Sino-psis

i've been up to a whole lot of nothing, but in kunming, so it still kind of makes it worthwhile. the weather has been off and on, one day thunderstorming, one day baking me like a lobster (i'll talk more about lobsters in a sec), and one day blowing dust in my face. overall tho, the weather is ten times cooler than for those of you in the southern us. mwahaha.

szo. i've been waiting around this week for the internet people to come, and they didn't. so it looks like i have to wait for another monday bloody monday. and on that fateful day i should get my passport and my ethernet port requirements all filled. hurray!

otherwise, i've been eating and sleeping, reading and dreaming, internetting and gameplaying, hemming and hawing. the dean of my school, who is also my landlord (go with those you can trust,) had my roomie kyle and i for dinner at the lotus hotel the other day. we sat with his family and ate random things off the round table and tried to make conversation. kyle sat next to the youngest son and i next to the oldest, i guess according to our respective ages. i had hushed english conversations and regular broken chinese conversations with the elder bro. he's nice and i think we're all going to get together tomorrow to play a friendly game of basketball CHINA VS US INSANE DEATHMATCH ROAR!! and then maybe go have some tea or something. kyle and yanchen (the younger) are on equal footing in terms of their chinese/english levels, as are haochen's and mine (tho i'm sure his english is better than my chinese, but he just speaks in such a soft tone i can hardly tell.)

yesterday i met up with eliza montgomery, alex and elliott's sister (almost forgot the second t there,) and walked around the town with her. i haven't really been in kunming all that long tho and didn't know where to take her, but she seemed fine with walking, so we walked. and walked and walked. we were both tired and sat in a park for a while luxuriating in the soft green grass watching children throw projectiles, musicians practice their craft, and elderly folk swat a birdie back and forth. that was nice. i was surprised that i recognized eliza right off since i hadn't seen her since (we figured this out) junior year of high school. but it seems that seeing alex a couple of weeks ago helps considerably, as they look a lot alike. today she is in lijiang, currently raining i believe, and then tomorrow she's going to hike tiger leaping gorge, of which i am so jealous. if i had had my passport on me, i would have gone with her, but alas... she seems certainly capable of travelling on her own tho, so i'm not worried. for those of you who know the family, fyi, eliza is going back for her sophomore year, says she'll prolly study abroad junior year (mebbe china) and then go somewhere for an architecture grad program focusing on sustainable development and environmental concerns. wrap that up with a bow and i'm done.

i just bought a camera today, huzzah! it's small and compact and 5.2 Mpixels. the zoom isn't all that great, but i prefer its size to its telescopic abilities. once i get my laptop down here, i should be able to shoot out pictures of my surroundings and add pictures to my flickr page finally. my last camera, rest its soul, left this earth around mid march and i life hasn't been the same since. i'm starting to feel complete again now.

oh yeah, the lobster. yesterday, as i was parting from eliza at a bus stop, there was a lady and child with a lobster in a cup of some kind of milky liquid. odd. but then i realized it was a live little lobster. i happened to get on the same bus as those two and had a good vantagepoint from which to view the antics. the baobei would stick his fingers into the cup and pull out the lobster by its claw and then proceed to tickle its tail. this obviously annoyed the creature, because it then would recoil and snatch at the child with its claws. the child did this repeatedly and the mother would make encouraging gasps each time the lobster clawed. now, i'm wondering why i was never taught to play with things that could pinch me when i was younger. i've always had an intense fear of small bity things, owing to odd experiences in my childhood. but i'm sure if i'd played with more lobsters, i'd have gotten over that much sooner. i think that mother is on the right track, tho i hope she's gonna let that thing grow a bit more before cooking it, cuz it was kinda on the small size. unless, it's a family pet! that'd be something. cmere little lobby! here boy! does pinchy want some phytoplankton? gooood lobster.

oh, eliza came bearing a Lonely Planet and found for us a vegetarian restaurant pretty near my house (she has been vegetarian most of her life, except for some forgivable incidents in china.) fake meat and fake fish galore. right next to a temple of course and has some really good hot and sour soup. i'm game.

anyhoo. i'm about done for this week. again, not much has happened. you?

e