pantsfarm

On my last trip to NY from Beijing I met a guy in the airport headed to Boston. We chatted a bit in the line waiting to check in, and then later on the plane we exchanged contact info.

I’ve been going back and forth with him on emails and some of the questions he’s asked me I feel like I want to think about a little more so I’ve tried to use them as a basis for this post.

I think I’m in a fairly lucky position of having a bunch of pretty good friends who I can visit that are concentrated in a handful of cities in the US. It makes any visit to those cities into a good trip and if ever I do manage to move back to the US it’ll leave me in a position to hopefully avoid the awkward situation of starting out with absolutely no social network to speak of, as was the case when I moved to China.

There are certainly things I miss about the US while I am in China and things I miss about China while i am in the US. I think one of the big things I appreciate about being in China, and only realize that I have come to take it for granted when I go back to the US, is the cheapness and convenience of a lot of things. Food in particular comes to mind – it’s a really fantastic that I can basically go downstairs and across the street are 4 different hole-in-the-wall restaurants any one of which I can go to and get a delicious dinner for no more than a couple bucks, USD.

It’s a little weird to go back to the US and feel like I’m a visitor there now. I mean, every day in Beijing I am faced with this very obvious sense of being not like everybody here, but it’s a new thing to have that happen in the US, I guess. Sure, in somewhere like NY a great many people are not from there but at the same time it was an experience I am not used to and am unsure if I will ever get used to.

That all said, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable I guess. Daily routine things have not shifted in some dramatic way for me. Some people when they come to China lament the coffee options and eventually upon discovering where to buy better coffee then lament how it’s relatively expensive compared to other options. I imagine this’ll change as people in China drink more and more Coffee but we’ll see. I’m not a coffee drinker so this particular experience never really came up for me. My breakfast routine was always basic stuff like yogurt, or eggs, or oatmeal, all of which are no trouble at all.

I liked how friendly people seemed when I first moved here though now it feels a little superficial. People aren’t screaming “HELLO!” for much of any other reason as to point me out as a foreigner and demonstrate that they can. Maybe I’m being too harsh, I don’t know. I do like that in the US I can readily engage in a deeper conversation with most people simply because we have a shared language. My Chinese proficiency still really isn’t good enough for me to get into seriously meaty conversations. At the rate it’s improving I wonder if it ever will be unless I really drop everything and seriously resume studying for a while.

I don’t know, we’ll see. I’m still having a pretty good time, and still when people ask “how long will [I] be here?” I answer “as long as it stays fun and interesting.”