Thursday January 20th, 2011

This morning was not a very exciting morning. It was class, and a hungry class at that. Yuki, the Chief Harbinger of the Alarm Clock, set it late again, and this phenomenon is making me want to purchase my own alarm clock. I’m able to pay a little more attention in class (haha), and in today’s classical Chinese class, Joy and I were together. I’m not going to lie, I was a little nervous about being in the same class as her; she did spend the first eight years of here life living here, and her Chinese is amazing. Her Chinese inspires me to speak this language like a native. But surprisingly, Joy told me after class that she was nervous about taking class with me! She said that “every time that I answered a question, it was right, and the teacher ‘always corrected her answers’”. That is false.

I ate lunch at MaLan solo, and then came back to the dorm to change and head over to Bally Fitness. I ran and did some other exercises, showered, and came back to the dorm.

I had a date with Jesse and Levi at 4! I was quite excited about having them over to the room, and getting to know the two of them. I made some tea, cleaned the room, and in an afterthought, set out some of the dark chocolate that I’d brought from the states. It turns out that the chocolate was their favorite part of the afternoon. I think that Jesse ate four pieces in about 30 minutes, and I gave them more to take home. It was actually pretty funny when I told them they could have some chocolate; they said that they could buy Dove chocolate here in China. When I told them that it was dark chocolate, they totally changed their game plan, devouring the chocolate.

We hung in the room for about 2 ½ hours, and we played Christian music on our guitars, mostly stuff from Passion. They don’t really have a way to access any of the chords in China, and I was having trouble accessing the music on Ultimate Guitar, much less on CCLI or another site. So I taught them the chords to several songs, and wrote down the lyrics for them. I feel like I'm on the edge of something big. Jesse said that once she felt comfortable playing the songs, we would work on translating them into Chinese, which is amazing. The only downside to this is that the two of them are now on their New Year’s Holiday, and won’t be back to Beijing until the 21^st of February. So I’ll not have any updates on this news until the end of February; stay tuned!

Then, Jesse, Levi and a group of we students ate at the Legend of Spice restaurant. It was another great meal, and I will definitely have to make another trip back there when I have another chance. We ate fish sauce eggplant, Jesse’s favorite niblet corn fried in egg yolk, spicy stir-fry shrimp, rice, beef and peppers, and a few more dishes. Another great 15 Yuan meal.

Then, I bid Jesse and Levi a happy Chinese New Year, and thanked them for meeting me for the afternoon. Jesse is such a bold Follower, and she is so unashamed to share her convictions, even in this country. They both gave me a hug to say goodbye, which is quite the feat in China. The hug is usually reserved for the best of friends and family. Chinese people just don’t like the hug, especially with people that they’ve only recently met.

Then, I headed over to Joy and Shazeda’s room to study, so that I could evade my 62^o F room. It doesn’t sound that bad when you write it down (as I have recently done), but the temperature feels much colder when one is sitting lethargically in the room studying. Thus, I finished my test preparation at 12 o’clock, prepared to fall dead asleep. However, fate had other plans. Shazeda and I ended up talking out in the hall for about and hour and a half about everything from our lives back home, to literature (our love of which we both share), to life in the Deep South, and the insanity that is China. Cailin joined us at one point, and we finally retired around 1:30. I would like to note one thing about the people in the program: while not all of them are outgoing, and the vast majority of the guys participating in this program are inordinately bizarre (excluding a few), those of us to leave our own doors can all get along fairly well, and there is none of the catty-ness that one finds in the South.