On Western Culture.

I used to have wanderlust. I'm not really sure what happened. Sometime between seventh grade and college all desires to leave the country left myself. I believe I have covered this earlier in the year. I don't have a desire to immerse myself in other cultures, in fact, I don't understand that desire at all. That translates into other things as well. When I arrived in China, the "cultural high" that everyone talks about lasted 14 waking hours. I think for most people it lasts around two weeks. I first experienced cultural shock in a terminal of the Los Angeles Airport, which is documented by the voicemail to a good friend in which I uttered the now immortal lines "I don't know if your asleep right now, but I'm in the the airport in L.A. calling from a pay phone and I'm pretty sure this is the biggest mistake I have ever made in my entire life." I ate at the airport McDonald's that night because I was already homesick and needed some comfort food (where was I, California?). I maybe the victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy, I'm not throwing that out the window, but nothing has occurred to date to make me think that this should be enjoyable. And everyday that goes by I think "How could anyone want to do this ten months?" But I feel the majority of people who love travelling, have no where close to the same experience that I have. Maybe I'm missing out on something. Well we've been over this before. There will be a quiz on Monday. But with that being said, I think there maybe some point in the future, where I might enjoy travelling to some other foreign countries in the west. Let me explain.

I don't consider what I am doing as "travelling". I find it insulting to call it that. To me, travelling consists of no responsibility, short-term pleasure seeking in foreign countries. I don't see anything wrong with that, as long as the person used some form of self-discipline to earn the money spent while going abroad. Pleasure without self-discipline creates social monsters like Paris, Mary Kate and Ashley (WHY LANCE WHY!!!??). Granted, I did have wonderful beneficiaries who helped me get here, but I also have a full time job--an easy full time job, but a job nonetheless. I also have not left this city in over two months. I would like to challenge those of you who love travelling to go over seas and spend over two months in the small city, without leaving once. If you done this, you have my have my respect, and the right say you love travelling, but I will venture to say that most of you have not. If you do this, you might discover something shocking: that anyplace becomes like "home" after while, in the respect that everything, no matter how different, becomes monotonous and second-nature. Every place has its good and its bad, and every one is basically the same. I didn't need to go 13,000 miles to find that out.

But with that being said, I think I would like to "travel" in the future. I think it would be cool to see other foreign countries--in the west. There are so many times where I here people speak Chinese and I think "Man, what I would pay to be learning German again, that was actually easy and pretty cool compared to this," or French, or Spanish, or ANY Indo-European language (I'll go in-depth on the language later). China is too different for me. Everything is different over here. It's like at some point in the past someone said "Ok were going to make sure we have nothing in common in with everyone else," and everybody did just that. The toilets are different, the food is different, the music is different; everything is different. They even have a "Chinese chess". I can deal with the toilet, the food and the music, but the chess kills me. The call our form of chess (which is the chess everyone else in the world plays) "Western chess." It was invented in INDIA! Is India the west? I'm not sure. It's the straw that breaks the camel's back. The Chess.

"I'll see you in the morning if nothing happens."

P.S. I went mad on projectgutenberg.com today. Not that I plan on reading Two Gentleman of Verona, Twelth Night, Agnes Grey, All's Well that End's Well, As You Like It, The Complete Works of Lord Byron, Dubliners, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI Parts 1-3, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Julius Cesear, King John, King Lear, An Interpretation of The Qur'an, Lyrical Ballads Volumes 1 & 2, Macbeth, Mansfield Park, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates; The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Northanger Abbey, Oliver Twist, Othello, Persuasion, Richard II, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Sense and Sensibility, The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volumes 1-3, Taming of the Shrew, and Wuthering Heights all before January, but hey, I got my options.