Fievel Goes East: 马上成功: Year of the Horse 2014

I actually wrote this several weeks ago but didn't have a computer I could use to post it. I'll post another one before school starts next week (really, I will...):

I'm sitting here at the airport in Xiamen (Fujian province) waiting for a flight to Singapore and thought I would take some time to update my blog after almost five months of negligence. Thanks to those of you who sent me friendly reminders and took the time to say hello/ask how it has been going. At this point, there's so much to say that I'm going have to be a bit choosy.

I spent the last two weeks or so in the countryside near Zhangzhou city in Fujian. Since I stayed in China over the winter break, I was able to be here to welcome in the Chinese New Year. The holiday is fifteen days long and is still not over as people continue paying New Year's visits to friends and family. I have a friend who is a third year undergraduate student at Central South University who invited me to stay at his home for CNY so that I wouldn't have to spend the holiday alone, and I took him up on the offer. We spent a couple days in Xiamen exploring some of the sights (Gulangyu and Xiamen Daxue in particular) and eating some of the food. Since Xiamen is a port city, seafood is plentiful. After finishing in Xiamen, we took a car to Zhangzhou. The area where my friend lives is called Hua'an, and I was very content the entirety of my time there. It's nestled in between a bunch of mountains, so the air quality was awesome, as was the scenery. The weather was also moderate with temperatures between 70 and 80 degrees. We had the opportunity to hike several different areas, (attempt to) fish, see some rocks with ancient Chinese writing, go to a bamboo garden/park, visit one of the world's largest earthen buildings, sit in a few hot spring water baths, sing karaoke, and eat some of the specialties in Zhangzhou. There was enough going on to feel occupied but not so much that I felt like I didn't have free time. It's been a long, long time since I;ve felt like I've had such a relaxing break from everything. The food was also very good and very different than food in Hunan. In Hunan, everything comes to you having had some sort of pepper added to the dish. Food in Fujian is not spicy and is slightly more bland, though not in a bad way. People in Fujian also typically start meals off with soup of some sort and are constantly brewing/drinking tea, which is different than what is typical in Changsha. I also have a much better understanding of where meat comes from. I watched a duck get slaughtered and met the little white goat that was going to be my dinner both before and after he had his own separate encounter with the butcher. We raised sheep and a couple other types of animals when I grew up, but my parents must have done a really good job hiding the animals' fates from me. It was not enough to turn me into a vegetarian (meat just tastes too good), but it was dangerously close.

The remainder of my school semester was relatively uneventful. I acclimated to my classes relatively well, but there was still a LOT I didn't understand. It's a process, though, and I'm okay with that. The biggest challenge has been to make sure I pass my classes in the ways that would be expected from me at home. There are simply a lot of differences in the way the educational system works, and not all of these differences would be considered kosher at home. My Chinese has made huge, huge improvements since I first got here, helped in no small part by another friend of mine who helps me study Chinese every week while I help her practice her English. I no longer get tired from hearing/speaking Chinese all day, but it's come at a cost of a deteriorating English ability. Sometimes I take a step back and begin wondering if I'm actually going to eventually forget my native tongue!

It was a bummer not to be able to spend Christmas with family this year, but the holiday period turned out to be an unexpected blessing nonetheless. On Christmas Eve, I had the chance to attend a couple parties that turned out to be much more enjoyable than I had expected. A lot of people I've met over the last several months remembered I'd be spending Christmas in China and made a note to contact me in one way or another to wish me a happy holiday in China. I spent Christmas with Drew, Rachel, and family along with a few of their friends. The food was great and the company was even better. Overall, I was very thankful for how it all turned out.

At the end of the semester in the beginning of January, we had a party as an opportunity for the different MBA classes to interact with one another. Each class was supposed to have at least one form of entertainment to add to the party's program. Our class is small and only three or four of us could attend, which means we only had three to four of us who were eligible to contribute to the entertainment program. One of my classmates roped me into singing a song with her. Naturally, I was terrified because I would be a) singing b) singing in front of other people and c) singing in front of other people in another language. The event had 300 attendees (298, to be exact), and about five seconds before I was supposed to walk on stage, I forgot all of the lyrics to the song. I will never forget the amount of fear I felt in that moment. Thankfully, my brain kicked into gear literally in the nick of time, and it worked out fairly okay, though my singing quality was below sub-par, especially when compared with my classmate who has taken classes and used to sing in bars. Regardless, I was so, so, so proud of myself for doing something I thought I would never do in 1,000,000 years. I have a couple of pictures, though none of them are very clear.

I know this is a relatively short update given the amount of time that's past, but it's the best I can do for now. Perhaps I'll be able to get another update in before school starts to update on my travels to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It should prove to be another educational experience...