Journey to Unself-consciousness

Is "unself-consciousness" a word? Oh well. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but the Chinese are incredible in their ability to not care at all about how they conduct themselves in public. It's like with children, who run and scream without any concept of censoring thought or action. Only it's not as cute when a 50 year old man picks his nose, hacks up what sounds like a furball and spits it at your feet without second thought. Regardless, the Chinese are seemingly impossible to embarrass. I think it's an admirable quality, and I'm trying to learn from them. You know, like trying not to care so much about what other people might think of me if I'm wearing knockoff Versace or Ferragamo. Hey, it's not easy!

So the other day one of our office "ayi's" (Chinese word for cleaning lady) was cleaning the men's bathroom when I walked in. I was trying to ask her how much longer she would be (she was laughing at the apparently unintelligible stream of Chinese coming from what looked to be a Chinese boy), and then another guy from my office just walked right by us and strolled into a stall, closing the door as he lit up his cigarette (the men's bathroom is like a smoke-filled bar sometimes). I stopped mid-noncomprehensible Chinese-sentence and thought to myself, "Now see! In China no one gets embarassed about going to the bathroom. Everyone does it of course, what's the big deal?" and further psyched myself up with, "If he can do it, I can do it! Learn from the Chinese..." and I, with false confidence, also strolled casually into the other stall and closed the door. I sort of assumed that the ayi would quickly get the drift (hah! sorry that's awful) and finish up and leave. But what I didn't anticipate was the fact that if we weren't bashful, then why should she be? She pulls out her mop and starts mopping the floor for the next two hours- which wasn't really two hours and probably only about two minutes but seemed like two hours since I was now trapped in a stall with my pants down feeling very vulnerable to the mop-wielding ayi close by and only Smoky Joe in the other stall to back me up. The mop swooped dangerously close to my feet a couple of times and I was terrified that she would yank open my door and finish mopping around my stall. But she didn't, and I waited until well after she'd left. Finally, with Smoky halfway into his second pack, I burst out of my stall, quickly washed my hands and ran out.

After that terrible experience, what did I learn? I am a looooooooong ways away from living like a native. And I'm perfectly happy about it. (p.s. there are no pictures to go along with this entry, and I'm sure you'll all agree that was for the best.)