Heeeeeere's Phil!

It's hard to believe that we haven't gotten around to introducing our newest member of the family online yet! We've certainly talked about him a lot, and we've taken tons of pictures, but we haven't put those pictures up anywhere for anyone to see. Time to remedy that situation.

As you may know, our cat, Jon Bon Jovi (Yes, it's a mouthful of a name--you can call him JBJ, or Jovi, for short), is a pretty social guy. He doesn't do so well when he has to be all alone for several hours at a time. And, unfortunately, when we're in school, Ben and I are away from the house for several hours at a time pretty much every day. We didn't want a sad kitty on our hands, so, around the time classes started three weeks ago, we decided it would probably be a pretty good idea to find JBJ a new little friend. We went down to the Lawrence Humane Society to see if the perfect little kitty friend was just waiting for us to adopt him and bring him home.

Turns out he was, and his name is Phil.

Phil is a pretty rascally little guy. He's only 9 months old, so he's still a kitten, really, and he is packed full of kitten energy. Luckily, he hasn't managed to completely irritate our Jovi, who is turning into a bit of an old man these days. (Sigh, aren't we all?) The two are the best of buds, almost inseparable, following one another around the house. In fact, our friend Rob commented last night that Phil was a little bit like Jovi's shadow.

Evenings are wrestle-mania time for these guys. It's pretty exciting stuff. And immediately following wrestle-mania is bathtime. That's mutual bathtime, where they take turns bathing each other. Then it's chase each other into and out of the box and/or laundry basket time.

Then it's wrap the kitty bodies around Ben's head time. That's the best time of all! At least it is if you're not a Ben trying to get work done.



Phil likes to chill next to the sliding doors that open out to the deck


Phil in his natural environment, with his favorite toy, a rolled up ball of paper


Jovi's so happy since Phil came to live with us

and then . . . four months later . . .

So, I am back to my blog. After a four month silence, that is.

In my defense, my absence isn't entirely due to me being lazy and/or neglectful of my dear ol' blog. My absence was, at least partly, due to the fact that China blocked all access to blogger sites during the last couple of months I was in Tianjin. And then Ben and I moved back to the U.S., and I was completely overwhelmed with getting myself re-settled, not to mention completely out of the habit of blogging. And then school started. And then, of course, chaos ensued.

So, my poor old blog just lay there and languished for about four months.

Lucky (?) for me, someone left a (fairly sarcastic) comment on one of my blog entries today, inspiring me to take another look at good ol' blog (and to erase that sarcastic comment--seriously, if you're going to be sarcastic at me, but you don't have the guts to sign your name to your sarcasm, then you are outta here).

I promise nothing along the lines of consistency here, but I think I can manage to leave a little update here and there. And so . . .

Life update: I am thoroughly entrenched in Early China at the moment. I am studying Classical Chinese and Early Imperial China in my classes right now. And I am teaching Confucianism and Daoism in my Eastern Civ classes right now. So for me, it is pretty much all Early China all the time.

Interesting? Perhaps.

Directly related to the area I am interested in researching? Not so much.

Time consuming? Oh, yes. Most definitely, yes.

it's picnic time . . . sort of

It hasn't all been work and study around here. In fact, we've had some enjoyable times around here lately. We spent last weekend in Beijing with some friends from Lawrence who have been living in Japan this year. (more on that later) And yesterday afternoon, we got together with some friends for a Let's Welcome Summer picnic.

Well sort of.

The weather has been completely summery all week long, sunny and humid, with temperatures in the mid-to-high 80's. But then, around 1:00 yesterday afternoon, just a couple hours before we planned to start our picnic, the temperatures just suddenly started dropping, the wind started blowing, and the rain clouds started gathering.

On the one hand, it was a real relief that the temperatures dropped. Ben and I have been putting off turning on the A/C because it uses so much electricity, and we don't want to have to go buy more electricity units before we leave in less than two months, but our apartment has just been sweltering for the past couple of days. That kind of muggy heat makes it hard to study, hard to eat, hard to sleep--basically hard to do anything. On the other hand, our picnicking plans were threatened by the stormy skies.

Threatened, but not ruined entirely. Instead of going out to picnic, we decided to have an indoor picnic, at our friends Miguel and Xiaoyin's house. Everyone brought a little something to contribute (we brought my new favorite cookies--peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip--yum!), and Miguel cooked up some hot chicken and cheese sandwiches to share. We munched, chatted, looked at photos, and watched Miguel teach our Chinese teacher to dance.

The great feast

Miguel teaches our teacher to dance like a Colombian



Ben and Lawrence eating the last cookie




Good times!




Who's the man? Inhye's the man.

you know you've been in China awhile when . . .

1.) You're walking down the street, and you see a guy with a giant serrated knife tied to a long pole, which he is using to trim tree branches, and while it may be kind of weird, it's not the strangest thing you've seen this week. Not by far.

2.) You think to yourself that Mr. Pizza (Pizza for Women)'s strange Harvest Gold Pizza isn't bad. Not bad at all. Kind of tasty, in fact. Pumpkin-stuffed crust and all. In fact, it may be even better than their regular potato pizza (yes, there are two kinds of potato pizza. The regular one has potato, ham, onion, corn, mushrooms, and cheese in the crust--kind of boring, don't you think?).

3.) You are so used to reading "Chinglish" translations, it takes you a minute to realize that "Naked Shrimp" pizza is a pretty funny thing.

please electricize

That's the message that comes up on my (purchased in Tianjin) electronic dictionary when the battery runs low: "Power Low: Please Electricize." Every time it happens, I get these images of Olivia Newton John in her little 1980's leotard, singing "Let's Get Physical." I guess in my mind, electricizing is something like aerobicizing. Ben, on the other hand, always starts humming the Electric Slide when I mention that it's time to "electricize" my dictionary.

Anyway, electricizing and exercising seem to be kind of a big deal around these parts. Especially exercise competitions. You may remember that last semester I participated in a "Sports Day" for foreign students. Well, we had another one of those just a couple weeks ago--the Spring semester version of the event. My camera was broken, so I didn't get any pictures, unfortunately, but let me assure you: much running, jumping, ball-bouncing, three-legged racing, and tug-of-warring fun was had by all.



Ben has recently been informed that he, too, will be participating in a teacher/student Sports Day for his school. He has been assigned to a team, and today he was given his official Meijiang School Sports Day T-shirt. He was so proud of it, when I came in the door this afternoon he just stood and pointed to it. Not that I could have missed it, even without his finger guiding my eyes to the appropriate place. It is bright, BRIGHT caution-orange. You might say it is electric. I guess we can be sure that Ben won't get lost while he's wearing it. Not that he can really get lost in a crowd around here, anyway. We both kind of tend to stand out in these parts.

oh, and also . . .

just 80 days till we return to the States. Not that I'm counting or anything . . . .

bitter medicine

I don't think I even realized how long it had been since I last posted here until I got a little message from my mom-in-law (Hi, Nancy!) saying she missed my blog. I haven't been avoiding it on purpose. I think I've just been a little distracted lately, studying diligently for my class, and working my way through some issues in my head. Sometimes when you're in the midst of churning through such things, it's a little hard to write about them, or the other things going on around you.

I've definitely had some highs and lows over the past several weeks. It was a great achievement to test so well and get into a higher level class. I started the semester elated over that news. But I soon discovered that actually being in a class that is three levels higher than the class I started in last semester can be a really stressful, difficult, and time-consuming enterprise. I started the semester at the bottom of the class, and have been clamoring to move up ever since.

I am (I reluctantly admit) not very good at not being the best student in the class. I like being the one who gets it. I enjoy excelling. And unfortunately, in the past, when I haven't excelled at one thing or another, my impulse has been to cry, and then to quit. The truth is, I simply don't excel in this class, and I have spent a few afternoons crying over it. But I've also been working really hard at not allowing myself to quit. All of this is to say that the semester so far has been a big lesson in humility, and commitment, and personal improvement in general, and those kinds of lessons are like drinking Chinese medicine--they may be good for you in the long run, but they sure are bitter going down. And you have to take a lot of doses before it really starts to work.

That being said, I'm working on not allowing this class (and my position in it) to take up such a prominent place in my thoughts. That's good, because there are a lot of other things to appreciate around here, all of which have nothing to do with studying Chinese, or excelling at it. Like the beautiful warm weather (mid-70's!) we've had over the past two weeks. Or the fact that the entire city is full of blossoming trees right now, all of them spilling their little pink petals like snowflakes over the city streets. Or the cool, new cafe Ben and I have been frequenting, which is only a few blocks away from our home. Or the fact that the streets are beginning to fill up with people in the evenings again, thanks to the rise in temperature, and having people on the streets makes every day feel like a party, even when there's no occasion for it. There's a lot to enjoy around here. I'll try to keep you in the loop.



(Also: sorry there are no photos. My camera broke shortly after we returned from our big trip, and I haven't had it fixed, or bought a new one yet. Working on that . . . . )