Blargh! I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve written anything for my journal. Just when I was getting into a groove I got all tired and shit. I didn’t realize you could get lagged from being on a trip for so long. It has shed new light on what it’s like to be on a study abroad trip for months. Having to wake up early and push yourself till late certainly takes its toll on the body. Of course, we’ll see the final toll when we land back in Chicago on Wednesday.

                To catch up to today, Friday consisted of a trip to a tomb stumbled on by some people trying to build an apartment complex. In one sense, it seems like we should be supporting those that wish to tear down hills and put up infrastructure. Maybe we could find more tombs! In another sense, there are millions of hills that have nothing significant underneath them. Or so we think.
                The tomb itself shed some light on how the Egyptians were not quite as unique as we give them credit for being. Sure, they have hieroglyphics, but Chinese characters are essentially modern day hieroglyphics. The king that is buried also had several rooms which contained concubines, servants, and other human sacrifices for the afterlife. There were also some very impressive sculptures, weapons, and instruments that held their shape fairly well. I feel like the generations of the distant future are just going to find plastic bottles when they dig us up.

                From the tomb, we learned all about the city of Guangzhou. Since it is the major port city of China, it received the Western influences of religion, science, and technology first. Thomas the Tour Guide also gave us a pretty entertaining story about the tower that contained all of this history. I videotaped the story, but I know it had something to do with suppressing a dragon contained in the hill. All of this talk about dragons over here really has me wanting to believe that dragons existed at one time. Maybe I’ll believe it and just not tell anyone.

                Our next destination was a park that had some playfully intertwined goat statues to assert Guangzhou’s title of The Goat City. Again, another great story about the gods of various purposes (grain, water, etc) rode the goats down from heaven and helped populate the area with their respective godly qualities to give the city all of the resources it has today.

                All Chinese people love calling any business district the CBD, which stands for central business district. Do people use that term that work in the CBD? Probably not. Do people use that term in America? Probably tourists. I suppose it helps in generalizing an area, but it just seems like a strange term to me. Anyways, the CBD was very lovely. There was a mall in progress and some gentle Christmas music playing as we walked. I was informed at one point that a mix of myself, the sidewalk, and the music painted a very picturesque scene reminiscent of a movie. Assuming a holistic view, I will give most of the credit to background.

                Next, I took a trip by myself to various areas in the surrounding markets. I still have that urge to immerse myself in these areas that are so foreign to me. I think it will incite me to learn more Chinese so I can appreciate them more. Seeing all of these people with their stands setup trying to sell only one kind of thing, like a particular fruit or vegetable, helped me understand how they are able to get things so fresh. It is also evidence for how they form such a community. These people probably see each other every day and interact with each other on most of those days, either by trading or just casual conversation. I know my dad would have loved that atmosphere. I loved that atmosphere. Hopefully my Chinese will be good enough one day to fully appreciate it.

                Nighttime held another trip to a bar. This time it was a gay bar. It was super gay, of course, and it sucked. Of course. I don’t know why I put myself in these situations. The only reason I like going to bars is to dance. The best places to dance are certainly not in China. In fact, the worst place to dance is at a gay bar in China. Here, there were two gay men that were dancing with us. But not the fun kind of gay dancing we are used to in the states. One gay man wanted us to form a circle, possibly to accentuate his awkward dancing and the girls’ constricted dancing. Thankfully the night was capped by Rachel’s stellar boyfriend going through everyone’s purses looking for his iPod touch. Great addition to our party. It turned out it was in his backpack in the hotel room. Fuck that dude. Fuck that bar.

Big thank you for new words:

Guang jie – shopping area

Ju zhang – mother river (Pearl River)

Shi tang – eating place

Wo shi xia – I like…

Ya chien – toothpick

Yong zi – crowded

(director) chen kai ge

Gexing – singer
yinjuejian – musician
bofang – to play
yinyue – music
diyin jita – bass guitar
nian - years

                Today seemed fairly unimpressive compared to our last week and a day. Granted, the weather is pretty nice, but that only goes so far in my book. Really, just to this sentence.

                Breakfast was pretty tasty. It’s interesting to see which people on the trip come sit with me when I’m all by myself. Today it was Lauren Smith. She talked to me about how she is addicted to coffee and has been doing pretty rough since she’s over here. Soda has supplanted her coffee fix thus far, but I think she honestly just needs corn syrup. I feel like that’s what a lot of people miss when they talk about how they want American food so bad. It is a bit startling to try and get your body to understand that the majority of what we’re eating is incredibly fresh and usually prepared fairly recently. I think I had a couple cravings today for things like cheese or pasta or something but honestly I know the things I’m eating are infinitely better and better for me than those things.

                The campus here is pretty beautiful. I imagine this setup is similar to Florida, but still totally different. They call Guangzhou the flower city, which is very fitting. The drive in was wonderful and the campus is equally beautiful. A tour around the campus made me cringe to be back in the Chicago winter, but with the Chicago winter comes Chicago. It would be nice to have a Lover’s Bridge and it’s unfortunately counterpart Break-Up Bridge at DePaul. But as Athena said, lovers don’t need a bridge with a name to be together. That was incredibly wise of her to say.

                It seems as though we’re going to feel much more like tourists here. Already I can tell our relationships with the students are fragile and uncertain. The goodbye after our Bruce Lee dinner was painful. It doesn’t help that we’re city trotting all over the place to this university and that school to do more of these interviews and lectures. I will say that I had no idea there was such a huge earthquake in China back in 2008. The economic crisis really overshadowed a lot of events. Thankfully Wenchung had some help from Professor Feng and plenty of other willing volunteers.

                I think I’m a bit travel lagged. I have hardly had time to truly reflect on how wonderful my experience was in Beijing and here I am trying to adapt to another place with new people. It doesn’t help that I got a little runny nose from a certain roommate of mine. I will say that I am glad the United Nations (formerly known as Smoke Dragon) has been as tight as we have. I hope we get to party together when we get back home.

                Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow. I think a good night’s sleep will help a lot of things.

The performance of a lifetime. Here’s a link to a translation of the poem that was sung http://www.chinese-tools.com/forum/read.html?q=18%2C87412

                Today was almost too much to take. I had a bit of a slow start, which was fine. I think I needed the sleep to help with everything I encountered.

                I feel like it might be tough getting through this next week. I don’t think I’ve really started to miss everyone yet, but once I start to realize that I’m going to be gone for another week, it may start to set in. It helps to keep myself preoccupied by writing songs and helping Hana deal with jerks. I can’t believe she got me a gift!

                I’m glad I finally got to play some basketball. I ran into Olivia, thankfully, and she helped me find the basketball court. I shot around with a guy named Michael for a while as he told me about the next Yao Ming and some other players that he admires. Apparently, the NBA is the biggest sport here in China. I feel like if I ever taught here I would have to coach basketball. No doubt about it. I couldn’t just let my sweet jump shot go to waste.

                The lecture was very interesting. I definitely konked out for a little bit thanks to a pre-lecture lunch, but the professor called me out which woke me up. That I am certainly used to. He seems like a very prominent figure in the psychology world here in China. I mean, he must have some prestige if he has companies like Wrigley contract him out to do studies about how gum lowers stress.

                The last supper was the best part. Hana gave me a present. Everyone’s presentations went well. It was so emotionally fulfilling. I couldn’t go back to my room afterwards. The walk through the campus helped me introspect a little bit and come to terms with everything I have experienced. As I said in a video, I never thought traveling would be as fulfilling as it has been. Whenever I heard people talking about traveling in the past I felt this mix of jealousy, contempt, and interest. I finally have something to contribute. I do wish I would have played a bit more for a those folks around the nameless lake.

                I thought I was going to have to throw down on my way back from the market. Fortunately, the boys scuffling were jus rhul drunk. I was legitimately concerned they were going to know kung fu and I was going to get my ass whooped. Thankfully I approached the situation with a level head and I found out that ‘very drunk’ is one of the phrases in their English vocabulary.

Cake time was fun. Again, super girly, but so it goes. The tattoo talk was very interesting. I really hope Olivia gets a tattoo. Even though it’s not as acceptable in China to get one, I think she could rock one really well. I can see Nancy getting one on her foot or some other place. It’d definitely be a small one.

Another visit to the airport tomorrow. I won’ t miss the pollution. That’s honestly it. I hope I get to come back again real soon. Till then, I’m hoping for plenty of skype conversations and many more songs.

                Schools visiting schools. Today we got to encounter some adorable little youngsters and some ambitious high school students. I’m glad I got to test one of my new vocab words (hint: lao shu)

                The kindergarten school made me wish I could be a kid again for just a little bit. Or take some shrooms again. The lack of shrooms helped me focus on all aspects of the classroom that help the students learn in so many different ways. To help with separation anxiety, the back wall has a series of photos that show students leaving their parents, students crying, and then students after a year of school, in which they were hugging and playing. The pictures of students crying were very striking when considering their place in America, but it makes a lot of sense. When considering the theory of mind development, it must be difficult to try and get the students to understand that many students get sad and scared when they leave their parents. The vivid pictures help with empathizing and developing the theory of mind that other students can feel the same way. For me personally, developing that mindset that I wasn’t the only one that wanted to start sobbing when my mom left helped me detach myself from my parents. It’s strange to think about the aspect of theory of mind that deals with one living in a different house than your parents usually does not develop until one is 18 years or older. I feel like I know many people that still haven’t grown out of that mindset.
                In addition to the pictures on the back wall, there were also books like The Little Mermaid, Snow White, and Three Blind Mice. It is interesting to note that the books have the Chinese characters and the pinyin. Another aspect I found to be incredibly necessary to teach today’s youth is the value for plants and wildlife. A large section next to the window is dedicated to growing garlic, potato spuds, and various other plants. They also had two tanks that had a goldfish in one and a turtle in another.
                Attached to the classroom was a room with wooden floors that is meant for sleeping and playing. I assume each student has a bed they pull out around noon to take a nap.
                The students also ate breakfast there. Seeing that made me wish when I was growing up it was not an option to not eat breakfast. After they were done eating, they were allowed to play at an adjacent table. The two boys that finished first started playing with a blank landscape that they could put shapes on to make a picture. They then gravitated to playing with mazes. The girl that came over played with shapes.
                In the hallway there were several different sets of pictures. One set of pictures looked like it was done with calligraphy brushes and in that style. The paintings themselves were of various animals, like roosters. Another set of drawings looks like it was meant to imitate Starry Night by Van Gough. Projects like that seem incredible for growth. To be able to learn about an artist like that by trying to paint his most famous work at such a young age is just immeasurably valuable. Part of me wonders if that inhibits production of anything from one’s own set of imagination. Of course each Starry Night imitation had its own twist, but they were all clearly trying to imitate something.

                From the elementary school we headed to a café called Golden Phoenix. On the way I had a great conversation with Terrance about everything from cartoons to bikes to textbooks. So, most of my favorite things. I can really see myself keeping in contact with him. He seems like he’s had such an interesting life so far. It would be a waste to not say hey every now and then.
                The food at Golden Phoenix was great. The cream corn sandwich was sweeter than I thought it was going to be, but very good. The egg in the quiche-like pastry I got was not cooked like I thought it was going to be but it was still decent.
                We ascended the stairway to Heaven to get to the café we had drinks at. I wish I could take credit for coming up with that phrase, but the credit is due to maybe Led Zeppelin and the designer who thought to put that on the face of the stairs. I had papaya milk tea and some crunchy rice crackers there. The papaya tea was so good that Professor Budd had to get some.

                The high school was the best you can get. I can see why Professor Li is where she is now based on the kind of education she received growing up. Not only was everything very modern, but the philosophy for teaching even lends itself to a more creative path to gaining knowledge. For example, the teacher showing us around, who coincidentally teaches English, was telling us about a project where a group of students is given a movie and they have to try to imitate the words and accents as closely as possible. To make learning more interesting, all of the groups compete to be the best in the class and all of the classes compete to be the best in the school. Though this method is much better than rote learning and giving answers, it still seems like creativity is hampered by the students simply imitating the scenes. It is beneficial for them to work in groups, but I feel like it would be one step better for the students to watch these scenes and then write their own scene. Then they can develop their own accent as opposed to imitating the Smurfs and Kiera Knightly.
                After learning about some accomplished graduates of the high school, we had lunch with some students. I talked with Tony and James (as in LeBron). Tony was very interested in religion and how the Bible was structured. James drifted towards American’s perception of boxing and kung fu. I will say that he taught me a very interesting poem, which is now immortalized in calligraphy on a sheet of paper.

                The calligraphy I did can speak for itself. The gal that I talked to after everyone left also spoke for herself. The conversation I had with her made me realize how similar PKU is to a lot of American Universities. Just like the first semester (or quarter for DePaul) at any college you cannot say no to anything. Balancing activities with school work is very challenging, which I am glad our calligraphy teacher recognized. It was also good to hear how excited she was about going back home soon and what calligraphy did for her. I wish I wouldn’t have interrupted her writing a letter to her friend, but I think she didn’t mind. I feel like the students enjoy getting any chance to express their emotions as freely as they can. I could tell from how she spoke of this boy that played the bassoon and took pictures that she liked him. You don’t just carry around a tri-pod all day for someone because you’re just interested in photography.
                I also got to play a little bit of ping pong. The guy I was playing was good, but I was able to hold my own. At least a little bit.

                Ate, setup Skype for Nancy and renren for myself, talked with Pat, saw Courtney put makeup on Nancy, started getting snoozy. But first…

New words:

Ni duo da? – how old are you?
ni shi xuesheng ma? – are you a student?
wei shenme - why

Mu gua nai cha – papaya milk tea (nai – milk; cha – tea; mu gua - papaya
you ba – rice/corn crackers, fried

Yi dian dian – a little

Jing yuen – golden cloud (our guide/laoshi at the high school)

Wo cong meiguo lai – I come from America
feichang ganxie – thank you very much

Zhong wen … zenme shuo? – How do you say … in Chinese?

Gei wo xie xi alai, hao ma? – could you write it down?

Guan – store

Shing lai – wake up

Fu – good luck

Zhuan huan qi - adaptor

The Beirut of China. Taken at the Temple of Heaven

                Free day! Our agenda held the Temple of Heaven and some shopping at the Pearl Market.

                The ToH was outrageous, which I’m just going to start expecting now. Yet, I like being surprised by these places. Being a tourist definitely has certain amenities to it. For one, I can try almost anything and it is entertaining to myself and most of the people I’m with. I figure once you start living somewhere you have to do things for serious. Don’t get me wrong, learning how to do a Chinese dance was awesome, I just learned from our new friend Grace that it is for old people.

                I also got to play some air badminton/ping pong  and kick around a hackysack type thing. The difference was that it had a feather on it and had some jingly rings. Then we got to see all of the sights, which were impressive, par usual. Yet, we were discussing how certain things have much more significance when you feel like part of the history. Because I don’t have a very strong heritage, I don’t have many things in my heritage to be inspired by. I know Courtney and Erin take pride in being Indian, but I just don’t have that. Regardless, ta han piaoliang le (it was beautiful).

                The Pearl Market was massive. So many shops…  Many of them with the same thing. The one that stood out was (not surprisingly) the music shop. Betty is the name of the girl that runs Beijing Peach Blossom Dream Company. I bought a melodica and learned all about how Betty started a dumpling restaurant many years ago, got her MBA partially in New Jersey, but finished in Holland. She runs her business in a Western (or modern) style, where she prefers having repeat customers and forms relationships with them to accrue income over time. From what she told me, it seemed like her learning English, which was rare back then, gave her the advantage she needed to communicate with tourists and run her dumpling shop. Apparently she also makes great dumplings. I think she made a good call turning her dumpling shop into a guitar shop though.

                Long train ride home and straight to dinner. I had bao fan, which is a Korean dish with egg, pork, sprouts, and other veggies served over rice. Bao means to mix the food before you eat it. It came in this small cast iron kettle.

                One on one time in these trips is a necessity. I feel like I’ve always gotten the best conversations out of having little stretches of time where I can really get to know what people think about various ideas. For example, if I didn’t get to talk to Erin like I have, I’d probably have a much different view of her, as most people do when they don’t know someone.

                Wrapping up the night was another great conversation with Pat, some messing around on the melodica, and confirming that this Rosetta Stone does in fact work. Zaijian moon.

New words:

Dong nan men – East South Gate
tian – tan / dong – men - – temple heaven east gate
lu \ - road
chu - - exit
xi bei – west north

Ke ^ ai \ - cute

Wo shu shue/ sha – I am a student
Beijing guang ying ni – Welcome to Beijing

Shu – tree

Zumen zho – how do you go…

Ma Jian – air ping pong

Bo lo mi – prickly fruit
chu pe – sprite
fan she jiang – ketchup
liu da gun – popular Chinese dessert

La ma jian – ype of Buddhism (purple robes)
ji bu jiao – Christianity
e su man jian – Muslim
jian – religion

Jien ju – pearls

Hu lu si – Chinese flute
ji ta – guitar
chi pao – Chinese dress
ching wa tsu – blue and white designed pieces of China ware
fung zheng – kite

mi lao shu – Mickey Mouse
xiao – small
shou – thin

xiang – formal with yao; to miss
wo xiang ni – I miss you

Hen gao xing yu jian ni – nice to meet you

This fine Saturday’s travels took us to The Great Wall. Oh yes. The (pronounced thee) Great Wall. Thankfully, our bus driver was running late. So, we got to eat our reliably tasty breakfast. I’m not sure if I was in a strange mood or I just didn’t feel like talking, but I was fairly quiet during the meal. More on this later.

                I was amazed even before we got to The Great Wall. The trip there revealed a little bit of the splendor of the mountains. All of the views were complimented by some medium talk with one gal in our group in regards to what she does. I feel like the whole group has several questions they would like to ask her, yet, seeing as how this is a group comprised largely of women, everyone is probably being fairly passive. I guess it’s rubbing off on me in a sense. I did get her to talk about how she is a project manager for different groups like UNICEF and various other non-profit organizations. I’m glad that she was able to take time off of her job to come with us. I’m also glad I got her to open up about the seedy nature of non-profits, particularly how Navy Pier just turned into a non-profit, making it essentially useless. Or just easier to rake a hidden profit from. I know the NFL operates as a non-profit organization and I can assume most of the people involved with it don’t do too awfully when it comes to their salaries (2011: The Year of The Lockout).

                Our destination was as chilly as everyone said it was. I am glad that I bundled up as much as I did or else I don’t think I would have had as good of a time. The pictures and videos I took probably explain the wall much better than I can. In one video I talk about that feeling where your sense of being overwhelmed is exhausted to the point of being in a Zen-like state of pure experience. Really, the only things to do at the wall are walking up and down it and taking pictures, but to stop and consider the significance of such a place makes helps to attain that exhaustedly overwhelmed feeling.

                Lunch was at a Chinese fast food restaurant called King something. The food was okay. Very American. They had popcorn chicken. I had this beef with onions that was cooked like we had at the hot pot and then put on rice. Even though it is cooked fast, it is much healthier than deep frying. Again, I felt like a bit of an outsider during some of our meals. When tons of girls are together there are just different conversations that happen. They’ve been around Patrick and I long enough to not give any quantity of fucks about adjusting to maybe make the conversations more involved. It is rare that anyone initiates a conversation with me. The positive side of that is I now understand at least partially what it’s like for a girl to be in a group of guys that only talk about dicks and sports. It’s hard for one to break out of their comfortable conversation sphere, especially when one is already so out of their comfort zone, like China. Moving table, dick move, but they’re all women. So I guess it was a vag move.

                After a couple of purchases and a snoozy bus ride, we headed over to the Olympic Park and, again, took in the splendor of a previous Olympic location. Though there were plenty of places to look and take pictures, we found solace in flying kites. We must have been playing with kites for an hour or so. Sometimes I feel bad for getting caught up in these kinds of things when I know other people may want to go walk around or something. Yet, that is the essence of traveling with a group. Regardless, I couldn’t help the urge to keep trying to make mine go as high as I could.
                The best events happen when you aren’t expecting it. Everyone knows that. It is much better to experience though. While we were in the park, some students at another university were playing this variation of dodgeball where there were three lines of people. The middle line had to dodge the balls the outer lines were throwing at them. If they got hit, they were dead. If they caught it, one of the dead players was revived. I don’t want to say I was the catalyst for us playing with them, but if I didn’t get a certain stray ball for them and look all wide eyed and bushy tailed, I’m not sure we would have gotten to play. I feel like these fortunate events are absolutely the product of being as open as possible to ambiguous situations and just saying yes.

                Speaking of just saying yes, I ran into another fortunate situation on my way to the cafeteria. Though I would have liked some company, I was glad to be by myself for that time. I got such a rush from just walking the short path we have walked so many times. Maybe it was the lack of pressure of having to converse with anyone else. Maybe I finally realized I’m in China. Either way, running into that group of students with a guitar was fantastic. I played them Carlin is Real, or at least a version of it. Then, I got the pleasure of having them sing me a Chinese song with a guitar accompaniment and some recommendations for music. James, Nicole, and Little River (aka Be Strong) were the three that I got to talk to the most and eat dinner with.
                At dinner, I learned about Crazy English (abandon, abandon, abandon), some Chinese jokes (which I still don’t know if I’m saying it correctly… I am too cold), and other bits of drama and music. It was cool to find out that Nicole is essentially running the same school track I am with her Psychology and Theater double major. They mentioned a theater competition they went to which I am a little upset I didn’t get to go to. But, I never would have known.  It was still interesting talking about improvisation and how Nicole does things where they have to act like a monster, which is apparently unflattering for the girls. We also talked about the inflection differences in Chinese and English. James said that he learned that in English, we speak from our diaphragm and keep the conversation at very low tones. In Chinese, they speak very loudly and at much higher tones. It was also interesting to note that James was taking a guitar class. I didn’t even know they gave those here! Peking definitely does not put off that vibe that there are those kinds of classes, nor are plausible for my perception of their degree.

From there, I got to go to the market, buy a boat load of liquor, and have quite a time MacGyvering these Jan Ying beers open. I would venture to say Yan Jing means “tight bottle caps”. The beer tasted similar to Heineken, but had more yeast in it maybe. I couldn’t pick out exactly what the difference was, but if I had to infer from the 3.6% alcohol content, I’d say a decent amount of yeast was involved. I can’t remember exactly how the interplay between yeast, hops, and the alcohol works, but I know more hops means more alcohol. The beers were accompanied by some more shots and some of our lovely female companions (Megan, Brittany, Lauren, Rachel, Julia). Then it was off to Propoganda and Sensation.
                The bars were very similar to American clubs: tons of people, loud as fuck, overpriced drinks. It made me wish I had gone to KTV to see what that would have been like, but I am glad I got to experience a little bit of the seedy underground Beijing club scene. They did play this interesting dice game there that I think was identical to the one they played in that scene in Pirates of the Caribbean. My understanding was that you got three rolls to get as many of the dice to match as possible. Lower numbers were better, meaning 3 3’s beat 3 6’s (this was my scenario). Though I lost the dice game, we all had cheers and drank. You could smoke in the club, as evidenced by this one picture I took of our dice friends. American DJs need to take note from these Chinese DJs in regards to how long to play songs. These DJs only 30 to 60 second clips of songs that were mixed as well. Also, the Ghostbusters theme was played. Coat check was a bitch. We met this strange man outside who has been living here for 5 years and taught math to students.

Meg and I caught a cab and I knoked out something fierce.

New words:

Nu ran – female
nan – male
mama – mother
baba – father
gege – brother (older)
didi – brother (younger)
giegie – sister (older)
meimei – sister (younger)
fu wa – blessed babies
wa wa – baby
yeye – grandpa
nainai - grandma
Wo yo yi gege hu yi didi – I have one older brother and one younger brother.

do jiao – red bean soy milk
hu – and
ji ga – this
meiyou – nothing; no

Ni xiang yi zhi shanyang e hou - you look very lovely
Wo bun eng deng dai gei ni qinwen – I want to give you kisses

Ni hen leng – you very cold (playful saying when someone says cold joke; meant to be bad/corny)

The Chinese symbol for big. A theme throughout the trip

Wee! I feel like it’s hard to have a bad day here. It’s weird to think about this as being on vacation but I really am. I guess I don’t remember the last time I was truly on vacation. Especially for this long. We aren’t even half way through yet. That makes these long days all the better.

Today, started the day with a tour of the psychology department. A couple different students came out and talked to us about the various kinds of research they do there. One girl said they were running studies on emotions like shame and anger. Another male student informed us on the EEG lab and what they did there. Our tour guide Terence spoke English really well. He was from Hong Kong, went to international schools growing up, and then Clark University in Massachusetts. So, no wonder. I thought he was amusing, but apparently the girls in the group thought he seemed like a dick.  Again, no wonder the girls thought that. I wonder if all girls think some guy is a dick if he’s just trying to be entertaining to a group of people… We also met a gal named Helen who has been to two countries that I will probably never get to go to: North Korea and Cuba. Apparently in North Korea you cannot talk to any of the citizens, lest they are poisoned by your foreign ways.

From there, we headed to the Olympic badminton courts. It was no United Center, but that feeling of being on an Olympic court was exhilarating. I had some people take some videos, but I didn’t get any from when I played Professor Li. Allegedly, she played throughout elementary school, but she was not aware that I’ve been hustlin’ errday since I was a lad. If someone in our group would not have been whining about how she hadn’t played yet, we would have played to 21 and it would have been no contest. I was crushed that I lost… But I played impressively, so I heard. Either way, it was (again) exhilarating (see Megan’s voice modulation) to be able to get some exercise.

When play was finished, we had some nommy lunch. A lazy suzan was involved. There may have been a whole fish on our table at one point. Of course I ate it. We also got to converse with the aforementioned Helen and an adorable student who had this light blue sweater on.

The lecture we attended was on the theory of mind (ToM), which is the concept of knowing what others do and expanding your beliefs to include others. The lecture itself was a little hard to stay focused on, but the content was incredibly interesting. I know I recorded that and was glad that I did. I may or may not have been snoozing a bit. In my defense, we were in a warm room and I had a full belly. That is all.

After a rousing conversation with Patrick and some shots of rice liquor, which is 56% by the way, we went with four girls in our group (Ali, Lauren, Sarah, and Britney) to a restaurant that served a type of food called Chinese hot pot. Unreal. The food was fondue style, where we had to different soups boiling in the middle of the table and various meats and veggies to dip in. About halfway through the meal, these wild noodle men started doing these tricks with long strands of noodles and then gracefully placed them in our boiling soup. For some reason, I feel a bit distant at the end of today. I think this is just back lash from being the one that everyone relies on whenever any kind of Chinese needs to be spoken, which is rough. I wish I knew more Chinese.

I did encounter a high amount of stress when trying to direct the taxi driver to the restaurant. I am really glad I was able to write down all of the numbers he rattled off to me. It was hell trying to understand anything else, especially when we got to the restaurant.