Chinese Mythbusters!

Myth #1: All Chinese people are short. WRONG! If Yao Ming wasn't enough proof, behold the following:
Our new pal Tang is 2.02 meters tall and used to be a professional volleyball player for China. He became a professional athlete at the age of 14, spent 10 years traveling around playing volleyball, and is now a junior at NPU. He compensates for his lack of junior high and high school education by being very charismatic and taking his professors out to dinner on the day before an exam. So I can't bust any “myths” about bribery and corruption in China yet, but he sure is tall!

MOONopoly

When I last left off blogging it was around Mid-Autumn Day, so I suppose it's time to tell you about Mid-Autumn Night, which is really the important part, it being a lunar festival. Unfortunately we couldn't see the moon through the smog and clouds, so instead we stayed indoors and enjoyed the moon via Moonopoly, a game that is almost identical to Monopoly: Here & Now, with the notable addition of post-it note moons (thats the Chinese character for woman and a rabbit on the moon; go read the wikipedia article on Mid-Autumn Day if you want to know why).
(Monopoly: Here & Now is almost identical to Monopoly, except that you can be french fries or a labradoodle instead of a hat or some standard dog breed, and you can purchase such fine properties as Red Rocks [for all you CO folks] and the White House, only the 3rd most valuable property on the board.)

We also tried to enjoy mooncakes, though with the boxes of mooncakes we were given there was about a 1 in 4 shot that it would be delicious and a 75% chance of me making that face I was making in the picture I posted with my haircut. I can understand now how my students got sick of them so quickly. I still have 3 mooncakes left, so some of you might get lucky enough to have the mooncake experience.

I still exist!

I know it's been a long time since I've updated, and I apologize for dropping off the face of the earth. I am still here, and alive and well! Life has been sufficiently busy and blogging hasn't always been my top priority, but in the interest of keeping in touch with everyone back home, I'm going to attempt to catch up with myself and stay caught up. So keep tuning in for a series of chronological posts about what I've been up to for the past two or three weeks, and send me comments or emails if you want to hear any stories in greater detail. Actually, send me comments or emails anyways, as I'd really like to hear how things are going on your end of the world! I feel like it's been a long time since I've talked to a lot of you. Let's get caught up.