Happy Halloween

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October 30th 2005

Published: October 30th 2005

So for whatever reason I thought today was Halloween yesterday and told some of my classes that. I think it's okay because we mostly talked about what we do on the day instead of which day it is. I still can't believe I forgot though. It's kind of strange to be out of the country for a fairly big holiday. You always miss the things that you used to do all of the time. But then again it's also strange to be in a country having a holiday that they've always had and you've never had. When I was in India for ... I can't remember which holiday it was ... maybe Diwali. There were a lot of fireworks on a random day and I just pretended like it was July 4th even though it was in November. Of course the foreigners here celebrate Halloween and all the other big holidays but it's never the same. For Thanksgiving China doesn't have one and Canada's Thanksgiving is a month earlier than America's so no one here really has that holiday except for me (and Michael who I don't know very well).

I'm still partially waking up thinking "What am I doing?" I think this morning it was more like "Um, what???? ...... Oh, right, I have work." But then once I get into my classes they start waking me up. It's getting cold around here and I don't really have the proper things for it yet. I slept in my jeans and sweatshirt last night because I was a bit cold and didn't have enough blankets. I think I'm going to spend some time this week and go shopping. We'll see when I get a chance.

I'm still making lesson plans even though I don't really know why. I spend some time making a lesson plan and never do what my lesson plan says. I'll either do it out of order or make up some things that aren't on my lesson plan. I think I make the plan to start my creative mind rolling in order to get ready for class (even though often times I make the lessons at least a night in advance).

I gave one of our friends some money to get me a really cheap phone card. It's around $0.20 per minute to call America using this card so hopefully now I'll be able to call people more often.

Restaurants are funny things. The most expensive restaurant that one can go to are the ones where you get a pizza or a huge buffett at a nice restaurant for $4.50. Yet foreigners still complain about them being too expensive. I don't really understand that but whatever. Beer here is really cheap. We got a pint at a nice restaurant the other night for $2. Unfortunately the beer is the light kind that one can see through which normally isn't my type but it definitely doesn't get you drunk (which is a good thing). Chinese people here still find it strange for a foreign woman to drink (and the equivalent to 6 shot glasses of beer is "drinking a lot") but we still do it to socialize just like we would at home. Eating is funny around here too. Most days I get up fairly late and then end up having two meals a day. On Wednesday I have to rush to have lunch because even though I only have an hour long meeting that's supposed to be at 10 and then class starting at 1 the meeting always gets postponed and we end up having to rush for lunch. Then on Saturday we only have about 45 minutes for lunch so we have to rush over, eat, rush back and get ready for our next class. Some days if we have too much to do to get ready for class we end up missing lunch (that happened to me yesterday). Sunday is a good day for me because I have to wake up for an hour class at 8am and then I have two hours off to do whatever and another hour of class before "lunch" so I get enough time to have lunch.

Shot out to everyone for tomorrow: Happy Halloween! Have fun trick-or-treating, going to Franklin Street, going to a party or whatever you may be doing.

Just went outside and there's a huge marathon going on out there so they have some of the streets blocked and a lot of policemen are out as well as many reporters. Looks like they'll be having fun.

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