Having A Dog

As I'm sure all my readers know by now, I have a dog, I bought him about a year ago. In fact right around Halloween, I gave up my costume money for my dog. When I bought him I promised myself so many things. I promised myself I would never compare having a dog to being a parent. That I would never let him get away with things. That he would always just be a dog. Well, less than a year later and I have broken all of those promises I made to myself.

I should have known I was going to break all these promises immediately, but denial is a sweet nectar to our guilt. Just a couple days after getting Otis, my dog, I was at a friends house and we were eating dinner. I had Otis on my lap while I ate. And one of my friends turned to me and said, "Oh! Your that kind of dog owner!" I tried to deny it, explain it away, no he has a lot of energy right now, he's not potty trained yet, I don't have a leash.... excuse ... excuse ... excuse. I felt the truth of the statement, but I kept telling myself, he is JUST a dog, I am master. I own him.

The first promise to slowly start eroding away was my promise to not compare owning a dog to parenthood, but its hard when all the mother's around me compared my dog to their kids. I promise, I didn't start it! Perhaps, it was a way I could connect with friends, my friends who are married with kids while I am single with dog. (Sounds like the beginning to a sad story.)

So, as all my peers started to call me Otis's mother so did I. I will confess it was painful, but liberating. I will influence this creature's habits from now on out! But if you take this first step, you can never let him be JUST a dog again. Which began my downfall into letting him behave very un-dog-like.

At first this wasn't a problem because he had some other dogs in the house, but when they left he began some curious habits. First, when I would sit down to eat at the dinner table he would jump on the chair next to me and sit there too. Step one, thinks he's human. After doing this for awhile I started to find he had jumped on the table, step two; he knows he's not human, so what is he-cat?

I'm happy to say I killed that habit (after a looong time), but I couldn't bring myself to tell him no to jumping on chairs-it was so cute! Which is where my final downfall lay, letting him get away with things.

I tried to tell myself that I had to be stern, if you want your dog (or child) to create good habits, you have to be consistent and I was always one of those single people who couldn't believe it when parents weren't consistent with their kids. Now, I understand. Sometimes,

I catch Otis chewing on pillows and I look away and think "Yes! A moment to myself!" Sometimes he jumps on the couch (which he is technically not allowed to do) and I think "How cute!"

My conclusion is this; I am a terrible parent, but the same as any other. I am completely biased towards my creature and think all others suck. Mess with my stuff (dog/child), you mess with me, angry mama bear.

What does Riding the Bus and Street Dancing Have in Common?

I begin this blog with a question; what does riding the bus and street dancing have in common? If you look at specifically China, not much. Or specifically America, the same answer. But if you decide to switch the question to what does riding the bus in America and street dancing in China have in common? A whole lot. Or the other question; what does street dancing in America and riding the bus in China have in common? Way too much.

Riding the bus in America, is a fairly comfortable, if not sometimes long event. We get on, we find our seat, we have our space, we observe people and sometimes we may chat with someone else. But usually we find our own thing to do and we avoid eye contact, unless a friend is with us. China's street dancing is surprisingly similar.

We go to a large square or park where there are many other people we don't know. You find your space, not touching any other person, you observe and follow. Maybe if we are feeling open or bold we will chat with our neighbor, or if we have been going for awhile we will at the very least nod at the people we know. While this is the norm, I will say, when I went I broke all the social conventions. And let's just say we had quite the crowd.

Let's move onto the other comparison we are making. Now American street dancing can look many different ways, it could be awesome break dancing in your little square with a big crown around you and I wish that's how it was on the bus, but I'm thinking of something different. I'm thinking more club style and before you say that doesn't happen on the streets I would like to disagree; have yous seen the new footloose? Yes well there is bumping and grinding out in public, and the movies never lie. The point I'm trying to make is street dancing in America, or if you must make me say it, club dancing in America is eerily similar to riding a bus in China...its scary!

I first noticed this experience two years ago, when I moved here. I haven't written about it because I simply didn't know how to, but this analogy gave me a good opening. Now, riding the bus is not always so intense, only mostly. When the buses are over crowded and you are slipping by every single person, body rubbing against body. This might be sexy, if the people were mostly clean, perhaps your own age and if there was something other than the Chinese radio station playing.

In America, I didn't go clubbing much, the idea of shaking my booty for a stranger didn't appeal (for some reason), but now after living here I feel all clubbed out. I have never grinded on people so much in my life (by accident of course), been grinded on (hopefully by accident), given and been given lap dances like this in my life (which happens when the chairs face the aisles of the bus and it is so crowded you are pretty much sitting in that person's lap).

I know there may be quite the diversity of ages reading this and I hope it doesn't scare you, while for those who understand, hopefully this makes you laugh. But this is my almost daily experience, not street dancing, but riding the bus, which as you can see is much scarier than street dancing.

A Post to Bring You Up To Date

Sorry for not writing for so long, but after living here for two years something terrible has happened... life has become normal.

The last two or three months have been filled with thoughts of "I should write, but..." I have gone out, I've seen things, I've lived life, I've met people, I've had conversations (English and Chinese I'm proud to say), but it now takes a lot of imagination for me to write something that I think will interest people. My mind has moved forward, to doing other things and my blog about China has been left in the dust. Having said that I will try to continue to write semi-consistently for the next 6 months. Why for 6 months? Because that is how much longer I have in China, then I move back to the States to begin an even scarier journey...(imagine scary music playing) University! Full-time! The horror! The expense! I can't talk about it too much or I might scare myself away from it.

I will give you an update to what has happened in the last few months, then hopefully my future blogs will be more relevant to now time or not relevant at all, but at lest humorous and perhaps enlightening to my life.

Last Spring I went home for 6 weeks, during that time my sister got engaged. When I returned to China, life was slow, not much going on, so I tried to work as much as I could (which unfortunately didn't happen as much as I would have liked) cuz I then had to go back to the States to attend a wedding. During my couple months back home in China I got sick, I literally lost my voice for 2 weeks. Crazy.

At the end of July I started my journey back to Seattle. It took me about 3 days to make it to there. An hour bus to the train station, 5 hours delay, a 22 or 23 hour ride (on a hard seat nonetheless), an hour bus ride to my hostel and overnight at the hostel and a 12 hour flight to Seattle, where I was greeted by my beautiful family.

I was only in Seattle for a week, the first two days were spent on mostly dealing with my visa stuff (had to apply for a new visa before going back to China), the next couple days after that, seeing a couple friends, the next couple days dealing with wedding stuff (which was beautiful by the way) and the last few days was spent with family. I then flew back to China with a friend.

My friend and I spent two busy, busy, busy days in Beijing, ran to the train station (made it with only a few minutes to spare), went to Xi'an (stayed with one of my friends there) for a few days, then flew to Xining (my current city) for a week. The day after my friend left, one of my Xi'an friends came and visited for a week. After she left two new roommates moved in, the following week my part-time online school started up again. And my weeks since then have been full of helping some things other people already have going, doing school and taking care of dogs (did I mention I was taking care of 3 dogs for 3 weeks? No I thought I forgot that ;) But now its me and Otis, two cool new roommates and an exciting 6 months to look forward to.

Life has been full and busy, but manageable and fun. I'm excited (and scared shitless-excuse my french) for my move back to America, but I am so happy to have 6
months left in China. Hopefully my last 6 months of blog
posts will bring you plenty of enjoyment as well.                            Above a pic of my two friends that visited



My new haircut (I'm trying to bring ya up to date):