9/26/08

Apparently “Typhoon” is really just Chinese for “it gonna be windy and rainy and dreary for three days, followed by the prettiest day China has seen since you’ve been here.”  So much cultural meaning wrapped up in one little word…  My favorite part of the typhoon was by far: sitting on the balcony of my apartment, smoking a cigar and listening to the wind and rain as the storm rolled off the sea and into the city.  It was a very elemental experience.  Getting the next day off of school was nice too, since I didn’t have a lesson plan thought out yet!  

In that lesson plan (on Denver) I ended up talking at various points about: Judas, Bush’s speech about the economy, the U.S. electoral system, the November election, sitting ducks, why Sarah Palin is an idiot, and why the U.S. economy is going down the drain.  I’d say I got a bit off track.  

The unfortunate part of having that day off was that I thought: “hey, I’ll clean up my apartment a little bit while I’m killing the day.”  Part of that cleaning was doing the dishes, and then putting them in the dish sanitizer.  I figure, hey, this bowl is microwave and dishwasher safe, so surely it will be ok in the dish sanitizer, right?  Well, I was wrong.  This thing is basically a toaster over that you put your dishes in and, as you can see for yourself, it’s apparently waaaaay too hot for my poor Tupperware bowl type thing.  

Yesterday evening was a soccer intramural type thing for the school, so three of the other teachers from my school and myself went and watched a few games.  A few kids were pretty good, but the rest not so much.  Either way, it was nice to be able to go out and watch a soccer game for the first time in a month or so!

And, after teaching one class tomorrow, I’m off for a week!  We kept having trouble getting train tickets to where we wanted.  On National Day (think 4th of July) and Golden week (the whole week leading up to it), pretty much everybody in the country is off work and traveling to visit family.  So, public transportation systems are just completely swamped with all the people moving around.  So, instead of Tiger Leaping Gorge, and instead of Zhangjiajie, I’m traveling to Xiamen.  It’s a little city near Taiwan, and its supposed to have cool foreign architecture.  Plus, it’s a good point from which to hop to Taiwan, if Xiamen isn’t particularly cool!  

So, I’ll post again after I get back next Sunday and hopefully have some awesome stories and pictures of vacation to share!