A couple of observations today:
1. I miss salt and sand on ice. Even though salt kills grass, and is generally bad for the environment in large quantities, and sand gets all over your shoes and gets tracked around everywhere, every time I slip and almost fall on the inch-thick solid ice coating on the sidewalks around here... I miss the brisk efficiency of New England snow removal. I found out a few days ago who's responsible for removing the snow on campus - groups of students required to show up and shovel. I thought for a second what would happen if Williams suddenly decided to save money by no longer using salt or sand, and forcing the students to form work brigades for snow removal. When you start directly comparing China to the United States, it very quickly becomes obvious what enormous differences remain. It's very easy to get very frustrated very quickly if you keep saying, "well, where I'm from, there's no way we would put up with [inse rt any one of about ten million things here]." For example, in China, you can't flush toilet paper down the toilet - the plumbing systems here can't handle it. Instead, you put the toilet paper in a wastepaper basket next to the toilet. I swear, when I get home I am going to spend an entire afternoon just flushing toilet paper down the toilet - just because I can.
2. All of the female Russian exchange students here dress like prostitutes. It is amazing - the temperature today hovered around the high-teens low-20s, and these girls are walking around in high fake-leather boots, black nylons, and miniskirts (not to mention tight low-cut shirts and eyeliner). The Russian guys dress like total slobs in oversized sweatshirts and jeans. Every time I think I've seen the most incredibly inappropriate outfit ever, another one comes along - tight black nylon pants with rhinestones on the back pockets? Who wears that to class? Russian women. I mean, not to stereotype or paint with a broad brush, but really...
The plan for tonight is calligraphy class - it's an elective class that meets twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Tuesday night our instructor told us about the five different kind of dots it's possible to make in the Chinese language - to give you an example, if you look at the characters 江，心，家，冰，and 羊, you'll find examples of all the different kinds of dots. Tuesday night, the instructor only talked about the dots, but didn't let us actually draw them. Yesterday, we went downtown and bought brushes, and tonight we finally get to start making dots on our own. Not all five kinds, though - according to our instructor, we'll only be practicing the most basic kind of dot - and we won't be writing characters, only dots. It will be two hours of attempting to make the perfect dot tonight - we'll see how it goes!
ok - now off to do some homework, if I can manage to make it back to the dorm without slipping on the ice. OH - I ALMOST FORGOT. I'M GOING SKIING AT YABULI ON SATURDAY! SKIING SKIING SKIING! Snow is actually supposed to be pretty good - they had a huge blizzard in parts of northeastern China last weekend (we only got five inches, but a lot of places got a lot more) - apparently conditions are as good as they've been all year. I will be sure to take lots of pictures, and hopefully will figure out how to post them online. Can't wait to check out a Chinese ski area - should be fun!
