Countdown: 10 Days (1:4 cultural trip to guangxi)

I feel really irritated today. I don't know why, maybe because of the final exam papers that are so troublesome, maybe it's because of my messy room. After a month here, I've had the habit of taking nap in the afternoon because our break time is from 1200pm to 230pm. Awesome right? However, there are some afternoons and nights that I could not fall asleep. I can feel my body is sleeping but my mind isn't. It's so contradict that I feel so conscious and tired at the same time. This afternoon was like that. 

I can feel the time passes slowly and my eyes are widely opened. I tried to close my eyes but it is just not comfortable to do so. At the same time, I can feel my entire body is so relax and tired, it's as if it is slowly going into the sleeping stages and my head is separated from the body (sounds scary I know). And right now sitting in the office, my whole body plus head is tired. LOL

Speaking of the trip, well it's quite fun because the scenery is really superb! However, I still prefer to travel with bunch of people that shares the same culture. You will feel the importance of it once you travel with a bunch of people that shares the same culture excluding you, yes you, the only one! For example, like foods, they are from the Guangdong province and they eat almost everything (crocodile, dog meats, horse meats, all kind of seafood etc) Even though I am also a Chinese, our food preferences are different. In Malaysia, we eat all types of foods like Indians, Italian, Muslims but for China, they have a strong preference toward Chinese foods. In terms of foods, it's a great experience because I get to try the snails (ewwww never thought I would eat that) and many more weird vege. However, sometimes don't you get tired of Chinese foods??? I misssss Western foods so much right now! Luckily I still get to satisfied my crave on Japanese and Korean in the past few months. Also, because of the culture, we may have different preference and interests on where to visit and what to do during the trips. Apparently they kind of enjoy drinking beer here and playing the boring dice drinking game. Hahahaha, sorry but I just can't feel the fun because people here can hardly get HIGH! They rarely cheers! Only a few people would go there and dance at the dance floor. And the others? They will just sit there immobile and stare at the dancers. Some will drink, chat with their friends and smoke at the same time (There are a lot of smokers here like seriously! Even in this college you can see a lot of lecturers are smokers!)

Another thing is, their jokes! Sometimes you can't get it or you don't find it funny. We also shared different perceptions on the same situations, they may think a narcissistic guy has some mental problem (even tho narcissistic falls under DSM V but they are looking at him as if he is having some kind of disease) and he should go for plastic surgery. (whaattt?) For me, I think the guy was just having some really good charismatic skills because he was travelling alone and he tried to be funny! And also, they think people who traveled alone has mental problems too. (Whaaattt??) See. You will have a lot of speechless moment. What can I say, China has a strong collectivism culture. Anyway, it's really a great memory with my colleagues. Besides,  I get insights that helps me to understand more of their cultures. Even though I am a Chinese, I found that Malaysian Chinese have more similar cultures with Indonesians rather than China's Chinese. 

To conclude, I will call this phenomena as 1 to 4 cultural trip. The reason is among five of them, I am the odd ones. I wasn't expecting a lot during the trip, therefore I only had a few culture shocks and that's all. So, when you're going to a 1:4 trip in the future, be aware of the things that I've mentioned, and try to embrace the different cultures.