Not so long til Christmas break...

Hello everyone!!!

I know it's been a little while now, my apologies. However, I've been really busy and have felt like I've been flying by the seat of my pants for the last two weeks. We had our third test last week. I had a paper due the previous week, and for the last two weeks I've been working on filming a movie in CHinese with my friends to put on display at a movie festival our study abroad program is having.

So I'll start with some exciting news and move the most exciting at the end of my post. I am going to get to sing with my Chinese home- stay sister Kou Dan at IES's China night. It's essentially like a sending off performance type of thing for all of IES and the people involved the night before everyone leaves. We're gonna sing Beijing welcomes you (that would be the title of the song in English). I'm super excited, but it's going to be a bit of a feat singing it as it is like a 7 minute song, meaning 7 minutes worth of words to memorize. haha The other bit of really cool news is that I will be appearing on a Beijing television talk show this upcoming thursday to be interviewed on what being a foreigner in China is like. We've had several lessons on how to talk about that in my classes so I should be able to use a lot of Chinese. I'm super excited and want to represent Americans well. So prayers for that would be very welcome!

The coolest news now. Tonight Lisa and I led a "Dad meeting" with four Chinese girls. I was supposed to prepare a lesson, but in the end decided that a more or less question answer format was best. The night went really well and we got to lay down the framework of who "Dad" is and what his son did for us. So cool! It was such a wonderful opportunity and I think all of the girls were even more interested at the end of the night so I'm looking forward to continuing to invest in them. Now we just need to get some guys to start coming.

In other news, I went to see some of the Ming dynasty's tombs this weekend with my home stay mom. My home stay mom brought back the closest thing to a Chinese burrito you will find in China for dinner tonight. My friends and I got our butts kicked by my Chinese kung fu teacher and one of my friends who does martial arts back in the U.S. for our movie's fight scene today, and my home stay mom called me "xiao huai dan" the other day. It means little bad egg, or in a better translation, little bastard. It's supposedly a term of endearment in China according to my Chinese teachers and I believe them as my mom said it with a smile on her face the whole time and doesn't seem like she could ever say anything mean.

Well, we've got a really light week with Thanksgiving coming up, so I should be able to update more, but for those family members I will be missing. Travel safe, I'll be missing you and all the delicious food we always eat.

Oh, also, the Chinese government finally turned on the heat after weeks of shivering in my home stay. I first wanted to thank Hu Jin Tao and second wanted to let my parents that due to the increase in the internal temperature of my house I am now showering every other day instead of every third or fourth.

God Bless!!!

Long Weekend Trip!

So this past weekend I had go to Anyang with about 11 of my classmates and two teachers. Anyang was the capital of the Shang dynasty and where oracle bone writing (a really early version of Chinese writing) was developed. We were supposed to get to participate in an archeology dig but that fell through when that actually found something the day we were supposed to get to dig. In Anyang we went to an the Oracle Bone museum, went to a Chinese high school, and went to a Chinese history of Chinese museum. My favorite of the three was going to the high school. The visit to the high school began as I would have expected. We met with a group of three high school students and they hung out with us and showed us around their campus a bit. I got to ask them what they like to do, what school is like, and what they want to do one day. What they liked to do was nothing out of the ordinary (ping pong, badminton, basketball, watch movies and t.v.), but then the fun started. They asked me to sing a song, I'm not really sure why, but I did because I like to sing, and it's China and they were high school students. I had nothing to lose. hahaha So after I sang they complemented me and I of course did the customary Chinese thing and declined all praise and said I sing terribly. Then we arrived at their sports competition. Two times a year their school has a sports competition and we were lucky enough to be attending on one of those days. The entire school, clad in their blue and white jumpsuit uniforms, were in the stands and surrounding the track watching their fellow classmates participate in a number of different track and field events. It reminded me a bit of high school football games when each event began because the roar of the crowd at the beginning of each event sent chills running up my spine. One of my classmates participated in the 1500 meter race and won by about 10 seconds, I digress. Anyways, as soon as we arrived at the track we were bombarded by people wanting to take pictures and meet with us. I literally felt like I might have been a superstar for about two hours. If any white person is in need of an ego boost, just walk into a Chinese high school outside of a large city and wait for the students to begin to ask you for pictures and want to talk to you, all the while telling you you're so handsome or beautiful. After getting a bit of free space I ended up playing some basketball with some of the guys I had met, but then we had to stop because the teachers were afraid it was taking attention away from the school competition. This also happened when I was challenged to a dance competition... I'm rather glad that happened because while I believe I dance fairly well, I was greatly overmatched in this competition. So after all of this and telling some number of people I can't count that I had forgot all of my contact info (as a foreigner, giving out contact info is typically a no- no, acquaintances will ask you to come see them for months. I'm still receiving texts from some girls I met in Harbin and had a five minute conversation with), we left and went to a tower somewhere in the middle of the city. We climbed it, snapped a few pictures, relaxed and reveled in our previous celebrity status and went to the hotel to sleep before dinner.

So now it's back to class and NO SHAVE NOVEMBER!!!! I need to focus on my beard. With my hair getting longer and longer by the second I may be able to pass as an entirely new person when I come back in December.

Well.... I Love everyone back home!!! And miss you!

And Go Dawgs!!! I don't care if we just got heart broken by Florida...