Respite and resolutions..!

After a wonderful, refreshing trip home for Christmas, I went back to school for three weeks of exam-cramming and grading. Now, it's time for a break. We get three weeks off for the Chinese New Year, and I have spent this first week recovering from the ringing in my ears. On New Year's Eve, the minutes sped toward midnight, and the city exploded in every direction to a degree that would be unimaginable in the States. Little kids shot fireworks off of balconies and street corners, drunken groups of adults climbed onto rooftops to blow up all of their disappointments from the previous year, and foreigners gaped in wonder at a city that seemed under seige.

Bill and I joined in a rooftop party and contributed paper lanterns that floated into the night sky like glowing hot air balloons. It was a trick getting the things lit, though! You had to wait for the flame to catch and inflate the lantern, but at first we didn't quite have the patience to allow the balloon the lift itself. We tossed it off the rooftop before it was ready, and a guard below watched our lantern plummet for a bit before willing itself into the air.

I feel good about this, the Year of the Ox, and I will do my best to update this blog more regularly (weekly, in fact!) My posts may not always be exciting or poetic, but when I was home, I realized how little I have shared about my life here. People asked me if I had any friends, what I was teaching, whether or not I really had to eat with chopsticks... I shall try to do a better job of illuminating these small facets of life and not give in to my Chinese Zodiac animal, the lazy pig.

Check out this story about how the Chinese Zodiac animals were assigned:

According to Chinese legend, the twelve animals quarreled one day as to who was to head the cycle of years. The gods were asked to decide and they held a contest: whoever was to reach the opposite bank of the river would be first, and the rest of the animals would receive their years according to their finish. All the twelve animals gathered at the river bank and jumped in. Unknown to the ox, the rat had jumped upon his back. As the ox was about to jump ashore, the rat jumped off the ox's back, and won the race. The pig, who was very lazy, ended up last. That is why the rat is the first year of the animal cycle, the ox second, and the pig last.

http://www.c-c-c.org/chineseculture/zodiac/zodiac.html