snow.

snow #3

sorry about the sides being black, i filmed portrait style :/ bad idea.

also, i sound like a child.

also, when I walked out of the door this morning, our gate man ran out and yelled at me, "MAOZI!!!" which means hat. I couldn't find it this morning!

the dance.

For the past few weeks, we have been practicing. Not for something useful, but for our school’s End of the Semester/Christmas/New Year extravaganza. Apparently, I like to dance, so I was awarded a position in this weird Scottish folk dance with a smoke machine and flashing lights.

Did I mention that I am too big for any of the costumes? Apparently my body was not made to fit into tiny asian red-sequined-ruffle skirts. So I look like… I just look ridiculous. I don’t know who thought that this would be a good idea.

Anyway, this past Tuesday was a hectic day. First we had our final exam, which was stressful. Then, we had rehearsal and an impromptu performance (that NO ONE told us about until about 5 minutes before) at the German students’ graduation (a ridiculously embarrassing moment), 4 hours of make-up, and finally the show that evening.

I have assembled some rare footage of our infamous hoe-down above. So you too can laugh at the absurdity that is my life. The first part is a speech that Aubs and Kristin took part in, and Kathryn, Steph and I are in the dance.

At least I got to try on some fake eyelashes.

my baby.

For my birthday back in October, my roommates gave me two turtles! One of them passed away, but the other is having a good old time in his new home. For the first 5 weeks, he refused to eat anything.. and now, he's a chow monster. His favorite is raw ground beef. I have about 1/2 Kilo in the freezer and only feed him a piece about the size of the tip of my pinky finger... so it should last a while....

so, here's a video of my baby eating... I am just so happy he decided to be healthy and eat!
i don't really know if anyone enjoys watching these... but i like making them... so yeah..






I am currently trying to figure a way to bring him back to the states with me....

tight ride.

this dog was so cute, and he barely fit on that bike... i don't know how he manages to stay on! his big fluffy tail was almost dragging the ground.. sorry no picture of that.

good day.

I went on a great walk yesterday and took some photos of my street:










these guys were building this really cool brick wall.. but I went by there today, and they covered the whole thing with cement. sad.




and had a successful shopping trip - bought two winter necessities.. I finally found a slouch hat ($3) and these fabulously ridiculous mittens that are all the rage over here in east asia...


and alfred (my plant) is dying in the background. i should just stop trying to have plants.

KFC

Yesterday, I was in KFC for a good.... I don't know, 3 hours. We went to another city to visit and needed a good place to hide from the freezing temperatures outside. Western restaurants like mckies, KFC and, my personal favorite, Starbucks (which we do not have in my city ☹ ) are really great because they are a guaranteed quiet, clean place with nice bathrooms and lots of seating.

Anyway, I was there during lunch. And this was a particularly hard thing for me. I was REALLY tempted to eat a chicken sandwich – they just looked soooo good. But I was able to control myself and went somewhere else for lunch.

Aside from an egg tart a few weeks ago, and maybe some biscuits during growth group, I have not eaten any KFC products in about 8 years. When I was a sophomore in high school, I watched some video (probably circulated by PETA) about how their chickens live in horrible conditions and they cut their beaks off with this awful machine. Even though I really really loved their triple crunch chicken sandwich, I vowed never to give my money to KFC again. And technically, I have not.

Being here, I have been very tempted to buy some delicious KFC goodness because it is convenient, tastes like home, and you can’t go wrong with some good old fried chicken. And sometimes I think, “it doesn’t count because these chickens aren’t from America,” or “well, everyone treats their chickens the same, and I eat chicken all of the time, and love McDonald’s chicken so what is the difference?” But I guess it is the principle… I watched some stupid movie, and decided I would take a stand against KFC. So take THAT Colonel Sanders!

adventures in language learning.

lesson one.

超市 chāo shì = super market

超人 chāo rén = super man.

a chipmunks wooly bully.

I've had this song stuck in my head, and I think that this is my favorite version of the song. enjoy :)

as you can tell I have gone a little youtube happy.

the game.

On Sunday we had the distinct pleasure of attending a professional ‘football’ game… now I don’t know why I thought that it would be like any other professional sports game I have been to in the past… I don’t know why I thought that I would be able to purchase refreshments, hotdogs, maybe some cotton candy. I don’t know why I thought that there would be a lot of music and cheering fans. I don’t know why I thought that we would sit in the seats printed on our tickets..

Needless to say, I encountered many surprises at this game. Now, this was a big game because it was the final game or something like that… and our team was playing one of the best teams in the league. So it was a big deal. When we got to the stadium uniformed military personnel surrounding the perimeter and a huge mass of people crowded outside the gates greeted us. We jumped into the mass and started pushing our way to the front. When we got to the front, military guys holding onto our shoulders physically forced us into a single-file line. Aubrey got through alright, but Steph and I were given weird looks, and through a lot of yelling and hand motions we realized we were at the wrong gate. Great. We have to go through all of THAT again. We went over to the next gate and just shoved ourselves in front of the mass and were immediately forced through these metal fences… no single-file lines this time, just good old cram-as-many-people-into-this-space-as-physically-possible.

We finally got through the cattle fences and got to our entrance door only to find another huge mass of people:

We jumped into this one feeling like pros, but we didn’t get very far. About a minute of pushing later, I watched as the mob knocked over the tiny metal detector that probably wasn’t doing anything to begin with and start rushing the door. The military guys couldn’t do anything against the mob that just wanted to watch the game… so they blew a bunch of whistles, called for back-up, and closed the huge metal doors to the entrance… which made all of us really angry. Steph and I joined in the yelling, but after a while I figured they weren’t going to open the doors anytime soon since the crowd wasn’t dying down and people were getting impatient. We pushed our way to freedom and saw a bunch of people running towards another entrance.. so we ran after them.. but the next 4 gates were also closed with huge mobs of people yelling outside of them…

We finally squeezed through entrance 16 before the doors closed and we were finally in the game! But then we had to hop 4 fences to get back to our section and find our seats. We found Kristin and Kathryn in the madness.. were stopped by a couple of police guys… but as Kathryn wisely put it, “Let’s just jump the fence, he doesn’t have anything to beat us with!” soooo yeah.
We made it to our seats and enjoyed the game and the longest lasting wave I have ever witnessed.





Oh, and we won… so of course people lit things on fire to celebrate ☺: