This is a shout-out to Jess Hoy...
...because I love her! And not because she asked me to, or anything. Nope, nope. :) To all my blockmates, family members, friends at home, etc.: I miss you all! I love you!
Anyway, today was another fun day. I aced my ting xie (dictation) this morning (10 out of 10 baby!) and had Tai Chi and Chinese Calligraphy class this afternoon. I also got interviewed on Chinese TV (in English though... hope the teachers don't see it!) about why I came to China. Apparently I'm going to be credited, rather disingenuously, as a BLCU student, but at least I can rest assured that virtually no one I know will ever see how truly horribly my hair looks as I talk about the interesting intersection between Confucian humanism and the Western philosophical canon. (Today it thunderstormed. On my already frizzy hair. And then I got interviewed, went back to my room, and almost died when I looked in the mirror and saw the frazzled thing looking back at me. Oh well!) Then I settled down for some fun with my textbook and index cards, followed by a flurried e-mail "conversation" with my mom before she left for work on the other side of the world. Thennn I had a really enjoyable dinner with a bunch of cool people I have not yet spent a ton of time with here, and one of my friends gave me some of his Oolong tea, and now I super-duper have to study because it all starts all over again tomorrow morning!
Right now I'm listening to "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" by Simon and Garfunkel, a truly awesome song that always lifts my spirits. I love the peppy background music, and the chorus "I'm on my way/I don't know where I'm goin'" has always appealed to me, particularly now as I am a true traveler, and presently unsure of many things, including where I'm going. The song is inexplicably happy-sounding, though, since if you actually listen to the lyrics carefully it's pretty clear that the speaker is not just headed somewhere on the road of life, but actually on his way to Juvie (possibly with Julio), and we all know that's never going to end well. "In a couple of days/ they're gonna take me away/ and that's where the story ends" one of them (don't know if it's Paul or Art) sings chirpily at the end of the song. Well, I'm certainly not on my way to Juvie (or whatever torturous version of it they have here in China, where I'd probably wind up, as one of my classmates here quipped before we lost our English, "in some work camp in inner Mongolia with my teeth and corneas harvested for sale on the black market," lost to the West forever), but I am on my way to do some Chinese homework. Di qi ke: Dawei bing le (Lesson Seven: David is Sick). Sounds like a blast and a half to me!
posted by Kelly @ 10:25 下午
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