(Emily)hello all.
the past few days have flown by- i have no idea where the time's going (maybe narnia?). anyways, today was no exception.
the day started off pretty much without a hitch. miao tells me to be ready by 7 yet at 6:50, her mom and her are waiting for me to get out of the bathroom (i was combing my bangs!). so tomorrow, i'm going to try extra hard to be ready at 6:45 just in case her parents want to leave early again. the ride to school is uneventful. her parents like to listen to talk shows (we ride with both of them- her mom gets off at our school and takes the bus to where she teaches, which is at the experimental school on wulin street) and miao likes to look out the window/nap so talking isn't really an option in the morning so i've taken to putting on my ipod and zoning out for the 20 minutes.
this morning we had calligraphy and hangzhou history. in calligraphy, we got sparkly sheets of rice paper with what i believe to be mica embedded into it. mr. yang told us to do masterpieces and write ri, yue, and two other characters which, when combined, meant 'the sun and the moon shine brilliantly' or something to that effect. he demonstrated and made it look like the easiest thing in the world. i, on the other hand, made one of the characters look like 'it is sleeping with one of its legs out of the bedroom door' according to mr. yang. mr. yang also has this 'what is this' shrug that he does with the best expression on his face. he also told us that good zen comes with calligraphy because a person has to regulate their breathing in order to truly make the brushstrokes work. i can vouch that this somewhat works; when we were practicing writing our names small for our 'masterpieces,' i wouldn't breathe in between characters. i felt sorta sick after that but it was worth it seeing my name legibly written in chinese. i even merited one 'very good' from the laoshi himself.
history, while perhaps not a class that i look forward, was amazing today. easily up there on one of the best classes i've had here. we got into the classroom after taking a break and saw that our teacher had set up the powerpoint (we usually have powerpoint presentations given to us in chinese then translated by lugia or baker). oh dear we thought. he started talking about wushan temple and in one of the slides, he talked about how the manchus and the tibetans share the same buddhist beliefs in that they believe sakyamuni was very fierce and war like (there was a manchu carving done of sakyamuni owning his opponents). i asked an off topic question about what he thought of the lhasa riots (because the manchus are apparently related to the tibetans) which spurred a whole conversation on tibet. he had some really good points; he argued that what the westerners see happening in tibet, they don't understand because they don't know the full story. he told us that the tibetans weren't peaceful and were in fact, quite barbaric before the ming dynasty, when china assumed control of them. he said that they were feudal and used human skin to make leather and that the chinese helped them and set up the control of the dalai lama. he also compared tibet to the south in america; the south wanted to separate from the north, but the north wouldn't allow it and put it down with militant force (war). he said that the tibetans were like the chinese because they were from similar family trees 2000 years back and that china made tibet what it was today. while i took this with a grain of salt, a lot of the points he made were very valid (the cynics in the peanut gallery will have to take my word on this- i can't condense the hour long conversation that we had into a few sentences). after talking about tibet, we then went on to talk about tiananmen square and what he thinks of mao. he was really eager to answer our questions and wasn't offended when we (respectfully) challenged his position. if anything, he was fascinated by our opinions. his responses, while maybe in line with the party line, were well thought out and backed up with a plethora of facts. after today's class, my respect for him has skyrocketed and being in that class and talking about the cultural revolution and great leap forward made us all think of modern china with viz.
lunch was excellent. there was tomatoes and eggs which were very very good as well as peeled mango and coca cola. we were all happy campers. after lunch was english corner where team china: the musical was put on. at random points in our conversations with people, we did the hokey pokey, the chicken dance, and the friends theme song, among others. talking to the chinese kids is so much fun. they've become less intimidated by us and now we even have a regular group that comes to english corner daily. team china looks forward to it everyday and the conversations are always different.
my afternoon was pretty boring- i worked on math with terry for most of the afternoon and then went to 'balls' (what penny calls it) with drew and nick (cady's class had class meeting apparently). drew ran while nick and i played badminton by the track.
and now, i am here, at miao's house. you may think i don't talk to her that much since i really haven't mentioned her in today's blog but fear not- we're getting to know each other and she's so cool and nice. last night we were talking about the kids in her class and she told me that the girl she sits next to got a really short haircut by accident and she asks miao everyday if her hair has grown; miao dutifully tells her that it has even though she can't discern a difference. my host mom is really adventurous-she loves traveling and usually goes alone since miao's dad doesn't like to travel and miao usually stays at home. she's been to all over china (including tibet-be jealous, mom) as well as europe and when miao comes to america in the summer, my host mom will travel around america while miao's at camp. she's also insanely skilled at badminton and is no.2 in the hangzhou teacher's league. my host dad is really good at cooking and made a dish with a pink broth, which he then put over my rice to make magenta rice. it was very pretty- i took a picture of it.
that's all for now! bye!
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