Things I Don't Like About China

This list is in no particular order.

*The humidity--it is soooooooo humid here. I'm sweating all the time. Luckily, we have air conditioning, but I still walk to and from school twice a day. This morning at school we had flag raising ceremony and it was the most miserable thing ever. We had to stand in these lines outside in the hot sun while they had speeches, the national anthem, and some different drill commands. I'm sure it was a nice ceremony, but it was all in Chinese. They did have a translator for the speeches at least. The whole thing was only about 15 minutes long, but everyone was literally dripping in sweat. Most of the guys backs were drenched from the sweat and you could see through their shirts. It was disgusting. I'm not exaggerating at all either. Even all the Chinese people were dripping and wiping the sweat. I thought it would never end.

*The smell. I'm not really sure what it smells like here, but it doesn't smell good. I don't know if the moisture in the air holds the stench in or what, but it seems to always smell funny. It's funny because sometimes we'll be walking along and we just walk into a gross smell. My kids will comment, "I just smelled something bad." Our bathroom also always stinks. I don't quite know what it is, but it smells like sewer or something. Jason said it's because our sink doesn't have a pea trap, but I don't even know what that is, so I'll just take his word for it.

*Not being able to understand or communicate with anyone. There are only a few times when I'm glad that I can't understand people: 1)when I'm walking down the street and a group of toothless men are smiling and saying things to me and 2)when someone is trying to sell me something. Other than those few instances, I really wish I spoke Chinese. (or everyone else spoke English)

*Leaving Haley at home every morning. Okay, this doesn't really have anything to do with China, just that I'm working, but I still don't like it. Everyday Haley asks if she can come with me. It breaks my heart that she can't. She's told me that she doesn't want me to work anymore and that she wants me to stay with her "forever and ever". It just kills me.

*The alphabet. I feel like I'll never really be able to explore or get around by myself because I have no clue what anything says. I can't even look it up because it's a different alphabet. A lot of the signs have the pinyin (English alphabet) underneath, but not all. The other times I've visted foreign countries, at least they use the same alphabet so it didn't seem as hard to navigate and familiarize myself with my surroundings. The Chinese alphabet is just so overwhelming to me. Last Friday night, we went exploring to find a restaurant to eat in. Mel and Shane weren't with us and we forgot that they always order for us. When we got to the restaurant street in Clifford, we realized that none of the restaurants had English menus. We felt so silly that we couldn't even go out to eat. And some of them had pictures but you couldn't really tell what it was or how much it was. Finally, we found a restaurant with an English menu and that's how we picked to go there. It wasn't the best food, but at least we could order.

*Jason wouldn't be happy if I didn't include this next one--the slow internet. It' s not even that slow, just not fast enough to watch TV from home during peak hours. Fortunately, most of the things we want to watch (BYU football) come on in the middle of the night or early morning hours here. We got to watch the season opener last weekend. Go Cougs!

*Our family and friends aren't here. So, when is everyone coming to visit? We miss you!