1. Call Day: The Shaoxing-ren (ren=people) traveled to Hangzhou for the call day service that follows graduation at MLC. I have a few close friends who graduated and got called to teach in various parts of the country. My roommate here in China was one of them! Because of the time difference, and we watched live, the service was at 330am local time and we had a bit of a party and stayed up all night to watch. It was crazy, awesome, and boy! did it throw off my schedule.
2. Guitar. I bought a guitar! I was learning to play using a friends guitar but that was only once a week when I was in the same locale as the guitar. I decided I wanted to make a serious go of the guitar and so I bought one. It's got black edges that fade to red and the body is mostly red. I can play three chords and I can switch between them about as well as a toddler stacks blocks. I think I'm doing pretty well and then I get stuck and have to realign my fingers, and double check placements. But I'm determined to be able to play campfire songs. Haha.
3. Tattoo. If you perused the pictures above you may have noticed a picture of my ankle. I got a tattoo in China! It's my third one, and don't worry the place I went to was very clean and professional. And no... they didn't use an old fashioned ink skewer and mallet. (one of my friends asked about that) The new ink consists of three Chinese characters that read (phonetically) loo-shing-ch-ya, which is my Chinese names and means 'traveler.'
4. Women's Weekend: This last weekend we had a large women's weekend with girls from Shaoxing, Hangzhou and Shanghai gathering at Zion for some personal growth, dancing, crafts, and food. We had a turn out of about 20 girls and it was a blast! We watched a movie one night, went out to a nice restaurant another night.... All the girls got dressed up! We made paper crafts, and learned to make eggs salad and deviled eggs and potato salad. It was a real refresher for the soul.
Are ya still with me??
On top of all that, now the school year is wrapping up, and I'm thinking about packing and leaving my humble abode for a while. I still have those moments where I pause and think "How did I get here? I'm LIVING in China!" And there are other moments where it seems like just yesterday I was losing my mind trying to figure out how to function in this strange place. Now, I'm qualified to show other people around. Crazy!!
I'll be home soon, and I can't wait to hug my Mom and Gram... tackle my little sisters... And most importantly-- Eat a whole bag of cheese curds.
Until next time.
(You can stop wondering, Gram.... Here's your update!)
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