good tidings and cheer

This photo was taken last weekend after my student's Christmas performance. "Will", "Vivid", and "Bunny" all did a waltz at the end of the show. Dashing students, eh? This week has been filled with exam prep and Christmas dinners, which is a good distraction I suppose from the fact that I will be away from my family for Christmas. For being in a country that apparently doesn't celebrate this holiday, there is still a good amount of fake Christmas trees in store fronts with big glittery santas.

Last weekend I started spending a little more time with one of the foreign exchange students from South Carolina. He can throw on a drawl pretty easily, wears cowboy boots, and always jumps into some profound conversation about life. After going to the show last weekend, we decided to go for a nice walk around town. Its always very eye opening to see different parts of town further away from the bubble of the university. We walked by a factory and the housing for the workers. Lots of construction projects going on. A few Chinese men strolling the street whispering "foreigners. white people." Always good to see new things. Once you get away from the university things become- how to say- more "cold war-esque". Many more concrete boxes of buildings with huge Chinese characters painted on the side. Long concrete walls stretching along streets with huge fields inside. I wonder how long I will still get the occaisional thoughts of "holy shit... I'm actually living in China".

Last night we went to a little restaurant near campus and I actually ordered a full meal in Chinese. Egg-fried pumpkin, spinach, eggplant, toufu soup. I've been eating less and less meat lately. A lot of the meat tends to be full of bones or grissel and.. I'm okay getting protien from toufu. We've been kind of hard up for things to do in this town, so we decided if we went to karaoke with just foreigners it would be a lot less intimidating (because the Chinese are really good and don't seem to realize that to do karaoke properly youre supposed to have a beer in one hand and sound horrible). So Morten, the foreign exhange student, and I all went to KTV and sang and sang and sang until our voices were raw and they kicked us out because they wanted to close. The best discovery of the night was just how funny it is to sing a whole song just saying "meow". This.. was probably much ore entertaining than it should have been.

Alright, Morten has volunteered to make a traditional Danish breakfast this morning for us, so I must be on my way. I hope you are all enjoying the Christmas spirit wherever you may be.

Party!

New desktop on my computer, thought I would share. Hehe.

"Communist Party"

chilly nights full of Elijah Wood

Drafty nights in the apartment will the temperature regularly falling below 32 are giving me little incentive to get out from my down comforter and go outside. 32? You might ask. "You lame little sissy!" Well- as I believe I've mentioned before- when you live at high latitudes houses tend to be made to trap heat inside so people can stay warm in winter. This far south, my apartment is like a little cave, with cold air blowing out the door as I unlock it. The time has also come to invest in a warmer winter coat *sigh*.

To adjust to the climate change, (although, it still is not uncommon for the temperature to rise into the 50s or even 60s during the day) Morten has downloaded the entire Lord of the Rings extended edition trilogy. Last night we watched the Two Towers and had a bag full of crackers, my guilty pleasure here. *side note* I've been lumping cookies into the category of crackers so I feel better about eating them. The Chinese definitely know their crackers.

We've also been discussing where to go over the rapidly approaching Spring Festival. My freshmen are done in 2 weeks, my sophomores in 3. We've discussed going up to Harbin in Heilongjiang. This is in the extreme NE of China and borders Russia. They have a huge ice festival up there and there is also an oil field that is very interested in hiring me to work there in their personnel department. I feel like working at an oil field would be a good for my resume- but everytime I hear this part of China described its usually in the context of "barren wasteland". Its flat and its cold. But, I do feel like its worth seeing- plus it is a very different part of China than where we are now. Then we could check out the panda sanctuary in Chengdu on our way back south.... :D

The poetry reading was largly unsucessful. However, upon my return I promised my freshmen I would read it to them on their last class. I've been forcing them to read English poems to me all semester, so it only seemed fair. Just the same though- it is rather discouraging to have had Chinese people laughing hysterically at your attempts to properly pronounce their language. It seems to have lit a candle under my ass in terms of my Chinese study though.

So, many months ago (I guess 2...) one of the freshmen boys in the dorm next door got my phone number. Don't take this the wrong way. People are always asking for our phone number- you'll talk to someone for 30 seconds, they will ask if we can make friends, and ask. Its very nice that people have been so willing to help if we need it. So, one day when Morten and I were talking about the orgin of the creepy pond next to the boy's dorm we by default made a whole slew of new friends.

Little did I know, that this boy would pimp out my contact information to many people. Maybe it wasn't him so much as the roomates he gave my number to gave it to one of their friends, ect. Which is why QQ has been such a blessing- it gives me a piece of contact information that is not my cell phone. A few days ago I had a new contact because of this passing of my information. A very nice boy who wanted to improve his English and was willing to correct my Chinese. He was board so we took this bus to the lake on the edge town. They had a little memorial about the Japanese invaision in 1937 on a tiny island. They sold a lot of nuts. Mountains everywhere. They world makes a lot more sense when you are with a Chinese person. It was a pretty good day. Also- whenever I'd ever even suggested to a Chinese male that we should go grab tea or some lunch, they immediately figure out someone to call to come along. Which I normally find entertaining and moderately awkward. Its annoying, because if there is another Chinese person there, they will start to talk in Chinese and cut me out of the conversation entirely. So this was nice.

Alright, time for some Chinese study and to get out of my warm warm bed.