Week 7 of the Packers shitty season was about the last time anything good happened with the Packers.

Fortunately, I have been doing much better than the Packers over the last few weeks.  A lot went on.  One week I slept like all the time.  Every night I went to bed at 11.  HBO's the wire happened.  I watched four and a half seasons of that in the last few weeks.  Strangely, I don't even like the wire that much.  Its interesting, but the plot gets more and more random all the time.  Weekends I've been spending a lot of time with my new girlfriend.  Chillin, cooking food, watchin TV, raging...  2 weeks ago on a Saturday morning I went to Walmart to buy food to make breakfast.  

First off- that was the first time I had cooked food here ever.  I get pissed off because Chinese people always give me shit about eating out every night.  I always thought thought that it was cheaper to eat out here than to make your own food.  Its like 75 cents to buy an eggplant at the store- and a dollar to buy a fried eggplant dish at a restaurant.  Fuck making your own food.  But if you want to eat some decent eggs and bacon here you got to step up and cook it yourself.  So I went and bought food.  $50 US for one frickin meals worth of western groceries!  They wonder why I eat out.

At Walmart I saw a gator hanging off of a meat hook in the meat section.  It was headless and gutted, but the skin was still on it.  On another meat hook there was another cross section with just two gator legs and a bit of stomach connecting them.  This is right in the middle of the Walmart grocery store.  Walmart in China has lots of weird foods though, there are live crabs crawling around and fish in tanks and stuff.  Chinese people like to see their food alive before they eat it.

Halloween was sweet too.  I pretended to be a zombie in class and started attacking my students.  We had a pretty cool Halloween party with all you can eat pizza and wine.  I dressed up as a pimp of course.

Last Friday I went to my friend Gavin's birthday party.  All you can eat all you can drink.  I drank all I could drink.  Sake after sake.  When we were ready to go to the club I lasted like 5 mins there, then was like I'm wasted, I got to go home.  I was fine until the cab started driving all over the place like a motherfucker and I got my head poked out of the window puking a little bit getting it all over the side of the cab.  I made sure to get out the other side.

We we got back to my school the guard on duty was the one who is always asking questions...  I think he was asking me some shit but I was kind of being propped up by my girlfriend at that point and I was just like I'm wasted dude open the gate man.  Fuckin shitshow Friday night.  Saturday did it up American style.  Went to see the new Bond in a theater.  It was kinda censored I think, not enough sex.  Brought it a bottle of Bacardi and mixed up some rum and cokes in the theater.  Went and got some Papa Johns after that.  That was fucking good too.  Met up with some friends at a live music bar and listened to some local Chinese cover band for a bit, then headed back to my place to fire up a session and drink some beers.  Good weekend.

When you're out of school the time goes by so fast.  Right now I'm already halfway through Tuesday.  At the end of Tuesday I am halfway done with work already for the week (I have more classes on mon and tues)  There are not really any negatives about my life.  My only problem is like do I watch TV or do I go out and do something in the afternoon.  MY free time is astounding.

The weather in Shenzhen has taken a turn for the worse recently.  It has been dropping to around 60 now.  I wear my winter jacket everywhere to defeat that winter breeze.  I guess it is November.

Rich Chinese Dudes

Last night I watched the Packer game over the Internet.  The thing kept freezing at first but it got better as time went on.  The quality was shitty... but hey, I got to watch the game at least!  In the commercial breaks it was flipping between the gamecast of the Brewers game and the Mets game.  At least that situation turned out well... actually amazing, considering I have never seen the Brewers go to the playoffs ever! Fuck Ben Sheets, without Sabathia we would be absolutely nowhere.  My thoughts on the only Packer game I've seen this season... where is the running game and where is the run defense?  We need at least one of those to succeed and in Tampa we had neither.  Went home after the Packer game (I watched it in an Internet cafe) and chatted it up with Jose until the Mets lost.

So I did wake up this morning dutifully after 4 hours of sleep and I was right- I was going to Guangzhou!  This was great news to me because it meant that I had a two hour ride to sleep... but when I entered the car there was a 19yo Chinese hottie with a very wealthy (and fucking mad cool)  father.  I had met two of this guys kids already, but today I found out he had 4 and met the rest of them.  That's awfully ballin in a country with the one child policy...

So I talked a bit on the ride and slept for about an hour, woke up feeling a LOT better.  In Guangzhou we ate a baller ass lunch and I got a bit tipsy off a lot of red wine... the Chinese way of getting drunk at a festive dinner by toasting everyone.  It was me, my assistant principle... who is kinda like a host mother here and is the one who introduced me to all the rich dudes, mr moneybags, the 19yo daughter and his 2 sons, my assistant principle's son, the rich guy's driver, and his son's university art professor.  The rich guy toasted the art professor mad times, got him tipsy, gave him a couple grand, and sent him off by paying for his cab and giving him a box of fruit or something.  Hellofa way to make friends with your son's teachers...

In China you can eat in a private room if you got a group.  It's got a private bathroom for sure and you have a private waitress or two that tends to the table and keeps the wine glasses not full... but with about a shot in a half in them, so you can toast and kill the glass of wine at any time without chugging or anything.  

So after lunch we went to a massive science museum but only to buy shit at the gift shop and check out the lobby.  Then we drove back to Shenzhen.  I talked to the girl in the backseat for a while and passed out again, went to my assistant principle's house for a simple dinner, taught her 20yo son to play Uno, and now its 9:30 and I'm watching the season finale of Heroes season one in my room. Bought season 2 for $3 on the way home.  Tomorrow, being treated to lunch at 11 am, leaving for the beach with all the characters from today at 1pm, going swimming by 5 and staying in a nice ass hotel.  I'd date that girl, I'm really thinking about it, but her college is kind of remote and far away and I don't know when I'd get to see her.  Probably not a good idea.  But the year is going well.  Networking effortlessly.  I'm going to be teaching until I get the skills and the connections  to live the Chinese dream- get fucking loaded and unleash my inner balla!

Go Packers and Why I am rich here

So I just found out that I can't post shit on my blog from the Internet cafe by my house which is just sooo fucking lame.  I think they want to restrict Chinese blogging to those who can access computers.  Its Sunday night and I'm kinda pissed off because I have to go off and chill with this family I hang out with tomorrow morning at 9:10 am which is tooo fucking early if you ask me.  Especially when you consider that I plan on staying up until 4am watching the Packets-Buccaneers game over the Internet.  I just payed $210 to watch the rest of the season online.  I didn't really want to stay up late and watch the game live but I figured I don't have any idea what I'm doing tomorrow and at least I'll wont have to work tomorrow... this might be the only Monday I don't have to work all season.  If shit aint working out tomorrow I'll just have to say I'm sick or something, who knows, I may actually be sick if I get shitty sleep. 

 

While I'm writing this its 8pm and I don't have any idea really what I'm doing tonight, whether I'm going out or not.  If I do at this hour I'm going to have to bike the buses/subway close up before 11.  Booze is fucking expensive here.  It's the same price here as it is in the US, but here you make less money and everything is totally cheaper.

 

About making less money...  so this year I make around $900 a month, for 10 months.  So that's around $9000.  Additionally I get a round trip ticket between the US and China.  But I don't pay taxes.  I have no bills, because I live at the school for free and they pay my utility bills.  I bet breakfast and lunch free at the cafeteria Monday through Friday.  Dinner you can get on the street for a dollar easily.  So essentially my living expenses could comfortably be as low as $50 a month if I was trying to save.

 

I could be making more money.  Essentially, I put in about 20 hours a week at my job.  That includes time surfing the Internet between classes in my office.  Nights and weekends I could be making 10, 20, 30 dollars an hour tutoring if I wanted to.  That's a lot of money here.  I just bought the first season of Heroes for under $5.  Movies are 70cent each.  What else do people spend money on in the US?  Cars? They don't help you much here.  No one else has a car so shit is really convenient to get to.  Traveling?  I can get to Thailand with its babes and beaches and constant cheap party for under $100 round trip.  I don't smoke, but cigarettes are 50 cent a pack. Living here is exactly like living in the US, but just imagine that everything is insanely cheap except booze, so you can devote most of your income to partying.  Really once you get over the idea that the dollar amount you make is kinda low, you realize that your disposable income is HUGE and that your job is a joke.

 

Anyone who is graduating from college and is having difficulty finding a job, or doesn't know what they want to do, or just wants to not work at a real job and party instead, seriously think about teaching here in Shenzhen.  Its not like you need to know Chinese, the basics are really easy to learn and free classes are provided.  You don't have to really know how to teach, teaching is really easy (especially at my level.)  Its not like you don't have American friends or feel socially isolated, because there are over 100 foreign teachers in this city and everyone parties together on the weekend, and during the week you hang out with the other foreign teachers in your area.  If you got the yellow fever.... Than there is no excuse not to come apply now!  Seriously though.. I think I'm gonna be here a while and if anyone wants to start a new life of prosperity during the New Great Depression in the US... I'm trying to start a China crew fo real.