You Can Get Used to a Lot

China seems to have fundamentally changed what I'm used to. The other day coming back from a Super class my taxi driver was going pretty slow on the road in front of my school since he wasn't sure where the hotel was. This is a road that has terrible cracked paving, is only two lanes wide, though the cars treat it like four, and has no lights, so that everyone using their high beams just makes you constantly blind. But all I could think was why is he driving so damn slow. I didn't have anything to do or anywhere to go I was just annoyed that he was driving so slowly on this death defying road. When I was in Vietnam I was actually surprised when people didn't stair at me I've gotten so used to people looking at me wherever I go whether I'm doing something interesting or not. In my smaller class when the papers were largely just copied from the internet I wasn't in the least bit surprised, though that could be because I know the students. Yesterday only two students showed up for class for some reason I don't understand. Honestly every time I go to class I half expect to find that no one is there and its been canceled, and they just didn't think to tell me.

It's amazing what you can get used to just by things being that way for a long time. It no longer seems all that surprising when the drivers to insane things or the students believe things that make no sense. I wonder how long it would take for the crazy way things are here to not even be interesting anymore. Though even as I say that the number of times where things just seem bizarre never seems to diminish. It was amazing how normal it felt after a while to have classes in the freezing buildings or to never expect students to spontaneously say anything. People's worry about swine flu seems insane when I probably have just as good a chance at being killed by the apple I just bought.