Fuzzy Slippers

The past few days have been a little slow, which is nice. I spent the weekend doing homework. However, on Saturday Matt and Ben and I ate left-over turkey sandwiches and went bowling to carry on the after-Thanksgiving tradition. It was pretty fun, but the bowling ally had a weird feeling. There was no loud 80's rock and people were drinking tea and it was too serious. I did pretty well too, 126 both times. Then Laura and I watched Gone with the Wind, which I had never seen before. It was VERY long, but good. I am kind of on a classic kick, and I like it. Sunday I started a paper I am writing for my Chinese politics class comparing the history and structure of the Chinese Communist Party and the Soviet Union. If anyone has any ingenious insights (Aunt Patty, I am looking in your direction) I would love some other opinions and/or advice. I took a break to go swimming. Then I was going to go running after to warm up again (it is getting so COLD! 13 degrees Celsius today) but then I saw Ben at the track and they were still playing soccer, so we went to the weight room in the giant sports complex. It is no IMA, but it was kind of nice and I had no idea it was even there, so I was happy to find it. Then we met up with Matt and a friend from SU, Violet (that's her English name of course, Chinese names are really hard to remember), to play some ping pong.
Today I went shopping before cooking class and bought the universal Chinese winter necessities, long underwear and slippers. I am not joking, EVERYONE has these things and wears them all the time when it starts getting cold. I got a pair of red long underwear that are thicker, like sweatshirt material and a thinner pair of purple ones. The slippers are all amazingly ugly. Matt likes to say that everything here is geared towards 12 year old girls and there is definitely some truth to that. So I picked the most comfortable pair I could find. They are all very comfortable and I can see why they are so popular. The slippers are especially handy because I have been wearing socks around the house and your socks get really dirty because the floors are ALWAYS covered in dirt from all the dirt that settles out of the air. In cooking class today we learned steaming. We made a yummy spiced meat and steamed pumpkin. Pumpkin might possibly be my favorite vegetable here, so I was really excited to make it.
This past weekend one of my good friends from Chinese class went to a Chinese wedding and sent me some pictures, so I thought I'd share some with you guys since I may not have the chance to go to a Chinese style wedding while I'm here. Sophie is from France and is here with her husband who is working for some computer company in Chengdu. The Chinese people who are getting married are his friends from work. Chinese weddings are HUGE deals. It is customary to invite around 1000 people for a medium sized wedding. They do this for two reasons; one is for face, it is important to invite all of the people you know so that they or you don't lose face.. The second is because every guest that comes gives a red envelope (a hongbao) which has a couple hundred kuai in it, so it is also a money making venture for the new family. Pretty much the bigger the better. They usually just have a big banquet and people sit around talking, it is not as organized as Western weddings. Sophie also said that they changed outfits like 3 or 4 times. We weren't really sure why they chose to have the Western outfits, but all the others were Chinese style dresses.
Another "only in China", I saw a rooster standing on a motorcycle today when i was riding my bike. It reminded me where I really was and made me smile. I don't know if I was smiling because I was happy or because I still haven't fully grasped that I am living in China or because there are still somethings you see or have to deal with that the only thing you can do is laugh, or all of the above. I hope everyone finds something to smile about where you are, for whatever reason.