Carly ~ Thanks. I'm getting used to the stares, but I still won't let a creepy old man of any ethnicity take stalkerish pictures of me. >.>
Potetofurai ~ I saw another monk playing with a basketball at the supermarket a few days ago. It was kind of weird. XD
nya16 ~ At least we're not farther up North! It's pretty warm here compared to Beijing, and I'm not looking forward to freezing my butt off when we go there.
Nishka ~ YES, those are Yan Yans! They're so much easier to find here, but I've really got to stop eating them. >.> And Pizza Hut is kind of. . .upscale here. Like, nicely dressed workers with fancy-ish interior decorating and whatnot. Very weird.
So. . . Classes have been interesting. Our Hanyu teacher is really nice and happy all the time, which makes the class interesting. I'm not very good at the language at all though, because of those darn tones. :/ We've had a few different teachers for Contemporary Society who've all been pretty neat. My Eastern Philosophy and Religion class is taught by the director of the program, and there's only one other person taking it, so that's nice. Our Intercultural Communication class is my favorite though ~ we've mainly been watching movies and having lunch at the CSP office. OH! Taiji. I like it, but I'd be enjoying myself a lot more if I wasn't being graded on it. It also doesn't help that we're doing it outside, right in front of the dorm building. >.> A couple days ago we even had a small audience of Japanese girls that watched us for almost an hour. I didn't think we were that interesting. D:
Let's see. . what are the interesting things that have happened? Well, I've seen DBSK, Rain, and Super Junior M popping up in random places every now and then. There's a DBSK "Mirotic" poster hanging in the window of a CD/DVD store; Valerie bought some snack cakes that had Rain on the box because she thought it was hilarious, Han Geng was in a Chinese drama and a commercial with the Suju M guys played before it; when we were walking to the Three-Self Church in Gulangyu, I heard DBSK's "Crazy Love" playing out of a guy's cell phone; on Saturday, when Valerie and I went out to the shopping street, we heard Suju-M, DBSK, and Backstreet Boys songs playing out of different stores all in the span of 5 minutes. XD Oh, and I found a legit copy of DBSK's "Rising Sun" tour at that CD/DVD store for way cheap. Now I just need to cross my fingers and hope I can find the "O" and "Five in the Black" tours somewhere as well. :D
Ah, and speaking of that record store ~ Valerie and I went on Sunday, when it was less busy. Before we walked in, we could hear Chinese music playing inside the store, but the moment we stepped inside, they switched it to American hip-hop that neither one of us liked. ._. The very second my feet stepped out of the store, I saw the cashier flip a switch out of the corner of my eye and the music immediately changed back to Chinese. Ironically, we only bought Asian music. XD That's when I got the Rising Sun concert tour, and Rain's "It's Raining" CD (it's the only one of his I like enough to buy). I've been back since then and got a couple of Chinese CDs as well. One was Mayday's "Poetry of the Day After" and Fahrenheit's "Love You More and More". I'm kind of surprised I bought that one, actually. I've listened to a Fahrenheit CD before and didn't like it very much, but saw a recent music video of theirs on TV and liked it enough to download their latest CD. Now I own it and I'm listening to it all the time. ._. I also got "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist", "Changeling", and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" on DVD. Obviously, those are not legit. >.>
Hrm. The only other thing worth mentioning was meeting Heather's (she's like the second in command/RA around here) Chinese friend Henry. When we were introduced, a small group of us were sitting on the ground outside the building with free wifi, so when I stood up a few minutes later, he was surprised at how tall I was. ^^; Then he asked if I played sports, I said I used to, and he asked "football?" I think you might know what my first thought was ~ big guys running around in helmets, tight pants, and huge shoulder pads trying to tackle each other to the ground. It didn't take him long to remember what Americans call football, and the poor guy was slightly mortified. XD Ah, and a few of us have also gone to dinner a couple times with Amanda, a Chinese student here, and that's been fun. All the Chinese people I've met here so far have been super nice.
Uh. . . Pictures?
The room!
My desk!
The bathroom. . .is weird. The shower, toilet, sink, and mirror are all in the same little room. I'm not a big fan of the setup. :/
I love Engrish. XD That menu is actually from a really good restaurant. The woman who works there is nice and knows a little bit of English.
Zhongshan Lu! It's the main shopping street in town.
I'll always think this picture is ridiculous, but when I saw it in the window, it made me smile. ^_^ Then Valerie laughed at me. ._.
I need to remember to carry my camera around more often so I can get more interesting pictures. D:
Oh, and my lantern festival pictures are here if you haven't seen them yet!
