Back in America
On the second stop of my North American tour.
Experiments in Orientation
Posterous is now blocked by the GFW. Posting stuff is easy, editing posts is an annoying ordeal. Them's the commie breaks, I guess.
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pictures
Cabernet Flavored Ice Cream Popsicle
Chinese convenience stores are full of frozen treats. Some are full of chocolatey deliciousness, while others seem odd and down right disgusting to my western taste buds. I've seen pea flavored popsicles and cucumber ice cream. I've had ice cream pops that have the flavor and consistency of butter and once I had one with a flavor that can only be described as dirt. Every time I look through the freezer near the checkout stand at my local shop, its like a frozen snack adventure. So obviously I was excited when I found this cabernet wine flavored ice cream treat.
My Chinese isn't so good (its basically nonexistent), so I wasn't sure what to expect. I assumed it would just be a popsicle that tasted like wine. Turns out, not so much. The ice cream on the outside has a chocolatey, corky flavor with a chocolate coated cap on top. After the first bite I thought "maybe that's it, maybe it's just cabernet wine cork flavored ice cream." Then I bit into the goo. The goo actually tasted exactly like red wine, but with a thick, mayonaisey texture. I couldn't finish the whole thing, it was just too weird.
Next time I'll just go for the chocolate one.
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Christmas Eve Party
Some Diana F+ shots of the Christmas Eve party with my students Grace, Yolanda, and Sarah and their boyfriends who were visiting from various out of town locations. We cooked hot pot and played some games. The guys wanted me to drink a lot of beer but I didn't really plan on doing that so I told them I'd drink as much as Sarah, the quietest and shyest of the three girls. Bad decision. Turns out she's the drinker of the group, consistently out-drinking the boys whenever they go out or have a party. When I said I'd stay on par with her, she immediately cracked open a beer and chugged the whole thing. Always in teacher-mode, I instructed her and the others on how to shotgun a beer. She beat me at that too. Twice.
As you can probably tell from the way the developer cut the film, I tried to turn this roll into one continuous shot. It worked out alright and I was pretty happy with the resulting pictures. However, last week I got incredibly frustrated with something my computer was doing and I threw my Mighty Mouse across the room and into the wall. Turns out, not so "mighty" after all. I can't be bothered to stitch all these shots together with my computer's trackpad. Maybe once I get a Magic Mouse. Probably not. Do it in your mind.
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Some top notch student gifts
The lighter is from Adam. Zippo lighters are a pretty common gift for dudes in China and this one is fantastic. I laughed hysterically when I opened it.
The card is from Grace, one of the students who treated me to a Christmas Eve party last night. She's fun but she always calls me stupid and threatens to kill me. Her card included some coupons for me to use in the future. Definitely going to take advantage of the "Do not kill me" one.
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R.I.P. Moleskine #5
I've been using this one since March. Didn't even make it through the whole thing this time since I have another one I use just for school stuff. Number Six is prepped and ready to go.
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pictures
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Afternoon KTV
Yesterday afternoon I spent four hours doing KTV. To me, 1:30pm-5:30pm is not the most opportune time of the day to sing my heart out in a dark room. Usually I feel I need at least three beers before I can kick out the jams without getting all self-conscious about the craptacular sounds emanating from my vocal chords. I was just there for the pizza. Well the KTV didn't have pizza, but there's a decent pizza shop close by and I owed one of my students, Grace, a pizza for helping me purchase my cell phone a while back. It started out as just Grace (the one with short hair), Yolanda (longer hair), and myself, both of them sang a hell of a lot better than I did. They sang so well that they would turn off the vocal track of each song they performed so their voices would be the loudest sound coming through the speakers.
I did the opposite. I didn't want to hear myself so I turned up the track volume and turned the microphone down. That didn't stop me from performing heart-warming (gut wrenching) covers of classics like Paramore's "Misery Business", R. Kelly's "Hairbraider", and Taylor Swift's "Love Story". After a while, without the aid of alcohol, I gained some confidence, and maybe some XP because my singing ability seemed to level up. I spit hot fire over Huey Lewis & the News' "Doin' It All for My Baby", that song from Titanic, Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" and The Cardigans' "Lovefool". I even sang "Country Roads" which seems to be just as popular in China as it is in West Virginia.
One of my other students, Robin (the one with glasses), showed up a couple hours into our singing marathon. She brought her boyfriend (the dude) who she failed to introduce me to. Both of them could also sing better than I could. After taking a break from singing for a while, the girls decided to choose some songs for me. They assumed that I would know all they words to any English song they knew because that song would be so popular that there would be no way that I wouldn't know it. So I had to sing "Larger than Life" by the Backstreet Boys and that N*Sync song with the video where they're all riding in cars and running on a train to try to get away from some girl (I'm trying to pretend like I don't know which song that is). They also chose some Lady Gaga track which was the one song I didn't really know. I realized that I've heard all of Lady Gaga's singles before I just had no idea she sang them. I always figured her music would be a lot weirder than that.
The pictures turned out a little grainy. I'm not sure why, maybe just because it was dark. Maybe because the film was expired and has been for a few years now. Its the first time I've used the Diana's default lens for a while. I'm not used to it. I'll use the wide-angle next time. I've been assured that there will be a next time.
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Where's Tom Jane when you need him?
It's incredibly foggy/misty/pollutiony today. I haven't seen any tentacles or giant bugs come out of the it though, so that's pretty lame.
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Dinner with the students
Some photos from when I went out with one of the classes a few weeks ago.
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