Break

I'M ALIVE. I survived my first semester in China. I came out with a few bumps (a B in history) and bruises (a C in math), but I nevertheless gained a lot of experience and insight into life, I hope. Here are some things I've learned over the past three months and three weeks:

• Money isn't the most important thing; happiness is
• making friends from different countries gives you perspective on different cultures
• it's better to stay indoors starting mid-November or you'll get frostbite
• endure the hot, crowded bus during the summer because you'll appreciate the warmth by December
• wifi isn't that important either, apparently
• Home Plate is the best Texas BBQ restaurant in the world

And that's all I can think of at the moment. Home Plate is really amazing. Upon interning at Nice HQ, I've been eating a lot of Western food because the company reimburses our lunch and dinner breaks. This probably isn't good for my health, since all I eat is french fries and greasy hamburgers, and the gym has been closed for renovation for about a month now and will be closed for two more weeks. I've decided that I'm going to let myself go until the gym opens so that working out will be more of a challenge for me.

First semester is over, which means all the semester kids are home, or in Isabel's case, are going home. This also means our class schedules are going to be completely arranged, which is nice for me because I'm moving down in math, AGAIN, and I won't be the only one with an out of wack schedule. Having nine people go home is a weird thought. This journey, adventure, trip of a lifetime, whatever you want to call it, is over for them. They may never see the gates of Erfuzhong, buy fried rice from down the alley, study at Cafe Bené, or ride a taxi across the city for ten US dollars ever again. Saying goodbyes at the SYA Christmas party was very sad, but I'm sure we'll all see each other again at some reunion in the future. Oh and I played the Chinese banjo at the Christmas party for the music recitals. It was scary and my hands were shaking and sweaty and I hope I never have to do it again but it was kinda fun.

A few days ago, while I was eating breakfast, my mom came up to me and said she was going to send me a picture on WeChat of some medication that she wanted my dad to get from the states. The picture was captioned in Chinese, and I think that because of that, she expect me to be able to understand what the medication was, despite the fact that the box in the picture was labeled "PRENATAL MEDICATION". So, yeah, my host mom is pregnant. You may ask, what about the one-child policy? Is she going to be fined? Is her husband going to be kicked out of his commune? You also may not ask these things, but I will answer these questions because there is a lot of American ignorance centered around the infamous policy. My mom does already have a 13 year old son, but his father is not the father of the fetus currently baking in my mom's uterus; her boyfriend is. Because her boyfriend doesn't have children, she won't be fined or be forced to get an abortion, and he won't have to lose his job. Oh, and also, you can have two kids in China as long as you and your spouse are both only children! Yaaaay!

By the way, I FINALLY got around to posting pictures on my photo blog. These pictures consist of those from the sports event, my trip to the countryside, Shanxi, and some random adventures around Beijing. If you happen to read this post on the day that I post it, you'll only get to see half of the pictures I've been meaning to post, because Tumblr won't let me post more than 100 pictures a day, so I recommend you check them out tomorrow, unless you're so impatient that you have to see them today.

There's four more days till Christmas, but I wouldn't be able to tell if it weren't for calendars. The Christmas spirit here is pretty bleak, but at least my dad will be here in less than a week!!