My Crazy Chinese Life

It has been over a week since I last wrote, and people are beginning to whine to me about how their lives lack meaning when they can't read my blog and how they get depressed everytime they press the refresh button on the browser only to find that there are no new tales of adventure to brighten their day. To all of these people, I am very sorry, I will try to be better.
The last week or so has been very interesting. I feel like I have reached a certain comfort level in Chinese. This does not mean that I am good at speaking or that my vocabulary has grown greatly, only that I don't think about it so much anymore, I just speak, and continue speaking until I am somewhat confident that what I am saying has been at least partially understood. (although there are those times when you try and try and understanding does not seem like a possibility and at those times you can pull out such life saving phrases as "suan le" (forget it) and "mei guanxi" (don't worry about it.) For those of you who enjoy playing charades, I think you would like China a lot.
Last weekend I ended up getting the best of both worlds. I traveled with 3 other American friends to a beautiful lake not far from Hangzhou and had the perfect mix of getting to know these American strangers and going off by myself and exploring. It was great to get away from all (ALL) of the school work for a couple of days and see some of China. The lake was nestled in between beautiful green rolling hills and there were not too many tourists around. Last Sunday was Zhong Qiu Jie (Jong Chee-o Jee-eh) which is the Mid-autumn festival, when you are supposed to eat moon cakes and look at the moon. I discovered a new favorite food, red bean (often put inside a moon cake) , which if you have not tried, you must because it is delicious.
This week has been good as well. Classes are pretty intense, but all of the teachers are helpful and it is really just a lot of work and memorizing and there is no way around that. However I did seem to find some time to go to West Lake with a friend one afternoon to stroll around, as well as attend my gongfu class, which is a blast.
The last 24 hours have been kind of challenging and emotionally draining because my roommate decided to move out yesterday. There are a variety of reasons behind her decision, (none of them being that I am a smelly/creatively clean person) and in the end she has to do what she thinks is best for her, but I am very sad to see her go. The resident director Su Aimei is in the process of finding me a new Chinese roommate, but in the meantime I am enjoying my single and looking forward to exploring Hangzhou with some friends this weekend.
Love you and Miss you all...please contact me by comment, email, facebook, actual mail, etc and tell me what is going on out there in your world.