Well, wan shang hao to everyone this week.
Surprised, are you? I mean, you only got my last letter like, five days ago! Is it even possible that you could get two amazing, wonderful bits of writing within one week? Yes it is. Because I am going to Mongolia tomorrow and I want to be able to give that week its own chronicle instead of combining two in one. Also, I hate getting behind in anything. (Dad: Hey, what about my rent?)
Heck yeah, you heard that right. I'm going to Mongolia tomorrow. Okay, we're going to Mongolia tomorrow. I seem to be having a problem with the family group mentality today, as demonstrated by the duck incident (hold your horses, I'll explain that in a bit). But these chronicles are all about me, so that's probably okay for now. Yes, tomorrow we are flying into Ulaanbaatar (or Ulaanbator, no one seems to agree), then we will hike and ride camels and camp in below freezing weather. Fun, right?
Well, you will just have to wait to find out if it is fun or not, because I have no idea. Next week will be a very exciting letter, I am sure. For now, you're stuck with this week, which has won the prize for Most Boring Week in China yet. Let's moonwalk back to Monday…
I stayed inside pretty much all day and did lots of schoolwork. Mom and I did go out in the evening to get some stuff for dinner from the market, but pretty much I stayed inside on the computer. Oh, we did watch the second episode of Downton Abbey, Season 2, which was very exciting and full of cliffhangers. And now I have to wait till Wednesday to watch episode 3! I don't know if I will be able to survive without knowing what Lavinia's secret is, or if Thomas really does have a heart now or if he's just back to his cunning and jerk-face ways.
Tuesday I again stayed inside all day and did schoolwork. The thing is, my American online school doesn't celebrate the Chinese National Holiday (which is why we're going out of town) so I've had to work ahead to be able to miss three days of school. I literally was doing statistics at 9:30 at night a few times this week. Whoever thinks homeschooling is easy, put that in your pipe.
Wednesday I did finally venture out into the stark world to go to Young Women's. I had to forgo my Solo Adventure, unfortunately, which made me quite sad. I was looking forward to it but had to do (you guessed it!) schoolwork. YW was fun, though, we were having this Knowledge activity learning how to sew buttons, iron, and cook a little bit to prepare us for our future lives. I already pretty much know how to do all of those things, so I got to be sort of a teacher and it was fun. I like being the only Laurel, I feel so useful teaching the little Beehives how to iron a shirt. I do wish there was someone to go on double dates with, though, as there are three fine Priests in the branch. That was probably TMI, wasn't it? Oh well. As stated, this is about me and I will feel free to give my opinions.
Thursday I pretended to work hard in the morning but actually just wanted to watch Australian kid's shows with Daniel, so I put off my work and upped my stress level by a large margin. Mom and I went out with a cute young adult to the Yashow Market again, where I bought a nice warm jacket to bring to Mongolia. I then rushed home to go off to teach piano lessons, which was pretty fun. My seven year old student, Anthea (cutest name ever for a little girl, right?), is darling and precocious. As I was giving her the assignments for the week she was like, "Well how about I do this and this and that?". Pretty much, she just decided what she would practice this week. I think I'll be out of a job soon.
Well, my client's driver takes me home from piano lessons but usually just drops me off at the subway. That day I was like, "I'm too tired for the subway…" so he took me all the way home. That'll learn me good. It took TWO HOURS to get home because (according to Mr. Liu) there was a star in town and everyone was going to see them. I'm guessing it was some sort of concert or event that lots of people were going to see, so traffic was like minnows going through the water, slow motion times a billion. It took like half an hour to go 50 yards. I don't feel like I talk about the traffic here very much, because it seems so much a part of life now, but it's crazy! People just walk wherever they want, drive wherever, whenever they want, and yet there hardly seem to be any accidents! This one intersection we went through on Thursday looked like one of those Driver's Ed diagrams (you know, with dotted lines showing how this car turns here and that one there), except all at once. You just had to keep going in the direction you are going and hope someone will let you through at some point. Meanwhile Mr. Liu is sticking his head out the window and chatting with the other drivers, who there is no way he actually knows, and laughing with them about the traffic or something. He didn't really translate for me, which is fine I guess. I did get to practice my Chinese with him, which was cool I guess. He says, "Ni shuo Zhongwen, hen hao!"
Just mildly frightening.
Friday was once again spent inside in our super nice apartment slaving over the computer. Did you know that the day the thirteen colonies officially declared independence from Britain was actually July 2nd, 1776, and that the Declaration was signed and published July 4th? In 1777 Congress completely forgot to celebrate their declaration of freedom until July 3rd, so then decided to celebrate it July 4th. Pretty much, we've been celebrating the wrong day for 240 years! Inorite?! That's about all I remember learning this week. Oh, and that the first phonautograph was made in like 1860 and recorded sound waves onto a piece of paper, without any way to play them back until 2008 when someone made a computer program that could read them. I listened to the creator (Eduoard Leon Scott de Martinville, yes I just wrote that from memory) singing "Au Clair de la Lune" from a recording made in 1860!! Crazy! It was like listening to a ghost.
Oh yeah, I should probably be talking about China, huh? I won't make you read my journal of cool things I learned in school. You can read that along with my dream journal if you like sometime. That one has some interesting tidbits, like the dream where I was a Chinese man whale hunting illegally on the Baltic Sea, or the one where I found out my half-brother was Native American. But, that's a story for another day. This is about China, and today (Saturday) is one of the most important holidays in Chinese history.
Like our own Independence Day (see, that did have a point!) China celebrates its birth on October 1st of every year, to commemorate the day in 1949 when Chairman Mao stood up in front of the Forbidden City and declared China a Republic. There's probably a lot of other history surrounding that, I suggest you find a reliable source to research the fall of Imperial China and the rise of Communism (make sure it has proper citations!). I will just say that now it is time for all of China to take a break and travel around. Pretty much everyone has a week off of work and school. It is a time when everyone in China comes to Beijing, and everyone in Beijing leaves it as fast as they can. I think our branch will have about 50 members at church tomorrow. We're going to Mongolia, as I said, and hopefully that place is out-of-the-way enough that it won't be too crowded. I've heard everyone's going to Thailand or Korea.
So, our National Day was actually quite nice and not too crowded. We stayed near home on the edge of the second ring road, which is probably the reason, because everyone goes to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square in the middle of the city. It was beautiful weather today. Remember at the beginning, when I said that I might never see blue sky again? I take it back. Most of the weather has been really amazing here (except for the occasional hazardous day) and I love it. We headed out to help clean the church building, and then to the Yashow Market to buy a few more things for Mongolia, and then out to lunch.
Gray skies are gonna clear up! The view out the front door.
Oh boy, lunch. We went to this restaurant nearby our hotel which I liked but mom and Sarah weren't too impressed with. The coolest thing about it, though, is the Beijing duck that they serve. When you order it they bring out a cart, a chef, and a carving knife and carve it right in front of you. Then they give you pancakes, onions, cucumbers, and sauce to assemble your little duck wraps and set the meat in front of you. They gave us three plates: one with mostly slices of skin with a little bit of meat, one with slices that had a little bit more meat, and the split-in-half, smiling duck head. It was pretty much The Christmas Story if you're still having a little bit of trouble imagining it. I love China. Yes, I ate some duck brain today. What did you do?
Who will be the next Iron Chef?
Yep, that's a duck head.
We had ordered a few dishes before the duck and almost finished those off, then waited for at least half an hour for them to set the side dishes (pancakes, etc) in front of us. Apparently National Day is the official Day to Eat Duck, because we saw at least five other ducks go by and get carved without stopping at our table. Finally I called a waitress over and said, "Hey, where my duck at?!". I realized afterwards that I had said "wo de kao ya zai na li" instead of "wo MEN de kao ya zai na li." Men is the difference between Yours, Mine, and Ours. (HA! I made a funny.) That was sort of embarrassing. Not really, I guess, because we got our duck within five minutes. It pays to be demanding in China.
After going home, chilling, packing a little bit, and taking a very satisfying nap (the invention of which was, in fact, better than sliced bread and floppy disks combined) we started getting dinner ready, at which point my dad pulled out the frog and stuck it in the oven. Yeah, you heard that right too. A couple days ago dad came home with a couple of raw frogs to be cooked for dinner. We (by which I mean Mom) managed to swallow our (her) disgust and try it. We ordered some nice room service, too, so it really seemed like quite a gourmet meal. I also ate some gangly frog legs today. China has brought to me a world of new experiences.
Another carving master
You know, it actually did taste a bit like chicken.
Well, it is much past time to say wan an, so I will end with a quote by Patrick Henry: "I have a dream that one day my country will do for me I can do for you, a day which will live in infamy, most likely in fourscore and seven years, a day which will give us liberty or give us death."
…it's funnier when you're 16.
Ellyn
P.S. Refrigerator. My haiku got cut off by poor copying skills. I'm sorry if anyone was wondering what the end was. You probably could have looked on the internet, I didn't actually think of it myself. That was really quite an embarrassing moment.
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