Finished my last week before finals. I hate testing but it's part of the job, it's tough though when you see your classes for 40 minutes once a week and then they have events going on or music practice or other things. It's easy to feel unappreciated even when most of the time it's that your class gets caught up in the sweep of things. It's just that a day off is a bigger deal to me as someone who sees classes on a weekly as opposed to daily basis. I've definitely gotten angry when I shouldn't have and perhaps allowed my classes to be moved when I should have pushed against it. But here I am pushing on and getting things done to have the residence permit and work stuff in my hands before I leave. Though I get frustrated and think of Homer Simpson responding to the question "Do you like kids?" by saying "What all the time? Even when they're nuts?" I also try to remember why I want to come back next year (more confidence, intensely rewarding, enthusiastic students, and very talented students to top it off). Testing will be hard, but I know how to speed things a little. And I have one class that still doesn't know what the test is going to be so I will need to use this week to tell them and possibly be a week behind schedule but I gave myself three weeks for testing in case of emergency so hopefully we'll get it all done.

Otherwise, it's been browsing through taobao for XXXL clothes, marathoning tv shows, and reading "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". I also found a "Three Kingdoms Podcast" which has been useful because I can read and go back and listen to someone summarize the chapter for 30 minutes. It's interesting, and it's a classic that has influenced things from Chinese opera to expressions used in the Chinese language but it's also a huge book that spans 100 years from the collapse of the Han dynasty to the three kingdoms period to the beginning of the Jin. Which also means having to track a lot of officials, ministers, warriors, rebels, battles, and adopted sons. It's hard for me to keep up with who's related to who and how long each character lasts in the story. I remember Liu Bei partly because of his description. If a book spends that much time describing a tall man with huge ears (which suggests wisdom) and good sense, then he's probably important. Then there's Dong Zhuo who takes out the Han emperor and puts in the Chenliu prince and takes charge of things from there, the people who fight against him, and then the battles that ensue as coalitions fight against each other. Again, there's only a handful of characters I can keep straight. I did feel quite accomplished though when I turned on the tv and was able to recognize some of the figures they talk about on "Wen Ming Zhi Lu"/"The History of Civilization". And then I finally sat down to watch "Farewell My Concubine" and recognized a few names (the movie's title comes from the opera the characters perform at different times). That was not an easy movie to watch, which isn't surprising considering everything that happened during the 20th century here but it was very interesting. The author of "Farewell My Concubine" sounds pretty interesting too actually. I read somewhere that she works on movies to reach as many people as possible, since books are limited to those who can read.

Outside of school and reading and tv, I had to replace the lock on my door (again). I was dumb enough to forget my keys inside and I never gave the school my new keys but they didn't believe me and had me test the ones they had. They didn't work so we called the locksmith. I also forgot about a lunch I'd agreed to and had to run off and put off meeting with the locksmith until after lunch. So basically, I left my apartment at about 10 in the morning and got back in at 17:00. I'm kind of exhausted from all the running around and I had to go back to Changsha for my medical certificate. I decided to forgo using my movie voucher. It's a free movie, sure, but all I wanted was rest. I really don't want to do testing, but I want it done and over with since that is part of the job. I may or may not have class tomorrow with the children's day things going on. I can't believe I'm at my last month and I feel so unprepared. I haven't looked at whether I'll need a second suitcase or not. My sitemate laughs when I worry but even if it's less than what others have, it's still baggage and still stuff I have to carry. I hate having things that I have to carry. I hate baggage. But I'm sure it will work out somehow. It won't be comfortable though. I've never really traveled with more than one suitcase and my violin, occasionally another bag I can wear on my back or strap onto myself somehow. However I feel, the fact remains that I will need to clear out my apartment somehow. I'm excited about Japan, but less so about dragging stuff around Japan. It'll be a well-deserved break and I hope I can actually wrap up my class and ask them about the things they learned instead of testing them and running off. It's the last push and I have so much to do, I just need to keep myself together as everything closes up.

Tomorrow marks the last day of teaching before testing begins. I hope I've been clear enough and hope my kids understand what's going to happen. On the other hand, if they've been reading comic books in my class and I've been posing the same questions for more than one class then there isn't much more I can do. I'll be available at school for more hours but otherwise, it's going to be up to them. I also get paid in full for the last time tomorrow. I have one last half stipend remaining that WorldTeach will pay to me. Rather than give us a full stiped at the end of our time, they split up one month's stipend so that we each received 1500 before leaving for our schools and they give us 1500 at the end when our plans may not involve coming back to China. It makes sense.

I overspent by 17 RMB but I know it'll be easy to make up for it with the remaining stipend and my time here. I have an excel sheet of expected expenses and set up formulas so that I could get an estimate of what it looks like in JPY, RMB, and USD. It was a little startling to find out that it's about 19 Japanese yen to 1 Chinese yuan and see that it's likely I'll be spending 100 RMB a day if I go out for two simple restaurant meals. That could feed me for a week! But I did save to go traveling so again, it's just going to what I meant for it to go to.

This past week wasn't too exciting. Lots of anxious kids or kids who just weren't listening when I talked about the exam. We were told partway through the week that the English Corner we were supposed to do on Friday for the school's advertisements wasn't happening after all. I'm not wholly sure what happened or why, but we had to go to another school in the afternoon and teach a class so now there are least 3 classes that I haven't had the chance to talk to about their exams. At first it didn't seem unlike other things I'd done before, except that I had less warning and it was less clear why exactly I was going and doing this. I think the school just told my liaison we had to do it as part of some partnership between schools but didn't give her much information and in turn, she wasn't able to tell us much either. I was told to just bring the lesson I used before in teaching at different schools in Zhuzhou county, then when I got on the bus I was told I would actually only have twenty minutes to teach or play a game ("What will you be doing then? Game or lesson?"), then we found out that both the foreign teachers would share a class. When we arrived in the classroom, we discovered it was all grades. There was a meeting celebrating partnership between our school and the one we were visiting and it became increasingly obvious that Friday afternoon was all about "guangxi", building relations. The meeting clued me into that, but I couldn't hear my liaison translating  what was going on since she was sitting on the other side of my sitemate. The dinner, the basketball game, the beer and toasting, and the appearance of cigarette packs and baijiu made it more obvious. Finally, one of the teachers from our school introduced us to his uncle, who worked in the area and we found out that that teacher taught there before working at our school. While the dinner was delicious, the food was fresh, the people were nice, the students were fun and very enthusiastic and I had a good time, I also didn't care much for the idea that the foreign teachers had just been tossed into a bargain without really knowing why and never being asked about it (though I get that from the school's perspective, we're a resource and they're just sharing with another school that isn't very well off). I think guangxi showed its less savory side when I realized I would be one of three women riding on a bus back to Zhuzhou city now filled with louder men smelling of beer, baijiu, and cigarettes. I also received a packet of cigarettes which I'll probably gift to the school security guards. Did I mention that the bus had to pull over at one point so that a few teachers could run out and pee by the road after all the toasting? Again, not the worst day but certainly a strange one for me. I did feel a little annoyed that the other teachers didn't really have to do any teaching themselves, just us, the foreign teachers that they are lucky to have.

I'm a little stressed and it looks like I'll need to run to Changsha on Thursday to take a medical exam so that I can renew my visa. I'll also need two passport photos. I can't find mine and they were in terrible shape after going through the wash. I asked my liaison if she knew a place I could do new ones but she didn't seem to understand that I wanted new ones even though she said she knew a place. She told me I already had photos and shouldn't bother. I told her again that my photos were not good and I needed new ones. I was told not to worry again. I may need to move on my own. Hopefully I can make it back in time to teach Thursday afternoon and not miss my classes. If I stay in Changsha overnight and run back for my 4PM class I think it's feasible. I know I need to move fast to get everything done right and have that permit back in my passport. There is much to be done before I can simply relax in Kyoto, city of 10,000 (or so) temples...

My school is on the list of schools receiving a foreign teacher next year so I'm coming back.

So we're getting into the final stretch where I'm pushing students to prepare for their English test and trying simplify as much as possible. The fewer, the shorter, the better. Or kids will feel overwhelmed with text. One step at a time.

In other news, I booked my rooms for Japan but may need to shuffle things a bit. I meant to sign up for a cooking class but it seems that the one I really wanted is booked up/unavailable for the dates I wanted. It's OK. It was a fun idea but it's not as big to me as being in Kyoto. Maybe I'll find a spot for tea ceremony instead. I've seen a little in China, but it's quite different since China and Japan have different histories. Japan's tea ceremony supposedly has its roots back in the Song dynasty here when it was popular to drink tea in bowls and grind up powder. But after time in Japan, it changed to fit the context of Japan and the dynasties that followed had their own cultures and came to value different aspects of tea. You also see changes in the cups and pots over time because of the different things each period wanted to highlight (ie enjoying the color of green tea is easier to do with a white cup than a green or black cup).

In other news, I went back to Nanyue with the 9th grade teachers who prayed to various Buddhas for different needs (and especially for luck as the 9th grade students go on to take their high school entrance exams). I hadn't actually seen Nanyue Temple itself, so it was nice to float through the gardens and stop to look in on various Buddhas. I was a bit confused at times since I saw Yin and Yang which I think of Taoist, but I also know that religion here in China isn't exclusive in the same way it is in the West. Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are considered the big three in terms of the philosophy/religion that shaped Chinese culture and it's more  coexistence than rivalry.

Speaking of Buddhism, this past week Modi came to China and I was a little surprised to see on the new that he was not in Beijing, but in Xi An. Then again, it is a city with a special significance for Chinese-Indian ties. As the capital of the Tang dynasty, this is where Xuan Zang/Hsuan Tsang/Tripitaka started his trip out to India with Pigsy and the Monkey King to retrieve the sacred scrolls. It's been a while since I last read Journey to the West (or Monkey, as one translation calls the story), I'm probably more familiar with the Stephen Chow film which has grown on me over time even though it's pretty crazy. My weekend took a coincidentally Buddhist turn the same weekend China received a representative of the land where Buddhism comes from. I still think I smell incense on my clothes. Hearing the loud bangs of firecrackers going off as people toss their packets to tell the Buddha that they are coming is still ringing in my ears as is the sight of a huge pile of burning incense and other things. I've seen them before, but I don't think I've stood so close before. It made me a little nervous to see a man with a straw broom pushing things into the pile even though there was water all over the ground around that part of the temple. It was a pretty large temple too, it was impressive. When I'd done a survey of the gardens and the different Buddhas, I hung out in one of the shops and watched a puppy chew on a little boy before they both ran out to walk around the temple. It was fun to see the boy coaxing the puppy over a step at a time "Lai. Lai. Lai." ("Come. Come. Come.")

This week is going to be tough, both to keep kids in line and to get the test information to them in a clear and accessible manner. We'll get there somehow. I'm just tired, and my allergies kick in and everyone thinks I'm sick. It's well-intentioned but also really frustrating and a little patronizing to hear "I'll make hot water. I'ts really just for you." or other things people do to to help when you know it's not a cold and drinking water feels good but solves nothing. This isn't the worst my allergies have been, but it's still a pain to get up and see nice flowers and be both excited and disgusted.

This week, I had the kids write a short story. I want them all to have a story, then to use that story to make a skit so to ensure that they did just that I added incentive by telling them that if I didn't have their stories, I would take 5 points from their exam. I still don't think I have more than half of the class turning in stories. I wonder if it's hard to understand, but then I see people copying stories onto a sheet of paper or reading and talking when I'm teaching and realize they deserve to face some consequence for flat out not listening or caring. But the stories have been fun. Sometimes they are very simple, sometimes the students really have fun with them. One class asked about the word count and I had to tell them there is no word count. As long as they have the 4 things I ask for, they can keep it as short as they want. They seemed really happy that I just wanted something short. I was impressed by one girl who wrote about a woman with a magic mirror, the more she looked, the more beautiful she became, but then she became unrecognizable to her family and friends. One story literally ended with a bang. One of my example problems was "zombies in Zhuzhou" so that was a popular story as was a pig/person/cat having no friends. While I'm sad that so many students have basically shot themselves in the foot by not caring, getting a B on the exam won't kill them either.

A student asked if I know "Mr. Black" who is supposedly going to teach English here. But I know nothing about it. People are still applying to teach here and the department of education has to make final decisions on the schools receiving teachers too. So either they're bringing in someone on a private contract or they're talking about Mr. Li, a current English teacher (his last name is a word that can mean "many" or "black"). Who knows?

I was also told that I need to think of what I want next year in case I cannot come back to my current school. I want to because I enjoy the students, and yet if they're bored of me now and giving me trouble...eh, I need to be much stricter anyway. It's a little sad to think of the possibility that my school may not have a teacher next year, but I don't know anything right now.

I don't count the time I have. I know what lessons I need to do and I focus on doing them since I laid out my plans back in February. My time to say goodbye will come when it comes. It's another one of those times when I don't think about how fast or slow time moves, when I don't ask for it to go faster or slow down partly because I know it will do what it will. Asking for it to change its pace is irrational and a waste of time. Time will not change for me so I need to change for time.

In other news, I wondered why ChinesePod has not had any updates so I went looking. I wasn't sure if it was a long hiatus like before or not, but now it looks like some of the podcasts I enjoyed for free became part of the paid for content on their website. On the bright side, I downloaded and saved them before they were removed from iTunes so I can still use stuff like "KTV Time" that I couldn't otherwise use. Those are my favorite, though I've only been to KTV once. I'm no good at singing and don't really like singing in front of others, though that's such a big thing here. I don't have a go to karaoke song and I've learned that there are ways I'm comfortable socializing outside of karaoke and clubs. I've accepted that there are times that require I just put my discomfort aside for others to meet them partway, I've also learned the value of saying no and creating other opportunities that are more my pace. That and I've tried learning songs in Chinese. My Chinese isn't great, trying to use the right tone while singing is difficult, but when I try to speak without singing when it's a song I know well, I fall into the tune naturally and have to fight to just say it in a normal voice for a while. Tong Hua (Fairytale) is particularly hard to just read and say without thinking of the song's rhythm and pitch.

Well, I've decided to come back for round 2 of teaching in China with WorldTeach. I'd still like to have the experience of teaching in China outside of WorldTeach so I sent the school I contacted an email saying thank you and explaining that I would be working in China for more experience, but would like to stay in touch as the idea of teaching college still interests me. I guess all I need to settle now is a summer job, where I'm staying in Kyoto, and if there's anything I need to do before returning to China to get a TEFL. I like what I'm doing now, and I don't know if it will be some lifelong passion but it's right for where I'm at and what I wanted when I graduated: experience, something related to language arts, something that would allow me to grow in intercultural competencies and communications, and of course, getting paid. It may not be a lot, but it more than covers my needs and I've gotten pretty good at saving and have a good sense of the cost of drinks, rice, and vegetables and my contract takes care of housing which is pretty big in terms of where the money goes.

I'm not going to deny that teaching on a private contract outside of WorldTeach is still tempting because I'd get paid a bit more each month (~5,000 seems to be about the average for teachers, though some places offer as much as 10,000 or 12,000 a month for native English speakers or teachers in bigger cities) and I wouldn't be limited to middle school. I have wondered at times if I'm better suited for high school or college than for middle school, but I do like the kids and all their questions, not to mention that they have something new to ask you every time they move on to a new unit in their book. It can get kind of tiring though to spend a week telling people that you like hamburgers but you don't think they're very healthy and that you get to school by walking everyday, especially when you have over 700 kids on the same textbook unit who will all be taking their tests on the exact same day at the same time. It's hard to explain to Chinese teachers sometimes that the American education system isn't uniform in quite the same way the Chinese educational system is (ie textbooks in America can differ from school to school depending on state requirements and what teachers identify as important for their particular school). I think I listened to one episode of Important Chinese Things with Jenny Zhu/ChinesePod and a woman talked about how she wasn't sure what to do when the school told her to make her own curriculum. I guess the teacher from our middle school who went to teach in the US for a year was also kind of startled that the school didn't decorate her classroom or her office for her, they gave her a room and she had to do it herself so my liaison and I talked about differences in hospitality in China and the US. Mostly that Chinese hospitality requires that you give so much attention to your guests that it's a little too much sometimes for Americans, but I guess just being given an empty room seems a little cold too. When I got invited to another teacher's apartment, I was really nervous about saying too much about what I liked because I sensed that it might turn into a "your wish is my command" kind of thing and the last thing I wanted was to take advantage of someone opening their home up to me. I felt a little less awkward when she told to cook something to share, which was good because it felt more fair to me than worrying that stating some small preference would turn into my host going some crazy distance to find something I'd mentioned in passing. It's hard sometimes though, there are things I want and just won't say it because I know if I'm out walking with another teacher and say that some street food smells really good, I run the risk of finding that my companion is determined to treat. My thoughts run through "Yes I want it. No, don't go to that trouble, I can get it myself. I'll just say no and come back another time, because I don't want this person to go to all that trouble but I don't want to insult them by making it obvious I'm refusing when I really want that cake." Maybe I make too much of it, but there really have been times when someone asked if I wanted to stop for some kind of cake and I said yes just to find that person buying it for me and not trying it themselves. There are times when China is incredibly direct, and times when you have to adjust your thinking to something...more circular? I don't know how to explain it, all I can really say is that this is a culture big on relationships and the work you have to put into creating and maintaining those ties. Maybe the word I'm looking for is reciprocal. I'm still thinking about the example we got during orientation of a phone call between two Chinese people, one American and one Chinese person, and two Americans. Basically, it was a phone call about going to the airport. In the call between the two Americans, one called to say she was going to the airport and the other said "Have a good time!" (the shared mentality being, that if this person wanted something, they would ask). In the same conversation between two Chinese people, it ended with an offer to drive the person to the airport (I will tell this person I am going and maybe they can offer me a ride/I should offer this person a ride because they are calling). And finally, the one between an American and a Chinese person in which, as you might guess a Chinese person calls expecting/hoping for an offer of a ride to the airport and the American unknowingly refuses by simply saying "Well, have a good time!". That example probably best encapsulates what I'm trying to get at. The difference between expecting someone to ask and expecting someone to offer.

Hospitality and educational stuff aside, I've been asking myself what I like about China and what's harder to live with. Part of this is because my students ask if I like China and why, and I imagine it's a natural question given that they don't lead the easiest lives here. So here it goes:

This past week was cut short by a test no one really told me about until Wednesday night. That makes it 3 weeks without seeing my Friday classes so I hope nothing happens this next week because I need to prepare everyone for their exams. Actually, I did get a heads up on the test when I asked another teacher how he was doing and his whole face changed sadness and anxiety "Just so so. All the students have an exam this week." While on the one hand, I felt for him it was a little amusing to see pretty much the exact same expression some of the students give me  when talking about tests come up on his face within seconds of talking to him. Then again, as in many countries teachers get bonuses and performance reviews based on grades and exam scores. I suppose it's not just the pain of asking yourself if you've done all you could for the students but also knowing that at the next meeting about student test scores everyone's going to hear about whose classes scored the highest and who's behind all the rest. The teachers at my school are good at what they do, my school has a reputation in Zhuzhou because in its 16 years of being open they've had 70 alumni go on to Tsinghua, sometimes described as the MIT of China. They also have international connections in Singapore and England and there are discussions about the school expanding into many exciting things. I imagine that many of the teachers here have already proven themselves in some way in order to get the jobs they have, but I have no doubt about its stresses. The teacher I spoke to about testing dyed his hair brown over spring festival/new year break, before that he had a few white hairs and I've supposedly got one too but I've never been able to find it. I think it's a trick of the lights more than anything else.

I guess it's good I didn't do anything too key to the oral exam this week since my week was cut short, we learned some new verbs and played charades, the kids were noisy and did whatever they felt like and I sensed that maybe 5 people were actually playing in a room of 57 kids. I wish them luck on their tests, it's going to take both Thursday and Friday. When we ran out of words for charades I played them some Pixar shorts I was saving for my story lesson next week, I'm sure they'll be happy to see them again when we break down what makes a story. I know there's a lot here in regards to performing arts, and I thought it was interesting when we had representatives from a school in San Diego and their assistant was explaining that here in Hunan there's a lot more involvement in performing. Which is why the school has pictures of students who won national English competitions, and a number of singers who attend school here. I was definitely surprised to learn that the kids get art and music classes a few times a week. But I think one thing that's hard to explain about these electives to Americans trying to understand how classes work in China is that the kids don't necessarily pick these classes themselves. They have one classroom they stay in all day together and the teacher comes to them. They can enjoy music and art, but they themselves don't choose in the same way I chose the classes in my schedule in middle school. Thursday afternoons have a designated activity period when students can do what they want but I've often found that students can't go to or do what they want every Thursday. We had English Corner on Thursdays last term and a number of students would mournfully say they wanted to come but their teachers wouldn't let them because of a test, because of a class, because there was too much work to be done...we kind of just had to accept that we'd take what we could get and try to reach as many as we could.

My social group grew a little too, and I'm not very talkative so not many teachers know how much Chinese I understand. I turned to the other people saying "Meiguoren" (American) and they asked if I understood. "Yi dian" (A little) and they deconstructed lunch for me "Yu" (Fish), "Su cai" (Vegetarian food), "rou" (meat), and "kuai zi" (chopsticks). It was fun. I don't think the other English teachers know I understand them sometimes too. I tried to practice Chinese in the English teachers office once but I think because they don't practice speaking English with me that much they either don't notice or prefer to speak English with me. My Chinese isn't great so it's the most direct way to communicate, and I've since learned that Chinese both as a language and a system of communicating prefers direct speech (Which is why my students sometimes say "This give me!"). I try to be polite, but I went through a podcast in which a woman got upset because "If you sound overly polite, it's like you're trying to be somehow better and more correct when you could just be direct." So I still start a lot of sentences with "Qingwen" or "qing-" to say please but I'm sure I'm alone in using it as much as I do. The other teachers don't seem to when I listen to them talking. It's funny to me, Chinese has a reputation as a difficult language, when you see how it's written and have to train yourself to hear the different tones the reputation is deserved. But grammar-wise, I haven't found it to be overly difficult but you do need to practice syntax (word order) and there are things you add to the end of phrases to change the meaning of words but for most of my needs it hasn't been too complicated to just build. "Wo yao" means "I want" and "Wo yao _____ le" means "I will _____ ". Commands are as simple as just shouting the verb, no conjugation required "Deng yixiar" is "Wait a bit" and "Kan yixiar" is "Look a bit/have a look/let me have a look" depending on the context (most of the time, you'll hear it from people standing outside of their shops). It's so extremely direct that students sometimes have trouble remembering to add articles like "the" or "a" or things we expect in a full, fluid English sentence. I haven't learned the past tense, but I've heard that all I really need is the verb and the word "yesterday"  or "last year". Why mess around with fancy conjugations when I can just tell you "last year" and make it pretty obvious it was in the past? But the Chinese language is vast, the culture is often misunderstood and we're talking about a huge country too. So though there are ways the language is easy and much can be understood just from context, the difficult part is remembering all the different tones, the writing system, and the cultural and historical context that adds nuance to what you want to say. And don't even get me started on how much depends on relationships and the expectations associated with those relationships (business, family, friends, and loved ones, which tend to overlap more here than in the US). I can definitely say more than I could at the beginning, but I still sense how much I have to learn and how much more writing I have to learn. It's not as easy as picking up a newspaper in a foreign language was for me in Switzerland since I had a strong background in Romance languages and could more or less get the gist of an article. Even the students here tell me it's hard for them to read the newspaper since you need to memorize so much to start reading.

This past week marks coming into May, the last full month I have before leaving Zhuzhou. The first few days is also the labor day holiday so for the 2nd Friday in a row I have no class. It was a lazy Friday. I went to this one place not far from where I live where they sell wood carvings, pots, paintings, and as of right now with the hot weather, tons of plants. I was looking to gauge the price of a name seal. It looks like my initial estimate of 400RMB was a good guess for the lower to mid range prices. The cheapest was 280RMB, the biggest ones were maybe 1000+ RMB. There was only one shop open that obviously sold name chops, probably because of the holiday weekend. The shop owner just kind of shrugged when I walked in. Not the warmest welcome, but it suited me because I always feel a bit weird when people follow me and ask questions in a shop, especially when I can't say much in return. I made a short trip to Wal-Mart at Shennong/Yandi Square to browse around and see about things I can't find at Carrefour or Vanguard over here on the East side of the Xiang River. It was kind of surreal because it was so hot and sunny when I went inside, but when I came out again the stairs and the ground was wet and people were huddled in together in a circle under a dome between the statue of Shennong and Shennong tower. It was sunny when I came out, but obviously there had been some rapid change in the weather while I was discovering that Wal-Mart offers cheaper olive oil than in other shops, but I still hesitate to buy extra virgin olive oil that clearly isn't packaged in a way that helps to preserve its flavor. The bottle was clear rather than dark. Then again, it's Wal-Mart.

I caught the bus back, it began to rain so I pulled out my umbrella and then it was gone again but still really hot so I hung out at the smoothie place across the street (it's probably more accurate to call it an ice and fruits place). There were still some pretty sizeable blocks of ice left in my mango smoothie but I got to hide out in a small place, cool off, watch the kids go by and a few women from nearby businesses stopped in to talk and get a cold drink. It was pleasant. I wonder if the woman who works there is from a more rural part of Zhuzhou county, I couldn't help hearing the way she spoke wasn't quite like the standard Mandarin my ears are trained to follow. It's also entirely possible that she is from here but just doesn't enunciate Putonghua well. After that, I went home for a bit, had dinner, went on a walk, picked up some red pens (I'll be needing them soon), window shopped, discovered that one of the shopping centers will be bringing in "100 Italian blands" soon and that was why they hung Italian and Chinese flags everywhere, and came home to try sleeping early. So much for that.

At maybe 8 or 9 PM the weather changed again and within a few minutes I was unable to see out my window because of the furious downpour that appeared after a couple cracks of thunder and lightning against the purple sky. The wind kicked up too. After a few hours, it died down but in the meantime I'd found myself unable to sleep and just watched out the window, wishing I had some hot chocolate or coffee in my kitchen instead of Tie guan yin, downloading The Hobbit and The Hunger Games from iTunes so I could catch up, catching up on Community (which I discovered my field director also enjoys), checking my fridge again to see that I'd cleared out everything that might have gone bad  when the power in Hetang district went out on Wednesday, and I finally made my way to bed. When I got up on Saturday, the wind was still going pretty hard and the trees behind our apartment building were all bent but it turned out to be a nice day.

Other than that, I finished Shen Cong Wen's "Border Town" and started reading Mo Yan. I have "The Porcelain Thief" marked for later reading too. The subtitle is really clever: "Searching the Middle Kingdom for Lost China". It's always interesting to read about others experiences or views on China because this place is so big so I'm always looking to put the pieces I have together with the pieces others have to get a fuller view.