I have eaten more cake this week then the past year combined. It’s a perfect storm of birthday’s and end-of-year parties that had me shovel piece after piece into my mouth. Chinese birthday cakes are all thick sugary frosting and no cake, but then I’ve never been one to turn
Curious how the Chinese Gov't Works? Read on…
Thanks to my pals over at Raoul’s, I found this really interesting article about the workings of the Chinese government written by an American teaching at Tsinghua University (the top college in China). Let’s face it, understanding the inner workings of our own government is hard enough (quick, name the
A Chinese Wedding
Ever since coming to China I have wanted to go to a Chinese wedding. After all, weddings are such cultural markers, I was really curious to see what it was like. Fortunately, last week I finally got my chance! Wendy, one of the women at the international office finally had
Hangin' With my Homies
It’s spring time here and that can only mean one thing: class trip time! In China classes live, work, eat and breath together. On your first day freshman year you are assigned a class number, and you will stay with those classmates for the next four years. I have mixed
Instant Forest – Just Add Trees
Normally the front entrance of the school is filled with purple and green bushes crisscrossing and intertwining to make colorful lines from afar. One day a giant boulder showed up, stuck around for a few weeks, and the mysteriously disappeared. Then the green bushes disappeared as did the purple. The
There Goes Another Leprechaun
So awhile back I wrote about how we have been having an unusual amount of luck ever since moving to China. Well, guess what? It looks like our luck is still holding. Last night, somewhere between a wedding and our apartment Ryan lost our cell phone. (We both share one
It's 'Friday?' How about a Little Music?
Yes people, I’m jumping on the meme bandwagon again. This time it’s music. By this point we all know the truly terrible song by Rebecca Black called Friday and some of the quite hilarious covers of the song (I like the Colbert/Kimmel one myself). Well, here’s a new one you
Strange Things Will Happen…
This past week, in oral class, we had a lesson called, “What’s on Becky’s iPod?” It’s an occasional class where I play a song, or two and we learn the lyrics and discuss some of the deeper meaning behind the song. This week, we talked about a song by The
A Japanese, Mongolian and American Walk into a Bar…
Last night I had dinner with five Japanese people and one Chinese girl. Today I had lunch with three Indonesians, two Mongolians, three Japanese, and one Chinese. Such is the life of a foreigner on my campus. I’m sure at a bigger university, or a bigger city in which
Spring Has Sprung
May first, or May Day is a holiday to celebrate the coming spring. My college is a Forestry University, and as you might expect, it has some pretty amazing landscaping. It doesn’t hurt that the campus is nestled at the base of some green rolling hills, nor that when spring