I finally relented and got a QQ account...

As you might have noticed, I haven't been posting very much recently. I think that as my schedule starts to become more "regular" and I stop going on spontaneous adventures all the time, there's less that I feel compelled to share. It might have something to do with being in the same place for a long enough time (three weeks today). Actually, I haven't spent very much time just exploring; my travels around the city have tended mainly to have specific destinations that I can't sacrifice on a whim.

On Monday I met up with Diana and David again at the campus of their school, the Southwest Minority Nationalities University (or something similar). The university actually has two campuses--one near the city center and one about a half-hour drive south--and there's a shuttle bus that goes between them. I missed the last shuttle bus before dinner time, so I took a taxi. The campus seems a little bit isolated, but on one side there are a few commercial streets, so that's where we had dinner. The restaurant's chairs and tables were small and unremarkable, the walls were bathroom tiles, and the entrance was a garage door. None of this was out of the ordinary. By contrast, the food was tasty and interesting. The two dishes I remember the best are spicy mushrooms with peppers, and something that might have been called "beehive corn", which was a giant knot of sweet, crunchy, porous, yellow material with a nucleus of corn kernels, all doused in vegetable oil. Speaking of hive insects, I was looking at the jars of variously colored baijiu on the counter near our table and saw one with a picture of ants on it. Diana and David tried to explain it to me, and if I understood right, this particular type of alcohol is flavored with fermented ant mush.





After dinner we went back to campus and they taught me how to play snooker.





Another thing that happened this week is that I started an internship at Chengdoo magazine, the first English language magazine in Chengdu. So far I have been given the task of compiling a weekly news review for the magazine's blog (which I am more than happy to do, because it forces me to stay well-informed about local news), I've helped distribute magazines a little bit (which is great for getting more familiar with the geography), and I've done a few other miscellaneous things. I think I have already learned a lot.

I've also found a few odd jobs, but I'm still searching for a part-time teaching opportunity. Wish me luck.

Happy Hanukkah!

in and around Chuan Da.

火锅，谢谢你！还是，是我的免疫系统？

I think that hot pot did me in. By yesterday morning I felt the same way I felt the morning after arriving in Chengdu, right before I got sick for a week. However, yesterday was too important to worry about such trifles as personal health.

Around noon I rode my bike in the general direction of the free market that Bob took me to. Instead of finding it, though, I bought the vegetables I needed at a little vegetable shop on a quiet street somewhere. It was the only shop I passed that didn't have dead animals hanging in the doorway. For six tomatoes, three onions, four peppers, and a bunch of cilantro, I paid about $1.50.

In the evening I had an apartment-warming party of sorts. I finally made the burritos, but they were only a moderate success. The avocados weren't ripe yet, and after soaking overnight and cooking for five hours the black beans were still hard in the middle. I don't know what's wrong with them (or with me). But the Spanish rice was fine, and the grilled peppers and onions were good. And one of my friends, Sharon, brought some sweet potatoes. I don't really have enough furniture yet, but by pulling together my three chairs, my footstool, and the couch, we had enough seats for everybody. It was great to finally have guests, and it made my apartment feel more like a living place.

It was only after everybody left that the virus really hit me. But I went to bed with the heater on full blast, and, amazingly, this morning I felt fine. This was a miracle, because today I had meetings with two English students (one for the first time). The cold has started to come back a little bit tonight, but it's not nearly as bad as it was last night.

I biked across campus several times today. Most of the leaves don't change colors here, but there are some streets lined with beautiful yellow ginkgo trees. There is actually one street like that right behind my apartment, and throughout the day it's crowded with little groups of people taking pictures of each other in front of the changing leaves.

The campus of Sichuan University is big. Due to some strange feature of the street plan, the cardinal directions seem to rearrange themselves at will. More than once I have had my sense of direction completely fooled. Because campus is too large to walk in a reasonable amount of time, and because bike theft is so common, pedicab drivers congregate at the main gates. They can bring you anywhere on campus for about 25 cents.

There is a degree of contrast at SU that isn't found on any of the campuses I have seen in the U.S. One street has a large, modern stadium towering over a well-groomed lawn. The next street over consists of old brick dormitories, and laundry lines stretched between the trees in the little park on the corner. On another street, one of these buildings has been partially demolished, and four chickens are picking over one of the rubble heaps. Nearby there is a bank and a photography studio. Two streets farther there is a field covered in trash. Finally you come to the eastern gate, where the sidewalk is broken in front of a sparkling new high-rise community, and literally right next door is another lot filled with rubble and burning trash. Some people are sitting in the lot behind a table selling vegetables.