My Ghost Town

So. It's almost Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). It's like a ghost town around my place. Everyone has gone back to their hometowns for the holidays. The shops are all closed up...metal sliding doors cover the normal glass doors. The street that's usually packed with cars, bikes, and people is empty...except for me. the lonely foreigner. And the few others who haven't left (or can't).

I feel like I'm living in a movie-one of those old westerns where the bandit comes to town and everyone disappears, holes up inside with boards over the windows...and the creepy music plays and a tumbleweed blows by. No tumbleweeds here, just dust swirls. Yesterday I was thinking "wow, this street is so big today..." Then I realized that there were no cars driving, no bikes and people and the usual rows and rows of parked "bread vans" are all gone. So for the first time, I can actually SEE the road.

The people who own my new favorite eating place have gone back to their hometown... fortunately I got in for one last meal there before they took off. The bus that I take everyday, which is usually packed and busting at the seams (literally...they open the door and people fall out. Then those people get back on and 15 new people squeeze on too)...is now nearly empty. Not only do I have room to breathe on the bus, I could even sit if I wanted to!

I've been watching more tv lately. Finding good tv shows and variety shows on tv. This morning I realized that the things I see have become normal. I don't think it strange at all to see the hosts come on in sequence and sparkly outfits and do things Americans would only do when they're completely drunk off their rocker.



Somehow the crazy antics don't seem out of place to me anymore. These are normal, everyday variety show scenes. And yet when I try to think about what a "normal" american would think when watching these shows, my first thought is "why isn't this normal? why don't we do funny things like this on tv?" I don't understand everything, but I understand enough that when I laugh, I'm laughing for the same reason as the audience...I'm not really an outsider...yet I still am. It's a strange feeling.