Had my first day at the remote Kid Castle school yesterday, working from 9-6pm. It actually went much better than I thought it would. The plan was to give three demos, but two of them got cancelled, so I did a total of one hour of work in the nine hours that I was there. I pretty much hung out with Petrel and Terry all day long. Learned some new Chinese, including learning to write my first Chinese character, my name. Took a small tour of the city there, it’s about 30 minutes outside of Chengdu and there are no foreigners there at all.
Walking around there or in Long Quan is really interesting, because a lot of them haven’t ever even seen someone as tall as me. When I walk down a crowded street everyone is talking about me, looking at me, pointing at me. When I was walking through the park groups of people would look and point at me, plainly staring as I walked by, even if I was looking at them. Every time I’d smile and wave, and they’re always anxious to wave back and say hello. I really get the feeling that I’m welcome here, which is fantastic. Everyone is as kind here as anywhere I’ve ever been and it’s fantastic.
I finished Sperm Wars a week or two ago and I’m about 20 pages from finishing Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, so I’ll write reviews for these two on Amazon. Recently I decided that I want to write reviews for all the new movies that I see, but I don’t know where I’ll do that yet. I’d like to dedicate a page or a portion of my website to movie/book/album reviews, if not for other people then just for myself, but unfortunately I have all kinds of connection problems from here. I’ve seen Spy Game with Brad Pitt, Crimson River with Jean Reno, and Grosse Point Blank with John Cusack in the last few days, all for the first time.