Bragging rights- at 6:23 AM

Hey everyone, I just wanted to say that I went to Taiwan today and it was ridiculously awesome. I was a little scared, just because I've never been to Taiwan and Taiwan-Chinese relations aren't fantastic right now, but it was amazing. Everything totally worked out well even with my terrible Chinese and I got another stamp in my passport, which may seem like it's not a good reason, but it led to a great adventure. I'll write more later.

Normal at 1:35 AM

For some time I've wanted to write this blog post.

When I was on my mission for the lds church in Australia, I came across a lot of things I had never seen before. Ridiculously large spiders, really large or colorful birds, wallabies, Koalas. It was the same with people. I met people from all over the world that I had never had any contact with before. It was really an enlightening experience in a lot of different ways. I remember specifically walking with my missionary companion one day and I saw an ibis bird for the first time. It looked a lot like the bird in the attached picture except it didn't have any color on the back of his head and the body was whiter than this one. Also the beak curved more sharply. Anyways, I saw this bird and it just blew me away.

I thought to myself, 'Wow, that bird is totally crazy looking."

I watched for a few minutes and was disappointed to see him doing the same things any other bird would do. I then said to my missionary companion, "Elder -- look at that bird. It's totally crazy and it has no idea that it's totally crazy. It's just walking around like it's a normal bird!"

At which point he said, "I've always wanted to grab one of those birds by the beak and shake it around." (Which he never actually did, so don't think he was a bad person...)

It was boring and fascinating all at the same time. After that point on my mission I looked at all the crazy animals in a different way. Ya, they were crazy, but for Australia, they were totally normal.

Fast Forward six years.

Sam is no longer in Australia (I'm Sam), he's finished his masters degree and moved to the Hunan Province in China. He walks down the street and people shout "HELLO" to him in broken English. Wherever he goes out he can hear people talking about him in Chinese and lots of people shamelessly stare at him. When he travels outside of his town people ask him if they can take pictures with him, and I mean, like several pictures within a single day for days in a row anytime he's on vacation. In random cities he visits people ask him to help judge competitions, and people try to get him to hold their children.

After about 4 months of living in China it dawned on me. I was the ibis. Those same words that had sounded in my head at seeing such an exotic bird now echoed in the minds of all the Chinese people I came in contact with. I could almost hear it. 'Look at that foreigner. He's walking around just like a normal person. It's like he doesn't even know he's totally crazy different!!!!'

All I have to do is say 'Ni Hao' to people and some of them bust up laughing. I'm not sure whether this realization was a blessing or a curse. I love China. I have to say this first. This place has become dear to me. I plan on coming back and I hope to become much more proficient in the language. A lot of people have done really nice things for me here and there are days where I feel like I have a family in this country... But, I'm am going to be SOOO HAPPY to go back to America and not have people shamelessly staring at me or talking about me where ever I go. Sometimes it's like being famous for something you did that was REALLY really bad.

So, this brings us to Lessons Learned. (I always like stories with morals)
1. Be nice to the ibis. He really is just a normal bird, or at least he thinks so. There's no good reason to give him a hard time about it.

2. Any attention is not necessarily good attention. There are some people who dream about being famous. I think they're crazy. I've signed enough books and been in enough pictures at this point to know. I would rather spend 15 minutes with someone who cares about me and understands me than 10 or even 1000 days with people flashing their cameras and staring at me slack jawed. Those 15 minutes would do more for me than any other type of attention would. I think the distinction between types of attention is a problem with a lot of people in America, especially younger women and teenage girls. Some of them want attention so bad that they're willing to settle for the wrong kind of attention. I personally think it's better not to do this.

3. Be nice to people who may bet the Ibis. This isn't a huge problem in America. If we see someone who is different, we usually wait till afterward to talk about it, or we at least pretend like we're not talking about it. However, the last thing we want to do is alienate people. Life is hard enough as it is without feeling like an outcast.

4.  This story hits at the core of a problem I've seen everywhere. It's really easy to make assumptions about people based on how we were raised or our culture. One time I was on a sleeper train and I was sitting on the top bunk with my feet out. I heard someone say something in Chinese and by the time I knew something was wrong, some one was walking by and giving me the bird. It turns out that showing Chinese people the bottom of your feet is really disrespectful. I had no idea, but the guy thought I was intentionally trying to offend him. It wasn't until I chased him down afterwards that he realized I didn't know squat about his culture and he explained it to me. At that point he was no longer offended because he knew it wasn't intentional at all. It's just so easy to judge people based off of our own standards that don't account for cultural differences.
Even within American culture we do this, but it's more like, "Well in my family we communicate like this, and this is the right way." One of the things I've been working on is not reacting instantly when someone does something offensive, because I often find out, especially in China, that they didn't mean anything by it at all. And for their culture, it's no big deal. I'm not saying it's ok to treat people poorly, I am saying that we have a much greater ability to give someone the benefit of the doubt than we realize. I also think it's ok to ask why people do or did things. Not accusatory, but for the sake of understanding. If they did it to be rude, you'll know pretty quickly, but if there is a cultural reason behind it, I think there is a lot to be learned, and understanding will come. Ultimately I think we need to make sure we communicate our expectations clearly and that we need to focus more on what people mean and intend then what they actually do. It's been said often that 'Anyone who takes offense when none is intended is a fool.' To which I've qualified a lot in my life.

5. This point is totally unrelated. I just wanted to rejoice in the fact that I can switch from 1st to 3rd to 1st person in a single blog entry and violate all other sorts of literary rules at will since it's my blog.

Li Mei Hua at 11:22 PM

So, when I first came to China, my diet was pretty pathetic. I was too new to this place to know what to buy. For the first few days it was instant noodles and crackers. the crackers stuck, cause I didn't know what else to do for munchies. Other than that we ate outside. Within a few weeks we found a place that makes hand pulled noodles and fried dumplings. We had this amazing food place literally 20 steps from the bottom of our stairs, but about 2 weeks into the semester they moved and someone else came in who made yuck food. So I was a little discouraged, until I found Li Mei Hua.

Li Mei Hua makes the best fried rice I have ever heard of. First off, we have to realize, that I can't read Chinese and I did not know what to eat in this country when I first got here. So any type of food I found that was safe, tasted good, and was easy to find again, was an instant success. Right outside the back gate of our school is this alley that has all these ghetto food places. It's actually really cool, partially because they're super poor and they're really nice. Anyways, I tried to eat at a lot of these places and it was good, but it was so different that I felt like lunch every day was a gamble. Until I found Li Mei Hua. When most people make fried rice in Hunan they do two things. Usually it's spicy, which is REALLY good and usually they put in these pickled beans, which I think taste like unhappiness. So one day, (there's about 6 or 7 food places) I went to this random place in the alley with this random lady and I asked for fried rice. She cooked it and gave it to me, and I partook.

Spicy - Check
No ugly pickled beans - Check
Good price - Check (4 yuan, which translates to about 60 cents)
Vegetables - Check (This is important cause we didn't have a working kitchen and you can't eat veggies raw here or you get parasites so they have to be cooked in your food)

Delicious - Double Check

It was love. Not with Li Mei Hua, she's married and I can't understand her Chinese anyways, well I can now, but I couldn't then. It was the fried rice! I think almost every day for the next 2-3 months I had fried rice for lunch (Don't worry mom, fried rice here is way healthier than in America). Every time she saw me she would start laughing and shout out "Ji dan chou fan" (Fried Rice), because she knew that's what I was going to order. Anyways, it's weird how you can be friends with people even though you can't speak the same language. I actually think she was usually pretty happy to see me despite the huge communication barriers. After a month or two, once I figured out how to ask questions in Chinese, she would teach me the names of all the foods she cooked with. Which was super cool, because, most of the words I know for food came from her. Anyways, the first couple months of this semester I didn't go out there as much cause I started eating fruit in the mornings and oatmeal for lunch. Plus lunchtime was a good time to study, so if I ate alone i usually got more done. Anyways, I went out there last week for the first time in a little while and I think it totally made her day. It made mine too. It's weird how we're friends due to all the times I ate there. Especially because my Chinese wasn't good enough that I could understand her and have conversations until recently. (Which by the way, having a conversation in Chinese doesn't mean I'm good at it. Just want to point that out.)

Anyways, she's my hero. I'm not really attracted to Chinese girls in general, but I always thought if she was about 30 years younger, not married, and a member, those things with her food would be enough for me to consider a marriage proposal.

So I've attached some pictures of her here and where she cooks and lives. It's basically a two room place. One room opens to the street where people can sit and she cooks. and the other is her bedroom which also has a table for eating. And that's it. That's her house. For a woman with no money, she seems really happy. Basically, I think she's the bomb and she's one of the things I'll miss the most about China.

The first picture is her bedroom pretty small. The second and third pictures are her cooking in her front room for students at lunch. The last picture is the view of the Alley just outside her place.

It kind of makes me grateful for how much stuff we have in America. Like places to live that aren't totally open to the elements. Air conditioning and heat. A clean work place. A computer. A car. The list goes on....

Things I miss about America at 9:05 AM

These are in no particular order. So don't be offended family, you would be at the top of the list.

1. People who come to my door and knock less than thirty times
2. Eating Raw Vegetables
3. Eating Raw Fruit
4. Being able to see the sun more than once every 2-3 weeks due to pollution or rain
5. People who don't stare at me
6. Being able to walk up to someone and know they'll understand me (English)
7. My family
8. Girls I'm attracted to that speak English
9. Driving
10. Having a dog that I know no one will eat
11. Food products that are filled with things that match the description on the container
12. Peanut Butter
13. Steak
14. Food in the grocery store that expired less then 3-6 months ago
15. My sister's wedding (I'm still really sorry about that Ami...)
16. Smash Brothers
17. Going to church in a Church Building
18. Having a priesthood leader that lived less than 1500 miles away
19. Signs on the street that I can read
20. Public trash cans people actually use
21. Bath tubs (oh how I miss a good bath)
22. De-oderant
23. Guaranteed seats when I travel (although 2-12 hour standing tickets are an adventure...)
24. Set Prices
25. Living in or next to the same time zone as most of my friends and family
26. Juice that's actually 100%
27. Meeting someone and not having every person ask me
  A. What country am I from?
  B. How much do I make?
  C. Do I have a Chinese girl friend?
  D. Why not?
28. Kitchens that work (China has kitchens that work, mine just doesn't happen to be one of them)
29. Toilets outside of my house
30. Toilets that I can put the toilet paper in (disgusting I know, but Chinese toilets clog if you put the toilet paper inside)
31. Hospitals that don't scare me (I'm sure there are some of these out of Hunan, but I picked a poorer province to live in)
32. Swimming
33. Home teachers that live less than 2 hours away
34. Knowing I won't get in trouble with the government if I talk about the gospel
35. Watching movies without Chinese subtitles
36. Not having to say Ting Bu Dong every 5 minutes (Chinese for "I don't understand," my chinese is way better and this is still one of my most common phrases)
37. Not sounding like an idiot to native English speakers due to speaking at half or a quarter speed too often and not being able to switch out
38. People who don't try to take my picture while I'm not looking
39. My old room mates
40. Watching General Conference live
41. Cities where people don't burn their trash every day
42. Not being expected to always have my own toilet paper when I use the bathroom any where other then my house
43. People who don't talk about me less than 4 feet away under the assumption i don't know what they're saying
44. People who don't talk about me less than 4 feet away
45. People who don't say I'm fat
46. Dryers
47. English I can understand (on T-shirts, notebooks, etc)
48. Waffles and Chocolate pancakes
49. Group video games
50. Ferris Wheels that let you go more than one time before they charge you again

Now, I want you to know a list of things I'll miss in China is coming out soon. Just cause I miss a lot of things about America doesn't mean I haven't been extremely happy here. More to come!!!!

(If you vote on your favorite ones I'll try to do a blog post on it, it may not be long, but it'll come)