In MY Face

Yesterday morning I wasn’t (surprisingly) woken up by the extremely loud TV but from rain drops hammering on my window! It is raining in Shanghai. And with the rain the massive crowds on the streets pull out their umbrellas.

I think some of you might have noticed that I could be a LITTLE taller than the average Chinaman! So imagine me (1.95) with my umbrella and Xiao Wang (1.65) with his umbrella. His size is equal to the size of me without head and half my chest. Imagine further that he probably carries his umbrella 20 cm above his head. That makes 1.85. 1.85 is me somewhere in my face. Conclusion of everything together: Xiao Wang´s umbrella is in my face!!!! Do I like him rubbing his umbrella in my face? No, certainly not. But it´s not only Xiao Wang because Xiao Wang brought his friends, his 20 million Shanghai-friends who are mostly happen to be as “tall” as Xiao Wang. 20 million POTENTIALLY umbrella-in-my-face-rubber!

Second thing is that during the rush-hour in the morning exactly this crowd of 20 million people is moving to all the metro stations and I cannot fight them anyhow but to run as fast as I can. In the end I didn’t do so. I just walked along the streets getting forced to taste 20 million (maybe a little less, sometimes they also share one umbrella) umbrellas and that only because of my height! Am I not a miserable person?

Hope my first teaching class tomorrow will give me some more cheerful experience! Be tensed to hear if or if not :-)

Cheers

L.