a little coffee

So it’s been a week since I last updated ye ol’ blog and I feel compelled to write something even though there’s been doodley-squat going on. Let’s see…

Friday was May Day (Workers Unite!) so we had the day off. Chris and I wanted to travel but train tickets to Luoyang were sold out. Just as well, would have been too crowded so we stayed in stuffy Anyang. Friday we had dinner with the other foreign teachers and played cards for several hours. That was good fun. What else…

Chris and I decided to cancel our Chinese lessons. They’ve basically devolved into half random vocab (“flower,” “watermelon,” “phone”) and half chitchat. And Chris about murdered Catherine and Lucy when they kept giggling at our serious attempts to pronounce “cai” correctly. (It’s a kind of a hissing sound made by putting the tippy tip of your tongue between your teeth and forcing the air out around the tippy tip. Impossible).

I wore a new dress to class on Monday and one student actually, loudly gasped when she saw my bare, glistening white legs. I couldn’t tell if it was the absolute whiteness or that I was in a dress. See, most Doodles still sweat in longsleaves even though it’s 80 degrees. In the same class, a group of girls asked me how I keep my skin so white.

I’ve started getting weekly messages at a local place down the street. After a few minutes of googling, I determined he does shiatsu massage. Instead of soothing Enya music, I listened to the traffic from busy Dulong street and stared at a concrete floor. And I almost laughed a couple times when he got to the tickling areas around the arms and sides. But 45 minutes of applied fingertip pressure and all the knots and aches in my back are obliterated. Aaaah…

So that’s all I got for this week, folks!