Learning how to use google

For a few months now, I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to bring money back to America. For some stupid reason, I’ve been googling some variation of “how to bring money back to America from China.” I even went so far as to search TEFL forums in hopes that someone else teaching English in China would have solved this problem.

Today, I came to the realization that foreign teachers are definitely not the only people who would ever want to bring money back from China, and I learned that using the proper terms makes google work better. Since I want to exchange currency, searching for “currency exchange in America” gave me infinitely more useful results. They did not actually help that much though, they unfortunately just told me what I already knew from Chase’s experience bringing money back to the US from China last year. The best place to exchange currency is likely Bank of America because I have an account with them. However, they’re still going to take a nice percentage from me for the pleasure of exchanging my money. The exchange rate according to google, the source of all wisdom provided you use appropriate verbs, is 1 RMB = 0.159 USD. The exchange rate according to Bank of America, the source of all evil according to a number of people, is 1 RMB = 0.1405 USD.

Here’s why: “We set our exchange rates for foreign currency based on fluctuating market conditions. Exchange rates shown in the newspaper and on some currency conversion sites are generally wholesale rates available only to banks for transactions of $1 million U.S. dollars or more. These rates are generally not available to retail customers who are obtaining foreign currency for international travel. In addition, exchange rates offered by other dealers, or shown at other sources (including online sources) may be different from Bank of America’s rates.¹ Bank of America’s rates are competitive with other retail foreign exchange institutions.”

I’m considering trying to live off the pathetic amount of money left in my US bank account while waiting for the day when the RMB that is held at an artificially low value (from newspapers and economists who know much more than I do, especially since the last econ class I took was in high school) stops being held at that artificially low value. Whether I can do this or not will depend on how quickly I can find a job and how much I like driving places. Are there downsides to this plan? If the dollar gets stronger as the economy recovers, will I end up losing out?

January 2005 - Present, this graph makes me think I'd be pretty okay hanging on to the money as yuan until I need it

That’s not nice!!

They turned our heat off! It is 29 degrees outside and they shut the building heat off, leaving us with only an electric wall heater to heat two rooms. The electric wall heater hardly heats one room. It was 55 in the room with the heater yesterday.

I’m in China until next Saturday, so while I claimed the previous post was the last you’d hear from me, that is turning out to not actually be the case.

Heading home

I’m going back to America. For several reasons. I’m going to try to steer this away from becoming one of those blog posts (FB status updates, fill in the blank with internet communication of your choice) that just shares a fairly large piece of news but gives only a vague reason why.

So, I’ll share one of the main reasons for this (early) departure. I don’t like teaching English. I don’t like standing in front of a group of thirty university students who are very rarely interested in what I’m talking about. Hell, I don’t really like standing in front of a group of thirty people whether they’re interested in what I’m saying or not; retrospectively, this is obvious to me, but y’know most things are.

I enjoyed living in China, I enjoyed visiting different cities, I enjoyed the friendships I made with students and the other teachers, but I didn’t enjoy my job. And, back in America, there are people and animals that I miss terribly, and there is hopefully a job that I will enjoy a bit more than this one. Plus, I can get on with working towards my eventual goal of vet school.

Anyways, the goal of this post is not to rant about the things I disliked here, it’s simply to tell anyone who reads it that this is likely the last post. I’ve definitely enjoyed blogging, and it has given me something to look back at, but I have no plans to blog about my life in the US. That blog would read like this: ran, rode Zinger, hung out with family/friends, searched for a job, volunteered with a vet, repeat.

If I took my girlfriend to KFC for dinner she would…

a) be quite angry that I thought this was a sufficiently nice restaurant for a date.

or

b) be so happy with me!

Based on your answer to this question I can tell whether you are American or Chinese. KFC, you win, you’ve convinced an entire country of people that you are an upscale dining establishment.

Floof!

I got a haircut about a week ago. Prior to that haircut, I’d been cutting my hair myself. I’m  not really sure why, it wasn’t a fear issue; if I were worried about getting a bad haircut, I never would have cut it myself. Anyways, I cut it several times, but by the last time it was getting pretty uneven in spots. Fortunately, my hair is curly and really doesn’t show unevenness, but it was at the point where I had to tilt my head to the side a bit to make the left and right side even. Probably time to get over whatever mental hurdle I was having about getting my hair cut here and just do it. The best moment of the whole experience was the guy cutting my hair holding strands of hair from each side of my face out to point out how uneven the sides were and asking “Why?”  I do not know how to say cut, hair, or even myself, but I responded in a universally understood way using the snippy fingers motion that Nick had earlier this year used to find scissors in Walmart, “Because I…” followed by snippy fingers motion. He laughed, but really I’m glad he asked, I didn’t want to leave him with the impression that uneven is a normal style in America.

After the cut, he got out the blow drier. I almost made another universally understood hand motion to tell him to put it away, but I decided to see what would happen. What happened was he dried my hair in a way that he probably uses to give straight hair volume, something entirely unnecessary with my hair. Then, when it was quite large at the end, he called someone else over to look at it; they looked happy until it started, noticeably, doing the curly hair that you have blow dried thing and frizzing. He tried to smooth it a few times with his hands, but to no avail. Slightly dissatisfied, he shooed me out of the chair.

Chinese haircut and style and pose

Biggest Regret?

Connor was here for a month and just left yesterday. It was awesome to get to see him and to get to travel with him.

My biggest regret from his time here? That we didn’t try this:

Shrimp hat

We meant to. We started seeing ads for it while we were still in Dalian, but didn’t stop by a KFC to pick one up. We figured we could do it anytime, but we were wrong. Once we reached Nanjing, we found that there were no shrimp hats there. Perhaps, we thought, it is a Dalian special. But, when we returned to Dalian, the shrimp hat had vanished.

Grocery Shopping

The student canteen near the dorms is closed until all the students return from the holiday.   I knew this was going to happen, yet somehow thought it wouldn’t change things that much… that delusion was shattered a few days ago when I returned from my trip and ate packaged noodles multiple times a day for a few days. Now that the canteen is closed, the nearest restaurants are about a mile away. Today I made the trek down to Walmart to go grocery shopping for real for the first time. I should be adventurous, I should learn how to cook here in China, but I have so many good excuses for not doing these things! First, I hate dealing with raw meat. It grosses me out like few other things do. I could cook veggies or tofu, but for this to be cost effective as compared to a restaurant, I would have to go to someplace that is not Walmart to buy the raw materials. It would definitely be a good experience, but it would be way outside my comfort zone because, while I know the food we eat in restaurants comes from these same sources, I can’t help but judge the cleanliness of the places that sell veggies in small markets. Also, we have no cooking supplies. At all. And I suspect that to cook delicious Chinese food, you need a plethora of spices. Which I do not have. So until the canteen opens back up in one month, I hope to subsist on at least one meal out a day, breakfast of oatmeal, and then… something else, which I hopefully purchased during this Walmart trip.

Jelly, tissues, noodles, pomelos, oats, carrots, Apple Fanta, more tissues, some pastries, and bread

Last night I wanted dinner, but I didn’t want noodles, and I didn’t want to walk two miles in the cold windy weather to get food. So I whined. And ate some noodles. This morning, I set out to get things to spruce up the noodles (carrots and sausage) and to provide noodle alternatives (sandwiches). If I’d had a car, I would have driven. It was 8:30, and with the wind chill, it was -22 C. Gross. But, I have no car, and I’m entirely too cheap to spend money on something (like a taxi) when I can do it myself (by walking). So I walked, round trip 3 miles. The way back carrying those pomelos (they deserve a post of their own later) was enough to make my arms sore.

Grocery bags, I lost our reusable one while we were travelling

But this is what I should do. Even if I had a car, this is what I should do. What else am I doing today? What else am I doing for the rest of the month? Classes don’t start until March 5th, so I have plenty of time to walk to the grocery store. I’m hoping to adopt this mentality in America; if I have time to walk or bike instead of driving, I should. Then I can feel extra virtuous for the rest of the day

…until I examine my overall lifestyle, how many plane flights I take each year, the environmental impact of owning a horse and car…

I’ll hop off my high horse now.