It's not about me Sunday

As I was sitting in the school canteen about a week ago with Zack, somehow I just started thinking about how it would be so hard to go back to the States after being in China. I've done Belgium and such before, but China is definitely just a different experience. We've reached the one month mark.

After a full week of partying, a range emotions that run both high and disgustingly low, I had a good amount of time to reflect about China and the way my life has been heading. Honestly I can say it is pretty much on track as to what I have wanted to achieve. Perhaps life is more than about achievements and goals, but those are th things I value most.

I asked a friend on day in the cab about my biggest flaw. From his personal point of view, it was atheism. But then again he was raised with strong christian beliefs. Nonethe less it bothered me to know that for some reason. I have changed a lot of my religious ideology since I was a kid, from hating religion, having people stop being my friends due to being an athiest, to having best friends from every religion, to accepting people and their religious beliefs. I feel like I have a adequate explanation for my athiesm and from swaying from a god, and even explaining to people apparently is not enough for them to accept my athiesm. I've had a friend almost divorce her husband after she found out he no longer believed in the religion they married under. Imagine, religion is so strong, it has a divide even in love. It is basically like a racial or ethnic divide that really makes me wonder if people can overlook such simple things and see the real me. It makes me wonder if real guys are willing to see and not get scared by my outward strong ambitious independent female appearance and be willing to take that chance and say- hey she's cool and she can fend for herself and I like that and shouldn't consider who wears the pants in the relationship as a problem. It's sad I haven't met a guy that really fits that category and have the guts to approach me other than phased as a friend, or they are the players or idiots who don't know any better. Oh wait, I do take that back since there was one guy but that was long history (that lasted only a span of less than a week).

I was just considering this because I was in Qingdao the past 3 days and a whole slew of girls were getting married during the mid autumn festival holiday. I then wondered if they really loved their husbands enough to get into a group marriage, or did they marry just to be socially accepted? I'm way beyond social acceptance i realized, but the idea of how some people do certain things to be accepted is a little sad.