Part of the world again!

Hooray! Yesterday, I came back from our almost daily lunch spot, which we have nicknamed the Muslim Noodle Place, and sitting behind the reception desk was a black case for me! I finally got the computer that UVM had sent me about a month ago.

Not having a computer was not the end of the world, but its much more convenient to have an accessible connection. Its going to be easier to plan for classes and I don't have to worry about getting all of my work done in hour blocks at the internet cafe.

To share the spirit of Halloween with our fellow friends here, we're throwing "The 2007 Chillin' Jilin Halloween Bash" tomorrow night. I was having a hard time deciding what I would be for the party. One day, we were shopping at Da Fu Yuan, which is a major grocery store where I saw my inspiration! I'm going to dress up as Astroboy! He is a Japanese cartoon character and one of his unique powers is using his hips as "a powerful machine gun".

我 叫 黄思金

Okay, I just figured how to use the pinyin-Chinese program on the computers here in the Internet cafe, with the assistance of Jenny.

I'm ecstatic of this new discovery because its another conduit for me to study. I'm also ecstatic because this keyboard does not have any spittle on the keys. The other day, I was writing an email to my sister, but every time I would begin a sentence or use a proper noun, my left pinky felt wet. At first, I ignored this sensation, but then after a few minutes, I wondered what the heck was going on. I looked down at the shift key and it was covered in some food particles in a small puddle of someone else's saliva. How pleasant.

Anyhoo, I wrote: 我 叫 黄思金（Wo jiao Huang si jin) which means "My name is James Huang" Well, my surname is Huang which means yellow. Then, si jin means to think of gold, which I guess means that I want to be rich or think of being rich, which is not really the case, but its a lucky name, I think.

Chinese Wedding (婚姻)

On Saturday, I had the privilege of accompanying my friend, Jenny, to a colleague's wedding. It was a pretty dreary morning, rainy and cold, but I was excited to see a Chinese wedding. The wedding started at 11:18Am; I am assuming ending in '8' because this is considered a lucky number, as in Chinese, 八 (eight), sounds like 发（fa), which means prosperity.



Jenny and I strolled up to the front of a restaurant, with our umbrellas in hand, waiting for the arrival of the lucky couple. There was a stand with firecrackers dangling from the top bar and a crowd of anxious wedding attendees armed with tubes filled of confetti.

The doorman lit off the firecrackers and we were all cheering for the couple as they stepped out of the car. The shiny confetti shot all over the happy couple and drifted on the wind towards us, covering us. Then all of a sudden, Jenny exclaimed, "ai! those are not my friends!". We were waiting for the wrong wedding party!

We quickly exited to the restaurant half a block down, finding 'our' lucky bride and groom. It was a good thing that we went to the wrong wedding because we had missed the grand, noisy entrance of our couple.

This wedding, like many other Chinese weddings according to Jenny, seemed pretty low key to me. There was an MC who ran the show and introduced the bride and groom, said some nice things about them, like how pretty the bride was and how lucky the groom was. There was a quick ceremony, officiated by some woman, and then some speeches by the parents and their bosses. Then, instead of a wedding procession, there was a dizzingly fast marching of food to our tables.



The wedding banquet was great and while did not consist of many options for the ovo-lacto-pesco-tarian, I was quite stuffed upon exiting the wedding which ended in a record short time, at 12:30. I think its the shortest wedding I've ever been to in my life.

Red Leaves Valley

On Saturday, Jenny, Matt, Kevin and I trekked to Jiaohe, which is about 1 1/2 northeast of here to check out the Red Leaves Valley. Unfortunately, we arrived a little bit too late, umm, like by 2 weeks. All of the leaves had hit the ground. On top of that it was SO cold! Nevertheless, we made the best of it and had a great walk. We managed to avoid the 50 kuai entrance fee, which was absurd since there were no red leaves to speak of and that barely anyone was visiting the valley. I'm a wimp when it comes to being an icicle, so I kind of complained alot, but in a good way. The pictures are courtesy of Matt's camera, as my hands were frozen and couldn't be bothered to push a button.


I have to admit that I didn't believe people when they told me that winters here would be bitterly cold. Now, I have seen the light: IT'S COLD! (and we're only in October!) I heard from Jenny that the heat would be turned on the 25th, so I'm excited, but I can't complain. The sun warms up my room (when it's not being obscured by clouds), and is decently warmer than Kevin's room across the hall.

Anyhoo, I start my legal English course tomorrow and am kind of nervous about it. I think it'll be an interesting class and I'm glad to be teaching another course, especially since its with undergrads. Hopefully, my seniors won't be to ill with senioritis.

Chopstick Faux Pas

Oh my! I've had a penchant for leaving my chopsticks upright in my dish, which is a no-no here. By leaving them sticking up in my food, I am imitating the scene of incense burning at a funeral, which does not bode well for my meal-mates. Kevin always points out whenever I do this, stating, "James has a death wish for all of us". I can't help myself; it's more convenient to rest them in my food, but then again, I enjoy my friends' company. For more big travel no-no's, check out this article.

Speaking of chopsticks, the other night, the four Jilin guys and my friend, Jenny, were out at a dumpling (jiao zi) restaurant, which by the way, is our most favorite food. As the steaming dumplings were being placed on our table, amidst the pre-packaged dinnerware (showing that everything has been sterilized), beer, and condiments consisting of garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, and hot sauce, each of us were prepping our little area for the onslaught of dumplings. We've all gotten into the habit of mixing Chinese and English, Chinglish (analogous to Spanglish). Thus, I wanted to say, "Where are my chopsticks?" so I said, "wo de kuzi zai nar?". Everyone gave me a funny look, and I realized that I said, "Where are my pants?". I figured if I didn't know where those were, I shouldn't be in public.

Why?!?

This was a desperate plea, in Chinese nonetheless, that exited my mouth at the customs office today in Changchun. Why? Why do I have to pay almost 400 dollars for my computer? In response, I got a mocking 'Why' back at me in English, and several customs officers chortling at my plight.

My computer crashed about a month ago and UVM graciously sent me a loaner computer via UPS. I received a phone call yesterday informing me that my I had a package in Changchun, which about 1 1/2 hours northwest of here. I confirmed many times that I had to travel to Changchun to pick it up and that they would not be delivering the package to me. Thus, I embarked on an adventure this morning with my compatriot, Jim.

It seemed that the gods were smiling down on us, as we jumped on a bus that immediately left for Changchun. Things were moving like clockwork. We finagled a taxi to customs, otherwise known as 'hai guan' in Mandarin. However, as soon as I walked in, everyone was walking in the wrong direction. Ops, we arrived at break time, 11:30AM. I was on the phone with my would-be package deliverer and my friend, Jim, heard me exclaim, "huh, Xiu xi!" which means break, and in China, it means siesta until 1:30.

We did the best we could and explored that part of the city, which is 4x the size of Jilin; about 4 million people live there. We found some pretty neat stuff including: a Chinese-version of a breakfast burrito, a fried egg with potato-like hash, some magical Chinese sauce, veggies and a man de-feathering 2 pigeons and leaving the carcasses on some fresh cabbage heads and a hospital called: Modern Male Hospital: where the trendy get their medical care.


We returned to the customs office and met up with a short woman in a black trench coat, who reminded me of the clothing designer in "The Incredible," because of her spunk and sassy attitude. I had a good amount of fun with her, notwithstanding being computerless upon exiting.

Man, did we have some language difficulties, but we were putting on quite the show for everyone in the room. At first, I couldn't believe how much they wanted me to pay in taxes. It was great, I was pulling out all my Chinese vocabulary: "that's so much!" "What am I going to do?" "How about if I just change the broken computer that I have here for the one in the airport and call it a day?" Well, I didn't say, "call it a day," but I did ask if I could just exchange it so I wouldn't have to pay. She laughed hard at me. I thought it was a good sign, but it didn't get me anywhere.

In the end, I left with only her phone number and bank card number so that I could deposit my payment in her account. Its sounds a little fishy, I know, but she's good people. I'm going to try to haggle the price down by using my resources here. If not, my contact at UVM told me to have them send it back because I should not be paying close to $400 for it. What an adventure! I'm pretty happy that I was able to somewhat communicate in this customs debacle; I'm a little sad that I am still bereft of a computer, *tear*, or rather that I don't have a functioning computer.

PS: It was flurrying today in Changchun, *double tear*
PPS: It was very, very cold today, *triple tear*

马马虎虎 （Ma-Ma-Hu-Hu）

I've learned the bestest phrase the other day "ma-ma-hu-hu" (马马虎虎). Literally, this means horse-horse-tiger-tiger, but in conversational Chinese, it is used as describing something as 'so-so.' When it is used to describe a person, I believe that it means 'sloppy' or 'unkempt.' I've been finding great pleasure in repeating this phrase; I think the novelty will wear off soon, but in the meantime, everything will be 马马虎虎.

For those bibliophiles out there, I highly recommend these two books: "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" by Kim Edwards and "Eats shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss.

The first novel is poignant story about a doctor in the 60s who ends up delivering his wife's twins and deciding to send away one of the infants because she is mentally retarded. The novel then whisks you through the parallel lives of each child and their families. It's wonderfully descriptive and a compelling story. I couldn't put it down and literally stayed up until 2AM to finish it.

"Eats Shoots and Leaves" is a light-hearted, humorous and much needed book in society today. Its a great crash course into the sometimes frightening, yet extremely interesting world of punctuation. I get excited about things that sometimes raise eyebrows; however, this is a fun way of learning! Aren't you afraid to use semi-colons? I've always been apprehensive about plopping ';' into my writing. Fear not! This book breaks down the mystical dots, commas and whatnot into easy-to-understand language. Plus, I learned that Starbursts used to be called Opal Fruits, who knew!?

And we have water, hooray!

During the past 1 1/2 months, on random days, our water supply has been cut off. Not to worry, its usually only for a day; we get advanced notice, either from our American buddy, Fr. Jim or from the front desk staff which undoubtedly leads to confused looks on both of our parts and repeated explanations. Its actually quite amusing as the dates and times always are in flux. It's always a pleasant surprise when you go to wash your hands and poof!, water flows out of the faucet in jetting spurts.

I've become accustomed to these water blackouts and the night before, I fill up my small tub of water and hope that the water comes back on. We've even named the first flush of the day a freebie since there's water stored in the square thing (I forget what it's called, or did I even know the name before).

Over the weekend, I learned how to play Chinese Chess (xiang qi) and Ma Jiang, both fun games and challenging. Chinese Chess involves tanks, cannons, elephants, rivers and more! The game is analogous to Western chess in terms of specific pieces having special moves and whatnot; but, I feel its a bit more complex and tricky.

Also, I have discovered that I am replacing Spanish brain cells with Chinese brain cells. For the life of me, I could not remember how to say "there!" in Spanish (Ahi) and all that kept popping in my head was a resounding 'NA!' Ugh! I'm not sure what to make of my waning Spanish ability and my growing Chinese. Nevertheless, I think if I immersed myself in a Spanish-speaking community again, I'd rejuvenate mi espanol!