Photo of the Day: Read All About It

Taken at Dawai, the school I went to first semester to study Chinese. This was mid-March, around the time of the riots in Tibet if I remember correctly. We decided to all buy China Dailys (the English language newspaper) and see what they had to say on the matter. Blatant government censorship was an interesting new phenomenon for us, coming from America and Australia.

Photo of the Day: Student Lunches

[The girl in the blue is the one I'm currently visiting in South Carolina for Spring Break.]

Eating lunch with my classmates (the two girls and guy in the foreground), all of them American. Class ended at 12 every day and there was an endless amount of choices for food around the Dongcai campus. They were all incredibly cheap too; usually costing 5 rmb for a bowl of noodles (~75 cents) or 7-10 rmb per person to share dishes 'family-style' as we're doing above.

Election from abroad

It's easy to be left out of the loop when living abroad. I have no idea what movies or songs are popular back home right now, what the latest trends are, what's the big marketing campaign for Halloween and Thanksgiving, and I'm okay with all that because it keeps life simpler.

The only real downside was when it came to the election. I woke up Tuesday morning slightly excited about the election, about change on the horizon...only to remember that I was 13 hours ahead of the States (Daylight Savings Time couldn't have been pushed back another week, no?) and had another 36 hours to wait for results.

Wednesday morning I bolted out of bed at my normal time of seven am...only to remember again I still had yet another hour before polls started closing. Leanna was worse than I was; halfway through our first class she remembered about the election, after which she started to freak out, "What if Obama doesn't win?"

We get three breaks during our four hours of class, and during each break someone was running back to the dorms to check the votes. After the first break it was 77-34 Obama, but an hour later he had already climbed past 100. At the last break Sam, a Korean American friend, rushed into my classroom and raised his arms into the air and yelled, "Obama's our new president!!", effectively making all the Koreans and Russians very wary of us Americans.

To be fair, they had good reason to be wary. Many of us, like myself, had been abroad for the majority of the campaign season, including the climax over the last few months. Our celebration was weak at best, and constituted mainly posts on each others' facebooks and texting each other in all caps (it was only 1 pm our time after all), but we were rejoicing the fact that after all the turmoil we could only read about and missed out on, we had at least one reason to look forward to going home.

An interruption post about volleyball

I know I'm behind on National Holiday and my subsequent trip to Shanghai, but today was amazing and deserves its own post while I'm still reveling in it.

The Chinese language department had a volleyball tournament between all the classes over the last couple weeks, and my class had been doing pretty well. I always went home right after class so I never checked it out, but today Leanna had another class so I agreed to step in for her just for the first half hour because the rules stated every team needed at least two females.

Well turns out one of my classmates is actually a volleyball coach, and three other students (two Korean and one Russian) were also really good. I played on a team for two years, but that was like five years ago, so only basic skills like underhand serving and passing/setting really remain. I was more backup; but the coach and one of the tall Korean guys set up a set and spike almost every single volley, I was very impressed with our reaction times and strategic movement.

Our first two games we beat the other team 25-21 and 25-23, then the next two they beat us 25-18 and 25-20 (or something close to that). So going into the last game the refs (just young Chinese students) said we were only playing to 15 points...we ended up neck and neck the entire way, and the game finally ended with a tense 19-17. In all the games I played on a team I never was so into a game, nor did I enjoy winning a game so much. We ended up winning the Final as well after that, though it wasn't as much of a challenge.

It was fun as well because they mixed rules; you could use any part of your body- meaning you could kick the ball, bounce it off your head, etc...I made an incredible save by bouncing one off my shoulder.

I was impressed, I think every one of my classmates made it out to see the match by the end. So I got to interact with them outside of the classroom, and am now fully convinced we are the best class ever, we have the greatest personality and energy. They were all waving around trash bags making noise and the most enthusiastic la la dui (cheerleading squad), even when it started to drizzle and the sky started darkening at 4:30. My listening and intensive reading teacher even showed up. I'm so glad I decided to stay and experience the Chinese university life for once instead of going back to my apartment and lounging about on my laptop like I always do.

Four hours after we'd started, we finally finished taking pictures, getting our prizes (giant 'premium containers' of Nescafe) and congratulating each other, and we all went our separate ways...but I still get to see them tomorrow morning! As if leaving Dalian in two months weren't hard enough, now I'm in love with my class....