Xin Nian Kuai Le!

So I was all like, "Happy New Year!" and she was like, "New Year's not until next month".*

 

At least, I think that's what she was saying. I don't actually speak Chinese. But I know how to say "Happy New Year"**, so… there you go.

 

Well, here we are at the weekend again!

 

This week felt a little weird because we had Monday off, and so they decided for Tuesday classes that Basics were more important than Wing Chun. Maybe they're right, but it doesn't make the Basics class any more exciting. But they did have the usual Jumps and Rolls class, which I decided to go back to. I think it went rather well. Not as much leaping about as usual. Still can't do a backflip.

 

I finished the Short Staff Form! That went a lot more quickly than I thought it would. Maybe it's because Bagua took so ridiculously long to complete. Yeah, I need to practice that one. And my Straight Sword. It suddenly feels like I have a whole lot of forms, and I can never get around to working on them all.

 

On Wednesday I felt super sore the entire day, and I heavily suspect that it was the four-day weekend break that made it so. It reminded me of the very first week I got here, when my legs were just constantly sore, and I started to dread staying here for five months, assuming that it would stay that way. But your body gets used to such things pretty quickly. By Thursday I felt completely better.

 

After a few weeks ago when Power Training felt like it would simply never end, I haven't dreaded it nearly as much. This week's theme was Sit-Ups, and if I remember correctly I did over 300. But doing so and then holding your feet for your partner so he can also do so takes up a lot of time, so we didn't do anything too crazy afterwards. Just the usual push-ups and chicken steps (squatting down all the way and then taking tiny steps forward, with your arms held together behind your back. It's harder than it looks.).

 

Friday! We, of course, had Forms and then Power Stretching in the morning. We've officially finished Tonbei now (the Shaolin Fist Form), and so Sifu asked us if we wanted to start on the Broadsword form. But I've opted instead to do the Single Chain Whip. If you're gonna learn a weapon form, you might as well learn something portable, right? So I was able to get one from the weapon shop here for 30 kuai and "take it for a spin" (ha, get it?) during the free class on Friday afternoon. For the first fifteen minutes of swinging that thing around, I was like, "this is gonna get old really fast", but then at the end of class I was like, "LET'S KEEP GOING". Weirdly addicting. Except when it smacks you in the shin. That's not all that fun. It has a spike on the end, but Shu-Shu recommended that I wrap it up so I wouldn't injure myself. I thought that was sound advice.

 

For Power Stretching, we "combined" with Wei Sifu's class, meaning that the two people from their class who hadn't left for the holidays joined us. Surprisingly, the latter part of this week has seen the fewest number of students that have trained while I've been here. I would've thought that Christmas rather than New Year's would be the time when it would all trickle down to a dozen students. Nope!

 

In my spare time this week I read Wuthering Heights. I'm not sure I can recommend it. It kind of freaked me out. I decided that if "Secret Garden" were a bit longer (like, if it covered the rest of the kids' lives), then it would be the antithesis of "Wuthering Heights". Is it just me, or did Francis Hodgson Burnette have a little more faith in people's goodness than Emily Bronte?

 

Recently I'd taken a bit of a break from Mandarin, but I decided to go back on Wednesday, to discover that others had also dropped the endeavor. So I had Nellie to myself. To her astonishment, she discovered that I don't actually speak Chinese. I've been trying to convince her of as much for several months now. I can't decide if now is a good time to really try to learn, or if I should just wait for an actual college class because I've only got a month left in China.

 

Yes, there is but one month more. *cue Les Miserables Music*. That seems super strange. But I think I'm about ready to go home to my family. After a while China loses its charm, you know? Riding in a taxi has gone from frightening to exciting to "I don't even care that we're on the wrong side of the street right now". It'll be strange to go back to a place where they have traffic laws.

 

Because we're getting Monday off for New Year's, I figured I could use the second Saturday to do my weekly Fruit Shopping and use the actual Saturday to get some rest. Which basically meant that I stayed inside and re-read half of the Scarlet Pimpernel before my smart mother convinced me that I should read one of the classics instead. I've decided on "Moby Dick", but I haven't had the courage yet to get into that "whale" of a book (heh).

 

In the last half hour of daylight on the last day of the year, I decided to take the puppy out for a walk. Here's a cultural thing about China. They don't really care about their pets all that much. In some households in America, it's like the dog is one of the kids. But here? I don't think I've even seen dog and cat food for sale in the supermarket. The dogs that live here at the school eat leftovers. And all of the stray dogs I've seen here have a funny build, with a long body and short legs, like they're descended from household dogs that were turned out on the street. It's sad, really.

 

Anyway, I really didn't do anything exciting for midnight on the New Year.  Had we been near the ocean or something I might've arranged a polar dip, but as it was, 85% of the students went to the local international youth hostel to drink in the New Year; so I stayed in my room and, like, read fanfiction or something until midnight, when my sister got up at 8:00 am her time to say Xin Nian Kuai Le to me.

 

And there goes 2011. According to the Mayans, the world's gonna end this year. I don't put any stock in that; I'm pretty sure those guys practiced human sacrifice.

 

The morning of January 1, 2012, came wrapped in an extremely thick fog. That's pretty much what the next twelve months look like to me. While I can see fairly clearly the things that are coming in the next few months (flying back home, etc.), the way ahead of that is a little more indistinct. But even though that fog was so thick I couldn't see the dining halls, when I stepped into it, it gave the illusion that everything around me was a greyish white. Just because you can't see the future doesn't mean that it's going to be dark.

 

I think it's gonna be a good year.

 

-Sarah

 

*Not only do people here celebrate Chinese New Year, most of them actually go by the Chinese calendar. For them, it's still December right now! It's actually made it a little difficult to figure out when my Sifu's birthday is. All we know is that it's in November, December, or January some time.

 

**"Xin Nian Kuai Le" literally translates to "New Year Happy" and is the common greeting expressed whenever you see someone around the New Year. It's pronounced "shin neean kwhy luh", and I had the pleasure of learning a song to remember the phrase set to "Oh My Darling Clementine".