had a party for my kids and I passed around my journal. I told them, "In the
United States we have a tradition of passing around and signing a yearbook
with peoples photos in it at the end of each year". Flipping through the book
it's so sacharin at points. One thing that they latched onto was wanting me
to remember them so alot of the entries went like this:
"Remember me. I'm the girl with big eyes that you gave a hug to."
"I'm the shy boy with dark brown skin"
"You're coming to my town Chengdu. I'm the short girl and I gave you spicy
food."
And on, and on, and on....
________
Last night Tsinghua held a banquet for their teachers and volunteers. I'm
always amazed at the sheer quantity of food that they present. While I love
the variety and the dishes are usually excellent I think sometimes that it can
be very wasteful. Perhaps my favorite dish last night was deep fried beef
ribs (it might have been mutton) that came out with a heavy coating of
batter. I stripped the bone bare. I only had one but you really can't eat
too much of that sort of thing. The also had these small bread that you
dipped into a creamy sauce about the color of vanilla pudding but with a
thicker consistency. It was very sweet and extremely delicious. Other dishes
included fried chicken that was nestled in a bed of red peppers, baked catfish
(the stuff at home is better), century eggs, sweet and sour chicken,
dumplings, fried rice, seafood and melonballs, and lots of beer.
After the meal we all wandered around and spoke to one another. It's the last
time many people would see each other. While at the camp the teaching team I
was a part of had a foreign volunteer, a UT college girl, a Tsinghua
Volunteer, a young English major, and a Hong Kong volunteer. My Hong Kong
volunteer is a really sweet girl but she's very shy and maybe a bit socially
awkward. I got the impression that after Harry Potter came out (yeah I caved
and bought a copy and I'm currently about 400 pages in) that she sat in her
rooms at night to finish it. Anyway she cried. It was totally unexpected and
it caught me off guard. I stood there and tried to comfort her until she was
ok. I guess she must have felt so disappointed and sad that things were
ending...
________
Sorry about the lack of quality posts recently. Just so you know this was my
typical day:
8:30 - 9:30 Lecture on US Campus Culture/ Dating & Marriage in the US
9:40 - 11:30 Small Group Lessons
11:40 - 12:30 Data Collection for Research Project
12:30 - 1:15 Lunch (often I'd spend some time with my students here)
1:30 - 2:15 Relax
2:30 - 4:00 Afternoon Singing Competitions/ Speech Competitions/ Activities
with students
4:00 - 5:00 Prepare for Next Day/ Shower (Hot water is from 3:00-5:00 only)
5:30 - 7:30 Dinner (Often going out to eat)
8:00 - ? Socializing
So in there I also had to work up lessons and work on my research so you can
see it's not anything personal I was just very busy.
________
Ok. So nobody panic. I'm going dark for a while. I'm heading to Chengdu
(look it up on Wikipedia) in the Szechuan province down in southern China to
hang out and travel. I don't know when I get to a computer. Just go on the
assumption that I am alive and well.
