Remember Me?

Wow. Long time no post. In fact, it's been so long, I had to go back and find out the date of my last post and reread it, just to make sure I don't repeat myself. Dec. 8th was the last time most of you heard from me. Sheesh! Sorry about that. In between going to Beijing for four days, getting ready and celebrating Christmas, and then planning my Winter Vacation, I guess I just forgot to post. Not that I didn't recieve a million reminders from friends and fans of the blog. (Thanks guys. Glad to know someone actually considers my ramblings relevant.) Plus there was a week or so in there where I hadn't paid my phone bill, and was therefore without internet access.

But I promise that by the time I am done with all of my updates, it will be like I never left. I am now done teaching (YIPEE!!) and so I have a lot more time on my hands. Plus once I get to Hong Kong I should be able to fill you all in some more.

Oh where to begin?

Say, before I get this post under way, I'd just like to take a moment to give a shout out to all of my readers in the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia! Welcome to my world. I promise I'll keep Cletus from climbing any trees.

Well for starters I guess I should say Shengri Kuaile (Happy Birthday!) to Jenni, Lily, Karlie, Beethoven, Jane Austin, myself, Wang Ping, Kate, Cletus, Andy, Jessie, Drew, 2006, Adam, oh yeah... and Jesus. (And to anyone else who has had a b-day in the past month, or will have one soon, hope it's a good one.)

Speaking of which, Shengdan Kuaile everyone!! Merry Christmas!!

And by now, Happy New Year as well!

Thank you to all of you who took the time to send me birthday/Christmas greetings. It meant a lot, especially this year. And to those of you who didn't, well, I love you too. (Just kidding.)

Speaking of my birthday, man was it a doozy! How many of you out there can say that you got to celebrate your twenty-second year on God's green earth (or any year on this hunk of rock for that matter) with the decomposing corpse of one of the world's most misunderstood cultural icons? A show of hands perhaps? Anyone? That's what I thought.

And no, I am not going to elaborate on that thought, at least not at the moment. I'm going to leave you all in suspense with that one. I gotta keep you coming back, don't I? Keep your eyes peeed for a post about our trip to Beijing.

Christmas in China was kind of a letdown. You remember how I talked last time about my "30 Days Of Christmas Movement"? I was very serious about it, and still am, but at the same time, it was admittedly a bit of an effort to try and recreate Christmas spirit in a country which considers the holiday nothing more than a chance to get a gift. Kind of sad.

On Christmas Eve Brian held a very special mass in the office chapel. That was really nice. Then when we went outside to go eat, it had started snowing, big fluffy flakes, which was spectacular. Cletus, Chris, and I had dinner a little restaurant that we hadn't been to in months, but were rewarded with a great meal. After that we all went to Cletus' place to watch "Elf." Then Cletus and I met up with Brian, Wang Wei, Wang Ping, Meng Yen, and Ming Li for Midnight Mass at the Catholic church. I thought it would be great, but what a disaster that was. First of all there were fireworks going off constantly outside; there was also a karaoke stage set up next to the chapel, with everyone singing off-key; the church was packed with people - it was standing room only, and everyone was constantly pushing and shoving; the other problem was that I bet over half the people in attendance were there for the spectacle of it, and not for actual worship purposes; for exmple, two guys in front of me were completely drunk, and just kept pushing people and laughing; next to me were five or six high-school girls who spent the entire service talking (not whispering, talking), giggling, and trying to be as obnoxious as possible; plus the whole time you had to keep an eye on your wallet ad keys, because pickpockets love to move through crowds like that and collect their Christmas bonuses. To make a long story short, it was the single most distracting church service I'd ever been too. And it sure didn't help that the whole thing was in Chinese.

There were some good moments though. Christmas Day was spent over at Brian's. He had an open house with lots of food and friends. I spent most of my time there playing cards. It was fun. Then afterwards Cletus, Chris, and Hannah came over to my place and I cooked dinner, and we watched "It's A Wonderful Life." I was pretty homesick all week, but with numerous phone calls, it was rememdied with no lasting affects. Probably my favortie Christmas memories will be from the six different X-Mas parties I had in all my classes. There was much revelry and caroling, and the students could tell I was down, so they did their best to pick me up. It was really great.

And now it's almost 2006! In fact, in just a little bit I'll head over to Brian's for his New Years Party.

And so now I must ask you to once again be patient. I promise I will post again soon. But I hope this at least gave you a quick fix for the time being.

Talk to you soon.

-Aaron