Culture Shock, and How to Beat It

Some of my posts in the past have been kind of hard to write for one reason or another.  Some weeks I don't have a lot of material to talk about, and other weeks I'm just kind of tired and depressed.  Living in another culture wears you out; this is part of what is known as "culture shock."  Having been here for over two months, I've definitely felt that for the past couple of weeks, and it has been quite frustrating.  This post, however is not nearly as hard to write.  This is because, in the past week, I think I may have finally turned a corner on my culture shock; I'm now feeling like I can actually do this "living in another country" thing for real.  This feeling came about as a result of several events.
The crux event surrounded my Chinese learning; I realized that my class has a study period/tutoring session scheduled with my favorite teacher for two hours every Friday, and almost nobody stays for this class.  I kind of knew this before, but suddenly it violently struck me: "I can basically have a one-on-one tutoring session with a great Chinese teacher EVERY WEEK! Why am I not using this to more of my advantage?" So I stuck around for the entire time (and it was basically a tutoring session) and this teacher in that time helped me really GET how characters are constructed in Chinese.  Remembering the meaning of characters, and how to pronounce them has always been very difficult for me, and I think that this might be the breakthrough I need to really get some traction on this problem.
Next, through a couple of different ways, I was reminded of the purpose behind why I'm here, and how it relates to my calling.  If I have not told some of you what that calling is, this video (and the others on that Vimeo channel) explains it pretty well; remember that I am a Christian, and my other major is Linguistics. Watching these videos helped to refocus myself, and a couple of speakers I heard this weekend helped to cement things in my mind as well.
All that said, I'm not out of the woods yet; I'm still tired, and I still have a cold (though not as bad as before).  But, with those two things figured out, a lot of the other stuff is falling into place.  So, I can post happily, and now I can tell you about some funny stuff that happened this week!
First off, I've been to McDonald's a good bit in the past couple of weeks; in a really weird way, it's comfort food (I never really liked McDonald's in America), and one of the big coping mechanisms for culture shock is seeking out familiar comfort food.  Plus it's the only place open past 10 PM or so, and I've been up REALLY LATE a couple of times in the last few weeks (usually coming home from events with friends elsewhere), so sometimes I literally HAD to go there. So, I'm in McDonald's at midnight, buying a Big Mac meal (or comparable), and I look around, and there's like eight or nine people (no really, I counted) SLEEPING in McDonald's.  Not just dozing off over their meals or textbooks, but stretched out across a bench, or curled up in a chair and sleeping.  Some of them were college students, but some of them weren't, and I really don't understand why you'd do that.  Sure it's the only place open that late, but 1) don't these students have dorms that they can sleep in? and 2) wouldn't the management kick them out?  I'm going to have to figure out what exactly is driving that particular cultural difference.
The other thing I noticed recently, hanging out with a Chinese friend. He's got very good English because he studied in the UK for several years, but it's always sounded just a bit strange to me, which I assumed was Chinese/his particular dialect of Chinese interfering.  Then I suddenly realized; he's got a BRITISH accent!  THIS is what British English sounds like when spoken by a native Chinese speaker!  Which means that almost all of the English speaking Chinese people in America have and AMERICAN accent. As a linguist I found this hilarious because 1) British/Chinese hybrid accent is just a funny concept and 2) I've been hanging out with him for TWO MONTHS and I only just now figured this out.  I am both amused and feeling very silly.  You may not find this super funny; I guess it just goes to show how much of a language nerd I am.
That's all from China for now!