CHINA

Man, I've fallen off the face of the earth. The domino effect of business that erupted with the family arrival for Christmas has kept me so busy. And yes, dominoes erupt. Dangerous. I'm bad at the procrastinating communication thing, my mother is not thrilled either with my inability to consistently write emails. It's a multi step process. First, I think that I've written recently so I should wait a few days for something interesting to happen, then I realize a long time has passed, but say that so much interesting has passed that I need more than 10 minutes of casual email timing to get it done, so I enter step three of waiting for the mystical free time that I never have.

I am now working a lot of muches, that part time job signed that huge contract to expand and is now hiring Chinese teachers and bringing in new students at Sonic the Hedgehog pace. The hitch, however, is that foreign teachers are much harder to find, and every new class is going to me. I am currently working 11 (sometimes 12) classes a week outside of my kindergarten duties, and on Sundays I do a frenzy of errand running and then pass out.

I bought The Office and Battlestar Galactica to watch with my crew, and though we haven't started yet two of my friends cheated and watched the first two seasons of BSG by themselves. ITS IN THE FRAKKIN SHIP

So skiing is something I hope to actually do in China. I think it will be frightening beyond all reason. One of Bob's pseudo girlfriends (and by that I mean insane women who chases him while he gets uncomfortable and unable to say no) has been attempting to rape-persuade him into going skiing. The idea got me all excited and now I want to go. It is probably one of my worst ideas ever.

Speaking of terrible ideas, I totally bought a motorbike. One of those electric propelled ones, the gas ones are illegal. I still go fast enough to kill anything I hit when at terminal velocity, and there are many times that it is scary as hell. I LOVE IT. I supplemented that with a new house that I moved into last weekend. The old place was already a shit heap, and then stuff started breaking, then a new foreigner wanted to come live when we found the replacement for English man, so I decided to just get my new place since I'm rolling around in Chinese money that I can't spend. Chinese money is abundant, but it doesn't transfer well into the American moneys.

The new place is so overwhelmingly nice and awesome. Just got redone and nowhere has lived here before, so this is on level with being as good as a good apartment in America.

After a conversation with a friend I'm thinking of buying Chinese stocks with my money instead of putting thousands and thousands in the bank.
Apparently the Chinese stock market has controls, and can only gain or lose 10% value in a day. I'm gonna take a page out of my friend's book and just put money into a corporation, wait for it to go up a bit, and then sell. He says he usually just puts money in a company for a few days to a week, and that time it usually goes up a few more times than it goes down, and he can sell for a profit of like 500+ RMB. I was like WHAT SWEET FREE MONEY FOR BEING AT A COMPUTER FOLLOWING THE MARKET.
Which is what I already do in between at work minus the market part, don't ask me why I don't use that time to email. I'm not that smart.

The new Australian foreign teacher arrived, and I thought he was going to cry with being overwhelmed by everything. He had never been out of the country before, never been on an airplane before the plane to China, and definitely doesn't speak Chinese. He had this look of, "What am I doing?" on his face the entire time, and has just had a string of events that rival JJ-level of insanity. He has already gotten locked into his house with the keys, an episode that involved him calling me while he freaked out from claustrophobia and had me talking to the crazy loud Hangzhou-hua speaking neighbors outside the door who were only increasing the fear by banging on the door and yelling incoherently. He has been the victim of repairs, as the repair guys show up at noon and don't leave until 8 pm. Add that to the normal difficulties of doing anything when you don't speak the language and don't really know anyone. I kept wanting to ask why he came to China, but I didn't want to make him cry. I've tried to be helpful, but he insists he'll be fine. Nice guy, but looks to be headed for an insanity China-overload meltdown. I'll videotape that part when he gets on top of a building and fist fights a grizzly bear.

Your life. Tell me about it.