Happy 2009!

Happy New Year, my fellow Americans!

There's not much to report in this blog entry for today. I just thought I would write because it's a special occasion.

Last night after roller skating on new campus, I ate lunch with one of my students on old campus. We had a great time and then we went and got some pictures taken at the very inexpensive photo booth place.

At night, my team, plus a couple of other guys from ELIC in Nanchang, and I hung out playing games until the new year arrived. Of course it was enjoyable. But then things got less enjoyable when my teammate Shannon went to unplug a hand-warmer thing from the wall in her bedroom. We just saw one huge spark and suddenly Shannon was on the ground. She got electrocuted sort of badly. One side of her left hand is black and there is a burnt hole. It looked so painful and terrible. It was sort of like a nightmare. Shannon, however, is an ex-cop and is pretty tough, so she is surviving quite well.

Today I just cleaned our apartment for 5 hours, since my roommate is off in a far-away province. Then Jodi and I wandered around the alleys in the neighborhood, visiting our favorite people, like the "watermelon lady", etc. We also got our hair washed for an hour at the same place as last time, for the low price of 8 kuai (roughly $1.15). Then we just ate some steamed dumplings at our favorite place for dinner.

So that is my amazingly uneventful day! I thought I'd wish you a happy New Year and share some pictures. The first picture is from today when we visited the watermelon lady, who actually just sells oranges and apples now. The second is when my team and I were served a lamb for dinner the other day. This is just half of the lamb--the other half was on the other side of the table. The third picture is an awesome one Jodi took when we went roller skating. The final picture is just one of the roller skating "rink" on new campus.