I had a visitor fly in a few months ago, literally. Take a close look at the picture and you'll see the airborne friend who appeared in my bedroom from out of nowhere. Even now, I still can't tell if he's creepy or cute. Not sure how he got into my apartment, but it didn't take him long to find the open window!
P.S. If you can't tell, he's a bird.
Dragonboat Festival
We had 3 days off in celebration of the Dragonboat Festival in June. The actual holiday was June 16. Traditions include dragonboat racing, eating sticky rice called zhongzhi, and wearing colorful bracelets. For reasons unknown to me, our city did not have dragonboat racing this year. I was disappointed, too.
I spent the actual holiday with a friend, who took me to a nearby park and river, which also has an amusement park in it. We ended up trying out some of the rides - my favorite were the bumper cars because all the other bumper car drivers were just as enthusiastic as we were, and we had a blast ramming into each other. Afterwards, I was invited to a birthday party in the evening at one of the local universities, so I got to experience my first birthday party here! The celebration included eating zhongzhi (because of the Festival), singing, opening presents, eating cake, and ending the evening with dancing to American songs outside (chicken dance, electric slide, hokey-pokey).
Personals for the elderly
Yep, this is a wild ride where you sit unstrapped and the contraption just goes around and around, up and down, left and right. I wonder how many leave with whiplash...
Bicycle numero dos
All decked out for a rainy day. Fortunately, it was only "mao mao yu" that day, or light drizzling rain.
Behold my most prized possession in this photo, the helmet. While my foreign friends incur stares whenever they go out, I blend right in...except when I don the helmet. Sometimes I'll try to stare back to see if I can out-stare them, but then realize that it requires me to take my eyes off the road. I'm not ready to put my helmet to use in that capacity, so I willingly look ahead and try to ignore the attention. An elderly man on his bike complimented my helmet the other day, telling me that it looked very nice on me. I tried to emphasize to him that I was wearing it for safety and not for fashion. I don't think he got the idea.
