Guanggu...joy?

Well, I really wanted that to be an alliterative title, but it's been a long day and I can't think of an appropriate word-starting-with-g to express having a good time shopping with friends.  Gregarious at Guanggu? Nah.  Oh, I guess I could have just said good times at Guanggu...

Anyhow, due to summer vacation, then bedrest, it had amazingly been three months since I had been to Guanggu, the center of the universe or at least the center of our little neighborhood of it. 

After having a 9study in the morning, our group split into two factions based on lunch preference.  One group headed to Subway while Micah, Tammy, Jim, Kaila and I were thinking Papa John's.  Amy tagged along as far as the bus stop, but decided it was too much trouble to drag around her laptop all afternoon and headed back. 

We kept the waitress busy bringing us massive amounts of garlic butter sauce, which we drowned everything in.  It's nice to get a fix of American cheese, butter, and bread now and then. 

Micah wanted to look for some elusive shirt he persists in thinking he will find here, so Tammy and I followed along, ostensibly to shop as well but really not to miss an opportunity of heckling Micah while he tried to shop. (I'm sure he really values our opinions on his clotthing choices...snort. I say helpful things like "Get the neon orange one!")

Micah's shirt remained elusive, and I ended up being the only one to buy anything.  It's rare I find anything in China as I am built very different from the women here, but I found a navy blue sweater with white dots that I am really excited about. 

Outside I expressed my enjoyment of being able to go shopping and traipsing around again by taking pictures (really, that's how I celebrate just about anything).  I was in a silly mood, but I did make an effort to be normal in one, for Tammy's sake. 

Belated Birthday Cake

Micah is one of those people who keeps his birthday quiet; I only found out last year because I just happened to get curious and ask, and it turned out that it was his birthday that very day.  What are the odds?? Well, I guess I can answer that, 1 in 365, I suppose.

This year I intended to annoy him by whispering the secret to all our friends so they could embarrass him in song and also make a cake. Well, the cake part didn't embarrass him, he even specified that he wanted chocolate. 

Unfortunately, I was in the middle of bedrest on his birthday, and couldn't get out to buy butter and sugar.  Besides that, he had a cold. So I told him to take a rain check. 

This past Saturday, though, I was in a cooking mood, and we had friends coming over to watch The Dark Knight (part of the on-going campaign to lessen my ridiculously long list of I-can't-believe-you-haven't-seen-that-have-you-been-under-a-rock movies).  So I took the opportunity to finally bake a chocolate cake.  It's more of a surprise two weeks late, right?

Just a note on the pictures: I was going for taste, not presentation...the candles are supposed to be in the shape of an m but you can't really tell.

Halloween Hijinks

Okay, that title sounds extremely corny. 

Anyhow, it's the week of Halloween, and my busiest week of classes yet.  I have nine classes this week, but eight of them are the same lesson. 

One thing I really enjoy about teaching English in China is teaching about culture, and the most fun lessons are usually about holidays.  And the students are so appreciative of any effort to liven things up with pictures and props...seriously, it'll probably be a bit of a let-down if I teach in the states again...you can't beat walking into a classroom and being greeted with a chorus of OOoohs and having so many camera phones turned towards you that you start to understand how movie stars feel on the red carpet. 

So this week I'm celebrating Halloween and amusing my students by dressing as a witch for class.  This was an easy costume as I already seem to have nearly every article of clothing in black, including a voluminous black jacket with a swirling velvet pattern that reaches nearly to my knees, making quite good witch robes. I think my mom found it at a yard sale. Micah found a witch hat at Wal-mart the other day, which I just remembered in class that I forgot to pay him back for. 

I also found a pumpkin large enough to carve-not an easy feat here where pumpkins are just another vegetable to be eaten.  They don't have much need of huge ones since a small one is plenty to make a side dish for a family meal.  However, it's actually good that I have a very small jack-o-lantern; much easier to carry to class.  The students have never seen one in person before, so jack got his share of paparazzi, too.

I voted for this post-apocalyptic "Radioactive" cover to win Response of...

Milo

Micah is babysitting for our friends Patrick and Maya this week.  While they go to visit her family for a few days over the National Day holiday, they needed someone to watch their tiny little kitten.  So, here is little Milo! Isn't she cute?

42 Amazing Maps

I love maps.  As any of you who have been in my house know, as maps feature prominently in my decor. On road trips, I'm the one with the atlas, navigating.  Maps make me happy. :)

And then there's this...

• Well, you know that whole story back in August about falling and hurting my back while hiking in Thailand? Well, I thought it was getting better, but then it started getting worse again. One of my friends that I see on Sunday offered to take me to a hospital she is familiar with and translate for me so I could get an x-ray. I just wanted to see exactly what was going on in there, to make sure I wasn't making it worse. I don't feel like typing out the whole story yet again, so I'll just copy the (long) message I sent my mother on facebook: 

  
  

  Sooo.... First of all, it isn't that bad, don't freak out.

  Anyway, I finally worked out a day that worked with my friend Jenny from to take me to the hospital for an x-ray on my back. It hasn't been bothering me too badly except for getting really stiff at night and I get tired walking shorter distances than usual but still, figured, just in case...

  Well, turns out I've been walking around for a month with two cracked vertebrae. So, the doctor said the only thing really to do for that is rest. He told me I should take a month of off work and stay home and lay around as much as possible and not do anything strenuous.

  
  

  You know, ordinarily, I'm wishing for exactly that...I just want to sit on the couch and play on my computer...but after being told to, it's now been three hours, AND I'M GOING NUTS. WANT OUT. I'm not going to handle this well. I already sent Micah about a dozen whiny texts. And complained to four other people. Sorry you weren't first, but you were asleep.

  
  

  Anyways, I am supposed to teach four classes of grad students next week, but he said standing all day (three of them are all in one day) was a bad idea. So, I'm going to talk to my coteacher and see if I can reschedule those. After that, thanks to my crazy schedule (God knew what he was doing!), I didn't have any classes for the next two weeks after than anyways. So that would give me about three and a half weeks. And I have a doctors' note so they're usually pretty good about rescheduling for that.

  
  

  It's just super frustrating and I feel like a drama queen asking for help from anyone because I really don't feel that bad. Well, I am pretty worn out from being out most of the day at the hospital, so I know I do need to rest more, but...still, I've been doing it all for myself for the past month and was starting to think I was almost better...The pulled muscles have healed, so most of the pain was gone...just an ache now, really. Sigh.

  However, Micah is a great person. His reaction to the news that his coworker is going to be lazy and no help for the foreseeable future was to say that it's a good thing he's moving in across the hall soon so he can carry stuff up the stairs for me, and that he's going now to go buy food at my favorite place and bring it to me.

  One other problem--my house is a WRECK. Well, the living room and my bedroom aren't bad, as people can see them, but the kitchen is a disaster zone. I was at the retreat all weekend, and then we didn't have water, so dishes from several days are piled up and starting to smell. I'll just have to do a few at a time and then back to resting, I guess.

  I was thinking that maybe I could hire a student or somebody who needs some extra money to come sweep and mop and vacuum for me, as those are some of the harder things on the back. But I need to get the kitchen in better shape first...I would be too embarrassed for anyone to see it like that. Sigh. Why couldn't I have gotten the house clean before finding out that I shouldn't be doing it? To top it off, I'm still recovering from a sinus infection. I only have half of a scratchy voice. AND as you can already see, you are likely to get a lot of very whiny emails from me over the next few days. I'm really going to try to rest and let it heal...but you know how it is! I feel ridiculous asking for help when I don't feel that bad.

  Well, let me know when you see this. I didn't want to rant about it all over fb before telling you. But I'm itching to. Sigh. WHINE WHINE WHINE. Well, Micah should be here soon with the food. I told him I was throwing a big pity party, but if he wanted to bring food to the party he was welcome.

  And I was working so hard to lose weight...sometimes I think it's the devil. EVERY TIME I get really motivated and actually start doing well, I get sick or something and can't exercise. But ofcourse, absolutely no exercise videos allowed. 

  Sorry, super long again, and sorry to make you read a temper tantrum. Just seriously, can this semester get any weirder...I probably should not say that, I'll jinx myself.
• 
  

Latest Chinglish

September 1st:  (Still having prolems with blogger; I can't go back and change dates until it's fixed, so I will date posts that are out of order until I can).  

After our morning worship time, we went to a western restaurant, Cat's Eye, on the Zhangfa campus (they have a huge neighborhood of restaurants and shops; we just have two streets! Not quite fair...then again, that campus is super close, so we just go over there sometimes...).  I was a bit skeptical at first; Chinese "western" food is usually as not-quite-like-reality as our Chinese food is in the U.S. (hint: heavily modified for American tastes).  But this was really good--most of us got pizza, and it was very close to the pizza at Pizza Hut here.  In fact, so close that we were speculating about whether some employee here used to work at Pizza Hut and learned a few things...

Anyway, I got the chicken and mushroom pizza, which was good.  I took a quick picture of the menu page about pizza, though.  I starts out quite normal, but the last few caused a few double takes.  Chicken, Hawaiian, Veggie...Crispy Intestine of England?  No one wanted to take a risk on that one. Pineapple crab  sounds a bit odd, too, but Chrissi ordered it and I tried a piece.  Not bad; truthfully the crab didn't have a very strong flavor although there was quite a lot of thin strips of it, so it didn't taste that different from any other pizza.  I still preferred the one I got, though.  

Smoggy Morning

It hasn't rained in several days here in Wuhan, and the smog is getting thick.  The view across the lake is muted into soft pastels by the gray haze.  A bad sinus infection is going around and everyone's allergies are bad; I wonder if the smog is part of it.  Unfortunately, it's looking like a very dry September--no rain in the forecast for the next week and a half at least (and who knows how long after that--that's just as far as my weather app goes).  

New chairs!

Yay!  My new dining room chairs finally arrived!  My old ones were falling apart--literally.  Two were in more than one piece, and a third (that didn't match the others anyway) has a big crack on one side.  I'm very happy to now have four matching chairs (well, matching each other--they don't quite match my table, but at least they don't clash) that I don't have to worry that my guests will suddenly end up in the floor.  

Now, they are sitting in the middle of my living room looking dusty, so I need to get on with it.  Also, the water just came back on after been off from 7 last night to 11 this morning for some sort of plumbing maintenance that affected the whole neighborhood (which apparently was scheduled, but YET AGAIN someone (Veronica, cough cough) forgot to tell the foreigners who can't read the notice on the campus website in Chinese.) so I need to get the washing machine going and see if I can't reduce this pile of dishes.  

Through the Peephole

Since I haven't had to actually go to work the last couple of weeks, I'm usually home during working hours.  And, since I'm not used to hearing any noise at all on the landing as I've been the only one up here on the fifth floor for the past year, I notice whenever anyone comes or goes to work on the apartment across the hall.  Micah is moving in across the hall from me as soon as the repairs are finished and all the furniture arrives.  

Whenever I hear someone out there, I spy out the peephole on my door to see what they're up to.  Then I usually end up giving up on being stealthy and just go over there and stick my head in the door to see what they're up to.  I've taken to snapping pictures on my phone and sending Micah updates.  I took a few the day they put in the new carpet, and on the day they delivered the bed.  I didn't get any of the new fridge and washing machine, but they were just in big boxes anyways.  I felt really bad for the guy who carried A REFRIGERATOR on his back up FIVE FLIGHTS OF STAIRS. By himself.  Wow.  I should never again complain about my job.  The guys who shoved the mattress up the stairs didn't look like they were having just a ton of fun, either.  

Today, they delivered the new couch.  I like it!  Very classy.  Anyway, I don't know if Micah wants his home shared with the world, but, he hasn't officially moved in yet so it's free game.  I'm enjoying spying through the peephole.