So the lack of updates has been due partially to lack of internet/computer access and partially to laziness. I was in China last week, Fulbright related, so that was pretty fantabulous.

We left for China at the crack of dawn on Monday. A van picked us up from IEd and took us to the Hung Hom station where we indulged in early morning greasy McDonalds. The train took us from HK to Guangzhou and we got in around lunchtime. We stayed at a hotel/hostel that was on the Sun Yat Sen University's campus. It was nice...two ETAs to a room, tv with Chinese MTV!, our own bathrooms, etc. One thing I will most emphatically not miss about campus living be it IEd or BMC is communal bathrooms. Anyway, we had lunch at the restaurant that was about one minute from our dorm (we had most meals there). It was...an interesting meal. Family style with the lazy susan turny thing. Chopsticks, tea, only spoke Chinese, that sort of thing. Then we had a tour of the campus and a tour of a connected campus. Then we had dinner. Then I think we just had free time after that. Or something. Was pretty much exhausted (not used to getting up at 5:15 in the morning), so I went to bed early. Which leads me into the next awesome thing that occurred.

Mosquitos. Or gnats. Or some sort of insect that ate us alive. And we all know how well I react to any sort of bite. It was a bit cold, so I had bundled up in long pants and a long sleeve shirt and was curled up in my blanket, with only my face accessible. And was it ever. Woke up Tuesday morning with about five bites on my face. Itched infernally.

Breakfast (which is an unusual occurrence in my life) was in the restaurant. Since I don't normally eat before 11 or 12, greasy food was kinda rough on my tummy. But it was good. Then we went to the secondary school where we were going to be observing and teaching that week. We sat in on three classes (two junior classes so I think they were like junior high age and a senior class which was more like 16 or 17 year olds maybe? hard to tell...I'm terrible at guessing ages). Then back to the restaurant for lunch. Then back to the secondary school to meet with the headmaster and watch a bit of a performance that the school had brought in.
At the meeting, our contact lady opened up the Fulbright newsletter that had brief bios of all of us. Fulbright had requested them last summer, and I had written mine knowing that people would see it but not realizing that it would be the defining summary of my life for people. And she asks, who is Laura Brymer? And I raise my hand, and then she says something along the lines of oh I see you do hip hop and dance...would you like to do a dance on Thursday at the junior talent show? And because I am not gifted with the ability to say no apparently, I said sure why not? Literally, I actually blushed beet red and stammered out "Sure why not?". *sigh* Anyway, having committed myself to that, I was now stuck with the problem that I didn't have any of my music with me. After dinner, we were allowed to go to their computer lab...where the internet moved at about the pace of snail mail. Once we were on, it picked up a little (an infinitesimal little), and so I found a youtube clip of Justin Timberlake's "My Love" and sent it to our contact and told her that I'd dance to the first three minutes of it. Please keep in mind that I had not choreographed anything to it nor ever performed to it, and that I am not really trained in hip hop, but am in fact and mentality a modern/ballet dancer. We also had to work on a presentation we were going to do on Wednesday...the 16 of us had to talk to the Junio class (around 250-300 students) about school and life in America. We broke into groups, and my group had weekends, family, and recreation to talk about. Rather than straight-up lecture, we had three activities. But that comes later...suffice it to say that we rehearsed for a couple hours that night to the intense amusement of ourselves and fellow ETAs.

Tuesday night. The little bugs were back with a vengeance. Not only did they bite me, they bit my eyelids. I woke up in the morning and my eyes were different shapes because the lids were so swollen. It looked like I had smeared red eyeshadow onto them after I punched myself. And they itched itched itched. I had 11 bites on my face. Half of which have scarred and left marks.

Wednesday morning, I think at breakfast we had egg tarts. Or maybe that was Thursday. Anyway, breakfast, back to the secondary school. Two groups of ETAs taught two different classes while the rest observed in the back. Lunch. Back to give the talk to the students. Okay. What my group did was start off with a cheer, one about spirit, which we taught to the entire group. Then we went into handclap games played by students at school, which they also imitated. And finally, we sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Hahahahaha. For those of you who don't know, I cannot carry a tune for my life (or so I've been told and to which I wholeheartedly agree). Anyway, it was pretty fabulous. The kids got a kick out it I think. Then I got my hair cut after that! There was a haircutting place right out the door of our hostel, right next to the convenience store, which was really a cluttered small room. It was the most elaborate fantastic hair cut I've had. They shampooed my hair/massaged my head for almost twenty minutes. I've never had a shampoo done while I'm sitting up in the chair...an interesting thing. Then the actual cut, wow. They pretty much followed my previous cut, but they did it slowly and with great concentration, to every single hair, I kid you not. The whole deal took an hour and a half...and cost 25 yuan. That's about 3 dollars. Crazy. Then we had an "English corner" which was incredibly misnamed. There was no corner. There was a huge pagoda like thing with a bell and no lights outside, and we were thrown into it. We gathered and talked to people in the dark, whose faces we could only barely distinguish. Perhaps talk gives off the wrong impression. We shouted for an hour and a half. Soooo many people, all chatting away. And most of them, actually the majority of the ones I spoke with, were not students of the university, but just business people, students from other schools who just wanted to practice English. We finally excused ourselves. Some people were going to get massages. I opted out...I'm not keen to have my muscles beaten to a pulp. I talked with a couple ETAs who stayed behind and went over the lesson we had to teach the next day.

Thursday, breakfast, back to the secondary school. We were the second group to teach a lesson, senior students. We had been assigned the topic of global warming. *shrug* So we did a powerpoint (I thoroughly enjoyed doing the the animation sequences for it) and then had them make posters with ways to exhort people to save energy or save the planet, etc. They got into that, which was good. Always stressful to get up in front of a lot of students and your peers. Lunch yadda yadda yadda (I'll write about the food later). Then the talent show. It was called the Foreign Talent Show or something, so all of it in English or English culture related (mostly American, though). The students were really good. There was some singing (karaoke and then a duo singing Phantom of the Opera), some skits, a duo of hip hop dancers who were great! And my favorite event: they take a movie (we saw Finding Nemo, Ice Age, and Ratatouille I think?) and mute it and then they do the voice of the characters. Pretty funny. Other talents included recitation of memorized speeches. And an impromptu sing-along by two ETAs...they were having computer trouble and asked us to fill the time slot....so it was done with I think Jingle Bells. :) And then me. I did my dance...was crazy nervous. I realize, I'm so not a hip hop dancer. I can do it if choreographed, but I should never never wing hip hop. Ugh. They seemed to like it all right though, so that's good. And then they convinced my co-choreographer and I to get up and do Magalena, which is a song both of us have danced to in our respective College dance careers. Good times. Not so much for the knee though. But! I can say that I have danced to Magalena and Justin Timberlake...in China. :) That night, the secondary school took us on a dinner cruise on the Pearl River. It was great. Buffet style, went up and down the river, lots of lights, good company. I like boats.

Friday morning, breakfast, then we went to a primary school and observed a lesson and talked to students and teachers. We had lunch there...they give you huge portions of rice. I don't know if they do this generally or if it's just us, but we get huge portions of rice. I could eat it maybe over the course of three meals. And I always feel bad about not finishing it, especially since the lesson we sat in on was called "Saving is a Virtue." After that, we went on a tour...kinda. We went to the museum of the tomb of the Nanyue kings, the Chan family temple, and then shopping. Oh and dinner. First time I've been served chicken feet in my soup. We also saw monkeys on a leash! Just walking around the shopping square.

Saturday morning, breakfast, bus ride to another college, talked to some students and teachers, took some pictures, and then came back to our hostels to finish packing. We had lunch in the VIP room of the restaurant with the VP of IEd who was a visiting lecturer that weekend and the Dean of Sun Yat Sen's faculty I believe. A very nice meal, a very nice send-off. Then we checked out, got on a bus to the train station, on the train back to HK, then a taxi back to IEd. Was wiped out by the time I got back. Unpacked and then crashed.

The food. All right, the food was good. But it took a bit of getting used to. I'm still trying to acclimate myself to seafood, the most I will normally partake on my own is a bit of shrimp or some calamari. But they had some great spicy meat dishes, greens of some sort every night, rice of course, huge bowls of congee in the morning, fruit at the end of every meal (and they have these great little oranges that are so sweet and yummy), often a noodle dish, egg tarts twice, lots of grease and oil, yum yum yum. And all incredibly and almost surprisingly filling. But tasty.

Okay, so that bring me back to HK. Sunday I stayed close to campus I think. Actually, I have no idea what I did other than sleep in. I went shopping today for card-making materials.
OH! Wow, totally slipped my mind. Last night, Monday, we were taken out on another boating outing. A yacht, I believe, took us to Lamma Island for a seafood dinner. The ride was so pretty...I love being on the water, with the wind blowing in your face, although as per usual, I wasn't dressed warmly. That seems to be my major issue with boats...the last three I've been on, I've practically frozen. Anyway, the dinner was goooood. Elaborate, well presented, yummy. Started out with ginormous prawns, moved to cuttlefish fried I think, then scallops with tons of garlic, then duck which was fabulous, then ummm spicy I think, then grouper a huge monster of a fish with the head and eyes and all that still attached, then dessert I think. Oh, and a small bowl of fried rice. I couldn't eat the prawn, I couldn't. It had legs, long antennae, and eyes. I just couldn't. Ate everything else though. :)

And that's that. What an incredibly long post. I wonder if it makes any sort of sense. I've been making dozens of tiny paper snowflakes, and my fingers are all cramped. Not that that would affect the coherency of this post, but you know. Yeah I have no idea either.

I need to end this post.......

"His destructive programming is taking effect. He will be irresistibly drawn to large cities, where he will back up sewers, reverse street signs, and steal everyone's left shoe."
~on Stitch