July 5 - Jobs dream

I'm on the phone with someone from Mexico was introduced to me by my friend. I've never met him, he just got my phone number and is calling me about an English teaching job. On the phone, he is very strange and not welcoming. It's like he's playing with me. He won't give me any real details about the job, although my friend has told me it's lucrative and a good job. Finally, he says, as the last part of the interview, I'm to tell him the definition of a word. Then he says, dramatically, "The word is...hhhrfffghf." I hold my ear closer to the phone and say "Can you say the word again? I couldn't hear you." He says the same muffled sound, clearly not a word. I hang up.
He calls back and I answer, telling him that I couldn't hear him and the phone must have not been working. He is a little bit angry and tells me that I must tell him the definition of that word, or more precisely, I must make up a definition for this word that doesn't exist. That's the real challenge: not a test of vocabulary, but of creativity.
I ask him to use it in a sentence and he tells me: "The 1988 vintage had a certain hhgfhhghf that pleased him."
Quickly, with reflexes and panic honed in classrooms, I start walking faster, pacing, with the phone still held to my ear, and I start speaking very quickly, looking down at the ground: "a distinctly oaky  flavor caused by long periods in the casket, and an acidity that reminds one of an attack of rabid badgers on the tongue."
I want to say more, but nothing is coming to mind, so I just stop speaking, although I'm still pacing and my heart is still beating; the creative engine is still heated up but has no more fuel.
He's silent on the phone for a while. Then he says he'll email me.

Then I'm in China. I'm with my sister and her friend who has worked there and I ask my sister's friend about how to get private lesson gigs here. I've applied for a coaching job in China, despite only having coached a low level middle school team in America. I check my email; I read a cryptic message from the Mexican, which confused me, until I read the subject: "You're accepted". I also have an email from the Chinese team, which has a brief English message among the Chinese that tells me I'm accepted as well.

We're on a bus going to our destination in China. I'm with the two girls and a lot of other people we're talking to. It's a sunny day. I'm thinking about my options and how I'm not sure if I should take one of these two jobs, or just go back home; I've been away from home for so long. My sister tells me to just take one of them, of course, why would you even think about it. I say aloud something that I don't really believe: "Teaching in Mexico or coaching in China: pretty good to have those kind of options!" Everyone else on the bus, all travelers, many American, smile at me.

Then we're at a huge bus stop. The glass dome over it seems to go into the sky for a mile. We ask the small information desk how to get to our hostel. They don't speak English. They point and things on our map and draw arrows, but we're still not sure where to go and we're smiling and they're smiling because everyone is frustrated but is trying to find the humor in the situation. Finally we leave and my sister says goodbye in Korean, mixing the two languages up.

As we're leaving the tourist information building, there's a huge, wide street, at least 10 lanes across. One tiny, green, one person car backfires and then the wheels fall off. My sister says "Oh my God!" and then the front part falls off. Then we can see the driver who is leaning back against his seat with his arms at his side and mouth open, looking dead already. The car trips over itself, flinging the bottom of the car, with the driver, onto the front part that had fallen off. It's gruesome and improbable. People run to help him. The man stands up, not dead, but now a tangled mess of human: one arm and shoulder bent behind his back in an unnatural way.

I run towards a wall and start throwing up. Not even my sister or her friend feel the same urge.