School has been in full force for three weeks now, except for the Freshmen who begin next week. Freshmen begin their military training for around 10 days, so they’ve been marching up and down all around campus, practicing taichi, and chanting slogans in the wee hours of the morning until the evening. Several team activities have begun rolling on as well with life’s pace being quickened with students, grading, and university life.

Rumors have been going around that during the National Day, which is October 1st, students may not be able to go home. H1N1 is a big factor in this. Just last week, there were plans for a two-day Sports meet and department performances to be held in honor of the China’s 60th Anniversary as the PRC (People’s Republic of China), but these have been axed due to H1N1 fear. I’m not sure what to think of all this; I had no travel plans for the week of October 1st, which again is rumored to have had no classes during the week.

My university is in the middle of the most heightened time in its young life: its 50th anniversary. The campus has absolutely been revamped: additional rocks with Chinese writing (very standard on a campus), new lights (a surprise), buildings detailed with neon colors (another surprise that's quite cool), new sculptures, and general campus "tidying" like trimmed trees, cleaned out water fountains, and assorted flags and banners (very Chinese as well).

The activities actually commence on Friday, September 19th. That's when the school turns 50. Tomorrow, the team will have lunch with our organization's President and his wife before enjoying an all-campus celebration and performance for all the "big wigs". I even heard from students that the Head Communist Party leader in Anhui province is coming since he graduated from the school. Wild stuff!

I'll take some pictures tomorrow to show how different the campus is looking around here.

Beginning three days ago, Siping was hit with snow. For about a period of a day and a half, it snowed off and on. I'd never seen it like this before. However, two days ago, on my way to class, I took pictures of some of the awesome views around campus. Check out the album "March Snow".

My campus has an English language club that is very active among the English majors. They meet in front of the library at 6:30 AM every morning to practice. The leader is a talented young man with a good team behind him. He and his club decided to put on a Halloween Party (on Tuesday night) and invited all English majors to come.

Many of us on the team ran events and booths, like musical chairs, mummy wraps (where you use TP to wrap people up), ball toss, Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Pumpkin and other things. I went as Zeus and just milled around, taking pictures and talking to students. It was great fun and the students really enjoyed it. You can see the photo album "Halloween Party" for pics.

However, before the party began Jude and Will came around to the team trick-or-treating. You can see the video below of the zombie that knocked at my door. Ooooohhhh!

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Last Thursday night, the Wu & fam, Daren & fam, Mark and I participated in a language festival held on campus. It was part of Foreign Language week and all the acts that were performed were comedies and all were delivered in English.

I am totally amazed at the creativity of Chinese students when it comes to acting. They had elaborate costumes: swashbuckling pirates, pompous princes, dazzling princesses, devilish villains, and creepy cross-dressers. The plots/plays they performed were even more elaborate: Brokeback Mountain (a mixture of Prison Break, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Titanic), Cinderella, Mulan, The Little Mermaid, and the Monkey King [seen at right] (a Chinese story of lore similar to Paul Bunyan in American culture).

Each acting troupe numbered several actors (from 7 to 12), amazing use of props (swords, ghosts, musical cues), highly detailed fighting scenes, and English with Chinese flair (if only I could record this part for your audio-visual enjoyment!). Highlights for me was: a Brittney Spears "drag dance" (I'm sure your mind has a visual picture and that's probably what it looked like), a skit performed quickly, slowly, without emotion then with (I guffawed in the front row), and Mulan's grandmother who TOTALLY looked like the grandmother from the Disney movie. You can see Mark's pictures in the photo album "Foreign Language Festival".

When the group of us signed up for this gig, we had no idea how hilariously entertaining this night would be. We, as usual, were the last to perform. Our skit consisted of a doctor (me) who is visited by several patients who each have an ailment. Each patient is instructed to sit in a "magic chair" in which their symptoms will disappear. Daren had hiccups, Rach had an itching rash, Jude had sneezing (which involved Jennifer spraying silly string on the audience each time he sneezed), Wu had a twitch on the right side of his body and Mark was pregnant. As each person walked in, the ailment would leave when they sat in the chair, but I would receive the ailment. So at the end of the skit, I was hiccupping, sneezing, itching my left arm, and having a twitch on my right side all while delivering my lines. As Mark came on, I simply ran off-stage in fear. I don't know if it's flattery or actually true, but some students said we were the highlight of the night. 加油老外!

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