I've Been Thinking Lately

I'm sure many of you know that Blogger is currently blocked in China -- courtesy of the Great Firewall of China -- and I have to use a proxy to get here. Now that wouldn't be a big deal except for the fact that the only proxies we have are on my parents' computers, and I'm not particularly willing to pay a considerable (for a fifteen-year-old) chunk of money to subscribe to one on my own computer, and neither are my parents too willing to pay that money.

That said, I haven't been able to get onto this site from my own computer, so I have to borrow my dad's (or less frequently my mom's). That is really annoying. I want to be able to keep blogging because I enjoy it and it's extra writing practice for me, but having to copy the text onto an email and get it to another computer (when nobody else is already using said computer) where I can post onto Blogger tends to deter me from it.

So, I've been trying to figure out what to do about it. I really like Blogger, and ideally I'd just want it to not be blocked anymore, but since that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon, I'm trying to find another option. Any suggestions in the matter are very welcome.

It's Begining to Look a Bit Like Christmas...

two days after the fact. It never really does look much like Christmas outside the apartments of those of us who celebrate it, anyway. The Chinese decorate a bit and play Christmas songs in stores and such, but they don't get any days off. Actually, that's pretty nice for us because we do get time off fro school and work, so we can go to all the gardens and tourist destinations when everyone else is at work, so it's empty. The weather's been really nice, too. It's great.

My mom bought a guitar for herself, and I want to learn how to play it, too. Right now I only know a few chords, though. I also want to start playing piano again, if I could find music I liked which was at my level. Then I'd be able to play three instruments, including my violin.

Christmas was great. We had pain au chocolat for breakfast of course, and our traditional pork roast. It was delicious. (My dad is an amazing cook.) We went Christmas shopping in this little underground shopping center in Shanghai, and we found some good stuff there, like Axis & Allies (a WWII board game) for John. My dad also ordered books, clothing, and things from the U.S., so I got this shirt. It's awesome.

We'll be going up to Beijing and Harbin for a few days. Harbin is where they have an ice festival with buildings and sculptures made of ice. I think the festival itself doesn't start until after school starts again for us, but we can still go before when they're finishing up everything.

It's going to be cold.

It did snow today in Suzhou, but not that much. It melted as soon as it hit the ground. My mom and I went to the Lions Grove garden to see it in the snow and take pictures, but the snow wasn't heavy enough to get a good shot of it. Oh well.

HALLOWEEN

So, yesterday was Halloween. Last year we didn't have the time or energy to work 0n getting fancy costumes like we wanted, so we made up for that this year by getting really nice costumes from a tailor. We just printed out pictures, handed them to the tailor, and told them to make it. My costume is a historical dress from the American Civil War era. I'm not any particular person, just someone. I don't think it should really matter what person I am, but obviously other people though so. One person thought I was dressed as Little Bo Peep. (If I were her I would have a shepherd's crook, but I wasn't and I didn't.) Or when I told them I was wearing a historical dress, they'd think I was Scarlett O'Hara, or a "southern belle," or something similar. I guess the closest thing would be the March girls, because they were my inspiration, but I still wasn't one of the March girls, just someone from that time period.

Anyway, here's a picture of me in my costume, complete with hoop skirt. Just for fun, I posed properly and altered the image to make it look old.



The collar isn't quite right (it was supposed to be pointed and stiff, not round and floppy), but it's okay for now and that's something I know how to fix. (I can just cut off the old collar and make a new one.) The thing is that the manikin wasn't wearing the collar in the picture, so we had to tell them ourselves by pointing at things that we wanted a collar, and they didn't know that it was supposed to look a certain way.

Gardening

I've been meaning to start my garden for a while now, ever since I received the seeds my grandpa mailed to me, but I haven't gotten to it until today. It doesn't affect the plants too much, though, because they're not really being planted outdoors; they're going into our glass-enclosed balcony, which is pretty much like a greenhouse. Anyway, I'll be posting some updates on the garden anytime I feel the need to. It probably won't be on any regular basis.


Here is where the garden is going. Normally the table is closer to the end near the planters, but we moved it towards the middle temporarily. (Our laundry has to hang on this balcony to dry, and we don't really want the table to be right under the balcony.) So basically what I'm saying is the stuff on the balcony will be rearranged a bit at some point soon. The planter on the right has slightly different soil than the other one, because I had two different kinds of soil and I mixed them together in that one, rather than keeping them separate but having two bags of soil which were each only about a third full.
This picture shows which seeds I'm planting, and where they are going. I have some tomatoes, chives, and flowers, but I'm not planting them yet.

English Class - "Five Ways" Poem

My English teacher is great. Some students disagree with me and say that he talks too much, but I like it because we can discuss things aloud as we read them, and not just writing journals at the end of each chapter, where the only person who ever reads them is the teacher, and you can't learn from what your classmates have to say. Besides, I feel like I can express my thoughts better orally than in writing sometimes, and while reading a book is one of those times.

The other thing is that instead of writing our assignments and book responses on paper and handing them in to the teacher, we post them on a blog. The advantages to this fall along the same line as the in-class discussions: other students can read your work and critique it, and you can learn from other students' writing.

Anyway, I'm going to show you a poem I wrote for English class. The assignment was to choose a poem from a book he gave us and write a pastiche, a copy of another artist's style, based on the poem. Here is the original poem, followed by my own pastiche:

Five Ways to Kill a Man EDWIN BROCK

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.

You can make him carry a plank of wood

to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this

properly you require a crowd of people

wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak

to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one

man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,

shaped and chased in a traditional way,

and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.

But for this you need white horses,

English trees, men with bows and arrows,

at least two flags, a prince, and a

castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind

allows, blow gas at him. But then you need

a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,

not to mention black boots, bomb craters,

more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs,

and some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly

miles above your victim and dispose of him by

pressing one small switch. All you then

require is an ocean to separate you, two

systems of government, a nation’s scientists,

several factories, a psychopath, and

land that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways

to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat

is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle

of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

Five Ways to Fail in Life EMMA

There are many cumbersome ways to fail in life.

You could claim inheritance to the throne

of an empire, and wreck the whole place.

You would require numerous mistresses, a case of

megalomania, a controlling mother, a way to kill

said mother, and an utter lack of talent in the

arts, which you would deny.

With no claim to a throne by birthright, you

could declare dictatorship anyway. You would

be self-conscious about your lack of height, not to mention

being at war with everyone at once, invading

Russia in the dead of winter, and refusing to

quit while you are ahead.

When destroying a nation is out of your reach, you can

lead a large army to their deaths instead. For this

you should have big and fluffy sideburns, a

vital battle, a gigantic crater, 3793 troops to

sacrifice, and a reputation to shatter.

Another way to fail is by becoming a famous

mobster. This would require one giant crime

organization, Thompson sub-machine guns, lots of

money with nothing to show for it, a prison

sentence to Alcatraz, and a case of syphilis.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways

to fail in life. Simpler, direct, and much more neat

is to sit in the middle of a sea of

opportunities, yet do nothing.

I actually had to do a bit of research for this poem, but I enjoyed it. The people I referred to in my poem are real historical figures, and as an added bonus I'll let you guess who they are. (Preferably specify which stanza applies to them.) The only people who aren't allowed to answer are my dad and my brother, because they helped me to choose historical figures and therefore already know who all the people are.

School

I know I haven't posted anything in forever. I would post more, but China just so happens to have blocked Blogger and so far only my mom and dad have proxies on their computers. I could steal their computers more often, but I always forget, and I like my laptop's keyboard better, anyway.

So, SCHOOL

School is good. I have the greatest homeroom ever. It's awesome. We have plans to make a homeroom band. (I am the lead violinist.) This year we're doing a lot more competitions between homerooms, and I like that.

We went to a two-night school camp last week. It was fun, especially compared to last year. It's not that last year was particularly bad or anything, but it could have been better. Basically they divided us up into groups and we cycled through activities like archery and horseback riding, which maybe I would have thought was fun if I hadn't done them before and under better circumstances. The archery equipment wasn't too great of quality (most of the arrows were losing their fletching) and we only got to ride the horses for one short lap. We weren't even allowed to trot; we had to walk. I can understand not cantering or galloping, but not even being allowed to trot was a bit frustrating. I did manage to convince the workers that I could ride a horse and didn't need them to walk next to me, at least.

The food wasn't that great, either. Oh, well.

Anyway, this year we did competitions like boat races, games, raft-building, group talent show, and fashion show. My homeroom got first or second place in everything except for the talent show, where we got third, so we won overall. My boat got the best time in the boat races when we had six people, one less than everyone else, although when the scores for all the boats were averaged out we got second. My group built absolutely the worst raft, but we managed to float the entire ten minutes and win the competition through careful balancing. What I'm most proud of, though, is the fashion show. Our theme was Latin America, which was perfect because we have a Costa Rican in our class, so she immediately knew what to do. Then we had to make two outfits - one male and one female - out of blue and white poster board, and hold a fashion show. Our girl's dress was the best. Multiple people commented that they couldn't believe it was made out of paper and not cloth. (If I had a picture of it I'd show you, but I don't. Maybe I can get it from one of my classmates.) We didn't win, but I think that's because our homeroom was first so the other models had more time to discuss how present themselves and learn from the models who went ahead of them.

And the food was pretty good.

The only problem was that we were in tents, which wouldn't have been too big a deal except that the mattress pads weren't too great and the ground was a bit uneven, and it rained all night the second night and the low-quality tents leaked.

Since my dad is a ninth-grade homeroom teacher (although not my homeroom teacher) he was at the same camp. Some troublemakers tied his tent shut one night, but since he always has his pocketknife with him he easily cut the string. We don't know who did it, although it doesn't really matter. One of my classmates says he's pretty sure ho knows who did it, but he won't tell me who.

I'm planning on posting more from now on, so expect another post within the next few days, maybe tomorrow.

Arizona

Back in Arizona for the month. It's great, but as a result of the traveling, Sunday lasted over 36 hours, and we didn't get back to Tempe until midnight. That's partly because we had an 11-hour layover in San Francisco, so we left the airport to see the city for a few hours. That was great, except for two things: (a) we were unbelievably tired, and (b) none of us remembered that San Francisco is cold, so none of us had any sweaters to wear over our short-sleeve shirts. Also, we flew into Tucson, so we had to drive back up to Tempe. It might of been nicer to fly into Phoenix, but we weren't sure of our schedules yet when we bought our tickets, and then we could easily get a car to borrow from my grandparents who live closer to Tucson, since rental cars are expensive.

I wish we could be spending more time in Tempe, but there are so many things we want to do and people we want to see that it's hard to stuff it all into one month. We also have a friend of ours from church/school from Korea (yes, she's Korean, not Chinese), so we want to take her to some nice places in Arizona and Utah. We're driving up to Salt Lake City... someday. Next Monday or Tuesday, I think. Anyway, John and I are going to fly back early after about four days because we want to spend a bit more time in Arizona. The rest of them are staying for about a week.

It's so weird to us how now whenever we're in public, people say "excuse me" and "sorry" to us. I think the Chinese are just used to shoving past crowds of people. One woman on a public bus just walked right over the top of my feet without saying a word, when I had plenty of room to step backwards. For contrast, when my mom accidentally bumped into a man in a store here, he said sorry to her.

We've basically been going on a shopping spree here. I can't believe how much I missed Target. We try to reassure ourselves that all our purchases are basically a year's worth of supplies condensed into a few weeks. The thing is, there's all this stuff that's made in China, but only for export, so we have to go to the US to buy it just so we can bring it back to China. Strange. But I'm just glad that I don't have to look through three different stores to find shoes my size, when it's only 8 1/2! I wonder what people who actually do have big feet do.

We've also been eating from all of our favorite restaurants. In-N-Out Burger = heaven on earth. Quite literally. There's also real Mexican food, not the weird stuff they serve at the "Mexican" restaurants in Suzhou. For example, their version of enchiladas is a small chicken wrap with a bit of lettuce and a spoonful of refried beans on the side. It's actually not bad food, so long as you don't think of it as Mexican food.

I just go to see the little Chinese waitresses wearing "Viva Mexico" t-shirts.

I'm sure we're all gaining a ton of weight from all the heavy food we're eating here. Don't worry, we'll shed it all off once we get back to China, either from walking a lot or the excruciating humidity. Sad thing is we'll be missing Phoenix weather when we go back to China, because at least that's not humid.

(Next stop on the food list: Mt. Pleasant, Utah for patty melts and milkshakes.)

We've been working as hard as we can to see all of the people we want to see, try as we might. There's just so many of them. Some of our friends, particularly the boys, look significantly older, while others seem like they haven't aged a day. The same thing is happening with my perception of time; sometimes it feels like I haven't been here in forever, and other times it feels like I never left. China is screwing with my brain, I swear.

We saw our cats and dog again. The dog ran right up to us, but the cats acted as if they didn't know who we were. I think that the dog remembers us better because they care more than the cats do. So inconsiderate of them.

Not much else to say. I think I had more, but I've forgotten. If I remember, I'll write it down in another post.