Guilty Long Post to Make up for Not Blogging

Ok, I have been doing a terrible job keeping my blog up-to-date. That changes now! I solemnly swear to write a blog post everyday. There! I wrote it, and it's the truth (Tenacious D reference, heehee). I hope the Honors program will forgive me, I've been sick and getting adjusted!

I'm feeling better though, my stomach is now allowing me to eat food again, though it seems to have shrunk in size, which is probably a good thing. I would really like to lose like 15 pounds while I'm here. That's about 5 pounds a month. That doesn't seem like an unrealistic goal. But, I want to lose it in a healthy way. Not because I'm sick and can't eat. I have a gym membership and since it was like 45 American dollars a month I must use it. I will work out and get fit, toned, and skinny. Mid Autumn Festival Resolution. Not that people make Mid Autumn Festival Resolutions...as far as I know.

The Mid Autumn Festival is coming up. I don't really know too much about it. Basically it's a celebration of the harvest season or something like that. There is traditional food like moon cakes (yuebing), jiaozi, zhongzi, and yuanxiao. The Chinese Americans in my group say it's all amazing and they're really excited to eat it all. My history teacher said we might see images of a moon goddess. She told us the myth about how the ruler during the Xia Dynasty's (which is the earliest Chinese dynasty and there is no physical evidence to prove it existed just a historical record that has been proven accurate on other events) wife ate an herb in the forest and became so light that she floated up to the moon. She was too light to get back to Earth so she lives there with just a jade rabbit for company and she is lonely. I'm sure I'll learn more about it soon. We get a break from school for it. However, we have to go to class on the weekend to make up for the days we miss during the break. So it's kind of like yay! aw.

Back to the skinny thing, there are no fat people in China. Seriously. No joke. I only see skinny people. There are maybe a few who are carrying a couple extra pounds but you couldn't call them fat. It's pretty amazing. I'm not sure if it's their dedication to exercise or a high metabolism or good diet or what but it's something I envy. But I fit in well enough, I'm pretty average size here. Which is good because I can buy clothes easily. I'm the right height, right shoe size, right body size (though I still would like to lose 15 pounds and be back where I was in high school) for the clothes. Which is good because they seem to come in one-size-fits-all for the most part. Ok, enough of that.

So, since I've been sick I asked Liang (our bilingual RA) to help me get some medicine. It was really interesting to here some of the Chinese ideas about health. For example, in the West, if you are sick people will tell you to stay in bed and rest. Liang told me that even if I don't go to class I should still get out of the room and walk around outside, get some fresh air. Of course, as I have covered, I don't really consider any air here fresh. I don't think they have air purifiers either. Liang didn't really seem to understand what I was talking about though she thought it was a good idea and wondered why they didn't have any.

She also took me to a fruit/vegetable/meat market where I bought 4 bananas. I was looking at the apples when this huge bug flew up from somewhere in the pile and started buzzing around. I, having a tremendous fear of bugs, immediately panicked and began hiding behind people and trying to run away from it. Everyone else just went about their business and didn't even notice it. I felt really silly. But, I didn't buy any more fruit. The smell was pretty bad in the place especially since my stomach still wasn't doing so good. Liang commented on it being awful as well.

I think that's all I'll write for now. More later. I will try to talk about some differences between China and the US.

Brianna