Days 228-229: Boring Day, then SISU Arts and Crafts

Thursday not much went on except that I wrote my Midterm Exam and sent it to Carol. I also found a possible flight to return home for July 5, so I sent it to Sophia Yang from approval. We had spaghetti for dinner...not much else to say.

Friday we had much more fun. We went to the group Chinese class for the first time in awhile.  However, we only stayed until 2:30 because we decided to go to and Arts and Crafts event that the SISU International Club was having.  I was really glad we went!  It was nice to see a lot of people again, including Peter, Damon, Boris, Curtis, and Samira.  I had a nice talk with Claudio about Italian films, and Kerry had a nice visit with Christa (the Dutch teacher) about word origins. I also chatted with a German visiting faculty, Michael, who was the head of his American Studies program at his university back home. It was a nice, bright, sunny day, and we made some Chinese wall decorations. We took silk scarves, placed them on rings, and then some men wrote Chinese calligraphy on them, and some of us attempted our own. I did five of the wall hangings: the calligrapher wrote "handsome," "Shanghai," "love," "dream" on mine. I did one of my own with the word "mountain," one of the few Chinese characters I know (shan). Many pictures were taken; good conversations were had. An enjoyable event all around. Kerry even got to pet some cats on the way back. The event was at the SISU International Faculty House, which was beautiful...and only five minutes from the campus. I have absolutely NO idea why we, as international faculty, were not placed here instead of the Hua Hong Yuan Condos, 20-30 minutes from campus, but there's a lot I still don't understand about China.

I just had beans and Chinese cabbage for dinner and did some reading in the evening. We're doing Maus I in my Honors class on Wednesday and Streetcar in my grad student reading group. My Short Novel students are taking a Midterm next week.

Here are some pics from the Arts and Crafts event:

Kerry with his Chinese name hanging from bamboo.

Group photo with SISU International Faculty: (left to right, the ones I can identify): Curtis (with the tie), Hacer, Samira (smiling), Farras, me, Anna (kneeling), Kerry, Christa (holding a wall hanging), Peter (holding a wall hanging), Claudio, Boris.

Me with my "shan."  Did it myself.

Me with "love", Christa, and Kerry with his.