Haircut

Exciting things have been happening to me this week! This October I applied for a scholarship at school and I found out yesterday I got it. It's a research scholarship and it's $4,500 over the whole year, which will be great.
Also, Laura and I decided to get our haircut today. There is a place right outside of campus near the restaurant street that is quite literally a hole in the wall. You can see little wooden steps going up to the window thing you walk through. Laura and I brought pictures to show, but I was still a little nervous. I have never had my hair cut by anyone but Denise since I was in kindergarten so it was a little scary. There were three chairs there. First this girl washed my hair in the back, then this man cut my hair. It turned out really well, but the way he cut my hair was a little weird. It started out OK, but he cut it in very small sections and it took forever! Then he twisted sections to razor it with a scissors. I was worried that he would make it really frizzy like all the Chinese haircuts. We call them the "I've just been electrocuted haircuts" and both girls and boys have them. They bleach their hair and perm it and make it as frizzy and poofy as physically possible. Mine turned out really well I think. It was just getting too long and heavy. This last one is me and Laura's "after" shot.

Markets

Saturday I woke up, went for run, and then went to the market near our house to pick up some fruits and vegetables. There are markets like this set up all over the city. There is even one in the bottom floor of Matt's apartment building which will be the lobby but is not finished yet. The wonderful thing about the markets here is that everything is really fresh and tastes delicious, noticeably better than stuff in the States. Perishables in the States are made to travel long distances and as a result the taste suffers. Things in China go bad more quickly, but the flavor is so much stronger and more wonderful. Also, it's just fun to go walk around the market and watch everything that is going on; homemade noodle making, people bartering over prices, people smashing spices or cutting meat. This other picture is of the fruit stand that we always stop at. They know us now and they are really nice. Fruit stands, like this one are alot more common than full-blown markets in China. There are four in a 2 block radius of each other right near this one. Everything is also very seasonal, which makes it more exciting when it comes in. Apples, oranges, pomelos, dates, and bananas are always in season. But just recently we had strawberries for a few days and now pineapples are starting to show up.

Today was Sunday and I went on another field trip with my swimming team. This time we met at 8am again and rode bikes to this swimming complex in the Northeast of Chengdu. They had 3 outdoor swimming pools (2 of which were drained for the winter), a diving well (also drained), and an indoor pool. We didn't have to pay for some reason and we all got to get in and swam at 9am. The pool was bigger, nicer, and cleaner than ours at SU. It was also 1 degree warmer, not like you can tell. After that we somehow acquired two giant bags of sweet buns and some milk juice boxes and rode home. On the way home my bike broke again and my swimming grandpa helped me get someone to fix it. He even paid for it, which one of my friends explained to me is the custom because he is the teacher and I am the student or something. I understand the treating at a restaurant idea, but this was weird because it was my bike. But anyways, we got it fixed and then rode back to school. Then my swimming grandpa gave me 3 buns and a milk box and I rode home. It was a shorter excursion and I was happy about that.
Once I got home I did some homework, but by 4pm I needed a break. I rode my bike to the Bookworm where they were supposed to be having Scrabble Club, but no one was playing so I just read my book for awhile. I'm reading "The Shaman's Apprentice" and I really like it. Then I went swimming again at our pool again and went home.

News from the Orient

Hello all. Sorry I haven't written in awhile. I've been busy and nothing super interesting has happened. I have gone to class and it has gotten colder everyday. It just seems colder here because there are no heaters here. There are no heaters allowed South of the Yangtze River. So it's the same temperature (like 50 degrees) all the time. Plus our hot water heater is the worst ever, so our shower is luke warm at best too.
On Wednesday I went on another trip with my swimming grandpa. This time it was just me, him, and 2 other younger guys who are also on the winter swimming organizing committee. I think they are just bringing me along to show me different parts of China and to show me off. But that's fun, it was pretty fun. We went to Leshan this time (where the Big Buddha is) to meet exclusively with the team there. We met at an outdoor tea house on the river that was right across from the big Buddha. Then we had lunch and I had to drink bai jiu this time, which was not fun. Then we walked out on the sand bar in the river to look at the Buddha, which was a cool new perspective. Then we drove to this hotel and went swimming in their semi-heated pool. I don't really know why, but that was fine. Then we went to dinner. They drank again, but I didn't have to this time. Since I already did once, I am going to try to milk that for as long as I can and not have to drink ever again. We'll see though, I don't want to offend anyone. Then we went to an indoor tea house with pool tables and mahjong tables set up and talked for a little while longer. Then we went home. They insisted on driving me up TO THE DOOR of my house. They wanted to pick up my bike at school first too, but I told them that if they had to take me home they should just drop me off and I would take the bus to school.
The next day I decided to walk to school instead, which was actually really nice. That night there was a movie showing at the Bookworm. We watched "The Game of Their Lives" which was the first of a three part documentary about North Korea. This movie was about the 1966 World Cup team that made it to the quarter finals by beating Italy at a time when North Korea was not even recognized as a country yet. The movie interviewed all the players and followed their story through the World Cup and talked about what it meant for their country for them to be there. It was really good. These film makers were the first people allowed to film in North Korea since the cold war. They have another documentary out about two young girls who are training to be gymnasts for some sort of national competition or something. We are watching it on Monday followed by a discussion with the film makers. Their last documentary is about an American soldier who fought in the Korean War and then defected and has lived there for the past 50 years. It's going to be released this year at the Sundance Film Festival.
In other news, I finished my paper about Communism and ended up arguing that Communism in China is on its way out. Our teacher is pretty liberal and in favor of democracy, but I'm still waiting to see how it goes over. I compared China to the Soviet Union and China doesn't really like that for obvious reasons.