If you inexplicably have "Never Gonna Give You Up" stuck in your head, does this mean that you are being rick-rolled by your own brain?

I am in possession of 7 Google Wave invites (my roommate got the first one...) - anyone interested?

I just for whatever reason ended up on the MSUM website, and I clicked on the campus tour button because I didn't remember the website having a campus tour, and while sitting there looking at the pictures... I got teary.

I am having the worst bout of homesickness I have ever had. I'm a little sad right now that I can't be with my family for the holiday season, but every time I start to think about Minnesota and the people there I start to cry. As cheesy as this is going to sound, I absolutely left my heart with that theater department. And it's... kind of difficult without it. That's all.

Your lashing out at me is fantastically compelling and inappropriate.


I think that qualifies for one of my favorite lines on television ever. I LOLed.

The storylines on Glee are completely nonsensical and ridiculous, and I think I love the show all the more for it.



Also, I've been watching So You Think You Can Dance this season (I've always wanted to before, but never really had time during Straw Hat to start getting invested in a show) and I'm completely obsessed. I mean, it makes me feel ridiculously inadequate about my own dance abilities, but it's just so much fun. I also think that Cat Deeley should be nominated for host of every reality show ever. She is just delightful.

So, I had been proud of this not being true for quite some time, but my geekery is now firmly established, as a showtune has surpassed a real song for the #1 spot on my iTunes Top 25 Most Played.



Also, sitcom plot is still sitcom like. Retaliation prank #1 will commence tomorrow night.

I think I'm being pursued by two different boys?

And I think I like them both. There are definite pros and cons to each, but the bottom line ending at there are two very nice boys who like me.

This sort of thing just doesn't happen in my life. I'm not used to ever having any boy like me, never mind having options.

The pro/con list goes something like this: one lives pretty flipping far away and smokes. Which is icky. (but he's quitting? or that's what he told me, anyway) The other lives in my building, doesn't speak a language that I speak. Our communication up to this point basically consists of him scaring the crap out of me daily by sneak attacking. But he seems really nice. As does other boy.

Of course, everyone here is like 'JUST DATE THEM BOTH THEY'LL NEVER KNOW' but I somehow don't see that working out, for some strange reason.



So..... sitcom plot y/n?

This is certainly a strange situation, taking into account that this is my life.




OH AND PS I DON'T LIVE WITH KATYA ANYMORE. IT IS THE HAPPIEST OF ALL THINGS. Now I live with Jess, a delightful Canadian!!

I'm piecing my way through (and by piecing, I mean it takes me over an hour to get through a page) a well-known contemporary Chinese novel called 幻城 (Huan Cheng; Imaginary City) by Guo Jingming, who is China's most popular young novelist, despite frequently being accused of plagiarism. Anyway, I really liked this one sentence that I came across today, and thought I'd share with you all!!


这样的梦境，像是一个无限的悲剧，却也略显慈悲的寓言。
zheyang de mengjing, xiang shi yige wuxian de beiju, que ye lüexian cibei de yuyan.


This kind of dreamland seems like an infinite tragedy, but also hints at being a fable of compassion.




Not sure why I liked it, but it's a sentence that I understood without too much dictionary searching, which is always nice. And I dunno, I just thought it was pretty.

So, I'm sort of sick. I'm feeling better now than I was last night or this morning (this morning I turned off my alarm clock, sat up, thought about it for a moment, and promptly went back to sleep). On Mondays our sheets get changed (which I find slightly excessive - I haven't had clean sheets weekly ever at any point in my life) and so at about 9:00 the cleaning lady came in, and a surprising move even for here, yelled at me for being asleep. She was all "Why aren't you in class? Class started an hour ago." And I was like "Ugh, sorry, I'm not feeling well." And instantly she backed clear across the room and asked in a near hysterical tone if I had a fever. I don't, so I told her that. She seemed to half believe me, muttered something about H1N1, and then just left.

Because the idea that I just have, you know, a normal cold or something, is completely ridiculous.

I was just asked a question in Spanish - a rather simple question - and while I completely understood what I was being asked, I had to answer in Chinese. The Spanish words just wouldn't come to my brain.

It's definitely an interesting situation to be in. While it's obviously thrilling that it's not really difficult to carry normal conversations in Chinese anymore, it's a little saddening that years full of lack of opportunity has rendered the language I've studied since I was 11 into a solely passive one.

Oh well! The only thing I really need Spanish for at the moment is to watch "El Internado", and TV shows don't generally make you talk back. Which is fortunate, as "El Internado" usually renders me speechless, and not just because I can't speak. Complicated show is complicated! I've basically never seen more evildoing going within such a small group of people on television before.

In continuing happy Chinese news, today I spoke in class, more than once, without being prompted! My professors were shocked. I'm not sure why I am still constantly so hesitant to speak in class when outside of class you basically can't get me to shut up. But today I made a solid effort to be less shy, and I think it went alright!

I just upgraded my account so I have more than six icons again, so I've been running around getting new ones, and this one basically made me cackle like a loon.

I think I just joined the hip-hop dance team?

Or, at the very least, I signed up to attend some sort of audition/meeting thing on Friday. Hip-hop is literally the last dance form on earth I would choose to partake in, but at this point, beggars can't be choosers. If hip-hop is the only dance that Heilongjiang University is going to offer me, well then, someone get me some shoes and point me in the right direction!

I'll let y'all know how this goes. It could be ugly.

We went to karaoke on Saturday night, which was awesome, as karaoke is SERIOUS BUSINESS in China (and most of Asia, from what I've heard). There was a really awesome collection of English music, comparable to any karaoke playlist in the US, plus you get your own room with friends plus a neat touch screen computer. It's awesome.

Anyway - most of the songs had these really awful fake videos playing in the background, but a few had the real video - if it had the real video, there were usually no karaoke subtitles. You just had to know the words.

Anyway, apparently I should have been ashamed of knowing all the words to 'sk8r boi'? I hadn't picked the song, but I sang along and knew all the words. The song ended, and they all were like ".... Jacki. Why on earth do you know those lyrics?" And I was like ".... why DON'T you guys know the words?"

For real though! It was a top-10 song when I was in high school. It's not exactly great music by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a silly, catchy song. Of COURSE I have it memorized.

And I bet $5 most of y'all know all the words too!

Happy Birthday, Little Bit!!! You are one of the coolest people on the entirety of the internet, and you listened to my high school whining far more than anyone ever should have had to. I hope your day is just fantastic!!

My stupid roommate and her equally annoying Chinese boyfriend are watching this absolutely asinine Chinese children's movie about a kid and his friend Panda - and for all the squawking she does about her Chinese is so much better than mine because she studies and whatever, she keeps asking him to pause the movie and explain what's happening... I'm not watching, and I can only half hear because I've got headphones on and watching "So You Think You Can Dance", and I can still follow the plot of the movie. It's not HARD, Jesus H. Christ, it's a little boy and his Panda that goes missing. Not rocket science. I want to punch her every time she opens her mouth. I did not think it was possible for one person to be so goddamn annoying.

In other news, classes start again tomorrow. And maybe... just maybe.... my roommate will leave the room.

... but I'm pretty sure that the further I get  from America, the more American I become. I suddenly find myself clinging to facets of American culture that I would never dreamed of partaking in while I was in the US.

The other night, my friend Uyan and I watched the MTV Video Music Awards, which were being broadcast on MTV China. I had of course heard about the  Taylor Switft/Kanye West debacle, because that nonsense flew. I'm fairly sure the video clip of Kanye interrupting Taylor was up on www.youku.com before it happened.

Anyway, I have never in my life seen the VMAs. I don't normally follow the top-40 scene. Of course, now that I'm a bazillion miles away, I am quite familiar with everything going on. The show was fun! I was surprised that there were basically more performances than there were awards given out, and that was fun.

It also prompted me to go watch the "You Belong With Me" video, which I had never seen. (I had obviously seen the "Single Ladies" video. That was a veritable MSUM theater department phenomenon when it came out.) I was quite excited to see Lucas Till show up in the video, because if he isn't just the cutest damn thing. You should have been there when my friends I saw "Hannah Montana" in theaters. He melted our hearts into itty bitty pieces, and then we all had to run to IMDB to make sure he was at least 18 so we didn't feel like dirty old ladies.

I'm still trying to get caught up with all the shows I watch... which at the moment is basically "Heroes". I'm pretty far behind with that, and I'm so far behind with "The Office" that it's pretty much hopeless. I am, however, completely up to date with "Glee" because that show makes my musical-theater deprived self so very happy.

My roommate continues to get crazier and crazier. The other day she informed me that tissues and toilet paper are not for sharing, and I need to get my own. She was angry. So I cleaned the whole room yesterday while she was out of the room for the legit first time in a week, and now she seems happy. But I shouldn't have done it; I need to stop walking around on eggshells and kowtowing to her ridiculous requests. It's my room too.

But, the tissue I had taken which caused her inner demon to unleash came from a box she had on the table. Not her nightstand, the table. So I don't think taking one was an unreasonable thing to do. So of course, now she has moved the box of tissues to her nightstand, and I bought a box to put on the table. She asked me why I put them on the table, and I said it was because people might come over, and I don't mind sharing. That felt good.

I just realized that I now have three versions of "Somebody to Love" on my iTunes, and only one of them is actually sung by Queen.

I just got to be alone in the room for an entire twenty minutes. Upon which, Katya came back and told me my bed was too messy, please clean it. What the hell does it matter to her if MY bed is cluttered? She has taken over 3/4 of the room with her stuff, which is fine, I don't need more space.... but FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING, me having a few sweatshirts and some stuffed animals on my unmade bed is not impairing her studying.

Hollow-in-the-middle slide was actually really fun. I only think it would be scary if you were very small and could fit between the two poles. There was only one little kid there yesterday (it was kind of cold yesterday, plus it was another holiday - one that doesn't usually fall so soon after national day) but he sure looked confused as I climbed up that ladder.

( Cut for whining about awful roommate )But yeah. I just feel like wanting someone to NOT spend eleven hours a day studying and prohibiting all other people in the room from making any kind of noise is not an unreasonable request.

So, yesterday was the PRC's 60th birthday, and most of the other foreign students are off running about various other cities in China, but I really didn't have this unexpected month-long break budgeted into my time here, so I can't afford to travel. (Of course, my awful roommate didn't go anywhere either. She sits in the room all day, every day, blasting horrendous music and studying. If she wanted to sit in her room all day and study, why did she come to China?)

But anyway, yesterday being a holiday, my friend Uyan (a Mongolian girl who speaks English so well it's fascinating - she's only been studying it for two years) and I decided to head on down to Centre Street and Zhaolin Park, which are both in Daoli District, the fanciest/coolest part of town, which borders the Songhua River. It seems that all 10 million people in Harbin also decided to come to Centre Street on their day off, because it was CRAZY CROWDED, but whatever. It was nice.

While at the park, I noticed that Chinese children are particularly hardcore when it comes to their playground equipment. Some of this stuff is TERRIFYING. Observe:

From 哈尔滨森林公园

Had I not been gripping the sides of this slide for dear life, I would have wiped out in spectacular fashion at the end. It is easily the steepest slide I've ever seen - it's probably hard to tell from here, but trust me. It was freaky.

From 十⋄一在中央大街

This slide doesn't even have a solid thing to sit on! I did notice that some parents were letting their children nowhere near this one, but for others it was no problem. There were a lot of kids waiting around for this slide, so I didn't want to be the crazy grown-up foreigner intruding. If I go back when it's quieter, I'll be sure to let you know how this one is.

From 十⋄一在中央大街

This swing was difficult to photograph, as it was always moving. It looks relatively sturdy, there are cables attaching it to multiple places on the ground, but at first glance it looks horribly rickety, and there are never less than four children on it at once. On a side note, that little girl in the plaid in front of me was extremely unhappy about having her picture taken.

From 十⋄一在中央大街

That's right, the park also had rides. None of them looked particularly dangerous, but this mini-roller coaster did feel a little rickety. (Of course Uyan and I went on it. We sat in front of a poor little girl and her father and the kid just screamed the whole time. Her dad kept trying to tell her that it was a fun ride- but the kid just wasn't having it.



I will post more on crazy playground equipment when I see it. But for now, I leave you with a shot of Centre Street at night - it's pretty there!

From 十⋄一在中央大街

Today while I was walking down the street, an old lady yelled at me to put a sweater on and asked how I could possibly not be cold.

It was like 67 degrees (19 for my non-American friends) and sunny. I'm pretty sure a short-sleeved shirt was completely sufficient.

I walked through a park and people had their children dressed like it was snowing.

What happens here when it's actually cold? I mean, I guess I would understand if people in Hainan or Shenzhen or something thought 67 was chilly (although I still think 67 is warm for everybody), but this is HARBIN! The land of -40!

I am envisioning an army of children dressed like they are in A Christmas Story come winter if they are already wearing knit hats in September.