People walk much quieter over here.

This blog was posted on September 16 as well.

My apartment complex is conveniently located right next to campus- so close that it takes me 7 minutes to walk to my classroom in the English building. So close, infact, that when the freshmen are doing their military drills eeeevery moooorning on the neighboring feild, yelling '1,2,3,4!!!' in Chinese, with barely a rhythm to the phrase, but enough of a beat for it to irritate my neurotic anticipation for a tick/tock of a clock while i'm sleeping, I can hear it.

Sigh... but the minute I turn the corner out of my street, and see all of the bright eyed freshmen in their military garb, and seeing them see me, stare, and maybe attempt a shy smile, my irritation dissipates. They are all so excited and eager to be at university, to learn the school song and to belong to something that widely upheld by society. Fascinating.

But for the sake of my blog title, I must clarify that the loud counting is during marching, not walking. Those are two, VERY DIFFERENT, gaits.

My apartment building is also made entirely of cement. When singing, I appreciate the reverb possibilities. I haven't asked my neighbor's how they feel, due to the still large rift in verbal communication, and I don't really want to know what they think.

When walking in heels, the click clack makes me feel quite professional, as well as brings me back to my elementary school years where Mrs. Ofpoff would stroll around the hallways in her pumps. Although, I don't really want to imagine myself as her, really, ... so this reference, I think, only pertains to the sound it makes, not the person I feel that I am- to clarify.

When raining, the air feels damp and full of musty moisture, a sensation and smell that gives me the urge to walk around barefoot wearing my bathing suit all day at a cottage on a lake.

When walking at night, however, it is dark. No really. I think, I think it's more than dark- it's negative dark. Like, if dark were neutral, or zero, then our stair well is a negative 6 or something. I truly think that light isn't just absent, every trace fragment is sucked out of the air, as if there were millions of tiny black holes all over the walls. It proabably takes an hour of daylight before the depressed air can regain neutrality and one can see their hand in front of their face again.

So imagine that level of darkness as you are making your way down some uneven stairs with your hands full- full of the leftovers from the food you just ate at the fun dinner you just had with your team mates that you are loving and loving to get to know. Now imagine trying to focus your pupils on something in that thick, despairing darkness- ANYTHING- to gain your orientation back, while concentrating on counting the stairs you can't see, and being unable to remember if there were six or seven stairs on this stretch. (You memorized them yesterday.)

You hear Heidi's breathing behind you, but that's it. You are carefully, tentatively, turning the corner.

Out of the corner of your eye emerges this round, pale, image, resembling a face, but with straight edges around it, like a distorted tiki-torch.

You inhale a sharp breath as you feel your heart stop and your eyes grow wide. In a flash, your imagination dumps EVERY single horror movie memory out in front of you from a secret bag it had stored in the recesses of your brain, and then sneers at you! Heidi behind you has no IDEA what happened, so she imitates your reaction with gumption and fervor, creating a panicky scene, almost complete with leftovers on the walls and floors and two Anglo-Saxon female bodies laying next to each other, in complete shock. (That last part doesn't happen though, starting at the food everywhere.)

As you both try to make sense of this image, frozen in fear, realizing your escape options don't exist, and trying to recall every defense move you learned in PE class, but you only come up with "I don't have my rape whistle on me!"... the image evolves to a head, with a neck, long hair, wrinkles on the forehead, all black clothes on, resignation in the face, and an unimpressed eyebrow raise directed at you and Heidi.

Seventy-year-old Chinese women should wear bells on their shoes.