hey hey, i'm at work!

so i woke up early this morning at 5 am to come into work. it's 2 pm and i'm still at work. i could've gone home at 1, even earlier than that really cuz my supervisor isn't here. but i'm toughin it out cuz i have a few deadlines to meet. i have to time-code the food bank story i shot, to publicize our CWY food drive. unfortunately, being the lowly volunteer that i am at the bottom of the totem pole, i can't seem to get any time in the editing suites. i dont know if i can get this piece to air before thursday!!! which totally defeats the point of me even doing it! boooooo!

and being the only one in my tuin dui that actually works downtown, i have to go into sobey's today to talk to the manager about our food drive on thursday.

and then i have to meet someone at 5 pm to interview him about the community winds project, which is basically a bunch of windmills being built across new brunswick.

my work counterpart james got into work this morning about 10, and he left about 1. i don't really blame him for working so little. i mean, i can, but i'm not gonna. it's hard to work in an environment where you don't speak the language fluently. and i don't have the time to baby sit him, so i just let him go home early.

funny thing. last night, me and sarah went around neighborhoods handing out flyers for our food drive. in negative degree weather. for an hour. but whatever. it was good exercise. but what pisses me off is that there are 6 people in our tuin dui, and only me and sarah did it. shirley hurt her knee 3 weeks ago, and so she didn't want to come with us. kevin and nick just came back from montreal and were too tired to come out. and amy, her excuse was the best of all. she wanted to take a shower. A SHOWER PEOPLE!!!

so anyways, i came back home around 10:30 pm and saw amy in the kitchen. I asked her, did you take your shower yet? and she said no. I asked her why not? and she said she had to help shirley "write something about a picture" and to "research the exchange rate between Canada and China" i'm like what? that is so disrespectful! so whatever shirley is doing is important enough to miss your shower, but what our tuin dui was doing was not! amy explained that she had planned to take a shower, but then shirley asked for her help, and that she didn't think it would take very long. and it took longer than she expected, blah blah blah blah. amy saw that i was pissed and started laughing! she said in china it is okay to do this. that her chinese friends would understand. so i asked her, okay, so if i asked james, or nick, or nancy about this, they would say it's okay? and she started backtracking on her words. eventually, she admitted she was "maybe wrong" and rah rah rah. so i just told her, well if this is "okay" in china i'm not going to do any work for our tuin dui! if i'm feeling tired, i'm just not gonna help out. and then she started panicking. she said "in china, you should not do what i do"

i know, right?

nuff of the winjing

okay, im feeling a lot more calm this morning, so hopefully i can get through a post without sounding totally negative about my experience here.

my life is pretty relaxed. my host family lives in a really nice house, with a dishwasher, no fighting over milk.

heres what an average day looks like for me...

everyday i go to work at rogers for 9:30 am. if im sometimes late, its okay. no biggie. but on tues and thurs i have to be there at 6 am, to help out with the french morning show "deux bon'heures". that means i have to wake up around 5 am to get ready and im having a really hard time with that. last time, i practically fell asleep operating the camera. master control was like "camera 3, pan to the right. camera 3. pan right...camera 3!" and then i pop awake and jerk the camera right. and fall back asleep :-P

im also filming my own pieces to air for the local news channel. i could be more proactive about it, but im kinda indifferent towards broadcast journalism. i mean, i dont really love it. i prefer print journalism, and have been putting in a lot of effort working my side job with the newspaper. and another reason is that my camera man is james, and he is so hard to direct. you tell him what you want him to film, and he doesnt listen. hes always zooming this way and that way, and he never wants to use the tripod so shots come out shakey. ive thought about just training myself on camera and doing the shoots myself, except the camera is pretty heavy. and then james wouldnt have anything to do at work.

i get off work anywhere from 1 pm to 4 pm, depending on the day and workload. i bike home, have some food. sometimes i'll work out at the YMCA. sometimes we have Tuin Dui meetings. and sometimes ill just chill with some of the other CWYouthers.

So you might be wondering, whats a tuin dui? tuin dui means 'group' in mandarin. there are 18 participants in our bigger group, and we are divided into three smaller groups, or tuin dui's. our tuin dui is called "the rock stars" and theres me, amy, sarah, shirley, nick and kevin.

this thursday we are supposed to organize a food drive in our tuin duis. we were supposed to distribute bags to neighborhood houses, with flyers attached asking for food donations, as well set up a donation box at a local supermarket. unfortunately, cuz its remembrance day weekend, all the stores are closed so we couldnt get any photocopying done. and two of our members are away in montreal so im supremely jealous! although not so much with the 20 hour car ride there and back...

anyways, ive got a pretty packed schedule. phone supermarket, handout bags, finish my newspaper article, interview 3 more people this week, edit a piece for rogers. and to think, this is only a portion of the business of most people's daily lives. i dont know if i can handle the real world. gahhhh!!!

here i go again

okay, my previous entry got cut off so im back. with nothing really new to say...

it snowed in moncton for the first time yesterday. and i went over go sarahs place today to watch tv, cuz thats just how exciting my life is. anyways, i was going thru her camera, and there were like a billion photos of her counterpart shirley playing in the snow. i asked her, waddup, was this like a shirley photo shoot? and sarah was like yeah, it was her first canadian snowfall, i had to document it. didnt u do it for your counterpart. and im like um, hell no. and then she called me a bad counterpart. and im like, yeah, im a bad counterpart. why dont u be her counterpart if you think its so easy.

the thing is, amy isnt outwardly offensive. she isnt aggressive or intentionally mean like that. but its just her very being, its in her character, which i dont like. and im never one to not like someone just for the heck of it. something about her in the most fundamental sense, i cant stand. nothing about her comes off as endearing to me. and the stupid thing is, no matter what i say about her, none of you can really understand what i mean. you havent met her, you havent seen her, you havent had any contact with her. everything you know about her is through my words, and obviously thats pretty skewed. but trust me, you would not choose to be her friend. i can guarentee you this. and its not cuz shes a bitch. she is just plain annoying. and boring. and i want to get away from her, as much as possible. how is this for cultural understanding?

have i learned anything these past two months? i havent a bloody clue. am i any more patient? i am and im not. i can tolerate a lot of BS, but im also teetering on the edge of sanity.

am i happy i did this? yeah, at least i know i tried. and no, because i probably could have spent my time better than babysitting...for free.

yes i would like to quit. but i want to go to china, just to see what its like. i mean, i really dont care about going, but at the same time...i have to. its like ill never get over the what mitve been, even tho i hate it right now. having to be chained down, having to be dependent on others, and knowing nothing of the familiar. and the snow! all the fucking...freezing...snow. brrrrrrr

another day in my life

i am getting pretty bored of canada world youth. there is little to nothing to entertain me here. i have no car, i have no phone, i make $15 a week on allowance, and umm...there are no hotties in moncton :-P haha...geez.

but seriously, i am feeling rather restless. the exchange with china is proving to be a real bust. apart from 2 or 3 of them, most of the chinese are rather closed minded, and its impossible to have an intellectual exchange with them about politics, international development or any other topic of the sentient variety. my own counterpart gets excited if i happen to know chinese celebrities that she knows.

i, in all honesty, would like to go home. but im stubborn as shit. i can bitch and complain, but in the end i just dont know when to quit.