As I am writing this, I am wrapping up the third day in China and on the cusp of starting the second leg of the trip.

I didn’t do much or go much of anywhere in the first three days of my trip in China. It’s mostly a reunion between my mom and her cousins. The only place that felt of any significance was the Nanhai City Museum. It wasn’t a very big museum and most of the exhibits were in Chinese, which I can barely read, but it was fairly interesting, especially seeing all these ceramic sculptures.

As my mom and her cousins caught-up, I kept to myself and when we’re out and about, I kept to the background. They hardly asked me anything or talked to me at all, I was mostly the invisible third-wheel my mom had brought along. To tell you the truth, I don’t mind feeling invisible, what I didn’t like were the insults.

The moment I arrived at our accomodations, a little girl ran up and immediately measured herself against me and then, she went and told her mom that she’s taller. Of course, she was taller. Any normal person would be taller than I am but it didn’t make me feel better of being compared. That little girl was my second (or was it third) cousin.

The first night, we went out for hot pot even though, with the heat index, it felt like 102-degrees-Fahrenheit. In my experience, hot pots are only eaten during the winter when it’s freezing. Thankfully, with my mom’s complaints, her cousins decided against sitting outside and opted to sit inside next to the AC. The main dish that night was beef. Four or five different cuts of beef laid out on metal platters, none of which sounded appetizing to me.

Instead of doing shabu-shabu (Japanese) style, a large chunk of beef was dumped into the boiling rice congee. The beef was so bland by the time it made it to my plate that I didn’t have the appetite to eat it. Besides, I was still full from lunch and the hour we were eating, it felt too late for me. When I stopped eating before anyone else, my mom’s cousins immediately began asking questions like, “What’s wrong with you?” And “You’re so fat, yet you eat so little.” The cousin that did that put her hand on my stomach the third day and laughed. In a different life, I would’ve batted her hand away.

After dinner, as we were heading home, they pointed the building of where the cow was slaughtered, which turned out to the across the street from the restaurant we were eating. Why didn’t it occur to me? The street is called “Cow street” for a reason. The entire street sold nothing but meat – pork, beef, and chicken – butcher shops on the upstairs, distribution at the ground-level. Totally barbaric and cruel.

Meanwhile, I was still battling severe jetlag. I felt bloated, tired, and headachey. It’s the worst jetlag I’ve ever felt, as if my body was rejecting to be in its birth-country. I felt sick but wasn’t really sick.

On the third day, my mom and I got up a little bit early as we would finally be moving to a hotel that night. The part I dreaded would finally come to pass. Staying at my mom’s cousin’s house hadn’t been exactly easy but I would rather in a hotel. At least the hotel has a softer mattress than the board-like mattress at the house and the hotel has the western sit-down toilet as opposed to the squatting toilet.

The worst part is, my mom had invited her cousin – the one that called me fat – on our next leg of the trip. This cousin is nothing like her sister – the one’s house we lived in. This cousin is rude, loud, and, well, less traveled.

Should be interested…