Green what?

Starbucks is proud to announce their new drink, the creamed spinach latte, served up HOT for your drinking pleasure! O.k. so maybe it's a green tea latte, but it looks like creamed spinach and it smells like creamed spinach. It tastes o.k., sort of, but it's hard to get past the sensation that I might be part of a new government initiative to get foreigners to do their part in cleaning up toxic waste. A color that bright (the photo really doesn't do it justice) is most definitely hiding something!

I'm at Starbucks now. It's a nice way to spend a Friday evening out of the house, but not really doing anything. This week has been pretty busy for me. I've been doing testing at school, which means I've spent a lot of time grading. I've also had the typical workload and master's course work on top of that.

On Monday, I did absolutely nothing to celebrate my birthday. I did, however, received a package from my dad (he has impeccable timing), and that was really nice. I got some jewelry from Dan, but we weren't actually able to spend the day together because Mondays and Wednesdays are the nights we spend at respective ends of the city. I also got a little Piglet snow globe from one of my Korean students. It was a typical Monday birthday, not good, not bad.

Tuesday, my girls' soccer team won their first game! It was great, and I was really proud of them. I don't have the winning photo to post at the moment, but I will add it later. They were all really excited to have won as well, especially since they won against girls who were way bigger than them and they played the whole game without substitutes. I really love coaching, I love being able to share that sense of accomplishment with them.

Yesterday, I played in our first two club football games. I'm playing soccer with about 9 or 10 other people from the school and it's really good fun. We got trampled, but I enjoyed every second of it. I actually played fairly well, especially considering it's been so long! We lost the first game 3-1 and the second game was a very high number-1 (I actually did lose count of how many goals they scored, but they were really, really good). My proudest moment was the assist I had in the second game. I would even say it was pretty and it led to a very pretty goal.

And today, today was Friday, thank everything holy. Work was rough and I didn't have much in the way of downtime, but it's over. At the end of the day, I did some line dancing (we're doing it for our school's International Day) and had some pizza. I love the slow moments like these, with Dan and my green tea latte. Life is good!

Wrecked!

I am soooo tired. I'm including a picture of me, right now, at Starbucks. O.k., I'm not actually sleeping, but I wish I was. I feel so overwhelmed right now. It's report week, which means that I still have about five comments to write by Friday afternoon. I also have school work (for my graduate class), which is mostly done, but then I have to prepare for next week. I have to hand in a statement of my goals by Friday as well, which is a hassle mostly because I'm just too busy right now. They could have waited until the week AFTER reports, couldn't they? I'm also doing a virtual seminar which is from 3-4:30 a.m. thanks to the time difference. I've arranged to go into school an hour late, but I still think I'm going to want to die. I have planning that needs to be written and I need to get my next unit planned as well. All of this probably doesn't even seem like that much, but I feel like I don't have a good hold on it anyway.

Aside from floundering in my professional life, things are going pretty well. I am enjoying the time I get to spend with Dan, even though it's not always restful. We do our best to do nothing. This week (from last Friday until this one), we've had guests from France. They've been staying in the Hutong and we've seen almost nothing of them, so hopefully we'll get a chance to spend some time with them tomorrow. They're really nice, and they have a very cute baby. I'm totally going to want one of my own someday!

Last week, when we went to visit the village people, they took us to an amusement park. I use the term very loosely because Dan and I were only really amused because it was so horrible. Think county fair and then take away all the fun rides and the cotton candy and the fried dough. You're not left with much. There weren't even any animals. I'm not really sure why Chinese people find these things fun, and we don't.

We went on three "rides", only two of which actually qualify by definition. The first was a very slow moving roller coaster type ride. All of the cars were connected and they went through a series of rooms with neon fish and under the sea themed plants and monsters. The music was different in each room and ranged from watery to the music they play when something bad is about to happen. There were some very mechanical mermaids and dragons along the way, and the cheap decorations were usually lit up by black lights. It's really hard to describe how crappy it actually was. It was so lame it was actually kind of funny.

The second "ride" was the aquarium. There were quite a few different kinds of fish and even some sea turtles. The thing that made the aquarium visit different from any other I've had was the fact that everybody and their mother tapped (or banged) on the glass in spite of the signs that said in English and Chinese "Please do not tap on the glass." The only thing I can figure is that maybe when it's written in Chinese people read it and think "Oh, we shouldn't tap, we should bang on it!" It's also interesting to note that the fish they get most excited about are the biggest ones and they often make a comment along the lines of "That one would be a good meal!" Sadly, I didn't get the impression they were joking.

Later that night we took them out to dinner. It was Dan and I and five of them. The beginning was a bit awkward because nobody would order any dishes worth more than 8 or so kuai ($1). I figured it was because they didn't want the bill to be too high. So Dan and I went ahead and ordered some of the most expensive things on the menu: pigs feet, duck and fish. We also ordered a whole bunch of beer, maybe 10 litre bottles. The grand total for the bill, including the 6 or so vegetable dishes, less than 200 kuai (about $30). I'm not sure how I'll ever survive in any other country again! Anyway, the highlight of the evening was getting everybody to sing, a couple of them were really awful, but we had a great time!

BUGS!

I didn't get a chance to blog until now (liar) because the voice in my head told me it was time to take a vacation (LIAR!). No, really, I've been lazy. I meant to blog about Experience China Week, but we all know what they say about good intentions! And now that I'm in a disgusting internet cafe, typing on a keyboard that some slob spilled Coke all over (fingerlickin' fun!) I have found the time in my busy vacation schedule to write.

Experience China Week was an experience, that's for sure. I wouldn't say most of my experiences were related to China as much as they were to the psychology of whining 12 year olds. Oh, and I experienced bugs, and the impact they have on the volume of a twelve year old girl's voice (it's a positive relationship for those of you who haven't yet had the pleasure of experiencing it). The kids experienced China, and complained about almost every minute of it! They didn't like the food, they wanted a snickers bar or more pringles (I don't know whose genius idea it was to provide them these snacks in the first place...), they didn't like hiking and they definitely didn't like bugs!

Actually, the trip wasn't bad. I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it (and a little bit sick), but I really enjoyed getting to know some of the kids and I LOVED the hiking! The trails were not easy, but they were beautiful, and I saw some really neat things that I wouldn't have seen elsewhere. In general, it was just nice to be outside of Beijing for a week. I will post pictures of some of the places when somebody gives me some. I didn't take any myself because Dan's memory card was full and the usb cord seems to have gone missing between three apartments.

So, now it's October holiday. I have a week off for "National Day" which makes me really like this country. We have no plans. I thought about leaving, but then I took a smart pill. Dan's ankle is still recovering from an injury almost two weeks ago now, so he's still not up for much walking. Tomorrow we're going out to Chang Ping to hang out with the village people. Neither of us have seen them very much lately, and I'm starting to feel like a total loser for not being able to maintain contact with people so physically close to me! I don't even want to get into the dozen or so postcards that are waiting to be sent.