Xi an April 30, 2010

That is a place in China, and I am traveling there this weekend. It is suppose to be beautiful. I am traveling with two people from Taiwan and another from Macau. Don’t know what/where Macau is? It’s an island near Hong Kong. It should be fun and fairly cheap because we are staying in a hostel.
Bored yet! Well I will take a near one million pictures and probably post about 3. China’s been cool, we had testing all week and I think I did pretty good. I think two Russian girls that sat behind me during the listening test were either cheating with each other or cheating off of my paper. They were talking the whole time, shoot I would’ve copied off me, my Chinese sounds dang impressive! Just the other day when I was out buying some rice the guy yelled: “Whooaaaaa!” And then he did a double back-flip.

I was taken…on 1-2 things. April 28, 2010

I went to the company today to collect my salary as the Russians would put it and I was near a part of Beijing that is pretty popular. I am not normally in this area so I went to check it out. I walked around and saw the stuff, people kept asking me in broken English if I wanted to buy stuff, and so on. I head back to the train station to head home. To get through the train station you have to walk through a mall, and wouldn’t you know it Fang Jing is waiting right there to talk to me. Some of you may be asking: “Who is Fang Jing?” Others may be asking: “Who the hell is Fang Jing?” and of course the rest of you are asking: “Why did walker use the wording ‘wouldn’t you know it’?” Well she is just a Chinese girl that was looking for an opportunity to practice her English and lucky for her I was American and lucky for me reason
No 1. She was pretty cute
No. 2 The same age as me
No.3 We ended up speaking Chinese about 75% of the time
Her approach was maybe we can get a cup of coffee and chat-I don’t drink coffee
Haha, ok tea-I don’t drink tea, maybe soda
We end up going to a tea shop, I asked her do they have anything else I can drink? We then asked the staff.
We have coffe-I don’t drink coffee
We have tea-I don’t drink tea
We have beer-I don’t drink beer
We have wine-I don’t drink wine, I don’t drink alcohol
I then asked do you guys have chrysanthemum tea?( it is a flower tea which is ok for mormons to drink) They fortunately did. She drank the more sinful green tea while i drank my less sinful chrysanthemum tea. It wasn’t anything better than I had had before, I actually preferred the juice box version which I had drank several times in Malaysia and Singapore…I know typical Walker right.
List 2
1. She invited me to drink tea with her
2. She asked for the bill
3. When it was announced that the bill was 325 dollars she ducked her head
4. I was shocked, why the hell was this crappy tea 325 dollars
5. I motioned that we each pay for our own
6. She blurted out, “In China!…” didn’t finish, but she was going to say that the bill is paid for by one person
7. If you refer to no’s one and two you will realize she should have paid
8. She only had 50 dollars
9. I spent more money than I ever had on a beverage in my whole life…275 yuan. that’s like 40 US dollars
I came home and told my roommate about the whole experience. He thinks I was cheated on 1 or maybe even 2 accounts. The first being the girl was in cahoots with the restaurant to fool an innocent (me) foreigner. The second being she was clueless and the restaurant just cheated us. Anyhow I plan on asking my teacher if I was cheated or if there really are tea places that are that expensive. It was pretty nice inside…Nevertheless, how ridiculous is that? If my teacher said I was cheated I will either a.) burn the place down or b.)go get my money back and pee all over the floor in the bathroom.

Hmm…Baby-making April 27, 2010

I think having white people (church) friends in China is the worst idea ever. They love to spend money like they are on scholarship or have fancy jobs. I guess most of them do. Where as Chinese people are too afraid of losing face if they let you buy anything. I don’t dislike the people at the church, but they love taking taxis instead of the train and eating out at nicer places. Rich people suck! Parental units, are you guys rich? If so I exclude you in my prior statement referring to rich people. Also at the branch talent show I found myself asking questions like: “how many more years do I have to attend such events?” or, “What is the average life-span of a human being?”Or, “Why did the branch president just scold me for taking two baby-sized sandwiches?” Yeah, seriously! I had just gotten two sandwiches, baby-sized, and he just happened to be at the end of the line (what was he on sandwich patrol?) and says:”You shouldn’t have taken two sandwiches we are short on them and there are a lot of people.” Unfortunately for him I had already doused (hoping that word is used properly) my sandwiches in ranch. He then walked away and somewhat roughly tapped my side. What the hell? Later in the evening everyone went back for a second sandwich. Listen. Leadership of the church let the sandwiches be eaten by the hungry college students; that is the only reason any of us went to the cruddy talent show anyway. Number 2: you have to watch out saying that kind of stuff, I just spent 2 years listening to members complain about being offended by other members. Mormons need to do a better job of chillaxing about the sandwiches and just know that if you run out you can always go downstairs and buy some rice. Sunday the guy comes out in elder’s quorum saying we never know how much to buy for these functions…so what? You always make sure to buy not enough? Buy a whole bunch of food and let people take it home for goodness sakes somebody is bound to need it and also willing.
I am trying to get a running program started. Boy that mission sure slowed me down…I feel like I have never trained before, but feel fortunate that I know how to train. I think a lot of it is just my mind telling me I am out of shape and also I feel my mind prefers it when my body is pursuing more lazy activities. I do feel good after a good run and even some push-ups. It would really kill me if I don’t end up being awesome at least at one thing in my life, so I hope it is running. If not I will have to major in baby-making.

China Blog Picture Debut April 22, 2010

Satisfying?

The face says it all, I hope everyone will enjoy this blogs pictorial debut.

A take it eassy… April 20, 2010

For the most part I would say my job is going good. Some of the translation is really difficult, some really easy, but for the most part it is an intermediate level. Mind all of you I took this job without any training, literally i had 0 training. “We will send you some documents to translate.” I got the documents and I translated them, sent them in, no problem right? A week after starting my Russian boss calls while I am eating lunch and goes nuts, crazy yelling at me. Imagine all of the following quotes in a russian accent. You are supposed to fill out a work report everyday walker! Okay, should be no problem right, next time you hire why don’t you go ahead and inform me. (by the way i was sending in work reports to the guy i work directly under, he didn’t pass them to her). Walker you are working to slow, it has been a week already and you haven’t finished any documents! Wait, what? I gave 3 of them to Maksim (yet again the guy I work under) on the day they were due. Walker! they are suppose to have chinese and english on the same page! Hey, Zerena (boss’s name) that would have been real cool if somebody told me, I was told to translate which is what I did. Working too slow! Zerena one document had about40 chinese idioms (chinese sayings) that only a native will understand, the rest of us chumps have to look it up in a dictionary. “Oh,” zerena replies it has idiom’s. No wonder this translation took longer. So long story short, apparently they have no clue what documents they are sending me. Hopefully now that things are a little bit clearer I will never have to talk to zerena until i give her back her laptop when I quit this job in about 2 months. Even though she was incredibly rude I will keep the job for the experience. Obviously they should have told me how to do it rather than assuming I would just do it how they wanted. Crazy, huh? Is this what’s it’s like to have a real job? I don’t know if my job is real or not, I think it’s close though. My boss’s new name is Crazy Boss 3000, I think she is featured as one of the main boss’s of those old video games I used to play…

As Promised April 16, 2010

Just as I said, if I got a computer of my own I would blog more often.  Thanks to the 35 strong campaign earning a total of 0 dollars my goal was accomplished, seriously you guys really sucked that campaign up.  I decided to take the advice of Curtis and get a job(see posts on “superstar”). This job so happened to provide a laptop for me while I am here.  I am translating documents for internet computer games that you may have played before on facebook.  I translate them from Chinese to English.  Curtis I am also in search of a motor scooter to scoot my way along the streets of China.  I know it’s no car, but it gets the job done.  I work about 3 hrs a day, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.  I think it will end up looking good on a resume and I am getting paid to learn lots of new vocab.  Which is why I came here anyway right?  My blog kicks ass, goodbye.