27 Outfits
I heard a story once about a guy
that was getting ready to leave for college.
As he was packing, he asked his mom, “How much underwear should I
take?” Her response was (as the story
goes) that he should pack all of it because he was moving to college. Setting
aside the point that going to college is a decidedly different process from
moving, the larger idea is how much stuff should be brought on different length
trips.
When I was first packing for
China, I figured that I would need a lot of stuff. Not only would I be here for a year, but I
would be experiencing vastly different climates, and I was unsure of what type
of goods and clothing I would actually be able to purchase here. If I had any doubts about something, I just
brought it, because I was (after all) moving
to China.
Needless to say, I brought too
much stuff.
Did I really think I would need
FIVE* sports jerseys here? Four pairs of
jeans? That brown button-up short sleeve
shirt I found on the clearance rack at J-Crew that my mom, sister, and every
female friend tell me looks atrocious? A
copy of The Brothers Karamazov? I had to know that I’d never read that book.
*Notre Dame (#9), Chicago Bears (G-Reg), FC Barcelona, Everton FC, and
my 40s Jersey. By the time I left, the
Cubs had already collapsed in August, and I figured I wouldn’t need that one.
The real reason why I brought too
much stuff, however, was something that I didn’t figure out until I actually
got to China. While I have six Polo
shirts of varying colors (bright green, dark blue, light blue, white, red, and
grey) most of the teachers and students at our school seemingly wear the same
outfits to school every single day.
In America, you have to be really
good friends with a person to start noticing specific articles of clothing or
outfits that they wear. Even if you see
a person every day, it might take several months before you can name certain
articles of clothing off the top of your head.
Here in Yanji, most of the teachers and students have roughly two
outfits that they wear—total. This means
that they might go an entire week, wearing the same thing every day.
I probably have enough tops here
(Polo Shirts, sweaters, sweatshirts, t-shirts, jerseys) that could last me
upwards of twenty days without repeating.
The thing is, however, that nobody would actually notice if I wore one
of these shirts every day for a week.
Hockey Night in America
Over the past four years (since
my stint in the Notre Dame Hockey Band ended) I’ve probably watched roughly 1.5
full games of Hockey. I went to one ND
game as a sophomore. I watched about a
period of last year’s Winter Classic (only to see what a hockey rink at Wrigley
Field looked like), and I watched less than 1 minute of three other Notre Dame
games on TV.
So, I’m not a big fan of hockey.
This is why I am endorsing the Simmons
plan (his third to last entry in the link) for the NHL. The plan involves scaling back the NHL to two
12-team conferences. One would be the
America conference and the other would be the Canadian conference. This would make the Stanley Cup Finals a
BORDER WAR between the US and Canada, something I would actually been intrigued
about and probably would watch.
Last Cigarette Ever
A couple weeks ago I wrote about
a situation where I arrived at my class to find that the doors were locked and
several kids were asleep in the corner of the room. After pounding on the doors and windows to
the room, the kids didn’t wake up, so we moved the class to another room.
This week, the problem
escalated.
When I got to the same class on
Thursday, all of my first year students were again standing in the
hallway. Arriving at the room, I found
that there were again kids in the corner of the room, but this time they were
awake. After unsuccessfully pounding on
the doors, I again sent a student to get another teacher. However, before the teacher could come, the
students let us in the classroom and left (ostensibly because there was a
teacher coming, I don’t really count).
I started class as if nothing had
happened, but then started to notice things.
Some of the students said they smelled smoke or something, but I didn’t pay
much attention because I didn’t smell anything (mainly due to the fact that my
nose has been running for two months straight because of the cold). I then started to notice that it was
uncharacteristically cold in the room.
In fact, it was frigid.
Thinking that a window might
actually be open, I opened all of the curtains to try to get sunlight in the
room, and to make sure that all of the windows were actually closed. When I got to the back of the room, I smelled
the smoke. Right where the kids had been
sleeping two weeks prior (I actually doubt they were really asleep that time) I
found a hole in the wall with a bunch of cigarettes in it.
The kids had been locking
themselves in this room, smoking in it, and opening the windows to keep the smell
out. This made the room frigid. Because they weren’t my students, I really
didn’t know who they were, so I couldn’t do anything. I told the other English teachers later in
the day, but it didn’t matter.
They better not do it again
though.
Best of the Decade
One of the best things about the
run up to New Year’s this year is that we are approaching the end of the
decade, and this means that we have been treated to a litany of “Best of the
Decade” lists scattered across the internet.
I’m not going to put links to all these lists (although SI.com and
Newsweek have particularly taken up a lot of my time) but I have thoroughly
enjoyed many of them.
What I am thinking about,
however, is when the year 2000 began.
Many people were afraid of Y2K, while other people talked about the end
of the millennium. Some people, however,
insisted that the millennium doesn’t end until the end of 2000. These people
claimed that because there was no ‘Year Zero’, the millennium (being 1000
years) could not end until the end of the year 2000.
For me, this begs a question
about what the best of the decade lists looked like at the end of the first
decade. If there really was no Year 0 (as Wikipedia states),
then was the first decade AD just from 1 AD - 9 AD? How could it have been a decade if there were
only nine years? Did they include events
that happened in 1 BC to their lists?
Because of this, I think that the
people who insisted that the millennium did not end until the end of 2000 are
full of shit. The new millennium had to
begin when the year 2000 began because each decade of this millennium will
begin with years ending in 0 and end with years ending in 9. I believe that the discrepancy can be accounted
for simply by assuming that the first millennium was actually a year shorter
than it should be.
While this makes very little
sense, consider the fact that my 2009 will be a day shorter than it should be
(because I never experienced September 4th) and my 2010 will be a
day longer than it should be (assuming that on January 1st 2011 I am
in America).
My Very Own _______
This week I received an
astounding four packages from America.
The first came on Tuesday, and it was a box of cookies that a couple
friends had baked. The next three all
came on Wednesday at the same time. I
was sitting in the English office of the school when three students walked in
each holding a box. When they put the
boxes down on my desk I felt like Scott Calvin when he walks down after shaving
to find a room full of boxes. Why did I
have so many boxes?
It turned out that two of the
boxes were from my parents. They
contained some Christmas presents and supplies, which I was expecting. The third box was from one of my friend’s parents. As I opened the box, not knowing what to
expect, the first thing I saw was what appeared to be a Chicago Cubs fleece
blanket. I took it out of the box,
still rolled up, and set it aside.
The next thing that caught my eye
was a seemingly random piece of cardboard that was in the box. “What is this?” I wondered to myself as I
picked up the piece of cardboard. When I
turned it over to see what it was, my face lit up like—well, like a little boy
on Christmas. It turned out that the
Cubs blanket was not a blanket at all . . .
It was a SNUGGIE!!!!!!
I remember the first time I ever
heard about the would-be phenomenon of the Snuggie. It was last October and I was at Between the Buns
in South Bend with some of my friends.
This was early on in the life of the trivia team known as Jessie and the
Rippers, and we were still reeling from our heartbreaking loss due to the
infamous 4-H question.
Anyways, about midway through the
trivia game that we played every Tuesday, we saw an incredibly cheesy
infomercial appear on one of the televisions at the bar. For all I know this was the first time that
anybody had ever seen the commercials for the Snuggie, and I like to think that
my friends and I were at the forefront of this cultural phenomenon.
Over the next several months I
was pretty much indifferent towards the Snuggie. While friends of mine tried to get their own
Snuggies (they were on back-order) I merely used the ‘backwards robe’ as fodder
for newspaper columns and comedy shows in churches.
Flashforward to Christmas 2009
and I have my very own Snuggie to keep me warm in the cold nights of
Yanji. Thanks.
Rising up My iTunes Play Count
Father Christmas: The Kinks—I couldn’t really tell you how it
happened, but a couple years ago this became one of my favorite Christmas
songs. I’ve rather unsuccessfully tried
to ‘get into’ The Kinks on several occasions since, but I’m not a huge fan of
much of their other music. I just like
this song. It’s a lot more unique and
original than other Christmas rock songs.
I
know I’m not in America because . . .
. . . of the lack of ventilation
in our apartment. Gavin was vacuuming
the floor the other day and he asked me (sort of rhetorically) why dust
accumulates so quickly in our apartment.
I immediately realized that because there are no vents in our apartment
and the heat supposedly comes through the floor (supposedly), the only way for
air to circulate through our apartment is when we actually open the windows
(which is something we aren’t going to do until June).
Hypothetical
Question of the Week:
Suppose that you knew today that
you were going to lose every game you played for the rest of your life. It wouldn’t matter if it was poker, Madden on
X-Box, fantasy football, Scrabble, pickup basketball, chess, GoldenEye 64,
Candy Land, computerized Hearts, pickup basketball, Sorry, or Mario Kart. If you play the game, you will lose.
Would you stop playing all games?
Meal
of the Week (but not really):
Aside from teaching my students,
I also tutor a university student whose mom is a Chinese teacher at our
school. A couple months ago she took me
out to lunch at a ‘hot pot’ restaurant. I
had never been to a hot pot restaurant before this, and have not been to one
since (although I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed).
Hot pot food is essentially what
the name sounds like. The tables at the
restaurants have big pots of boiling water sunk in the center of them. You order a lot of raw meat and other items,
and put them in the pot of boiling water to cook them. After cooking the food, you essentially eat it
straight out of the pot of boiling water (or at least this is what I did).
The first problem with my student
(since named Erica) taking me to the hot pot restaurant is the fact that hot
pot is inherently a food that should be eaten with at least four people. Since all the food comes in large quantities,
it would be improbable impossible for two people to eat all the food
that she ordered, but she ordered it anyways.
Because I usually take my cues
from the person who is paying when it comes to ordering alcohol at restaurants,
and she wasn’t drinking, I forewent beer in favor of Coke with my meal. This is important because the ensuing meal
was one of the hottest meals that I have ever had and beer would have been
soooooo much better to wash it down than Coke.
We began eating the food, and it
immediately was scalding my mouth. Not
only was it hot as in hot food, but coming out of the boiling water it was just
plain hot. While the meat that I ate was
certainly good and tasty, it was so hot that I was drinking Coke like it was my
job. There were also rice balls (or
something) that were literally so hot that I could not tell if they tasted good
or not. As soon as I put them in my
mouth it was a struggle to chew them enough and get them down my throat fast
enough where they didn’t burn something along the way.
By the end of the meal my eyes
were tearing, my nose was running, and I had amassed a small collection of Coke
cans on the table next to me. Before we
left the restaurant she offered me some sort of pill because she said my
stomach was going to hurt. Confused, I
told her that I wouldn’t need the pill (while I wondered to myself why a person
would go to a restaurant when they knew they wouldn’t be able to handle it
later).
As I walked home from the
restaurant, I really, really regretted not taking the pill.
Quotation of the Week:
“I told to my friends I have two
American friends, and then it makes envy among them.” –What my student, Erica,
wrote in her Christmas card to Gavin. I
never said I was a great teacher.
Picture of the Week:
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