9/23/08

The last week or so has been relatively uneventful.  I did find both a big camping store that I can buy a lot of the hiking gear I need from and a little shop in Futian that has a limited selection of cigars!  So, I consider both of those successes.  Really, the past few days or so have been mainly about waiting on break, and trying to pre-game what I’m going to spend the week doing.  My lessons in class for the past two days have been about New Orleans, and as part of that I had the classes break up into groups and design their own Mardi Gras Krewe and floats.  I’ve attached pictures of the (class-voted) best of each class, but unfortunately forgot to take a picture of either drawing of the float for my Krewe (le Krewe des proffesseurs).  Alas.  For now, I’m just hoping to get paid in the next few days so that I have the money to book a train ticket for break, because this is one of the busiest traveling holidays of the Chinese year, and without reservations as early in advance as possible, you’re pretty much out of luck.  

Three picture worthy excursions from the past few days:  the first to Mix C, the big shopping mall I talked about earlier.  Apparently there’s an ice skating rink on one of the top floors.  There’s also a delicious gelato stand (rumor confirmed!), and a photo studio.  Upon closer inspection of the pictures the photo studio had out front… well, the photo speaks for itself.  That is, in fact, a framed professional photograph of a young Chinese child urinating all over himself.  I was quite taken aback.

The second time I just had to take pictures was on the way to the camping store.  The metro lets out at a theme park called “window to the world,” which has scaled down versions of monuments from all over the world.  Check out the Eiffel Tower.  There was also another ice skating rink, as well as an indoor snowboard/skiing place that I didn’t check out yet.  Apparently snow sports are all the rage in sub-tropical China.  Who knew, right?

The other picture-worthy excursion was a trip to the park across the street from my school.  There were, among other things: a couple of pagodas, a rose garden, “exercise meachines”, and Chinese people just hanging out having a good time.

Oh, I also  (finally) have my address.  I don’t really want to post it on here, but if you want it email me and I’ll send you the characters and the English translation.  The best bet if you want to send me something is to print out both on a sheet of paper or a label, and affix it to the package.  That way it has a good chance of both getting to China, and then getting to me once here!