Almost finished. 要坚持下去

I just wanted to write a short post about how marvelously happy I am now that I have finished the writing portion of my finals! For my International Organization Studies class, I gave a short presentation, for my Socialism class, I wrote one essay on modern socialism and one on Scientific Socialism (yay), and I've finished writing BOTH of my gigantic final essays for my two flagship classes. Who cares that they are both horribly written and I have a billion corrections to make on both of them? Who cares that I now have to prepare my final presentations for these papers? I have accomplished some pretty great things this week, dammit, and I am going to celebrate by going to the gym tomorrow.  I have travel plans for the break, I have finished learning my epic Tai Chi form, and my English is awful which means my Chinese must be getting better. Life is good. As I have written before: rule #32 of Chinaland, enjoy the little things.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas! Love from China

China pic of the day:
 This is an advertisement for the newly available 4G network in China.  

Lol

Christmas, Christmas time is here!

...And I am slacking. I have TWO 3,000 character essays due by Friday, and I'm sitting in my bed watching Sherlock and blogging. But I don’t care! Because it’s Christmastime and everything is beautiful. I have a “Christmas tree” in my room and Reese’s in my hand. Who needs final papers?

Thank you Lauren and Rachel for being angels

A couple of weeks ago, I went and saw some friends perform at “同乐江苏” or “Jiangsu’s got foreign talent”, which is a singing competition for foreigners in Nanjing. They have the BYU study abroad students participate in it every year, so yes, I did do it two years ago, and because of modern technology and things like “the internet” that footage will unfortunately most likely be available for eternity. This year was actually really good though! The study abroad boys did some song about Kung fu, and the lovely Brooke Adams sang a song from the Beijing Olympics. She ended up winning the competition! If she hadn’t, it would have been a travesty, because her voice is literally the most beautiful sound I have ever heard, including the music of Ke$ha. The performance was just a few days before the study abroad students went back to the America, and I will miss them all very much.  

Kung fu masters

My two favorite girls in all of China. I will miss them dearly

First prize, bitches

I had my last day of teaching this week :( Those kids were terrifying but also adorable and I loved them. It was a mess whenever I taught them, but I hopefully had some positive impact in their lives. For the last day, I brought supplies to make Christmas cards and write letters to Santa. I made the mistake of laying everything out and then saying "Ok students, come up and get your supplies!", and promptly being trampled by 112 adorable little feet. 

I was worried I wouldn't get everyone with just one picture. Have I successfully captured their adorableness? I will miss those little buggers. 

I forgot to post these pictures but a few weeks ago some of us went to KTV to celebrate Paul Niedfeldt's birthday. It was suuuuper fun. His fantastic wife, Laurel set up the whole thing and surprised him with it. She also made cheesecake, which must have been difficult in this land of extremely limited dairy products. If you know Paul, then you know that he LOVES to sing, so this was an awesome birthday for him, I'm sure.

I figured everything out with my internship! I am going to work for a Non-government Organization called the Liangshan Yi Empowerment Center, which builds schools and provides education for orphans, and trains women in Mandarin and life skills so they can go to cities and find jobs. It is in Xichang, the capital city of Liangshan, which is an "autonomous prefecture" in Sichuan, which is the coolest province in all of China. It's in the West, which is notorious for being underdeveloped. Xichang has a population of just over 125,000 people, which is TINY by Chinese standards. I'm going to be the only person with blonde hair for miles! And there will be no McDonald's, no foreign import stores, and most people probably won't even speak Mandarin. I don't even know if they have normal public transportation! Am I freaking out? Yes! But am I also freakishly excited? Double yes! Western China is beautiful, and I know that I'm going to learn a lot. I feel like my whole college career has been leading up to this moment, and I know I can rock it. I got in contact with the office over there and they have a dorm for me to live in and I will start on the 8th of February next year, giving me plenty of time to travel during my break. I could not be more excited. 

Other happenings in my China life... how about eating a pig brain? Ooh ya that was fun. I don't recommend it, people.

Nom nom, brains is good for your brains

It was her idea. Crazy girl.

 

 The beautiful Maddie Hanley hosted a Christmas movie night last week and we made a blanket fort. It was quite awesome.

I've been doing a lot of babysitting lately. A cute baby contest would be impossible between these two. I am in love.

I just... I can't... SO MUCH CUTENESS

Why so serious, Peter?

Santa Baby. Lol

My life is pretty boring otherwise. It's cold so I just want to hang at home and eat lots of yummy noodle soup. So that's all for now, folks. Until next time,

China pics of the day:

These ducks were drying outside of this restaurant by my house for 3 days. Which also happened to be the three days with pollution levels over 400. I won't be going there for duck anytime soon. 

 This is a man. Carrying a small bag, wearing a fur-lined padded coat. Feminine is the male Asian sexy. And I guess for girls, sickeningly adorable is the Asian sexy.

FRESH FISH

 Love you, America

Tai Chi

I think I mentioned that I am trading Tai Chi lessons for English tutoring lessons which was like the best idea ever. I am tutoring the son of the friend of my Tai Chi teacher and he's super adorable. And he and his mother gave me a Christmas gift! Hanging out with them and helping them with English has been such a blast. I love teaching people a language they don't know, because I get to help someone understand something new that blows their mind. It reminds me of why I got addicted to foreign languages all those years ago.

How cute is this kid???

This is 杨师傅, the Tai Chi master. Why do I have to be so tall????

Also lately I have been trying to get in a Christmasy spirit and have been thinking about the amount of influence that individuals have on the world around them. The simple choices that we make shape our days which become weeks and months and years. From the things we choose to say to people to the things that we choose to spend the bulk of our time on. I don't ever want to look back on any large portion of my life and think that I've wasted it. I'm not going to waste my time by treating people badly, or by having a dissatisfied outlook on life. Everybody deserves bad days, but they can also choose to have a good attitude and face everything head on. And when they do, they can improve the simple things that make up this crazy world, thereby improving the world. whooooaaa right?

So that was cheesy, but it's Christmastime so no haters. Peace, love, yolo, all that stuff.

Later my beautiful American friends. Be excellent to each other.