......craziness........

Summer has arrived in Chengdu and it is hot! On the plus side it has been clear and sunny as well, which more than makes up for the 27 (80) degree days and humidity. I'm just worried about it getting worse (i.e. hotter), but hopefully that won't happen for a while. And I went swimming on Wednesday which felt wonderful. People are already starting to talk about my dark skin because pale skin is the fashion here and my skin tans so fast. All the girls walk around with these weird visors and sun umbrellas, plus they are still wearing long sleeves. It's crazy!
I've been really busy since I got back from Xi'an too, compounded by the fact that Huangjie keeps inviting me to do all this stuff and I've started to feel bad about refusing all the time (the Minnesotan in me, or maybe just the people-pleaser). I made it through the week though (YAY!) and today i just got back from teaching again in Deyang. I decided that because last time's lesson went so well, I didn't have that much time to prepare, and they told me I would be teaching all new students I would just teach pretty much the same class. With the exception of singing "Old McDonald had a farm" because it uses our animal vocabulary. It was going really well until I get to the last class of the day and I realize that I have already taught this class, last time. I think the school just told me I would be teaching all new classes every time because that was the easiest answer and now I know not to trust a word they say. I tried to bide time while in my head scrambling for what I was going to teach them and in the end just decided to alter the lesson with as much new material as possible and say we were "reviewing". So we reviewed animals, sang Old McDonald, and then played animal BINGO (again), but all told I think it went OK. The students all seemed to have fun.
Another highlight of the week was going to buy tickets for the May holiday to Xinjiang. Laura, Matt, a girl from my Chinese class named Carly, and I, and possibly Ben are all going to Xinjiang for the "Labor Day" holiday coming up the first week of May (soon!). They ended up being a little more expensive than we expected, but I am so excited to have them and I have heard Xinjiang is such an amazing, different place I am sure it will be worth it in the end. For those of you who are not familiar with Xinjiang, it is the often down-played Northwestern-most Province in China that is inhabited in large part by the Uighur nationality. The Uighur's are a Muslim people who in actuality are more like Middle Easterners than the Han Chinese, they speak their own language, which is most similar to Turkish, and they have tall noses and generally more Western-looking features. Xinjiang , literally translated as "New Frontier", is also known in China for having the same separatist tendencies as Tibet and Xinjiang-Beijing/Uighur-Han ties are very tenuous. Uighur people living in Xinjiang often refuse to learn or speak Mandarin as a symbol against Han Chinese oppression. Xinjiang, geographically, is a large desert with small oasis towns scattered throughout, congregating mostly along the former "Silk Road" that runs through the Southern part.
That's all I can think of to write about for now. I am going to a museum that just opened with Huangjie tomorrow, but we are going to be back in the afternoon to go swimming and then I should get to go home pretty early, so hopefully I will get some things done tomorrow evening. Tonight didn't work out because after dinner of HotPot (why people eat this on a hot day I will never figure out) Huangjie and her friend wanted to take me to this coffee shop that their friend opened last year. I had some things I wanted to get done tonight and I was kind of tired so I tried my best to say "I'm really tired," "We have to get up early tomorrow," "I still have some things to do tonight," and anything else I could think of to politely excuse myself. Huangjie's response was "We'll just go for a little bit" and "you can rest there." I stopped short of straight up saying "I don't want to go, I want to go home" because I just felt like it was too impolite, but maybe it's not because she definitely didn't take the hint. But, as usual, although I didn't really want to go I ended up having a great time and am glad that I went in the end. The friend wasn't there, but her husband was. The friend went to Italy to be a tour guide for 10 years after graduating from college and then came back to China a few years ago. Last year she and her husband opened this little coffee shop which was really cute and the coffee was imported from Italy, so of course it was delicious. He also gave us popcorn (which is common at coffee shops and they are actually starting to go together in my head, which I thought would never happen) and a homemade Italian-style lemon alcohol, which was sweet but also pretty good. If you are wondering, my Chinese friends didn't like coffee. Huangjie gave me hers and the other friend drank hers with lots of sugar to be polite.