Duck Duck Slam

…due to the fact that Tour Guide is running very, VERY late.  But don’t complain.  Despot Lishy will only think twice about beheading you:  once before it happens, and again after the execution – with grim satisfaction.

To pick up where I left off…  After arriving in Handan and going to a delightful lunch extravaganza, they shipped me off to my brand new apartment, throwing me inside a 5th floor flat with my over-sized luggage and locking the door after shoving 5,692 bits of essential information into my head that I promptly forgot.

It’s a nice little place.  I’ve grown rather fond of it since I moved in.   It has two bedrooms, a balcony, a living room, a bathroom, a washroom-esque hallway, and a kitchen.  When I arrived, it was fully furnished and already equipped with such necessities as a telephone, some survival food-stuffs, and a western toilet.  And yes, a western toilet is a necessity because squatty potties are not my cup of green tea.

The first look at my bed filled me with such utter delight and ecstasy that I squealed.  No lie.  My bed linens are purple.   However, upon more thorough examination, I found the bed to be nothing more than a 2 inch pad of foam on top of a wooden box.  Also, no lie.  But, it’s actually quite comfortable.  So, you can take your 8-inch mattresses with all their springy wonderful-ness, tickling top quilts, cotton-fiber upholstery, and fiber/mesh insulation and light them on fire.  I’m not jealous of you at all.

I’ve also two wardrobes, an end table, and a desk in my room.  They aren’t top of the line, but they’re fully functional.  Within the first week, the door displaced itself from one of the wardrobes.  The door to my desk is currently on hinge.  I could dwell on these infinitesimal issues, but the fact of the matter remains:  I’m getting new furniture tomorrow, haha.

The balcony connected to my room overlooks the section of the zone in which I live.  The zone is comprised of about forty buildings, each with six stories, housing approximately (by my estimation) 2,000 people within the gated city block.  My hometown has 2,860 people within a square mile.  Haha.  And Handan is considered a small city in China.  The only other interesting thing about my balcony is the clothesline extending from one side to the other, held high over my head.  Before gaining a bit of common sense, I had to jump multiple times in my attempts to hang up laundry to dry.  Eventually I got the bright idea to hang them on hangers first, and then hang them on the clothesline.  I find this is much more efficient in that 1) I no longer have to run the risk of falling through the floor to the balcony below, 2) I can string more articles of clothing along the line, and 3) it’s less humiliating than suffering the derisive laughter I know you all emitted at the thought of my short and wonderful self jumping to hang up clothes.

I have leather furniture in my living room – a gray leather sofa and a gray leather armchair.  Beat that, you buffies.     I also have a glass table, two wooden end tables, a TV, a DVD player, a small TV stand, and a water machine (hot AND cold, ftw!).  When I moved in, there was a telephone.  However, the absence of my house phone has left me with a sinking feeling of loneliness in my gut.  Since I didn’t have international minutes on my phone, the phone company which would have provided my international minutes wanted their phone back.  So they came and stole away my one true love, and left me alone to my own devices with my cute little purple Nokia cellphone which I carry with me everywhere since it fits daintily into the pocket of my purple Bolivian handbag.

The bathroom, while equipped with a western toilet, doesn’t include a bathtub.  There is a shower head with a drain in the floor.  So, essentially, the whole room is the bathtub.  So my bathtub is bigger than yours, na na nana na. =P   One thing, though, that I find unnecessary, is the massive mirror on the wall.  I don’t exactly like to spend much time ogling myself in the mirror to begin with, but having to see myself while I shower is even less appealing to me, haha.  The only upside is that I can draw on the mirrors when they steam up and not have to answer to anybody. 8D

The washroom-esque hallway connects the bathroom with the kitchen.  My bathroom sink is technically not in my bathroom, but instead in the washroom-esque hallway.  There’s also a primitive washer/dryer utility system in place.  It has two compartments, like a washer/dryer utility system in America, but they’re together in one unit, not two separate entities.  You turn on the water, fill the first compartment with clothes and laundry powder, turn off the water, wash, drain the water, fill it up with rinse water, run through another wash/rinse cycle, drain the water, and then put the clothes into the second compartment.  The second compartment is a high speed spin cycle designed to extract the water from your clothes so they only take two days on the line to dry instead of four, haha.  It’s a lot like doing laundry back home, except I have to do everything manually save for the wash cycle and the high speed spin cycle.  Could you imagine me having to do those parts?  I’d probably just go buy new clothes.

The kitchen is cute.  I have a refrigerator/freezer unit, a sink, and a shelf for food/dishes.  Currently there are 5 bottles of juice, some Chinese sausages, a bowl of moldy spaghetti, and various condiments littering the inside of the fridge.  The freezer has some dumplings and chicken patties, and maybe a couple loaves of bread.  The sink is currently full of dirty dishes because I’m too lazy to do them.  The sink only has a cold water faucet–so I have to go to the bathroom for hot water.  Yes, I do my dishes in the bathroom.  Yes, I know this is odd.  No, I don’t care.  There were plenty of dishes and cookware when I arrived, so I’ve only added a few things to that collection, mainly chopsticks.  Twenty sets of chopsticks, to be exact.  Never run out of eating utensils…and if I do…they’re super easy to clean.

The actual part where I do my food experimentation is sectioned off from the kitchen via a small door.  I don’t know exactly why they partition it this way, except that in the event of a fire I can run through the door and close it to hold off the flames while I run away.  I have a microwave, a toaster oven, and a two-burner, open-flame cooking range.  Fortunately, there is also a ventilation system above the cooking range to help keep things under control.

I’ve tried my best to describe my humble dwellings to you in such a way as to arouse interest and also paint a vivid portrait in your mind.  However, for those of you who are so unimaginative and creatively challenged, I snapped some photos.  Visit the Hall of Dwelling to see them. I hope you have enjoyed this free tour into the life of Despot Lishy.

Coming up next…

Reader beware, you chose the scare!
1)  Iron Chef, Handan
2)  A Day In The Life of Handan
3)  The Despot’s Birthday Celebration In Handan
4)  The Despot’s Wonderful Vacation
5)  How The Despot Stole Christmas
6)  Readers’ Request.

Comment and let me know what you want to read about next. =D

But I hope you can accept this blog post instead     My apologies for it being excessively overdue.

SO…I’m in China.  Yes, I’m certain you’re all aware.  But…I should start at the very beginning…and the beginning is the very best place to start, right?

The Flight.
Suuuuuper loooong.  Three planes.  Pittsburgh to Detroit, Detroit to Tokyo, Tokyo to Beijing.  I’m sure some of you are aware of how much I absolutely loathe public restrooms.  This hatred extends to airplane restrooms, especially.  They’re not only public, but far too small.  But, I think kudos should be in line for me…I controlled my bladder all the way from Detroit to Tokyo.  13 hours.   But I can say something that most other people I know can’t….I TOOK A PEEPEE IN JAPAN! *ahem*  But, at least I didn’t miss any of my flights or get lost or anything like that.  However…

The Landing.
Upon landing at the airport in Beijing, I moseyed my way on over to the luggage claim and somehow managed to get both of my over packed suitcases into my possession.  Plus my laptop.  And my carry-on.  I know I’m not small, but there is really only so much Lishy to go around, and Lishy was spread a little too thinly across all that luggage.  Thank God for wheels.  I slowly made my way through security and went to the Meeting Checkpoint to rendezvous with my Chinese associates (it sounds so over-important when I put it that way) but to no avail.  Grant, my boss, sent me a picture of Zhang, my other boss, who was to pick me up at the airport.  I couldn’t find him.  Nowhere in sight.  I looked and looked and looked.   For two hours.

…

I don’t know if you understand the enormity of this situation.  Let me put it in perspective for you.
Name:  Lishy
Age: 23
Sex: Female
Height: 4′11
Status:  Alone, unarmed, tired, hungry, lacking the Chinese language skills necessary for airport survival, weighed down with too many suitcases and bags, tired, hungry, lost, lacking the PHONE NUMBER of my Chinese friend who was supposed to meet me, tired, hungry, sore, tired, tired, tired…
Thank God for English-speaking Chinese workers at the airport.  After waiting around for two hours, one of them finally took notice of me and hooked me up with a shuttle bus to a hotel.  It took all I had not to cry.  I got to the hotel safely, checked in and all that jazz…In retrospect, I should have been prepared for problems.  I should have had the phone numbers of my connections in China in my pocket or something.  Instead, I suffered a severe lack of foresight and found myself in a dark hotel room in the middle of Beijing.  (And did I mention I was tired? And hungry?  And mostly tired?)  I’m glad I have an addiction to technology; without my laptop I would have died.  I got an ethernet cord from the front desk, fired up good ol’ Arsenica 2pt0 (my laptop) and found the phone numbers I needed in my e-mail.  Called Zhang, let him know what was up.  He wasn’t even in Beijing.  They had sent two other people to pick me up, so having his picture memorized pre-flight was pointless.  It took awhile for me to describe where I was (of course there are thousands of hotels in Beijing) but once we pinpointed my location, the other two guys made their way to the hotel and found me.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  Tony and Carter checked into a room, brought me food, told me to be ready to leave the next morning before 6AM (-_-).  But at least they fed me.  And then I passed out after having a much needed shower.

Arrival in Handan.
Well, I somehow managed to drag myself out of bed before 6AM.  I met Tony and Carter in the morning, and we checked out of the hotel.  Then we hopped into a cab and headed to the railway station.  We ate BREAKFAST at KFC.  Yes, Breakfast…at KFC.  But I didn’t have chicken.  Go figure?  I had Chinese porridge and some sort of long, fried roll resembling an eggroll, but not quite…Or maybe it was an eggroll and ours just resembles theirs, but not quite.  Anyway, digression.  It’s not a lifestyle, it’s an attitude.  We hopped onto a train and three hours later, Handan City was immediately the most happening place on earth because I had arrived (I’m modest, really).  Lots of people met me at the train station…Grant, Amy, Pam…I can’t even remember who all showed up.  But I hopped into a van with Amy and Pam and we went to a restaurant for lunch.  All the foreign teachers were there, plus Zhang, and Phil’s parents.
Any clue how Lishy took in this lunch date with 129038 new faces and 290348 foreign foods?
Like this:   O.O
I tried to eat some food, tried to listen to conversation, tried to take part in said conversation…failed wonderfully and epically.  But at least after this I got to go to…

My Brand New Apartment, Yeah!
Pictures coming soon.  Oh, and description coming soon.  Oh, yeah….I have to go now.  Haha.
I’ll finish this soon.  I promise >.<

Enjoy for now!

I’m gonna miss this simple town
Full of memories
I’m gonna miss just hanging out
With all my friends
The rainy days and summer nights
Skippin’ stones by the riverside
But I know it’s time to go

I grew up in Paden City. It’s small and simple, that’s for sure. It’s also definitely full of memories, both bad and good. Racial diversity doesn’t exist there; I’ve stuck out since I popped out of the womb. Many of my former classmates took jabs at me at one time or another; kids are cruel. It used to bother me a lot that I was different. All I really wanted to do was fit in, but the mysterious half of my genetic code prevented this. For the longest time I didn’t think it was fair. But now, I’ve come to realize that trial and tribulation make a person’s character stronger. I’m a survivor.

I’ve come a long way in terms of self-identity. The hurtful words that plagued my childhood because of my ethnicity no longer hold the sting and bite that once tormented me every night. I know who I am, and I’m proud of who I am. I’m Lishy, the Germasian who has wheedled her way into the center of your hearts. Hate me or love me, I’m there either way.

I will miss Morgantown far more than I will miss Paden City. Morgantown allowed me the opportunity to feel free to be who I am. When I started university, for the first time in my life I didn’t have to hide in shame because of my differences. In Morgantown, racial diversity paints every corner of the city a different color. By being different, I blended in.

Morgantown is where I met some of my best friends. Many are still there, but some have gone on to other places. Morgantown I hold dear in my heart. But I’m ready for something new. I’m ready to move away from the rivers…Monongahela and Ohio alike–both toxic cesspools harboring three-eyed toads and five-finned fishies.

So here’s goodbye, here’s so long
I must go and follow love
I feel my heart moving on
I must go and follow love
Carry on while I’m gone
This is what I been dreaming of
I’ll miss you so, but I must go
Go and follow love

I’ve made friends all over the place. Each one I will miss greatly, even the ones with whom I’ve not spoken in what feels like eons. I’m so thankful for each of you, my friends. You’ve made me feel special and loved beyond what I feel I deserve. In turn, I love all of you wholeheartedly and would gladly go naked in the middle of the winter to make sure none of you would shiver. You’ll all be close to my heart even though we’ll be far apart.

I’ve got a heart that’s full of dreams
And a little bit of crazy
I can feel it pulling me
To somewhere I have never been
I’m packing up and leaving home
To travel into the great unknown
It’s time, I have to go

But, this is something I have to do. My heart is aching for this…aching to return to a place I never really left in the first place; hungering and thirsting for what I might find there; reaching for the magic and mystery of a whole new world (please don’t sing the Aladdin song); longing for change, even if it’s difficult; waiting to experience life as I’ve never experienced it before. These are my dreams – please handle with care.

So here’s goodbye, here’s so long
I must go and follow love
I feel my heart moving on
I must go and follow love
Carry on while I’m gone
This is what I been dreaming of
I’ll miss you so, but I must go
Go and follow love

So away I go, off on this new, fantastic journey. I don’t know what’s coming; either happiness or disaster could be imminent. Maybe both. Whatever it is, though, I have to go and live it. Think of me from time to time, okay? I’ll be thinking of all of you.

We’re not guaranteed tomorrow
So we must just keep on livin’ for today
Make the most of every moment
Every step along the way

There are a million reasons why I could stay; thousands of uncertainties attack me from all directions any time I’m left alone to my thoughts. Will my parents stay in good health while I’m gone? Am I leaving the love of my life behind? Will my friends remember me for awhile, then forget I even exist? Will I be alone when I come back? But I have to move past these questions, or else I’ll never realize the dreams inside my heart. I have to go and not look back. Life is pulling me in this direction. God is leading me this way. Throw worry to the wind; place my faith in God; trust in His goodness and I will endure.

So here’s goodbye, here’s so long
I must go and follow love
I feel my heart moving on
I must go and follow love
Carry on while I’m gone
This is what I been dreaming of
I’ll miss you so, but I must go
Go and follow love

This is what I’ve been waiting for.

Good-bye Paden City. Good-bye Morgantown. Good-bye friends, family, lovers, losers, and people I’ve never taken the time to talk to even though I see you every day.

Life begins now.

“I’m glad you’re leaving.”

“You’re glad I’m leaving?  Why?”

“Because you’re driving me crazy.”

*suffocates*