Journal Entry December

Journal entry December
    I think I have 150% more patience now then before I moved to china. Recently the bank has been on my last nerves. The thing about china in general is that they know how to make some things as complicated as possible. In the last month I've been to the bank about 12 times trying to do the same thing. All I need is some money my mom sent me. But they keep telling me things I already know. Then by the 10th time they finally tell me what the problem is. I fix it and do exactly what they say then they say there is another problem. They tell me to come in the next day and they will give me my money that I desperately need. I go in the next day which happens to be a Saturday and I ask the front clerk to lead me to the international business where they said they would help me. She said they don't work weekends. So basically they lied to me and yeah I'm mad. Also recently I've had the worst trouble with taxi drivers. They have been driving right past me and taking me the long routes or wrong ways. It's super frustrating. So yes, my patience has definitely improved by a lot. Also old guys keep taking pictures of me on the bus with their camera phones. That gets annoying.      I've come to realize that the Chinese are a little bit brainwashed. I've started tutoring a local Chinese girl named carol. They pay me very well to just hang out with her and talk to her about anything. She pays for all the food we eat and activities we do. I scored on this job. Anyways so we talk and I found out that she doesn't really know about the things the government takes away from them. She goes to a school where all her teachers are foreigners and they speak only English in her classes. So sometimes they hint that there are websites they can't see and things like that. So I give carol the rundown on Facebook. She asks me why the government does that. And sometimes I don't really know what to tell her. In my Chinese class we had to fill a paper out on where we are going after the semester. My teacher told me it was for safety reasons. Me and other foreigners look at each other and say , yeah sure it is laoshi. If china was concerned about safety our security guards wouldn't be standing around talking to each other while smoking their cigarette. It's interesting the things I hear and see. The Chinese are kind of oblivious to the things going on around them.
My Chinese has improved a lot. But I get frustrated with myself easily. I study for hours on end and when somebody asks me something in chinese and I don't understand I get really mad at myself. I don't like how we focus so much time on characters. I know how to read and understand well, but I can't speak very well. I'm trying to fix that but it's difficult. At least I'm very good regarding tones which is very important since chinese is a tonal language and a lot of foreigners have a hard time with it. I want to become fluent really bad, I don't want all my hours of studying to go to waste. I envy the foreigners that can speak to the Chinese so well. Sometimes I just want to say things to the Chinese like stop being so rude and stop spitting so much. And it's weird because I have all the words in my head but I just don't know how to get them out properly. And it's even more frustrating when chinese don't have words for yes, no, please, and excuse me. All words that we use the most. Also since being in china I've noticed that I bow now. It's kind of weird.