I can't believe it's September 1st. That's just ridiculous. I'm convinced that the older you get the more time seems to fly by. I remember being in middle school and thinking the weekend was NEVER going to arrive. Now the weeks and months just fly by. I'm starting year FOUR in Asia (which is a little shocking and unexpected still) and it seems as though I just showed up here for the first time yesterday.

Anyway, none of that is the point of this post. I want to enlighten you about "To Do" lists in China. There are a few observations I'd like to make.

Your "To Do" list never goes away. Now, I realize this is the same in the States...but the reason is different in China. In the States, you just keep adding new things each day because there is always more to do. The difference here is that you don't check things off as often so it's just the same To Do list every day. My "To Do" list is more just a general list of things that I'll eventually need to accomplish. I can't put the expectation on myself that I will accomplish too many things in one day-- that just isn't realistic. For example, my teammates went out the other day to get some cleaning supplies. Pretty simple task, right? They came back almost 4 hours later. Why? Well.. first of all, they had to walk to the grocery store and it's a bit of a hike. Second, once they were at the store they had to figure out where everything was located. To add to that, they have to look at all the stuff fifty times because nothing is in English so you have to guess what you're buying a lot of the time until you get used to stuff. The next problem came as they had to find their way home. They wanted to take a little rickshaw/tuk tuk thing home but they realized they didn't know how to say the school name or address in Chinese so they had to play charades with a driver in order to get back home. Their original "To Do" list would've included things like "1)Make a list of needed stuff  2) go to the store and buy things 3) come home and clean"  ... they didn't know that it would take an entire day to accomplish all of that.

Usually I try to do two big things a day. Sometimes that doesn't even happen though. The two big things on my list today were to figure out train schedules from our local train stop and to go to the school clinic (because I have a cough that just won't go away). I haven't accomplished either of those today so they will be moved to tomorrow's To Do list. I needed a local to help me with both of those and I didn't find anyone today that could help me. I had three other things on my list today too but I didn't accomplish those either. Why? Well...

I was woken up today at 8:30 by someone banging loudly on my door. I opened the door and it was our building manager lady and two guys who had lots of wires in their hands. Apparently they were here to do something in the storage room in my bedroom. It would've been nice to know this was going to happen but I wasn't surprised that I hadn't been informed. They were done about an hour later and then they told me they were coming back this afternoon so I needed to be home. Hmm... that means that I can't go out and accomplish my errands today because I need to be home "in the afternoon" and that is a pretty vague time frame.

Another thing about "To Do" lists in China is that usually they are dependent on other people. I can't accomplish everything on my own... I usually need someone to help me get something done. If I want to make copies for class, I have to contact someone in my department and ask them to go with me because I am not supposed to do that on my own. If I need something fixed in my apartment then I have to call someone who calls someone else and eventually they might show up and fix the problem.

I guess the root of it all is the different view of time. To feel like I had a productive day, I would normally have a big list of things I got done that day. Now I'm lucky if I get one thing done each day. That takes quite the mental adjustment so that you don't get frustrated with yourself or your situation.