Happenings...

FINALLY, got my sink fixed...it took 3 plumbers 10 days to tell me they can't do anything and need to order a part or what not. Finally I got fed up with that and bought the janitor a pack a Marlboros. He put down his broom and in less than an hour it was fixed. American cigarettes can do anything.

AMBER AND I said good bye to our class. It was her first session and she did about 70% of the work and did a really good job. I'll miss her in the classroom next month as I go back to the slave ship SS Danny's Book.

FOR THE FIRST TIME, I watched a scary movie on Halloween just because it was Halloween. Amber and I watched Paranormal Activity which was just downright creepy but not all that scary.

Beijing in Twilight

A few pictures around Beijing at sunset.

Tiananmen Square

Hohai Lake

Forbidden City

Right on campus

Class A Picture

I swear I am in there.

David Crowder Band - SMS [Shine]

So my bathroom is kinda....exploding

For the past several days, there has been a maddeningly annoying drip drip in my bathroom that I couldn't seem to find the source. Today I went to wash my hands and my faucet shot water from all directions and made a very loud rumbling somewhere near a jet breaking the sound barrier.

My bathroom

In a few seconds time, there is a good half inch of standing water on the floor and I'm noticing that it's getting increasingly hot. Soon my glasses are fogged up. I yank the handle on the faucet (leaving my fingerprints forever burned into the melting metal) to the "cold" setting only to find out that my faucet now comes equipped with "Burn Your Fingers Off" and "Split Your Own Atoms." I run to the building manager's office...and it's dark. Turns out they're on holiday. Great, say I. Rumble, rumble say my pipes.

One of the Chinese staff girls who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time helped me call a plumber who came in and then....couldn't speak a word of Mandarin. This plumber only spoke a regional dialect. Imagine you call a plumber and you get Billy Bubba from Kentucky and people in Kentucky all speak Pidgeon English with every third vowel removed and backwards word order with a different set of vocabulary for everything and you get a vague idea of the situation. Fortunately, same staff girl (who really should have gone home when she had the chance) happened to be from that region and spent the better part of an hour relaying everything he said from their local dialect to English (for me) and Mandarin (for the Beida official who came by to see what was going on.)

The plumber was able to stop the leak but at that time my room was doing its best Yangtze River impression. I was able to get that cleaned up and nothing was damaged too badly but I gotta wait a few days until I can get the whole problem fixed.

Winter Comes to the City

All of the sudden, it is cold. Bitter winds and apathetic raindrops have invaded Beijing. The sky is the color of old, cracked cement that barely lets any sun in. The old guard take their coats out of storage, the new ones (from the north) take a little comfort in this reminder of home, the new ones (from the south) complain about how this is China and nobody thinks of cold when they think of China. The weather pays little heed to their logic.

Student Journal

I've written in the past how students have to write journal entries every day. Most are so awful in their grammar, spelling and overall format that they rip the very fabric of time and space, while others are straight up ripped from magazines or newspapers. ("Last night, my husband Mark and I were able to watch our beloved Padres take on the Anaheim Angels and win 5-4 in one of the best pitching duels I have ever seen." This came from one of my guy students, who is apparently gay and has developed a way to get to California and back in only a few hours.)

However, every once in a while you get a good one. Such is the case with Adam, who is my oldest student and been teaching for 25 years. The assigned topic was "If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?" He wrote:

If I could go anywhere in the world, I would go to America because America is the most advanced country in science and technology as well as economy which is not only the biggest country in making and producing but in creating and inventing as well. The people of America are wise as well as intelligent and hard-working. They are active and brave. They confront the evil and protect the hurt peoples of the world. They have full of the spirit in challenging and I know from our facilitators, even the elders are the same.

This spirit affects me deeply. This is the spirit of America.

The culture of America has been spread throughout the world. There are many famous writers in America. I read the story of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when I was a child by Mark Twain. I give them to my child to enjoy very much.

It was the creative spirit of adventure that makes the United States of America become stronger and richer and going forward ahead of the world. I am proud to be member of a country that is ally with America.

The history of America is not long but is full of instructiveness. That is, in the country in where everyone can be after and worship freedom and peace. The scientists are respected and fully available in their fields. I would go to America because I want to see and know much more of this mysterious country.

Goodbye

Geoff left early yesterday morning. I went with him to the airport at 5am and made it back in time for a half day of work. We were trying to figure out all the things we have done together in the year he was here, especially including the 8 months we were roommates.

Some of the more memorable events were...

-Sunday afternoon McDonald's and Zhongguancun Electronics window shopping.

-Being four feet apart from each other in the room and sharing links and talking via Instant Message

-Late night hard-core biblical doctrine discussions over beer and mutton sticks at our favorite muslim restaurant. ("First Thess-a-frigg-alonians says this....")

-Q. How many Calvinists does it take to change a light bulb? A. None. If it's supposed to give light, it will.

-Prank calling North Korea....Yes, we actually did that. It was awesome.

-Prank calling the owner of timecube.org and convincing him we would pay him 30 million dollars for his "research." (Disclaimer: going to that site may cause your head to explode)

-Going to Harbin...more specifically the train ride to Harbin. Who knew that sleeping pills, beer and a flashcube on a camera don't mix?

-Looking at the pictures Geoff took on the ride to Harbin.

-Breaking into Geoffrey's room and moving the furniture around, then waiting up all night for him to get back and find out.

-Speaking "Swedish" at the Silk Market to the vendors.

-Q. How do you starve a Calvinist? A. Give him 3 cakes and tell him he can only have one, but he has to choose which one.

-Countless visits to Lush and Pyro.

-Bike rides through Beijing rush hour.

-"Dude, are you in the bathroom again?" Yeah. "Do you have your laptop in there with you?" Yeah..so?

-I don't care....about Libya.

Well my mom thinks I'm special...

Every session or so, we get new chinese staff volunteers who help out in the session and do basic routine menial tasks like making copies, arranging chairs, passing out papers stuff like that. We call them Administrative Assistants or AA's because Non-Paid Overworked Under-appreciated Chinese Staff doesn't all quite fit on the name tag. Most of the time they are former students themselves who've come back to help. We have a new one this session. Her name is Summer. Most of our AA's have at least a certificate, most have a degree. Summer brings a little more than that to the table.

She has...(and try to keep up)

...a Masters Degree in International Politics from Oxford University (yeah, that Oxford)

...a Masters Degree in International Economics and Finance from Warwick University.

...a PhD candidate in World History.

...undergrad work at a top university in China.

...an internship at Goldman Sachs.

...and she's only 22.

That sound we heard when she introduced herself was everyone's egos slowly deflating.

Panda + Bear = Death

A lot of people ask if I see any pandas. Well, yes I have but I don't cuddle with them or hold them or feed them. Many people forget that the full name of a panda is "a panda bear" as in "bear" as in "will straight up kill you." Frankly, I'm a little annoyed with society's love of pandas. They're not small and cuddly but the size of full grown bears. The cute color scheme blinds people to the fact that it's still a couple hundred pounds of freaking bear and bears can and will kill you. But as long as they have the "awww big teddy weddy bear!" appeal people are going to keep them around. Bamboo is their depression comfort food since they've become too slow and fat to hunt anything but firmly rooted plants, but they'll still eat any small animals they get their paws on. All in all, the panda is nature's loser, an animal so far gone that it won't even have sex without the aid of several Chinese zookeepers. When a species' sole responsibility is to "get busy" and it still doesn't bother, then we, as people who have to get up and go to work every day, should lose sympathy.Scientists are considering cloning the species, but when you've got a room full of super-biologists stuck photocopying an animal that was too stupid to exist the first time, it isn't going to be long before they start thinking: "We could build a far better panda--with six arms! And laser vision! And neon pink!

Basically, I said all that to share with you this....pandas are vicious brutes and their extreme lethargy is God's way of taking care of us.

New Session (Take Two)

So it looks like I'll have a class this session and once again co-facilitating with Amber. There are around 300 students, so I'm pretty sure it won't be cancelled this time. Should be fun. I just randomly found out about it so I'm trying to mentally prepare as well as physically get ready for my first class in 10 months.

birthday

I had a pretty good birthday. Lunch Geoff and I went to Lush and then Starbucks, which if you have a Starbucks Card you get a free drink which was nice. Dinner about ten of us went to dry hot pot which was really good. It's basically like a much better stir fry, but you get the idea. Today a package came with many cards, so thank you to those of you participated in that. :)