Celebrity

I signed my first autograph today. There’s something about being the only white person in a roughly two mile radius that makes you stand out. Not really sure why.

I have new respect for celebrities and pro sports players. While I’m teaching, luckily for me, the kids turn off their immediate impulse to start giggling and screeching and pointing cameras at me. But as soon as I start to walk out of a classroom, a switch goes off –click– and girls start pulling my arm back and lining up to take pictures with me. Somehow these girls have Bieber Fever for me. Of course, I smile for their pictures and oblige their requests to sign my name, but the whole time I can do nothing but giggle and make a smirk over to my teaching assistant, trying to get some recognition of the ridiculousness of the situation. But the teaching assistants also ask me to take pictures sometimes, so I guess that recognition is short-lived.

But just as I stick out like the ugly duckling, I am trying to blend in with Chinese culture. My Chinese is getting better everyday (I’m good with numbers from 1-99 and a few phrases) and I’m trying to use it in daily situations like buying a drink or talking to a student. But I guess that I have to accept that I will never fully blend in. I’ll always be the guy with green eyes and a decent tan (every Chinese person I have seen has brown eyes and is really pale, even though it’s the summer).

One of my classes of 15 and 16 year olds.

As my Chinese gets better, my English is getting worse. In order to make sure beginning English students understand what I am saying, I have to speak very slowly and simply. “Can someone raise their hand and give me an answer to this question?” has become “I…need…an…answer….Raise…your…hand.” I even sometimes find myself accidentally about to use common mistakes like “one months” or mispronouncing words. Hopefully I’ll still be coherent when I get home. Writing “One times, I went go China” on my first Yale paper wouldn’t be so impressive.

I took a chance to explore the historic downtown part of Xi’an on Saturday, so I’ll make sure to get some pictures up and all of the details.

Zai jian.

Matt

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Matt went on his AIESEC internship in Xian, China before starting his freshman year at Yale. You can read more about his experience on his blog.