Snow, Homesickness and the Noodle Revolt
So it's not really supposed to get this cold this quickly in Wuhan. It's actually warmed up the last few days, but I was walking around Sunday night and it was raining. Then, the temperature dipped under 0 C and suddenly, snow was falling. Not in the cascading, floaty way. In the "snow that's still kind of rain" way. The wind blew it in our faces and I pulled my scarf up over my nose, since I was afraid of what would happen if I swallowed it. A few weeks ago, the gov't was playing with their little cloud-seeding experiment. So it worked really well before the Olympics; they shoot some silver iodide in the air, they made it rain (hahaha) for a few days and then clear skies for Ol

When the Cock Crows
"It's nonsense, and it's time to stop. I felt like a hand was at my throat when I first started writing. That if I was going to be a proper writer, I'd better be as polite as possible and as calm as possible and as un-angry as possible—and recently I've been thinking, you know, fuck that, basically." – Zadie SmithSo this is me tracking down everything that Zadie Smith has ever written and wondering why I spend my time doing these things when I should be sleeping. I’ve been collecting writers’ names, people whose work I need to track down and devour the moment I get home and reach a bookstore. I’m telling my family to start saving. Many books will be b

Read? Books???
So I've been sad because I haven't been reading like I used to. Last year in Knoxville, I had a screened in back porch and I sat out there and read, I read like a crazy person. Then in Cookeville, I sat on the patio or whatever you call that thing and I put my feet up on the table and I read some more. I didn't bring many books with me since I needed to bring, you know, clothes. But I brought Life of Pi with me on the plane. In August. I'm currently on page 178. Now, that's bad, especially for me, but I think part of me is afraid that once I finish it, I will be left with nothing but Madame Bovary and then I will have to go to Book City and buy more books and I can't do that yet because God

7 Weeks?!?!
It's been nearly two months. I mentioned this before, but sometimes it feels like we got here last week and other times, like we've been here for years. It's eerie. I got a phone yesterday. It's a tiny Nokia and lighter than my iPod nano, but now my friends can find me when I'm not in my apartment, which was starting to get on my nerves. And, barring any further complications, I should be paid in full at the end of the month, as promised. We'll see. I started writing a story about disgruntled employees the other day. Not sure how it's going to end. I like writing here. Parts of it are easy; probably the fact that I can go to my apartment and sit around and I know that, say, I don't ha

Update
I realize that I slack off on the blog posts and then I load everyone down with pages of information. Sorry about that. But I just got back from vacation and have a lot to say. So....The week before we left was hectic, since I was still finishing up classes and packing, and not getting paid...and then I finally got paid and that was fabulous. Then, vacation. Thursday was the 1st, National Day and we all slept in and watched the parade and got our stuff together. I packed pretty tight. I thought I packed tight when I came here, but I had no idea. There was a lot of stuff to bring. Anyway, we took a sleeper bus to Guilin. The "we" is me, Liz, Katie, Flo, Simon and Pye. I already m