Keep on rolling...

Yeah, so, earthquake. I was trying to figure out how to do this last night, but failed dismally -- I guess I just needed "sunshine" to do it.

I've got sort of a weird perspective of what happened at the moment. When the earthquake began, I had just sat down to coffee with a couple of other teachers from my school in Yulin. Schwanky place. I was arguing with the waiter about the health of drinking cold water with hot tea. It started shaking, but the place had wood floors -- we thought somebody was running or dancing or something. Not so much.

The teachers grabbed my Midwestern butt and drug me outside before I had a real notion of what was happening. I'm from Michigan, we don't get earthquakes. It's something we watch on TV when California's having problems. We stood outside across the street, watching in awe as the buildings shook. One of the teachers pulled her car up, and I blinked, then realized that my wallet and phone were conveniently located on the table on the second floor of the coffee shop. Yes, m'dears, I am the idiot who ran back INSIDE the building during an earthquake.

Wallet recovered, we jumped in the car and drove off before anyone had really processed what had happened. Everybody had just poured out of the buildings and was just starting to congregate outside. We saw the uniformed employees of one place marching 2x2 down the street, arm in arm. A little dog was standing in an intersection looking for mummy or daddy, and waiting for the cars while he crossed. We were trying to call our families and friends, but the phones wouldn't even register our calls. The teachers turned their phones off, and then on again, and then told me they were on emergency only. There weren't a lot of people on the road yet, luckily, as the teachers dropped me off at my university.

I had these visions of Dan in this old apartment with the ceiling having caved in on him, and I was close to panicked -- I wanted to make sure he was still in one piece. I retrieved my bike, and the shifu didn't even look twice at me. Usually we have some sort of strained, badly pronounced conversation.

And then I proceeded to try to ride my bike from Xinan Minzu to Sichuan University. It's basically from the west side of the south section to the east side of the south section, so a considerable distance, but it usually takes me about 20 minutes. Think of it this way: it's a 10 kuai cab ride.

That was a nightmare. Everyone had rushed out of the buildings and was milling around in the middle of the road. Middle, meaning center; they were hanging out on the bushes and the center dividers, and when they ran out of space, they spilled onto the road. Cars were stopped or inching along in that way that makes people think they'll actually get somewhere if they're a jerk about it. And there's a single line of bikes weaving through traffic, sometimes two wide, mostly just one, because people were crowded in the bike lanes and the sidewalks. I never really realized how many people were in Chengdu until then.

My normally 20 minute ride took me an hour and a half. I arrived at the apartment and ran up to the bike lady, hoping she'd understand my putonghua/sichuanhua mix and said,"Have you seen my boyfriend today?" "Yeah, he's downstairs, he's okay."

He was not downstairs, the dork. I saw the windows opened and yelled up to them, and he poked his head out of the 7th floor apartment.

From then on, I've been hanging out with him as he's achieved international fame. As I was trying to weave my way across the city to make sure he wasn't dead or dying, he'd been sitting online blogging, the only blogger out of Chengdu who was posting in English.

Either way. Peng Laoshi was trying to get ahold of me that night, and kept calling but wouldn't get off her phone so I could call her back. So at 11 oclock at night, dressed in a long skirt, I grabbed my bike and rode down to Peace Corps HQ. I was expecting to only tell the guard that I was okay and tell him to tell her, but to my surprise, most of the staff was camped out in their cars right outside the building. Everybody was relieved to see me, and I ended up talking with Peng Laoshi for a while before meandering back home.

Almost nobody was staying at home. Apartments were dark. But there were thousands of people wandering around on Sichuan University's campus that night, camping out in tents, stretched out on the ground in blankets, waiting in interminable lines for the bathrooms.

I finally got ahold of my students last night. They're safe, but camping out just like everybody else, poor guys. They said,"We're very lucky we have someplace to stay tonight. We're staying on the playground." O.O In the pouring rain. Ugh. If I could put 120 people up in my apartment, I would. Classes were canceled yesterday and today. They said maybe tomorrow too.

All in all, I've been very lucky. The aftershocks are still shaking a little, and I was definitely very frightened. But I'm safe, Dan's safe, my friends are all safe, and all we broke was a glass. But since it was pouring rain yesterday, relief for the people who are hurt in Wenchuan is long in coming, and I read yesterday may have to be dropped in by airplane. So please, while my experiences might have been mindblowing but relatively mild, keep those who really suffered in your hearts, and send good vibes. Donations can be made to the Red Cross.

Summer's here again. It's not just a temperature or a season here -- it's a taste in the air, green in the trees, a spicy scent that's pervasive but you just can't put your finger on. I tracked it down in the store once and found a little ...fruit? Nut? Vegetable? Herb? Brown thing. It reeked. But the smell is everywhere here, and it's something that grows on you.

It was overcast this morning, spitting rain just a little as I biked frantically to work, praying that I'd miss the downpour that never did arrive. The haze was close, too. You can tell how polluted it is every day by how far away you can see, and the distance wasn't very far this morning. Oh well.

I dunno, though. The weather is really making me nostalgic. I love Chengdu in the summer... The winter? It can go to hell as far as I'm concerned, but I really do love it here in the summertime, despite searing heat and incredible humidity. If I never feel sweat dripping down my back again, it'll be too soon. But I know I have that to look forward to in a month or so. Bleh.

Believe it or not, I've found a home here. Granted, I may spend hours on recipe websites longingly staring at recipes for food I could NEVER cook here (no oven, no microwave, can't get most ingredients), and I may wish I could stop teaching so darned much and get some time to myself, but I think I've finally found some equilibrium.

I had more to say..but it's just not coming out. To bed with me.


I'll leave you with a picture of one of my students. Kay's a sweetheart -- soft spoken, intelligent, truly a joy to have in class. Picture was taken by my boyfriend at English corner.

Explanation of the hospital visit

I am accident prone. I feel like I ought to attend a meeting or something, stand up in front of a crowd, and admit, "Hi, my name is Amanda, and I am clumsy," or something. Physically inept, anonymous. Since I've come to China, I've cut myself, burned myself, fallen all over myself, and gotten my thumb shut in a car door. Woot.

However, a couple of months ago I managed to get pushed off my bike and landed really hard on my knee. Not so happy. But, being me, I'm rather accustomed to being injured, so I shrugged it off and went on about my business. But something was rather odd about this injury...

I had a numb spot on my knee that was about 2 inches by 2 inches. And it had a bump. And it wasn't bruising -- I had crazy bruising everywhere else, but right in the middle, where the worst damage ought to be, it was white as snow. So, I did what any self respecting volunteer would do, and went to the doctor.

Doctor took one look at it, pronounced it "Injured!" and told me it would be better within a month. Cool, I thought, and went back about my business. However, five weeks later...the bruising was gone, but the numb spot and the bump? Still there. Not so much fun. And it hurt to put weight on it -- to climb the stairs and to ride my bike.

So I went back. Apparently, it was a hematoma -- a little area of internal bleeding where the body builds up a sack of blood or something like that. A few days later, they took me to the hospital to make sure I hadn't fractured anything or had any bone damage. Nope. So I got some cream and was told to slather it on twice a day until it went away, and to come back in a week.

Week later, bump is still prevalent (but apparently will be for another couple of months), and my knee still hurts. I pointed out that that it still hurt like hell, and hurting like hell generally indicates to me that there's something wrong. Finally, they take me seriously. They do the ligament and tendon tests again, which I passed with flying colors the first time I went into the office (no, I didn't rip or tear anything). However, this time the doctor pushes down on a place below my knee. OW FUCK!

Apparently the place where the tendon that holds your kneecap in place attaches to the bone is seriously inflamed. It's oddly just below the hematoma. Shocking. So I have uber anti-inflamatories and my knee is finally not hurting as much, two months after I injured it. According to the doctor, it may be months until it heals up. Agh.

Accident prone, I am.

Bargaining here is really an experience. Really. There is almost no such thing as a fixed price here, and when you run into one, it's a shocking experience. There's the invisible bargaining markup, which can be as much as 200%, and the "foreigner tax" which is usually the same amount as the bargaining markup but much, much harder to get rid of. All foreigners are rich, y'see....

Yesterday, Dan and I ventured out to the overpriced shopping street known fondly as Chun Qi Lu. Part of my plan was to get him in the reggae shop and buy him a shirt for his birthday -- a shirt that now resides happily in his closet. But I wanted to do some window shopping either way. My students warned me over and over again that it would be really crowded, but I was determined. I think, maybe, they've gotten the idea that I really don't like crowds. It's not an American thing, I told them, it's an Amanda thing. I've never liked to be in the middle of a large group of people. It makes me panic something awful. But I'm stubborn, too.

Another Amanda thing is that I build these crazy, detailed pictures in my head about places I've never been but am going to be going in the near future, and when these places inevitably are drastically different, I feel a pang of bitter disappointment. So, when we went to the bike market, I was expecting a huge parking lot of rows and rows of bikes, ready to check out. On the contrary, it was an alley of fifteen or so shops with 20-30 bikes each in it, and you had to navigate the various store owners without offending one or the other to be able to find a bike that a) works, and b) isn't incredibly expensive or that we could get the foreigner markup off of.

So yesterday, we ventured down to the clothing market. Dan's been planning on taking me for forever, and I was expecting something like a warehouse with high ceilings and few crowds, even though intellectually, I know no place like this exists in China. What I got was a five-floor warehouse with low ceilings and millions of people packed into it. We ended up navigating it by basically attaching ourselves to each other -- Dan's arms around my shoulders and steering me toward invisible holes in the crowd, so we wouldn't get lost. There were that many people in it.

Examples of the foreigner markup: on floor two, there's this cute orange skirt for 45 kuai. Flat rate, no bargaining allowed. We promised to think about it. Floor three, same skirt, 180 kuai. Bargaining led to a price of 110. We bought the one from floor 2.

Now occasionally you meet somebody here in China whose bargaining is truly amusing. In the tech towers, you're bombarded by people trying to sell you DVDs..they'll walk down the escalators the wrong way to get to you, run out in front of you while you're walking, block your way, and the whole time, they're shouting, "DVD, DVD!!" at you. You get really good at shouting back. Once, a woman started walking down the escalators with DVDs in her hand, obviously heading for the foreigners... We pre-empted her and told her that she'd better not be heading for us. She grinned at us and cheekily said that she didn't want to talk to us anyway. If I'd actually wanted DVDs that day, I totally woulda bought from her. I also have a student whose method of bargaining is to just shout the price she wants at the top of her lungs incessantly until the store owner gets bored and gives it to her. I love it -- it's hilarious to watch.

However, yesterday we were in a shop and found a skirt that Dan loved. It's this beautiful jewel blue, ankle length skirt from Indonesia with a cute print. I'm kinda meh about it, but whatever. I'm meh about most skirts, but Dan's talked me into buying a couple already and I wear them around the house constantly. He knows the correct methodology to get me to wear whatever he wants me to - wake up before I take a shower and have the clothes waiting. I hate putting outfits together. So if we buy a skirt I'm kinda torn on, it's not like he has to fight to get me to wear it. But the salesgirl...my lord. We walked into the shop, just wanting to look at this skirt. Remember, walking in is actually dodging fifty people rushing at you without a care in the world for their safety - or yours. She eyes us, grabs us up, and starts talking a mile a minute so that I'm only picking up one word in three. The skirt started at 230, which was enough to turn me the hell off and get me out of there as it was. But she's still talking, and talking fast. All I'm picking up is, "Because you're my friend, because you're my friend." And she and Dan are just going at it. Dan...apparently liked it. I was willing to pay 60 for it, and any more than that was just too much for a skirt. But this girl got him on her side, and they both suddenly go quiet and store at me intently. Fuck. Dan had just gotten the price down to 100, and I wasn't that hung up on it to be willing to pay that much, so I just said no. Dan bought it. Damnit.

Yes, I am now the proud owner of four skirts, two of which are a little too small for me to wear at this point in time because I need to lose some inches off my big butt. Those of you who know me may now die of shock. What a crazy day.

Today was a fiasco. Well, at least it wasn't a complete loss. But I've learned some important lessons.

The May holiday is this week. Last year, students had a whole week off, and it gave them a chance to go home and see their families. Most of my students are rather far away from home, so we end up talking about homesickness a lot in class. They've all been looking forward to seeing their families.

However, today we found out that the holiday this week is actually only Thursday, Friday and Saturday; Friday's classes are being held on Sunday. And some of my classes have class on Saturday. So instead of having a holiday...they have a weekend two days early and then a seven-day week. They were understandably angry.

They spent the first part of my class venting, and I spent the whole class wracking my brain for ways to cheer them up. We ended up talking about local customs. I ended up 'reenacting' an American traditional wedding for one group, and talking to another in depth about American perceptions of time and why we expect to be notified about schedules ahead of time. The best way I could explain it is that we consider people who are either late or excessively early to be selfish and inconsiderate, because they aren't taking the other person's time into consideration when they do their own planning.

Anyway, they know I love them. They know I'm outraged on their behalf, because they were planning on going home to see their families and now they can't, with two days warning. And they left the class in a little bit better mood. I wish there was more that I could do, but that's about the limit of my capacity in this regard.

This afternoon was supposed to be a double-dose of two different classes watching one movie together. And that's where the fiasco part of the day came into play. I should have known better than to let my students handle this one, seriously, but they just took it out of my hands and wouldn't let me be involved.

I had checked with both classes last week, and found out that they didn't have class between 3:45 and 6 on Tuesday afternoon. I knew that one class had class every other Tuesday from 2-3:20...or so they said. So last week, I asked the class monitor from one class to sign me up for a specific room that I'd already checked out and made sure was empty that entire afternoon. Everything cool, right? I thought I'd covered all bases.

Yesterday, I got a phone call from that student asking me if it would be okay if we had our class from 3-5. I checked with the other class (or rather, had Dan check) and sure enough, they were free. So, cool. Whatever, I said, if that's what time you'd rather have it. I let the other class know that class would be at 3 o'clock.

Today, I show up to the classroom at 2:40. I was twenty minutes early, or so I thought, and everything was all set up. But...my students are already watching a movie. And there's a whole (but single) class in there. Bridget Jones' Diary is playing on the movie screens. And that is most definitely not the movie I wanted them to see. The class monitor comes up to me, and says, "Where have you been? We thought you were supposed to be here at 2! You're so late!" ... No...I'm early. There was a misunderstanding, seriously.

Then I got a phone call from another one of the foreign teachers, who says, "My students told me they need to leave my class early for your class!" Uh..what? The class she's got right at that point is the class that has the class monitor responsible for scheduling the whole schebang in it. There's NO WAY that she didn't know she had a class right then. I told her to come down and get the movie from me, and they'd watch the movie later.

I let the first class finish watching Bridget Jones' Diary. With the craziness of this week, I'm not going to make them sit in class for another hour, when they already had their vacation stolen from them. And then I came up to the room that the second class was watching the movie in and found out that they'd co-opted the other foreign teacher's class and had been watching it in her class time. Agh. At least Elissa (the other teacher) liked the movie.

Alright, whatever. It's dealt with. I'm never leaving it to a student to do alone ever again. Seriously.

Finally, I get out of the mess. Class is dismissed. We invited one of my 3-year freshmen out to dinner with us (she's a bit neurotic and needs a bit of cossetting sometimes) and ran down and tried out a new dishes restaurant. Pretty good. I run away and jump on the bus, and Dan wanders off to find a piano on campus, which is apparantly a succesful quest.

Got back to the old campus, and checked the hidey-hole that I was certain his birthday present was in. He'd convinced me I'd brought it over to his apartment; I was still convinced it wasn't here, and I'd gone through every single little hidey-hole I would have put it in here. Oddly, it was exactly where I thought I'd left it. Present found.

Home I went. Engaged in a little art project regarding Dan's birthday. I'm not very crafty, but hopefully he'll like it.

When he got home tonight.... he managed to drop bread on his stomach, jam side down. WIN! He's totally getting clumsier, and it's totally from associating from me. My life rocks. ;)

Today's lessons learned:
The perception of time in China is a lesson in zen patience. Seriously. You have to accept, rather than react.

If you want something done right, especially when you've got a cross-language boundary, do it yourself. Or go along. Don't do it over the phone. Ever. Nobody will understand anybody.

My klutziness is contagious.


Another website for today: www.bookglutton.com
Basically a book club online. Find a book, find a book discussion group. It's pretty sweet. ;)

Fucking mosquitoes.

It’s not like we don’t have these ingenious little devices that plug into the wall and are supposed to drive mosquitoes away. What’s more, it’s not like we don’t live on the 7^th floor – way above where mosquitoes are supposed to dwell anyhow. Oh no, we’ve got both of those.

It’s that they seem to think I’m a gourmet meal fit for the most discriminating mosquito palates.

I must admit, I disagree. But then again, I’m exhausted. And itchy. They don’t tend to start biting until about 3 a.m., when you’ve already settled into a good night’s sleep. Y’no, the time of night where you’re supposed to be having psychedelic dreams reminiscent of acid trips of the days of yore where you’re being chased by big purple elephants on cotton candy clouds and incidentally jump onto the roof of a skyscrape….bzzzzz! OW! Damnit!

So I’m exhausted. I wandered into class today with absolutely nothing prepared, and remembered halfway there that I’d already talked about Earth Day with this class. Fuck. So I literally had nothing planned, nothing prepared, and nothing to challenge these little minds with. I ended up bringing up the debate from Friday (yes, it’s dominating my life at the moment) and having them talk about the WTO.

I have to admit, I’m rather impressed. A year ago, I helped TA International Problems at University of Toledo, and my students were darn near clueless. I had my students today make up a list of what they knew about the WTO, and they gave me a darned accurate definition and description of duties, responsibilities and functions of the WTO (in bad English) and then detailed the consequences of the inclusion of China to both the populace and the government. I was…impressed. And a little disappointed in the performance of the students back home.

On the way home, I stopped for groceries and such. Nothing big, just enough to fill my backpack. The cashier was a little bemused at the foreigner jamming eggs and bread carelessly into her bag, possibly destroying both in the process. It made me realize, though, that I’m really glad I started concentrating on dialect instead of “proper” Chinese. Dialect is more widely understood and spoken here. I like being understood. I like understanding what’s going on around me. People stop treating you like you’re insane, stupid, or a child if you speak even a few words of dialect. Seriously.

Anyway, Dan had only been out of bed for a half an hour by the time I got home. Darn it. He very kindly made me lunch, although it didn’t turn out so well (he’s made like three meals in the last three months that have been so-so at best. The rest have been amazing.) He’s also tolerating my snippiness that comes from too little sleep like a champ. I don’t ever mean to be snippy, but I’m really like a toddler. If I don’t get enough sleep, I’m a cranky bitch.

The Webby Award nominations are out and they’re up for a vote. I always go take a look because I inevitably find something pretty darned cool on the web that I hadn’t already known about. Go take a look yourself if you’re interested. http://pv.webbyawards.com/

And the other cool thing I’ve found in the last couple of days is a website called Lunch in a Box. It’s basically a website dedicated to bento boxes. A bento box is a Japanese lunchbox, usually arranged to be aesthetically pleasing and full of bite sized munchables that are super delectable. I always liked ordering bento boxes in Japanese restaurants because it let me sample a ton of different Japanese food without paying crazy prices or getting locked into one dish. This site, on the other hand, doesn’t restrict you to Japanese cuisine for your bento boxes, but gives you ideas for healthier lunches that are fast to make, nice to look at, and yummy to eat. You can find it here: http://lunchinabox.net/

TTFN.

Amanda

Where did the weekend go?

This weekend was far too short. It feels like it's just begun, and yet, it's 9:30 at night on Sunday night, and I'm looking forward to a crazy week that I just can't predict yet. Maybe I have class next Sunday; maybe I don't. Maybe I teach on Friday; maybe I don't. I just have no idea, and I wish I did -- my students don't even know what's going on.

I realized I've gained 10 pounds in the last three months or so and I'm rather unhappy about this occurance. I'm not altogether certain how it happened -- oddly, I'm riding my bike more and haven't really changed anything else. Anyhoo, it's created an impetus to start eating better than I have been, and Dan eagerly jumped on board. I'm lucky to have met someone who has been so incredibly supportive. He said that I'm beautiful as I am, but if I would be more comfortable with myself at a different size, he'd help me get there. So we've been buying better food and I've been trying to eat less starchy food. More milk (even though it's sweet in China), yogurt, and tons of fruits and veggies. During the break between my classes on Friday and the debate I had to judge, we wandered down to the vegetable market and stocked up on tons of veggies that we don't normally buy -- fresh red peppers, bean sprouts, new potatoes, squash and green beans. He's been cooking these amazing, colorful, healthy dinners that are tasty and awesome. Maybe dieting isn't so bad.

On that subject, his birthday's coming up in two weeks. I bought a gift for him back in December right under his nose -- bargained for and everything! -- and tweakily teased him about it for months. However, I seem to have put it in a safe place. I put many things in safe places, never to be found again. And I've got to find it. I really do. I went through all the nooks and crannies of the apartment today trying to find where I'd put it, but it's not in any of the logical places that I would normally put it. I'm more than a little annoyed. I'm going to check my old apartment this week to see if it turns up.

Other than that, we didn't really accomplish anything this weekend. We went out for hot pot yesterday, and then wandered through Trust Mart and the fruit market. We even visited this scarf shop I've been contemplating going into to get something for my hair, but didn't end up buying anything there. I did get some platform flip-flops though. It was the best kind of bargaining: he said fifteen, and I showed him my wallet because I only had 10. I got 'em for 10. Awesome.

I didn't lesson plan since I don't need to, really, although I have a ton of grading that I really didn't get around to. I had two classes last week that didn't get to see the movie I showed the week before, so they had a different lesson plan than the first three classes, so the first three classes can have what I taught the two last week. Whatever. It's not really a tough lesson plan. I just wanted to remind them about Earth Day and get them to contemplate the problems that China's facing, then think about some solutions. It's amazing that something so simple can keep them busy for two hours. Really. And I feel pretty good about it because they're thinking about something that really needs to be thought about.

Finally, I've found some interesting things on the internet the last few days.

• 43things.com: a website to help you find and keep track of the 43 things you'd like to do with your life. It's supposed to be an inspirational site, and I totally see how it can be. Writing down your goals helps you keep working toward them, to keep working toward accomplishing them. Mine are a bit silly, but accomplishing them would make me a very happy person. My list so far:
• learn to like wine
• take more pictures
• lose 40 pounds and keep it off
• open a bookstore
• learn to cook Italian food
• learn to play guitar
• write in my blog more often
• learn to make sushi
• learn to write well
• meditate
  

Anyhoo. I'm already working to post more often. It's a good release.

Until next time..

Mom called me last night in the middle of a debate competition. I shut the phone off in a hurry so I wouldn't disrupt it even MORE than I already had, so I didn't get the phone call. However, when I got home I had e-mails waiting for me. Lots of them.

Someone has apparently stolen my identity and opened a phone account in the United States with it. They somehow got ahold of my social security number, god only knows how, ran the phone bill up to $300, and then let it go to collections. Mom got a bill yesterday, and initiated the identity theft process.

So I've been up at insane hours trying to get ahold of her, and I have to deal with all of the ensuing garbage from halfway across the world. I hate people, have I mentioned that? Ugh. I really have no idea what's going on.

Today, I need to go get scans of my passport, PC id, and my drivers license, so I can email them to my mom

The local police department has my phone number here in China, and they have my e-mail address.

All that's really left to do is to make sure that nothing ELSE has happened with my stuff. Hopefully this is it.

My second grade teacher pronounced library "lie-berry." I still remember.

My second grade self, already an ardent library fan, told her she was wrong. It was "lie-brary." Two rs.

We stared each other down, each knowing the other was wrong.

However, I was in second grade. I ended up going about my way, pronouncing it 'library,' whilst my classmates immediately started pronouncing it minus the second r. I did not get my ducky that day that you get for good behavior that you could turn in for candy at the end of the week.

I really had good intentions when I made this thing. Really. In times past, I've been a compulsive blogger, posting multiple times a day. However, habits are easy to break and once I fell out of it, it was gone forever. Sadness and woe.

This semester is halfway over. I'm so amazingly glad, and so utterly sad, all at the same time. I absolutely adore my students, and, I find, they feel the same way about me. I hate having to teach every freaking morning, because teaching one class every day first thing in the morning is exhausting -- but I am always, always happy to see them. Next fall, I will not be teaching the same students, since I will be teaching the freshmen once again, and my current students are disappointed to the point of speechlessness. It's really odd. I'm a loner; I don't really like people. I've never been described as social or outgoing and I totally treasure my time alone. I like quiet and solitude. And yet there are 250 or more students who are screamingly loyal to me, and god only knows why. I certainly don't understand.

However, last night I judged a debate competition for the first time. My students were insane. There were 350 or more people packed into this room that's meant to fit ..maybe 80. There are students sharing seats, people packed into the aisles, every seat is full, and there's a crowd outside of the room. Its insane. And as I'm looking over this crowd, I realize that I've taught most, if not all of the students present. I've taught all of the freshmen, all of the sophomores at least once, and four out of seven classes of juniors once. So when the judges were asked to stand up and be introduced, each was applauded. I got a standing, screaming ovation.

I have absolutely no idea what I did to deserve the love of these kids, but.. I'm so proud of the progress they've made this year. My students have really bloomed into confident, creative people, and if I had any part in that at all, I feel like I've made an amazing impact on this world.

But anyway, the semester is half over. Next week is May holiday, where I may have four days off, I may have three days off. I may have one day off and then the weekend. I really have no idea. I really wish I did. Bleh. I think I may have gotten a little upset with the secretary yesterday, because my students were asking me what the deal was and I had absolutely no answer. That frustrates me.

No plans, either, because I have to ask for permission to leave, and it's too late now. I want to go down to Chun Qi Lu, spelling optional, to go shopping..but otherwise I have a feeling that this will be a weekend of relaxing on the couch. I do need to go someday and spend a day or a week taking pictures of Chengdu...but I have a feeling that is going to wait until this summer and my three months off from school. Oddly, I really need it right now.

Summer is also going to include summer project, which is probably going to be two weeks of marathon teacher training. I'm really not at all sure what's going to be going on with it. Bleh. Do not want to do. Here's hoping some crazy natural disaster cancels it. Something that hurts no one, just prevents everyone from doing the project. :) A big hand of god sticks a wall around the university and says,"DO NOT ENTER" for two weeks or something.

Anyway. Here's hoping I'm a little better about posting in this thing in the relative future. My students' midterms are coming up, and I'm really looking forward to them. They've been asked to select a bit of Chinese culture and present for 10 minutes on it, then lead a class discussion. They've got as much time as they want, because the more time they spend presenting is less time I actually have to teach -- and because of the discussion aspect of the assignment, my students are talking, too.

Oddly, one of my groups of students managed to shock me by deciding to do theirs two weeks early yesterday. Not at all expected. They presented on Beijing Opera, which was pretty interesting, and I'm desperately hoping that they didn't copy their presentation. I'm waiting for the e-mail with their powerpoint in it so I can check. If they did, I have absolutely no idea what to do about it. Their grammar was just a touch too good (read: it was nearly perfect) for me to think it HAD been them writing it. Ugh. Cheating just leaves me speechless sometimes.

Anyway. I've babbled enough. Later.

Why I Hate Pink

I know it's silly, but I've missed having a blog to muse within. Unfortunately, I seem to not have much to say tonight, aside from general sleepiness and a wholehearted contentedness.

I'm a Peace Corps volunteer in China. It seems odd to identify myself as such, because I hardly feel like a Peace Corps volunteer. I spend a lot of time with my students, just not in the traditional after-school clubs and such that ever yone told us that we would to. I try to make myself completely available to them; they're all completely aware that not only do I make my phone number and e-mail address available to them and offer them office hours, but I EXPECT them to call me if they have problems. I spend weekends with whole classes, end up with English hot pot or visits around the city with them. Heck, I think I know my city better than most of my students, since they're not from Sichuan and they live outside of town. It's made for some interesting site-seeing days speaking entirely English and helping out with problems that they have that they can't work on when they're in a class of thirty. My students are bemused by these excursions, if only because everyone assumes they're foreigners and they get the same staring-oh-my-god-superstar treatment that I get every day. But I feel good doing it, and I'd probably do it whether I was a Peace Corps volunteer or not.

I've come to love China. When we first came here, we were warned that we'd go through phases of acculturation and acclimatization to the culture here; that we'd start off by being naive, innocent and bright-eyed, excited by all the difference here. That we'd next kind of fall in an acceptance, then get jaded and start to hate China, where every little thing would grate on our nerves. Finally, we'd grow to love China and just sort of sink in. When I got here, I felt so boxed in by my host family and problems with my apartment that I just... skipped the acceptance phase. I sort of skip steps a lot in my life, isn't it funny? I spent a good month absolutely miserable, intent on leaving and trying to plan how to make it happen. I liked my students, but that was about it.

I got so lucky, though. Back in September, my second weekend after I moved into my apartment, I had a visitor from Gansu, another Peace Corps volunteer. With her, I met up with a half a dozen other Peace Corps volunteers and some of their friends. We had a pretty good time -- we went to the Women's World Cup, the soccer tournament in Chengdu, which was pretty sweet. We wandered out to the pizza place by my apartment. We went to Pete's, the western food restaurant, and met up with a couple of their friends. And I met a couple of people who live in Chengdu, much to my benefit. We wandered around afterwards, buying DVDs and just hanging out, before splitting for the afternoon. I got some phone numbers and some possible new friends.

Fast forward to the end of October -- I was wandering around Sichuan University on my way to Peace Corps HQ and saw one of those friends who I hadn't spoken to in ages, and we were both rather startled and pledged to phone and hang out. And we hung out. And clicked. Hard. And that probably turned the tables on Chengdu and China for me. I hate to credit it all to an external source, but frankly, having someone to share it with has helped immensely. I've always been known as a loner, but I'm not, really.. I crave company, I just don't really know how to connect. It's sort of sad, really.

Anyway, luck is that it ended up working out so well. I can't believe my life: China rocks, my relationship rocks, my life rocks.

I still hate pink. Why is this relevant? It's not. I used to have a boyfriend who'd ask me these crazy questions like,"Why don't you like pink?" and get really upset when he got answers like, "Just because!!!" I think I had an argument about why I don't like pink for an hour. Pink sucks. Why? Because it sucks. Simple as that.

So why? BECAUSE. So there. :)