Forgive me but I am having a very bad China week because I miss mom, the holidays, the shopping, and the ability to communicate with people on a similar level of understanding.  Furthermore, I checked the calendar and realized that I have hit the 6 month mark in China.

There are these studies about foreign researchers and their moods through their stay.  Back in 2008 when I first got to China, there was a study that separated a yearly stay within 3 month increments where the first 3 months are euphoric because everything is nice and new, the next three months are less happy but productive because you are trying to figure out the system, beginning in month 6-7 you generally start becoming disenchanted with everything around you because you are tired with dealing with all the cultural differences and people giving you the excuse that its the cultural differences, and by month 8 you dig yourself out of the “everything is terrible mode,”and back to euphoria.  I had forgotten about this study until a friend of mine reminded me about it this morning.

So my posts for the next week are going to be on the negative end and I am going to lift myself out of this mess because I need to get back to work.  Therefore, you will see a whining 7 day period to get my 6 month blues out of the system.  I need to write my paper and study for the UBE.