Tuesday, July 12

Today I got up. Studied. Class. Lunch-had bread and wheat yogurt. Class. Studied. Had xiao long bao for dinner. Studied. Got tired of studying and decided to go for a little bike ride.

I rode around campus and to places I had never seen before. I wound around and found a bunch of apartment complexes. I wish I had brought my camera to take pictures. The buildings were run down and dilapidated. There were stray cats and people milling around. There were “public restrooms” for people who don’t have their own or who don’t have water. I kept thinking that these people are living just a ten minute bike ride away from me. They have completely different lives. I bet they don’t have a full size bed, air conditioning, running water, a western toilet and fancy, high pressured shower. I bet they don’t have the kind of expendable money like I do.

And another thought crossed my mind. The only reason why our lives are so different is because of circumstances that we can’t control. Where we were born, the families that we were born to. The privileges and blessings that I experience aren’t really based on anything that I have done or can do. It was expected for me to go to college, not something I thought of or worked hard enough to do. Because of where I was born and the family that I was born into, I am able to have a comfortable lifestyle. The people I whizzed past on my bike didn’t choose to live there, they didn’t choose to be poor, their life circumstances led them there. I think in America it’s so easy to view the world in a way that we can all just “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” and make a better life for ourselves. I’m not even sure that this is making sense, but these are just my current thoughts. Obviously I need more time to process and and to seek guidance for understanding.

After my little bike ride, I stopped to pick up a new jug of water. It is $7 yuan (Chinese dollars) to buy my water at the dorm. It is 6 yuan to buy it at the little store down the street. So of course I like to buy the water down the street and save my 17 cents (in USD). But I also picked up two ice cream bars, one for me and one for my roommate, bringing my total to 10.5 yuan. So it doesn’t really save me any money to stop there, does it?

Here’s me with my 10.5 yuan water. Since I haven’t uploaded any pictures recently.