In Between the New Years

If you can ignore the constant noise from fire crackers the children continuously set off and will continue to set off until the Chinese New Year (around Feb. 18th), it’s been generally quiet since school ended a week and a half ago. But when you’re living on a college campus, this also means that everything shuts down until the students return in March. This means not eating my favorite shao kao or the 1 kuai jidan bing (an egg fried into a flatbread). But don’t worry. I’m not starving. There are plenty of noodles to eat and dishes to try. And then there’s always cooking, but…

The New Year started in grand fashion. After attending the best New Year’s Eve Party I’ve ever been to (thanks, Kari), at 4:00 a.m. New Year’s morning I made a trip to the hospital with Devon, one of the Lanzhou PCVs, who had been suffering from an intense pain in her stomach. So after waking up the PC doctor, Simon, Danielle, and I carted Devon to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning. And after a day of watching our friend in agonizing pain, she went in for surgery to remove her appendix. I think by the end of the day I had been awake for a consecutive 38 hours. The rest of the week I was basically all but living in the hospital, since I live close and am one of the few PCVs who possesses a cell phone, making communication between Devon and the PC medical staff in Chengdu much easier.

The rest of the month didn’t have anything nearly as exciting as an unplanned hospital visit. I slept too much, hung out with PCVs and Chinese people, fooled around with my guitar a bit, watched Desperate Housewives (seasons 1 and 2), watched a few movies, studied Chinese characters, and bowled way too much, I’m ashamed to admit. By the end of January, I was ready to be out of Lanzhou for a while, so our winter training came just at the right time.