pants was because they were 15 yuan in a discount bin since no one else can fit their skinny Chinker butt into those super huge pants!
My birthday shopping spree was a bust and I'm going to have to save up some more yuan to buy pants at a pricier joint. My theory is that the more expensive shops have more clothes in larger sizes because wealthier folks, who can afford to get fat, shop there. The pair of 99 yuan pants that I bought were size 11, and they only go up to size 13!
I ain't trippin' though. It's not my fault they don't have milkshakes and garlic bread here. But they do have cake, and what awesome cake it is! Check out this sweetness the school got me for my berfdayz!



And then I treated myself to my first Chinese Coke!

The night before last was the most restful sleep I've had since arriving in Huarong. Here's why: I wasn't awakened once by explosive itching on my legs and arms from my nighttime bug friends. It's like Huarong is finally saying, "I guess we can be friends." It also helped that I had mosquito incense burning, lightly dampened my skin with this refreshing green bug juice that has a single English phrase, "shower water," and I closed my bedroom door.
I woke up that morning and went for a short jog to the nearby river. On my way there, I made a wrong turn and ended up in between small patches of pond-y farmland, trying not to slip off the narrow dirt path and into someone's lotus root crops. I didn't go that far down the river because I cut through another dirt path that led to the new road that will go into the school. As it is now, the cracked cement driveway that leads to the small gates leaves much to be desired for a Number One middle school. The new road is wide and has been paved to be paper smooth and ends at the new school gates that looks like it will be at least twice as big as the present gates when completed. There is also a lot of school housing construction surrounding the new entrance, and it makes me daydream about how they'll move all the teachers into swanky new pads in a few months.
The campus itself is also be revitalized with new basketball courts, stadium-sized auditorium, science building and this story book-like motif with towering, brightly colored windmills. Everything is still covered in tarp, half-finished and I can't wait for the unveiling.
After my morning exploration, I felt like venturing into the small city. I asked Cesil about which bus to take, cost and when I should get off the bus. He gave me good directions, but neglected to mention a few minor details about the difference between Huarong public transit and Portland's Tri-Met:
1. Huarong buses don't have a meter machine to take your money. I hopped on an idle bus as the driver awaited more passengers, expecting him to ask me for my 1 yuan fare. But he didn't. I looked all over the small, 12-seater bus to find a box to stick my money in and then just figured that if someone wanted me to pay, they'd ask. Eventually, a woman with a wad of small bills boarded and sat at the single seat by the bus entrance. As the bus began moving, she yanked at a black rope attached to the door and pulled it shut. She was both the door operator and money meter. I gave her my money and watched her let go of the rope to let on another passenger.
2. Since there's a lady who manually opens and shuts the doors with a strip of canvas, I figured that there wasn't a "Stop Requested" cord to yank when I wanted to get off the bus. Instead you just hollah, "Yi xia." Or something similar to that, meaning "I'm gettin' off, sucka."
3. So, if folks are just hollerin' out for the bus to stop, it's easy to surmise that there may not be any official bus stops- because there aren't any bus stops. Instead, when I was ready to head back here, I just stood at the side of the road and looked for a bus that had the schools name on its front placard and waved it down. The town is seemingly small enough where I didn't have to wait for more than a few minutes before a bus showed up.
The roads aren't nearly as congested as the Changsha urban streets, and it made me miss my bike so badly. I even thought for a moment to have Gus ship Basil out here, so perfectly fitted with a side mirror, head and tail lights, loud bell, U-lock and skate helmet. I didn't realize how much I had missed riding my bike until I began lusting after the rusty clunkers that folks around here ride.
While Huarong is slowly developing, a small Chinese town of 720,000 in transition, there's still a lot of vintage China here like the pedicabs that outnumber taxicabs. On our second day here, we hopped in one for a short trip to the post office. It was a rickety tricycle, covered in an awning made of pieces of mismatched tarp. Our driver was wrinkled and looked older than my 51-year-old father. Cesil and I sat behind him, watching his dark legs pedal with plastic tan flip flops bending beneath his calloused feet. Early in our ride he had to abruptly stop the bike when his right sandal slipped off and he hustled back to retrieve it before effortlessly climbing back on his seat and lugged us away. The bike had a single gear with a dirty chain cranking around pulling us further.
Sitting back there, watching an old man pedal my fat American ass around, made me feel like a dick and miss pedaling my own fat ass around.
But I tried not to think about it as I walked around the few shop-lined streets of Huarong. There were moments where I just felt like I was in Chinatown, surrounded by stalls of bright and varied cheaply made essentials from pajama bottoms, to backpacks, to buckets. Then I would keep walking and peer down an alley to see an old man with a wiry white goatee and his makeshift fortune telling set-up, ready to disperse his wisdom and Chinese voodoo.
I would ask him about what's on my horizon, but with the language barrier I don't think it's possible to pantomime, "Young woman, China will tear you a new one. Just wait and see."

I'm a crybaby.
I cried twice two days ago when I left Changsha.

I tried desperately to hold back my tears during that late morning when all 42 of us chaotically scrambled through the Hunan Hotel to grab our luggage and leave to our host schools. Three male Chinese English teachers came to Changsha to pick up Kate and I, to take us to our new home in Huarong. We tried to avoid crashing into people with our luggage as we hustled up and down stairs (the hotel has no elevators), while simultaneously grabbing at each other for goodbye hugs.
When I handed in my room key to Daniel, our field director who's been my dawg since day one, I told him that I'd miss him very much.
"I would give you a hug right now, but it's China and I can't," he said.
Just as I stepped out of the hotel lobby, I turned and saw the reddened eyes of our other field director, Jenny, and that was when my eyeballs got all kinds of wet too.
The last thing I wanted to do was to look like a big ol' crybaby in front of the important dudes from my new school, and there I was tearing it up. It was a tender moment when Mr. Liu (I think that's his name) asked me why I was crying and I tried to be all adult and force myself to stop when I said, "I'm going to miss my friends." He reached out, stroked my hair in a fatherly manner and I got in the van.
I didn't think I could get so close with people I've only known for three weeks.

Our ride to Huarong took us out of a big city and onto a highway surrounded by greenery. I had been told earlier that day that it would be rude to fall asleep during our rides to our schools. So I just pretended like I never heard any such things and slept uncomfortably most of the way. Dude, I'm from Los Angeles, we sleep while we drive for goodness sake!
We made a stop in Yueyang, the largest city one our east of Huarong and 2 hours north of Changsha, for lunch at a Mao Communist restaurant (that's not what they're called specifically, but all's I know is that they serve delicious Hunanese food and Mao's image is all over the shizzy and it's a chain).
The most interesting part about lunch was how little I cared about our driver drinking ice cold beer before we hit the road again. It's just one of those things where I trust this old dude knew his limits and wouldn't harm our little foreign bodies with reckless driving. It's just one of those things that you grow to expect in Chinars.
After lunch, we headed over to the Yueyang police station to register our foreign asses with some sort of security administration so's that they can keep tabs on our comings, goings and in-betweenings. It was unfortunate when we got there to find that the office was closed for mid-day lunch siesta and we had to kill an hour before it re-opened. Our hosts scrambled around a four-block radius of downtown Yueyang to find a place for us to just sit and have some tea while we waited. Since they were unfamiliar with the city, we ended up in a seedy establishment made up of closet-sized rooms and curtained booths what was empty at noon, but something made me think that it was busier after the sun set.

We finally arrived at Huarong County Number One Middle School at about 4PM and shown our new apartments. They are nice and roomy and I don't have many complaints except to say that the bathroom was the most unwelcoming scene (I will expand soon). What's odd is that Kate and I have the exact apartments, right next to each other, but for whatever reason her apartment is much more well-furnished than mine. I don't mind this much because it will help in avoiding clutter, but I can't helped but be mildly annoyed that my closet as it stands now (and I use stand very liberally) is a flimsy cloth wardrobe that's ripped at the top and my neighbor has a huge wooden closet extravaganza thingy.
But my initial miff-ness about my closet was wholly trumped by the fact that my shoilet (pantry-sized toilet-in-shower type bathroom) looked as if it hadn't been cleaned since the Cultural Revolution when they banned hygienic bathroom activity altogether. Sermiously, nothing says, "Welcome to your new home" like a bowl-ful of fucking skidmarks. And it didn't flush.
That night, I showered while standing right next to the toilet from a stereotypical film about a men's prison. But 'showered' may be the wrong word considering that I had no shower head and someone compared my hose bathing to feeling like being peed on by a horse for five minutes.

After the initial introduction to our new homes, we were taken out to dinner where more male teachers gathered to talk about us in Huarongwa (local dialect) and/or Hunanese, so's that we wouldn't understand a single word they said. Except when I heard meiguo in the middle of sentences followed by muffled laughter as they looked right at me, the fake American.

I sulked into bed that first night, completely overwhelmed, exhausted and brain dead. That was when I cried the second time that day. I sobbed until I fell asleep. It hit me hard that this was my home for the next year.
I miss Portland. I miss my best friends. I miss my family. I miss the fucking United States and how comfortable I was there. I miss familiarity. So I cried.


But I'm better now. My mommy called and I told her all about it. She said that she should come to China and live with me. I asked if she would help me clean and she agreed. She said she loves me.
I've also spent a billion yuan on cleaning supplies and almost vomited a dozen times when I cleaned my shoilet bathroom. I no longer wish I had blindness-on-command whenever I have to pee.
Also, everyone will be happy to learn that I am indeed not "as big" as I am in photos. As that is what Maggie, another Chinese English, teacher informed me yesterday. In fact, I am quite "thin." Yeah-hoo! Maggie is my new best friend because she is a good liar. And she thinks it's the bees knees that I look soo much like a Chinesey, but I'm from America!
And after my first night in my new China home, I've garnered nine mosquito bites. Some of the more interesting bites are the ones on my fingers and big toe. They continually swell up to ginormous proportions, and I just don't have the energy to care anymore. I figure that I'm allergic to these bites and that if I'm here long enough, my true Chinesey immune system will function to its fullest potential because it is in its motherland and the bites will no longer leave scars. But that's probably a long time coming and I'm only here a year.