Recent Life Happenings

Currently sick with a respiratory infection (blech), which, for various reasons, feels harder to deal with in China, if solely for the fact that I ride my bike everywhere, and due to lung issues, I can't currently do that. Hence I have not been eating much and am currently dreaming of juicy jaozi (dumplings) and malatang (soup that you choose your own ingredients for). I am drooling just writing that.

Anyways, Christmastime in China is different...it is celebrated more widely in China nowadays than in years past, but it's still not the same as celebrating in the States, with lights and Christmas music everywhere. Nonetheless, I enjoy this time of year and getting to share Christmas traditions with local friends.

Anyways, so some recent life happenings:

-I started studying Ancient Greek. My friend had a book and we decided to study it. In just an hour a week I am picking it up fairly well. On a personal note, it will be nice to be able to read the New Testament in its original language!

-I have also started being officially tutored in the local minority language (wasn't self-motivated enough to do it alone!). I am actually considering studying it at the university next semester, but as I also obviously want to continue to improve my Chinese, I haven't decided about that).

-I have been teaching a "Spanish Corner" in addition to the English Corner I already lead. Several students approached me about wanting to learn, and while I was surprised as that doesn't seem to be the most useful language, they are picking it up well, and it's good for me to brush up on my rusty Spanish!

-I am enjoying周杰伦's (Jay Chou's) new cd, courtesy of my knight-in-shining-armor who mailed it to me when I couldn't find it in the stores here! You should give it a listen! Tracks 7 and 10 are my faves. And it has its share of usual cheeky numbers too.

What else...for those of you who enjoy the light-hearted updates, here is an update on the saga of the cute barista. Well, he recently saved me from the advances of a drunken coffee shop patron, after which he came up to me and launched into an explanation/apology of some sorts for the inconvenience, but I'll be honest, I only caught about half of what he said, he was talking so fast. (Enter the nod and smile, hoping that he was not saying anything totally crazy.)Aside from that I wasn't really getting anywhere, aside from a conversation one night in which he told me I needed to stop cleaning up after English Corner and let him do his job. :-) “不用那么客气！”(bu yong na me ke qi--need not be so polite!)

I will admit to doing some stalking on renren (the Chinese version of facebook), but his profile was private...and renren has some features that are not stalker-friendly, such as letting a user see who has looked at their profile and when. Well, one night I was staying late at the coffee shop to have a meeting with the owner...we were discussing renren and how she should get an account (even if she is older than the typical student...I gave her the example of how all the parents are on facebook now). Anyways, I wrote down my renren account info to give her...and I guess she passed it on to her employees cause...cute barista added me! In actuality I wasn't all that thrilled because renren still has those features that mean I can't stalk him that often..and sometimes I feel more awkward as a result of social networking, because it's like added pressure. You know what I mean? Like, "well, we weren't really that close before, but now that we're friends online, I guess I should talk to you in person more."

So there you have it, my life happenings and love life here in the middle kingdom.