Sunday January 30th, 2011

Sorry this one is out of order! He forgot to send it to me at first!! - Morgan

This morning, I rolled out of bed at 11 AM. As one might expect when getting to sleep around 4 in the morning, I was still quite tired upon waking. I showered, but remained in the room, working on an essay due on the morrow. I prepared minimally for the lesson, and then I fell asleep for another 2 ½ hours. After this second sleep, I was feeling a lot better. I contacted Shazead and Lee, and and three of us took a cab over to Carrefour.

Next week, again, is the Spring Festival, and we all needed more food to make it through the week. Our primary objective was to get breakfast foods and snacks. I found some “chocolate muffins,” apples, oranges, yogurt, hawthorn juice, “sweet tea,” and my favorite Ritz cracker-esque snacks. The girls took a cab back, but I walked back to the subway station. Richard Whitehouse (from a few days ago) and I had arranged to get supper together. I met him at the subway station at 7:30, and we walked back to the dorm. Joy and Shazeda said they wanted to eat with us, but in the end, Richard and I had a romantic dinner of our own – just the two of us.

We went back to the Legend of Spice. Why let something good go to waste? We made a meal of spicy green beans, roast lamb, and white rice. We chatted more about our friends from Ole Miss, where they are now and such. I also learned some of the particulars of Richard’s internship, for which he will be leaving in two days. He will be in rural Yunnan province, which is in the southwestern part of the mainland. He will be working with a group that is experimenting with environmentally sustainable practices in rural China. They are taking manure from the livestock, along with waste products from humans, and retrieving methane gas, which they then use to heat their houses and use for cooking gas. That sounds very interesting to me. Not only did this group figure out something to do with their waste, but they also provide a service to people in these rural areas: they would be unable to gain access to cooking oil or heat from the government because they live in a “southern province.” We parted ways about around 9:30, and I went back up to the room to study.

I was quite enterprising in my studies, and by 10:15 I was done and ready for bed. However, my roommate had other plans. He enjoys staying up late and talking to people on Skype in languages that sound much like those utilized by aliens in Star wars, or getting on chat rooms at midnight. One might assume that the former was the worse of the two, but I have been awakened on numerous occasions by incredibly loud tappings upon his keyboard. Something has to give.

Then, I fell into a restless sleep.