dance, monkey

The first thing to get used to is being an alien. I don't mean an alien resident in a foreign country. I mean the big, black eyes and enlarged head bit. Children will be awed or upset by your presence. Adults will try unsuccesfully not to stare. They've seen things like you on television, and maybe their friends have told them about the lao wai they saw when they were in Shanghai or Beijing. But they've never really believed until now.

Lao wai is one of the few mandarin words that I know. It's the not too rude, not all that polite word for foreigner. I hear it here and there. It amuses me to cause such fuss. I rather like being a public spectacle (anyone who has shared a dance floor with me can attest) and I have a kind of malicious anticipation at all the little weird things I am going to do to shock and astonish onlookers.

Now, I also want to be able to interact with people using more than a few broken sentence fragments, and say a complete sentence without hashing up the tones. But I also plan on using my foreigness as an excuse to tell people that I just ate a couch and that my pants are on fire.
Shelley, my host, says that he feels weird when he goes back to the states now because no one stares at him. He has gotten to like being a freak, a talking monkey.

I've never minded people thinking me odd. I've always been distinctly uncomfortable with being taken seriously. Talking monkey is a role I could seriously get used to.