Hello All,
This week started off with BANG. As soon as I finished writing the last post, fireworks started going off more and more rapidly as the Chinese new year (春节 - Chun Jie) came to close. It was like a 4th of July on steroids. My classes were interrupted by intermittent KABOOOMS and POPs and people would sort of flinch walking down the street every time someone lit off a cherry bomb. All the fireworks in the middle of the day kind of makes me think that Chinese people never really get through that pyromaniac phase that a lot of American boys between the ages of 10-13 go through (guilty).
That night we all went downtown to celebrate the Lantern Festival (I'm not really sure why... I didn't see any extra special lanterns around). It was packed with people from all over walking around and lighting firecrackers, roman candles, etc. wherever they were. I've never seen more kids under the age of 7 playing with fireworks. Two kids starting throwing M80s at our feet as we walked down an ally way... they got a good laugh out of it. It was a pretty fun experience for a good hour but then the noise and the smell of magnesium became a little much. I think I'm over fireworks for a while.
This week has been my first full week of classes. I'm really getting a lot out of my chinese language classes even though they get pretty long. We go at a pretty fast pace so I'm always having to memorize new words. My first test is tomorrow over three chapters but i think all the practice is helping me retain a lot of the information. The hard part is bringing new words into conversation outside of class.
After the test tomorrow I have to get ready to go to Harbin. About 20 of us are going together on an 8 hour overnight train ride north. We are getting "hard sleeper" cars which makes coach on Southwest look like air force one. I've heard a lot of things about the hard sleeper cars but I'll save that for my post when I get back. We'll arrive in Harbin in the morning, check into the hotel, and head over to the ice festival which should be amazing. I've refused to look at any pictures of the festival online because I want to be suprised. It's going to be a really cold weekend; temperatures could go below zero (ouch). I'm layering up. On Sunday we're going to a lion/tiger/liger zoo. We're flying back that night and will hopefully be back by midnight. It's going to be a long weekend and I'll hopefully have some great pics and stories in the next post.
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