fly by the seat of your pants, the only way to do anything in China

It's been awhile since my last post so this might be a long one, I'll try to have lots of pictures too. Thursday I had my conversation test which went really well and then I went home. I did a little home work and was feeling really drained from a week of studying and not sleeping enough so I decided to take a nap. After I woke up, I was so groggy, but not tired enough to sleep anymore and that continued until about 2 am that night. I wasn't tired enough to sleep, but I was too tired to really focus on studying. I hate naps and am never taking one again.
That day they also planted a tree outside my window, which was kind of interesting to watch. They are constantly doing new projects in our complex and everywhere in China. I think it is a product of the over abundant labor. For example, also in our complex, they just tore down our perfectly good, new-looking lobby and are apparently going to build something new. Everything is in a constant state of construction.
So on Friday after taking my comprehensive midterm in the morning, I went to cooking class and we learned to make baozi (a steamed bread filled with seasoned meat), la mian (pulled noodles), and guokui (which is a kind of fried bread with a little meat and seasoning in it). La mian is really hard to make. It's an acquired art that takes alot of practice, like throwing pizza dough. The picture is me trying to make la mian, which you make by whipping it out between your hands kind of like a jump rope and then twisting it up and doing it again. Then you pull it out a bunch on a floured surface to actually make the noodles. I'm really excited to try to make it again at home.
Friday night there was a banquet in honor of the people who had done well at the sports event and these two students who had written the best undergraduate theses in the Overseas School. They made us stand up and each receive awards and take pictures. It was fun, but a little embarrassing. They gave me my medal, a little plaque, a commemorative stamp collection, a leather bound journal, and a towel. I don't know why they gave me the towel. The food was pretty good too. Then I left my camera at the banquet and when I went back to get it they had already given it to a teacher, so I don't have pictures of the rest of the weekends activities. After the banquet we went to the Bookworm to watch an Irish Band called Bro Buro, i think. All these European people have been in town the past week because of some sort of EU-China conference so they have had all sorts of activities around it and this was one of them. It was really good and gathered a crowd from the street.
On Sunday morning Laura and I rode to the bus station to meet Deborah, Matt, Tabitha, and Andrea for a trip to the Sea of Bamboo. On the Yangtze River cruise I made friends will a guy who lives right near the sea of bamboo and we had been coordinating with him to come down. He had told me that it took about 2 1/2 hours to get there and he was going to meet us at the station. However, when Andrea bought the tickets they told us it was actually more like 4 hours. We thought the bus must be longer than the car and decided we still wanted to go. We got on the bus at 9:20am. 5 hours later, we finally arrived at the Bamboo forest. The judge, the nick-name we have given the guy who was supposed to meet us (because he is studying to become a judge), had also for some reason thought we were coming to the train station in the city and was no longer going to meet us. I know that I had told him at least twice we would be arriving at the BUS station, but he also said it was about 2 1/2 hours away, so you never know. As soon as we got of the bus we had to try to figure out a way to get back so we could be sure to get to class on Monday morning. We asked our bus driver and he was pretty much just turning around right then and driving back. We obviously didn't want to do that so we asked the people that had started to gather when we got off the bus. They said there was a train back at 9pm from Yibin, a town about an hour away, and they could arrange a car to take us to Yibin, for a price of course. We decided this was a good option and told them we wanted to walk around a bit in the park and then at 7 we would come back and they could take us to Yibin. Then they started trying to sell us a driving tour of the park and all sorts of other things. When we finally just walked away because they wouldn't listen to us when we said we just wanted to walk, one of the men started to follow us. We tried to ignore him as best we could and get him to leave us alone, and finally were successful when we started to climb the mountain. I think he just wanted to make sure we didn't talk to anyone else and figure out that he was ripping us off, which was obvious because he kept changing the price of everything. The park was definitely worth it. It was beautiful! I'll try to post pictures from other people once I get them.
After a few hours we hiked back down and met the guy who got us a car and driver to Yibin. After an hour we arrived at the Yibin train station, but when we walked up to the window to buy tickets, we were informed that there was no 9pm train. There was a train at 2:50am and a train tomorrow morning at 9am. The guy who had "helped us" had either lied or was very confused. Luckily, we also gathered a crowd in Yibin and two women told us that there was a bus going back to Chengdu right now. We said OK and they made a call and minutes later a bus pulled over to the side of the road. The sign in the window said Chengdu, so we got on and bought tickets. Finally, 3 hours later, we arrived in Chengdu safe and sound. After an adventure in Chinese transportation, Laura and I finished off the day with a bowl off dandan mian at a card table set up on the side walk at 11pm before we rode home and went to sleep.
Today we were supposed to have a meeting with Susan Jeffords, the Vice Provost of foreign relations at UW who is coming to visit at 3:40pm. In usual Chinese fashion, at 3:30 we were told the meeting would be delayed an hour and about 20 minutes later we were informed that the meeting was cancelled until tomorrow morning at 9:20am. Today was also Tabitha's birthday so Laura and I had bought a chocolate Western-style cake from Grandma's Deli, a Western restaurant by the West gate. We were planning on going out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant, but Tabitha didn't want to. So we suggested that we just have the cake we bought and the wine we had won at Quiz night there at school on the patio and then we could go home; very low key. Tabitha didn't want to do that either and she went home. We didn't know what to do, so we decided we would celebrate being in China instead and sat on the patio and ate chocolate cake and drank comparatively good Australian wine. It was nice to just sit and hang out together and the cake was delicious. It wasn't even that good of cake, but I just missed chocolate and real western desserts so much that I loved it anyways. Western desserts are much richer than Chinese sweets and I wasn't used to it so I could only eat one piece. I guess my sweet tooth is going away, but maybe that's not such a bad thing. When we got home Laura and I watched "Rear Window" which is an old Hitchcock movie.
I had never seen it before and I liked it alot. Laura wanted me to watch it because it reminded her of our apartment complex, which is true. You can look in everyone's window and see what everyone is doing and you start to know people by their habits. Like, there is a little kid who practices piano every night and a woman who does tai ji on her balcony every morning. But there are no murders... ...yet.