Gay and Alone

Today, I did laundry for the first time I've been here.

It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but it felt like something familiar and normal. I also had the chance to break away for a moment and be alone...and to feel comfortable with it.

I put in my Zune, just like America, walked around lost in my music, just like America, and watched TV, just like home.

I enjoy being alone sometimes. For the last few days we've been in groups, and although its great company, at times it's too many voices saying they want to go in different directions. Sometimes I end up doing not what I hate, but not exactly what I want to do. Today, it was nice to break away for a moment, collect myself, and decide that I wanted to do something as mundane as laundry. Alone.

What will I do when I come to China by myself and don't have a big group of people to relate to when I get here? I wanted to view this time in China as the practice run, and to really gain an idea of what it would be like to be here for an extended period of time. I can't do that if I'm in a nuclear America. I need to learn to think as a group and be around the cool American students, and when to be alone. Funny enough, when I'm by myself I more readily mix with Chinese people than when I have an American to talk to.

In other news, the owner of the vegetarian restaurant near our campus is gay, from Beijing, has a cute frame, and seemed to look me really hard in the eye (maybe he was focusing--I was speaking English). I'm thinking about using him for a research project I'm thinking up for class about "Male Homosexuality in the New City." Hmm...I get to play with gays and it be for a grade? Hecks yea!

(People like pictures, yea?) I'll put up some pictures later. As soon as I take some. It takes a lot of energy to take the camera out of my bag since it's mutha'f*qin' hot here.