oh, no, it's the "china you'

As I sit here at my desk, listening to Sufjan Stevens' new Christmas album (it is amazing. Go out and buy it. I'm in love) and watching my Christmas lights flash above me, I'm inspired to write yet another blog entry.

One of the reasons I want to post is to mention the fact that I am curently wearing black knee socks that have a gray and purple argyle pattern on them. With a skirt. Weird, I know. I'll get back to that.

Chinese lessons are coming along alright. I went to the free on-campus class last week for the first time, and thought itw as ridiculously hard. Our teacher (one of our bosses in the Foreign Affairs Office) wants to focus on learning the characters. I personally think that learning the characters won't be particularly helpful if I can't even pronounce words written in pinyin. Reading Chinese written in pinyin (with the roman alphabet) isn't like reading English, even if it uses the same letters. Even though I "know" the tones, it's still really hard to say correctly. We'll see if the class improves...I just felt so lost when she started talking about the different strokes for writing the characters. Let's be honest, I need to talk to cab drivers and buy things and eat in restaurants. I might need to talk to some other people, but am I ever going to be writing things in Chinese? I think not.

So yesterday Shannon, Dania, and I had our Chinese lesson with our tutor, Emily. Emily then invited us to have dinner in her and Alex's apartment, which ended up being really fun. I didn't actually do anything to help, but we watched her make scrambled eggs with tomatoes, dumplings, and chicken fried rice. Ooh, thinking about it right now is making me hungry. We had a really nice meal and it was so nice to have a home-cooked dinner. I feel like anything I "cook" here doesn't really constitute as "home-cooked" because I don't make anything besides pb & j sandwiches, dumplings, pasta, or ramen. It's just such a hassle, and if it only costs 6 rmb (um, like 80 cents) to go out and get chao mian (noodles with vegetables and meat in a spicy sauce) then it's hardly worth the trouble to cook. I'm looking forward to coming home and having a real kitchen (not a midget kitchen) with an oven and real cookware and a big fridge and more than 2 plates.

So, when we went out to the supermarket with Emily, we stopped at a random vendor on the street who was selling socks. Not just regular socks, although there was a pack of socks that were obviously mass-produced at some crappy factory that said 'polo' on them. We were interested in the really tall socks that had interesting designs on them. So...I ended up buying two pair, and today I wore them with a skirt. I was talking to Shannon, and I was like 'yeah, it's so weird that I'm wearing them, they're so not 'me.'' to which she responded, "oh, no, it's the "china you."" It's funny, but true. There are things that I wear here that I wouldn't necessarily wear at home. Or things that I buy here that are just ridiculous. If you looked at my dvd collection, you'd be embarrassed for me (although, for the record, many of the dvds i'm buying are to show to my students in my music class). I have no excuse for buying "Take the Lead," starring Antonio Banderas as a ballroom dance instructor who teaches troubled inner-city teens how to dance. No excuse, except that it's China and it was less than a dollar.

You'd wear weird socks and buy horrible movies if you lived here too. I know it.