Adventures in Guangzhou!

Besides being Mother's Day, Sunday was also actually International Austin Powers Day. Diana decided that since I had Passover and Kelly had Easter, she was feeling left out. The end result? Austin Powers Day. Diana cooked up vegetable samosa's, wheat crust pizza (from scratch!), mashed potatoes, and some other goodies. And, of course, we watched Mike Myers' modern classic. It was a really good meal, and only the second time I have had pizza since coming to China 9 months ago. Crazy.

Speaking pf pizza, my best student recently won a regional writing competition and got a 2000 kuai cash prize to go along with some chicken spices from a sponsoring company. What does that have to do with pizza, you ask? It's quite simple. 2000 kuai is about $250--a HUGE amount of money by Chinese standards. She was a bit disappointed to have been passed over for the grand prize, 6000 kuai and a 3 day vacation to Singapore, but 2nd prize is nothing to be embarassed of! She wanted to celebrate so we agreed to have lunch together yesterday. Though she selflessly wanted to spend some of her winnings on treating me to lunch, it was obviously much more appropriate for me to treat her. I asked her where she wanted to go and she said Pizza Hut. More pizza? Sure!

I had never been to Pizza Hut before but it has always intrigued me here. Whereas Pizaa Hut in the states is sort of low-end, greasy, cheap eatery, it's actually a real high class joint in China. There are fancy plates, well-dressed staff, and an extremely overpriced menu. But hey--pizza is far from ubiquitous in these parts so I was certainly willing to give it a try. We ordered two of the small 9 inch pizzas, one veggie and one spicy chicken. The menu suggested that each pizza would feed 2-3 people but I knew better. In American terms, these were individual-sized pan pizzas! When the waitress brought them over I was pleasantly surprised. They looked similar, smelled similar, and appeared to have a similar amount of grease. Though I had heard their pizza tasted radically different here, I think I have to disagree. It was far from exactly the same but the only thing that was noticeably different was the tomato sauce. Overall it hit the spot and I will definitely go back, despite the high price tag.

Meanwhile, I still have no internet in my apartment and it doesn't look like I will until September. This is no disaster, but it just makes life a little bit more difficult every time. This past Monday Steven and I had to give a presentation to a group of students traveling to the U.S. about cultural differences. Putting together the powerpoint turned into a minor fiasco because of transfering information and graphics, etc. But really what annoys me most is the lack of baseball news and highlights. MLB is obviously in full swing at this point and I'm feeling extremely out of the loop. I did, however, just read that the Yankees came back from being down 9 runs last night. That makes my day.

I hesitate to say so with certainty, but I think I actually have a new roommate for real this time! Though I haven't heard for sure, I did get a quick note from PiA that they completed their long and arduous search for Steven's replacement. For a short time there it looked like I was going to get a female roommate but I guess that never materialized. Either way, I'm excited to meet the "newbie" and show him around. Nick, if you're reading, get psyched because Guangzhou rocks.

This news of a new roommate is one of many indications that this school year is winding down, and winding down FAST. I am currently midway through my last full week of teaching before doing a week of review and then giving final. Crazy! Where has time gone? It's now a full year ago that I graduated from BU and got my masters. My sister actually graduates this week with her masters (congratulations, Ilana!!) so the entire Wolfe family is now officially overeducated. But I digress. I am getting super excited to get back home for a few weeks. I plan on gorging myself with high-fat American foods and watching baseball and sportscenter non-stop. I suppose I'll squeeze in some time for friends and family, but we'll have to see.

My Chinese course is also winding down which makes me sad. I am really enjoying the class and my teacher has been wonderful. I had a very satisfying moment over the weekend when I went to buy a flash drive from the big computer parts market down the street. I was asking around to check on different prices and finally found one that started off with a decent price. Of course I had to bargain down from there though so I had to kick my Chinese into overdrive. Though I'm sure I still got ripped off somewhat, I did manage to tell them in Mandarin that I was a poor student without any money and that they needed to lower the price. We jawed back and forth a bit but finally the lady caved and sold me a 2 gig drive for the equivelant of about $55. Not bad. Everyday though I am getting more excited to study full-time this summer. I am all set to be in Beijing from July 2-August 26th, studying about 45 hours a week. It'll be exhausting, but it's just what I need.

Finally, on the subject of Chinese, my (American) friends here have given me a new Chinese nickname which I find particularly amusing: "pangzi," or "xiao pangzi," which roughly translates to "fattie" or "little fattie." I love the idea of this catching on to the point that my co-workers here start calling me fattie. For some reason that would just make my day--I would laugh uncontrollably everytime.