America Moments

I used to have these weird, “Wow, I’m in China” moments. Now I sometimes have “Wow, I’m in America” moments. Most times everything seems all normal and then suddenly you realize that you are sitting in a coffee shop. Or on an empty sidewalk by a busy street. For all the good sidewalks in this country, people don’t walk much.

I just finished the first class that I was taking, and on Monday I start the second two weeks of class. It’s kind of nuts. The last class was really interesting – Contextualization. We looked at how culture impacts all the aspects of life and how to put things into the context of different cultures. We had lots of discussions and looked at case studies and wrote papers. It gave me lots to think about but not really any answers. It’s amazing how much culture shapes everything.

My longtime friend Patti came to visit for the past few days. She saw a rather scary brain-dead, sleep-deprived version of myself. She said since going to China I have lost the ability to talk correctly. Quite true. I tend to leave out articles or put them in the wrong places and use words in forms that don’t exist. I think I’ve also lost most of my multiple-syllable vocabulary.