No I'm not pregnant. There's no way I'm having babies in China.

I've known some of this for a while, but had to keep it under wraps until my official letter came in from GWU.

The big news is that Niels and I will be returning to D.C. in summer. He's been accepted and received a merit scholarship (which will cover the cost of tuition for three years) to GWU Law, and I've been accepted to GWU's Graduate School of Education & Human Development's Secondary Education Program. I'll be working towards my M.Ed in Secondary Education with a concentration in Teaching English as a Second Language.

WOOT!

I started this knitting project in January, and am still working on it.


I think it's the longest I've ever worked on a project continuously. (I've a knack for starting a project & then stopping.) It's still not done, the pattern calls for it to be about 5+ feet long and I don't think if I follow the pattern it'll be long enough for me because my shoulders are so broad, so I'm knitting and knitting away. Of course by the time it's done, I figure, the weather will be warm and I won't be able to wear it. .

Got this from Eden:

You are 10:02 a.m.

You are breakfasty, like a pile of pancakes on a Sunday morning that have just the right amount of syrup, so every bite is sweet perfection and not a soppy mess. You are a glass of orange juice that's cool, refreshing, and not overly pulpy. You are the time of day that's just right for turning the pages of a newspaper, flipping through channels, or clicking around online to get a sense of how the world changed during the night. You don't want to stumble sleepily through life, so you make a real effort to wake your brain up and get it thinking. You feel inspired to accomplish things (whether it's checking something off your to-do list or changing the world), but there's plenty of time for making things happen later in the day. First, pancakes.

One of the big disadvantages of spending the past year and a half in China is that I've become completely lost on the current music scene. This started while I was still living in D.C. but has reached an all-time low since coming back. Part of it's my fault, I should be better about reading entertainment and music sites, but sometimes it's just hard, I spend so much time on the Internet already, too much I think, and finding that balance is hard.

So, when I heard dooce, talk about going to see John Legend in concert on more than one occasion and see on the side bar of my friend Andy's blog that he's listening to his Once Again album, my interest was piqued.

I managed to get my hands on Live from Philadelphia and Once Again. Oh my gosh, I can't believe it's taken me so long to listen to it. His voice is like buttah. I want to lick him.

I need to stop living under a rock.

Niels' Dad, Klaus, is in visiting this week so posting is going to be lighter than it's been the past few weeks. We'll be spending a lot of time showing him the sights, there aren't many so we're venturing outside of Zhengzhou to see them, and meeting various friends for lunch or dinner so they can meet him.

Yesterday we went to Shao Lin Si which was really nice because it wasn't so crowded, it's still one of my favorite places i China. Today they're at Longmen Grottes in Luoyang. I didn't go with them because I came down with a case of the pukes yesterday and my stomach is still a bit tender, which I'm pretty sad about because the grottoes are a sight to be seen. Tomorrow we're off to Kaifeng to celebrate Lantern Day Festival. Friday we're going to the Henan Provincial Museum and bum around the city.

It's a busy week.

Classes start next week. Since I'm home and have the afternoon to myself I'm going to use the time wisely and go go prepare.

When Niels & I returned form our 18 day trip down south we were pretty sad. Not just because a wonderful vacation had ended, but because we were coming back to Henan. Don't get me wrong, I love my friends in Henan, but I have problems with Henan and many of the people here for various reasons.

Henan is so different from Guangxi. Guangxi has mountains, Henan's flat as a pancake. Guangxi has the Gulf of Tonkin  (or Beibu Gulf as it's known in China) which is pretty, Henan has the Yellow River which is not. I'm a water person, knowing that I'm near water makes me happy, and I find it hard to be so landlocked.

Also, in Guangxi, it was so... clean. People used garbage cans, kids didn't use the sidewalk as their own personal toilet. The instances of spitting were relatively low. The air was much cleaner and I didn't have my "Zhengzhou cough" the whole time we were away. It was such a pleasant change.

Niels and I have wondered why people in Henan just don't seem to care about their environment. Henan is the province with the largest population and most of which come from the countryside. In the countryside your backyard is also most likely your garbage can, there's no municipal garbage service, the fields you tend are probably also your toilet, you're lucky if you have running water. And when you come into the city the views one may have about the environment are often brought along. This may explain why people do some of the things they do in the city. But I could be wrong, I don't know.

Views like these are why I have such problems with living in Henan. People don't care about their surroundings and aren't willing to change it. And it's why it makes me nuts to return from my trip, look out my kitchen window and see this...

I'm still collecting my thought on our trip to Guangxi Province, not sure when I'll write about it. But I managed to upload the photos I liked best to my Flickr account. Most of the photos have a caption, so I hope you enjoy.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Niels & I got in late last night after a TWENTY SEVEN HOUR train ride, yes you read that correctly, we spent 27 hours on a train. Lonely Planet lied, they said it'd only be a 19 hour train ride.

We're very grateful we had hard sleepers and that everyone else in China was already where they wanted to be so most of the train was empty, which meant a quiet train ride and a less disgusting toilet for all of us.

Needless to say we're tired and glad to be home, although a part of us still wishes we were there. Guangxi's topography is the complete opposite of Henan's and we're going to miss the mountains and water a lot.

I took over 700 photos so it'll take me a while to go through them all but I'll do my best to post the best ones on Flickr, it all depends if the government will let me have access to the site or not.

Happy year of the rat!

Greetings from Beihai, Guangxi Province! Niels and I arrived yesterday after traveling to Nanning and Daxin for a couple days. The weather has cleared up down here but not too far away in Guangdong Province things are still pretty bad. We consider ourselves quite lucky to have only been set back one day.

Unfortunately, because of the cold weather I got sick and missed out on seeing Nanning and Daxin, but did get to watch a lot of CCTV-9 (China's only English speaking news channel) and saw a lot of coverage of the snow storm. The coverage here has been pretty positive, everything's under control nothing to worry about. So when we arrived in Beihai we were looking forward to Internet connection so we can see what's really going on.

Here are two very different news articles covering the storm. I'm sure it's easy to guess which is from the Western news source. 

Severe Winter Storm Persist in China; Food and Fuel Are Short

Hubei Food Supply Stable

Not sure when I'll have access again before heading back to Zhengzhou, so I hope you're all well, and please leave a comment!