Wednesday January 16th, 2011

I woke up at 6:45 today, ready to eat some breakfast and read over the text again before walking through the 20o weather to my class. I demolished my first two classes, if I do say so myself. I have taken to writing new words that I’m learning, along with new grammar patterns, into a Moleskine notebook; it’s become quite useful. My third class of the day – debate class – was more interesting than usual. We were talking about cultural, political, and social aspects of America that China should seek to replicate. There is one girl in my class – keep in mind that there are but 3 of us in this class – who talks the entire time. And when I happened to say something about possible electoral systems that China could emulate (should this place ever democratize), the girl went into a 20-minute rant about how I didn't know anything about Chinese culture. It got so excessive that the teacher even tried to direct the conversation away from this fiery demon that now occupies the space where our classmate used to sit. And I might add that Chinese people have a HUGE threshold for things bothering them. I tried my best not to say anything directly to this girl for the rest of the class… Then I got some lunch at MaLan with Wesley and Vinod. I need to start getting the spicy fragrant noodles instead of my usual beef noodles. I was quite envious of their delectably spicy and fragrant noodles for the rest of the meal. I went to my one-on-one class with the lady who will serve as my independent project advisor for the rest of the semester. She was really great to talk to, and seems to know a good bit about the topic. I do think the project is going to be fun to work on. Then, I went back to the room to prepare for the next day’s lesson. I had to finish my homework early, as I was going to meet Richard Whitehouse (a recent graduate from Croft, and a member of the 2006 Flagship cohort) for the evening meal. At 4, I attended the Chinese Chess activity, and played a game of Chinese Chess that lasted entirely too long. Chinese Chess is designed to be a rather fast game, much faster than International Chess. This game lasted for over an hour. Then, I hopped on the subway towards where Richard is staying – not too far from Tian’An Men Square. Today has really not been my day; I took the wrong subway and ended up having to walk about 30 minutes to find Richard’s stop. We found a simple little restaurant not far from the Square, and we chatted for about 2 hours before it was all said and done. He’s been in China for 4 months already, and still has another 5 in front of him. I can tell that he’s been here a while, haha. He has developed the habit of chewing his food with his mouth open and smacking – which is entirely socially acceptable here, just a little weird for me. I have to give Kudos to Richard though; he really does try to fit in here. And I’d say he’s doing a pretty good job at it. I walked him back to his hotel, which is back in a Hu Tong, in the middle of nowhere. He lent me two books from his bounty of literature in his room. He would have given me more, but I don’t have the room to ship them back, along with the fact that most of them are written in inscrutable Chinese. I bid him goodnight around 8:30, and began the trek back to the dorm. I walked into my room around 9:15, did some homework, and talked to Shazeda and Joy for a little while before I hit the sack. Shazeda and I have made a trade: I traded her a bunch of bananas and some chocolate I brought from home for temporary ownership of her tub of coco butter. My entire body is morphing into a crocodile, and something had to be done, lest my skin is to fall off in sheets. This is something that I’ve forgotten to mention in my other journals: The other day, I got a message from Dr Gispen (the director of Croft), saying that I was eligible for some sort of mysterious scholarship from a reclusive donor. Well, he was exaggerating a little there. I’m eligible for the Taylor Medal, the highest academic honor that you can receive at Ole Miss as a graduating senior. I hope that me saying this doesn’t change my fate for this scholarship. We’ll just have to see what happens… Other than that, the Internet at the dorm is getting less and less reliable. I don’t know when I’ll be able to send this to the world, but I hope it’s soon! Love, Jamey