Sword-swallower
Argh! There's too much that I want to say, because I've been busy. One: I bought my flight home: in a credit-card-less world, you can buy 'em on the phone and a man comes in a car and finds you and you hand over wodges of cash (a.k.a. "splodges of wonga") and are left with your real paper ticket, feeling gangstery as usual.
Two: my friend got married and I went to his wedding - the second this year! - which was very nice apart from the prominent screen showing festive footage of blonde bikini models throughout the hotel ceremony. As per twenty-first century Chinese tradition, the bride changed into at least four gorgeous dresses, possibly six, between walking through the red inflatable dragon/phoenix arch and graciously saying goodbye to the guests. During the meal I was reminded that no matter how long I lived in China, I would still be asked by friendly Shushus if I could eat Chinese food and use chopsticks, etc., having forgotten that this ever was an issue for anyone. Weird, but as my dad has started saying, "quidquid."
Two point five: bumped into (邂逅'd, actually) Edge of the World at a random spot in the city again - that boy gots 缘分。Before jumping on the bus to go home for the Dragon Boat Festival the next day (the 5th of the 5th traditional month), he made sure I knew how to observe it - eat 粽子 (flavoured sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves or, here up north, reeds); eat a boiled egg for breakfast; and if you're female, tie a "five-colour thread" around your wrist. All your troubles will osmose into this string, which you will not take off until the first day of rain after the festival - then you cut it off and let all your troubles wash away with it in the rain. In fact it rained the very next day, and the ground was dotted with colourful string. Oh, and think of Qu Yuan 屈原, the Warring States (Chu 楚) poet who drowned himself around 278 BC and thereby instigated the whole miscellany.
Three: I celebrated a birthday properly for the first time for years and, after a 自助烧烤 feast (热闹, but where were all the Chinese people? note to self: next time force them to come despite dormitory curfews) and a night out (where are all the Chinese people? note to self: at home in bed), am now twenty-one. Hurray!
Four: finally, what I actually wanted to say was that yesterday I finished my part-time stint at the private Korean school. Because I'm in a tearing hurry to go to sleep, this is from an email to my dad. He won't mind:
"...It really went well overall. It ended with us all exchanging email addresses and several of the girls getting tearful and the boys demanding explanations for why exactly I had to leave - there's nothing sweeter than teenage boys trying to stay cool while at the same time really wanting to say "waaaaaah I'll miss you!" ("I'll miss ... the class.") As I left one girl hailed me from her dorm window, and as I turned the corner I heard some others wailing pitifully, "Kaaaaaaaaaay!" So all in all I think you could conclude they liked me, ha ha. I was sorry to leave, to say the least.
Oh and in case this may ever come in handy for a fun time-filler, I invented a game (tho' I may not have been the first) which could be used for fun and/or vocab revision and which went down a hoot with the classes. [Note 妘纯's loosening grasp of idiom. -Ed.] No prep necessary, just a list of likely - DRAWABLE - words. You write the words down the sides of the board leaving lots of space to draw on. One student stands at the board with the marker while another student secretly chooses a word and begins to DESCRIBE to the first student what to draw - no hand gesturing allowed, only things like "diagonally - yes - keep going - now stop! - now go down down down yes and now draw a circle, a small circle." The first student to guess which word the speaker is thinking of gets to be next at the board!
This remains fun for at least 40 minutes and 20 average words would last about an hour with intermediates. It's a riot :) and imagine the cognitive ouch of having to control someone else in a language you're just learning! Tee hee hee."
And with all that out of the bag, I can go to sleep knowing I have truly scratched the barrel of essay procrasti... [thud]