Sitting on my Own, All by Myself

September 6, 2008

A few months ago, I was practicing langage with one of my good Chinese friends. Quite often, every Thursday we’d find ourselves drilling into the misunderstandings that seperate us. We’d been doing this a lot for not quite the past year or so, with each of us kicking things off with our own observations of cultural nuances and so forth.

This week I wanted to know why it was that all of these exchange student friends of mine had no other Australian friends but myself. They had friends and plenty of them - all of Asian descent and I wanted to know why it was like this.

As it’d be we discussed this, code-switching between the two languages for about an hour. The conclusion, as my friend had put it was that it’s hard making ‘local’ friends and that when I’d be in China, taking the role of the exchange student, I then would realize what it is like.

I was talking to Mrs Hua yesterday and I asked her how many other exchange students like myself were living on this campus. I’d already known that a good majority were paying a pile of money to live at this other campus, the “exchange student” campus but how many were here, where I am?

She said that I was the only one. I guess that’d makes sense. David would have been the second one and he’d left a few days ago. Plus I haven’t seen one foreigner in this district, let alone at the University.

I am trapped, surrounded by Chinese people and I have no choice but to understand what it is like to play the role of the outsider – particularly in a culture that stresses the outsider. I now understand my friend perfectly and understand what it would be like for the others too.

At the moment, when nothing is put infront of me, I’m not sure what to do. I can and have already done a bit of exploring and will do some more soon. I don’t want to do too much just now though since I still have more than 4 months to look around and I may as well do some after class when I am already out and about near the CBD. I obviously don’t _really_ (I’m not too sure if what I have now counts) have any friends in Shanghai either so there is no one to meet or go out with.

So during the days I have free leading up to Uni I have been doing a bit of travelling around Yangpu and Shanghai but have spent the lion’s share of my time in my room, playing indie games and writing. I’m not too sure what I should be doing right now so in the meantime this seems like the most suitable option.

As a quick mini run down, on Thursday I basically spent most of the day writing up articles for both blogs. Friday it was raining quite heavily, so I stayed inside (was planning on doing photography). I also quizzed Mrs Hua a little more, concluding my list of questions and looked into alternative meals. Saturday (today) I have basically been playing games and writing all day, I’m not too sure if I should just spend tommorow doing the same.

Next week, I plan on taking all of the photos I’ve been meaning to take (all in one hit). I’ll obviously be starting Uni and with that I will be closer to the CBD so I’ll probably look around the Pudong and those areas.

Since all of the basics of my trip have been covered the upcoming articles should be uch shorter as less writing is needed to explain the backstory.

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