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For three years, I have been in China teaching Swing Dancing. Now I'm wandering yet again...
2004-12-27
Christmas in Shanghai
My friend from the UK has gone back to the UK. My current flatmate is from Australia, and he's been pretty agressively persuing a job since he got out here. But he's now facing the do-or-die decision as well. It can be a bit of a trick getting a job out here. The basic fall-back position is teaching English. My roommate is willing to do this until something better comes up. I'm glad for this, because if he takes this type of job then he can at least stay in the country and I get to keep my apartment the way it is right now. Moving is stressful, and even if I didn't move I'd have to get a new roommate to replace the old one. I just don't want to have to deal with that right now. I've finally found a housing situation which is acceptable and overall pretty good. It'd be a step backwards to have to look for a new one.
The movie is wrapped up and I am now facing the project void. I've got the once a week swing dance class, which is going well in some aspects. But I've got to get more going on than this. I ran into a person who is doing a TV commercial for an exercise machine. I'm definitely going onto that one. It pays pretty decently; enough in two days to cover most of rent. Plus I'm going to hook up any friends of mine I might be able to.
My birthday is coming up. Right now we're between Christmas and New Years, but once that is over my birthday is right afterwards. By coincidence, we are having a swing dance night at a popular bar on the very same night as my birthday. So the I'm going to call it a "Birthday Party" for myself and invite all the swing dancing people and anyone from the movie.
I spent Christmas here not doing all that much. Shanghai does get the full commercialization of Christmas. They have Christmas trees and guys dressed up like Santa's. I was walking home from dinner with my flatmate and we passed this rather skinny Asian guy outside a restaurant. He was dressed like Santa. He had the outfit on, but this guy's really skinny. He has a white beard sort of hanging from his chin. "That's the sorriest looking Santa I have ever seen," my flatmate said to me.
Also on the way home, we passed a church. I have not been much of a church-going person since I came here. I wasn't one before I came here, either, but there you go. So it was Christmas eve, so I said, "How about if we stop in here really quick?" So we did. I walked in. I think it was a Chinese language service, since there was not a single foreigner there. I stood around, looked a bit. I said the Lord's Prayer to myself, and nodded to my flatmate and we took off. I don't know if there's anything to it, but it never hurts to try to get a little good influence worked in there.
My next things are: get the Shanghai Swings website up and running. Plan a 1930's party (which has a lot of verbal support but a whole lot of logistical challenges), and come up with ways to earn the cost of living this month!
Peace,
-J
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