The Pledge reads that I will not speak English until "graduating from The Middlebury School in China." If I am caught violating The Pledge a letter is sent to Northwestern. If I am caught twice, I buy my own ticket home. This is a fine way to learn a language, but someone reported that I

"mumble English," implying that I violate the pledge. In short, somone tried to screw me.

Whoever you are, I don't appreciate you much.

In other news, something has happened. Something has flipped, and I suddenly enjoy China and am thankful to have another quarter here. This is remarkable, considering I spent the vast majority of the beginning hating my life. I think the switch finally went though when my roommate took me to a dance on campus. I met people, I learned Slow Three Step, and I felt like a normal person. A person that can interact and make friends and tell awful, stupid jokes. And that was the best I've felt since coming to China. Plus, I won a little stuffed pig to put on my phone. So I suppose my life is now complete.

Two things I like about China

• the music and annoucements broadcast from speakers around campus at lunch and dinner
• meeting people and starting to have friends and people that i recognize around campus
  

Home in 2 and 1/2 weeks.

Some observations that one might not make instantly about China

• Some people keep all of their fingernails trimmed. Except for one. Which they grow to a disgusting length. You might think the purpose is to gross out foreigners, but it's actually a status symbol. With a nail that long you can't do manual labor, and most of these people are from the country side
• High school in China is super intense. But once you get to college it's pretty much clear sailing because the classes are too big to closely monitor student progress and because everyone slacks together, so there is no pressure except for about once a month
• Long Jing Tea is Hangzhou's famous tea, but I am pretty sure that it tastes like tree bark. I much prefer Ou-Long Tea
• Nearly 1/2 of our program has been in the director's office in tears
• I am addicted to Sprite (雪碧). I have it at nearly every meal, using it to counter act whatever foreign food I am eating
• I have lost weight (but not much, Grandma!)
• Every Tuesday I go to 家乐福a combination mall/uber-Target to visit friends that I made that work in a Tea Shop. They give me free tea, but I try to avoid Long Jin!
• I ride my bicycle all around the city--it's really pretty amazing. The city is rather compact, so 20 minutes can get you most places, and the bicycle traffic is more or less undescripable. I was terrified of it for the first month and a half
• I had Thanksgiving dinner at Pizza Hut with the only other year long student

Hopefully you find these musings thrilling and wonderful. In exactly three weeks I will be on a plane to come home. Thank God for Christmas! Above is me with my roommate, Wang Guo Jiang

For your benefit I have fully researched all the possible situations and combinations of them that can occur when studying Chinese. They are as follows.

• recognize neither the character, nor its meaning, nor its sound
• recognize the character and meaning, but not sound. therefore, unspeakable
• recognize the character and sound but forget the meaning. therefore, unuseable
• somehow vaguely know what it means, but not know how to use it
• only know the word orally
• recognize both the characters in a word, their sound, tone and meaning. have no clue what they mean together.
  
• amazingly know the character, its pronounciation, tone, and meaning. This is approximately a 2% occurance.

One month from today, I am going to be getting off of the
plane in Chicago. Amazing.

Above a woman is lifting a wine cup that was floating down a river--the person who drinks it has to compose a poem or song. This was how some rich Chinese people amused themselves about 400 years ago. Now it's an activity at a famous park by Lu Xun's old home.

News from the Eastern Front

• The concrete guard tower and pillbox on campus were demolished this week. I am not sure what purpose this structure served, sitting in the middle of campus, but I suppose that it is a nice gesture either way
• I have four more week tests (and five more weeks!) until I get to come home for a while
• I am going to a lecture on senility today... we'll see how much I glean from that one!
• Last weekend we visited the home of Chinese author Lu Xun. Think Mark Twain.

And in the best recent news

I recently got a nice compliment from our Academic Director. She told me that they have had students come a year behind in Chinese and they have had students come alone. But they have never had one both a year behind and alone. She said that everyone has been impressed by my "extremely rapid progress" and how I have "held up emotionally." So that more or less made my day.

Above is me with my pronunciation class partner, Guang Da. I think his English name is Dan. Our dialogues are famous for "creativity." He's probably my best friend here.

You may be excited to know that I had my first really happy day in China. It was Sunday. I went with one of the friends that I made in the Jia Le Fu Tea Shop and we goofed around, ending up in KFC for dinner. And as she told me a joke that I actually understood, I realized that I was happy. And had been all day. And it wasn't because I had received 5 e-mails from home. So it was a remarkable day.