For those who felt especially slighted by my recent lack of posts and need even more stories, here are a few more things I thought of as I was falling asleep last night:

I didn't really prepare much for the halloween classes this week but I did do a little bit with my first year students. I explained trick or treating and pumpkin carving and some of the different creatures and scary things associated with halloween. Then I had them play some halloween games, namely Pass the Orange and The Mummy Game. For Pass the Orange you get three lines of people and they have to get an orange from person to person without using their hands. It was a stitch to watch, both because the girls had a lot of fun and the boys predictably stood at the back and claimed that it was against their culture to play such games with girls. Meh, boys. The Mummy Game was pretty funny...I gave each group of three a roll of toilet paper and told them to create the best looking mummy. It was fascinating because I did this game with two classes and in both classes, the boys reactions were EXACTLY the same. I have about three boys in each class and all six of them avoided the orange game and then totally hammed it up in the Mummy game. They're so predictable. In any case, the students seemed to have fun with it and it was pretty cute to watch.

I've been playing more basketball recently--I've become very comfortable just walking up to people and asking to play with them and thankfully, the boys usually don't take a second thought, they just let me play. Sport is a great equalizer in that way.

An interesting note: here in the NE, the government controls when the heat turns on. November 1st is the day when the coal starts burning and central heating is supplied to all of the buildings in the city. I'm not exactly sure how they control this but whatever the case, the heat is now on. Thankfully this has been a very warm October and the need for heat hasn't been nearly as great as in years past. However, since the heat is on, the coal smokestacks are also up and running. I haven't noticed the pollution as much up until this point, mainly because the smokestacks haven't been puffing out large amounts of black smoke. This changed yesterday, when, looking across the horizon, one could see countless plumes of smoke and by mid-morning, the distant horizon had developed a grimey gray black haze. I smelled the difference too when I walked out of the building yesterday morning. It felt like I was breathing next to a car's exhaust pipe. I tried holding my breath as I walked through it but realized that the smell was everywhere and that unfortunately I was just going to have to get used to it. When I got off the bus at school, for some reason, there was a new and different stench that my friend Kurt and I could only categorize as 'burning outhouse' We speculated that perhaps the Chinese had devised an ability to create power by burning manure but then decided that no, it's probably just the coal plants starting up and resigned ourselves to the fact that we're probably going to have nasty cases of cancer in the future. It will be tragic, I'm sure, in the next 30 years to witness the cancer rate of people here in China, given the air and water pollution.

I went out to lunch with my friend Joshua (Chinese name: Jia Xiayue so it made for a simple English name conversion) recently and then we went over to the theater on campus to see about movies that were going to be playing. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night they show a double feature here on campus with one foreign movie and one Chinese movie. Last weekend, several of the boys wanted to take me to see one of these and we ended up having a pretty good time. The Chinese film was a newish Jackie Chan film that reminded me a lot of Three Men and a Baby. I was entertained. We didn't stay for the foreign film because it was horror and poorly acted at best. Along the way, we passed the auditorium and heard all sorts of laughter so we went in to check it out. Apparently the department was putting on a play for some high school students so we decided to sit in and watch for awhile. It was a revolutionary play set in the WWII era when the Japanese occupied this part of China. There was an interesting mix of comedy, kung fu and dance and tragic drama and it ended with the heroine taking dynamite and sacrificing herself to kill the Japanese soldiers who were terrorizing her and her friends. It was inspiring and very, very Chinese. I enjoyed it, especially the dancing/martial arts work. The actors were very light on their feet and it was cool to see it live for once. The randomness though of just walking around and just happening to find a play to watch amuses me.

Sometimes I'll have people ask me about my take on China and what the hardest part of living here is. I don't have a very good answer for them usually because my life is really quite simple. I teach, I study Chinese, I go out to play with friends, I cook occasionally, there really isn't much stress in my life, thankfully. I think the most annoying thing is actually the frequency with which I have to go shopping. I hate shopping and I hate spending money. But there is no minivan here that I can take to the store, load up with everything I need for two weeks and pull up to my front door to unload so I'm limited to what I can carry. It's just kind of a hassle. Other than that, Chinese life suits me. Really, if you're wanting a change or just a refreshing experience, come visit me for a few weeks.