Normal? What? Quoi? 什么？
I’ve always thought the word “normal” is one of the weirdest, most flexible terms in (in this case) the English language. What’s your normal? Betcha a billion it’s different from mine.
Sort of a tangent, but I promise it has a point. I’ve only been in China for around two weeks and it already feels, well, normal. It really is quite easy to live here. The food is good and cheap. Walmart exists. The people are kind. There is cake. All the necessities for a happy and healthy life are comebyable.
I’m starting to get my routine down. It goes something like this:
- 6:45 am: My first alarm goes off. I hit snooze, obviously.
- 6:58 am: My second alarm goes off. It gets turned off. I’m playing a dangerous game, this I know.
- 7:00 am: Construction outside begins with great gusto. I realize I can’t go back to sleep and turn on my white-as-a-kite fluorescent lightbulb.
- 7:10 am: Boil water, make coffee-in-a-tea-bag, grab banana and peanut butter (YES!!!!!!) and return to bed.
- 7:15 am: Eat breakfast, drink coffee, read for a bit, and get ready for class.
- 8:00 am: First class starts. Depending on the day, it’s either grammar, reading, speaking, or listening.
- 9:30 am: Run to the nearby bubble tea stand/coffee shop and get a latte. A real latte. With like… real ground coffee beans. Sets me back about $2, but the joy it brings cannot be priced.
- 10:00 am: Second class starts. It’s different from the first class, but it’s also either grammar, reading, speaking, or listening.
- 11:30 am: Grab lunch. Depending on the day, I’ll either head to the international student cafeteria or I’ll go to the woman with the bakery stand a few buildings away. In both cases, I can get a solid lunch for about $1.
- 12:30 pm: Study. Do homework. Repeatedly check Facebook.
- 2:30 pm: Meet up with some buds. We’ve taken to going for walks to local gardens or shops. For a city of some seven million, Hangzhou actually has quite a bit of nature. The botanical gardens are a ten minute walk, and West Lake is a twenty minute walk. Or go to Walmart.
- 5:00 pm: Eat dinner. I’ve been trying to get out of the habit of eating so early, but I just get wicked hungry. Not always, but I often go to a nearby restaurant. We’ve already found solid Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese food.
- 6:00 pm: Study or do homework.
- 7:00 pm: Exercise. I gots myself a date with Shaun T.
- 8:00 pm: Study some more.
- 9:00 pm: Watch a movie. I decided it would be swell to watch all the Harry Potter movies in sequence. And I just started watching House of Cards. Interesting tidbit… not one frame of House of Cards has been cut out in China. In fact, it’s one of the top shows here.
- 10:00 pm: Go to sleep. Don’t make fun of me.
I need to make sure to not get too comfortable. Having a routine is fine, but I’m literally (← for realz) on the other side of the world. I want to stretch the li’l globby thing that is my comfort zone.
I’m just starting to get to know people. No one too deeply yet. But that’ll come. I’ll tell ya all about them soon.
Forever and always.
