Start of the holiday season

Here's another smattering of happenings recently that I can remember now. It's now December, typically the most difficult time to be here in China, apart from family and friends during the holiday season. I miss everyone reading this (except for you, US Army private who keeps leaking cables on Wiki sites...I could do without you.) and hope that you are enjoying the sights and sounds of Christmas, even the things like the traffic, the mall smell, the clamor of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the Salvation Army bell ringers, the santa hats and the excessive quoting of "Elf." Think of me when you experience these things.

-Class has been interesting. During our conversation portion today we had a discussion about FaZhan ShouZu (Arrested Development) which I never thought would happen in another language. As this is my favorite TV show of all time I thoroughly enjoyed talking about this in Chinese, though trying to describe who Carl Weathers is was more difficult than I anticipated. However, she had no trouble understanding how a family who's father became rich by using his construction company's corporate account as a personal piggy bank. Probably because this happens all the time here with sketchy business practices.

-The cat that Harrison had rescued and had been living with us passed away recently. She just stopped eating for about 4 days and I'll spare you the rest of the details, but it was her time to go I guess. I wish I could tell you that it was without suffering and that it got a proper burial but I'd be lying since both of those things are hard to find in China for animals. Personally I will miss the times when it would get too close to our space heater and jump back, burned by it's own curiosity. I will also miss the certainty of knowing there won't be any rats around our place. Sure, there were about 100 things I hated about that cat, but those two things I will remember with fondness.

-We (the ACC guys here in China) won the Turkey Bowl! It was nice to get revenge from the last time we played when we got blown out and I dropped two interceptions. Mainly I was channeling all my energy with the memory of the SEC team running up the score by throw Tim Tebow jump-passes with less than a minute to go. So this year we won it in style 40-6. The victory stands for now, though I'm worried that Harrison has been hanging around a lot of runners for agents. Recently he posted on Twitter a 200RMB receipt for PF Changs and Justin and Zach I'm pretty sure have been receiving extra help on papers in Chinese class. So we'll see if we'll be able to weather the storm. Either way, the NCAA wont be able to take away the memory of the most fantastic, bizarre, and sublime facial hair I have ever seen. It was a banner year in this department.

-Thanksgiving. We celebrated with Turkey and other dishes that ultimately became so crammed on our plates that it seemed to just become one food item. Delicious. Also, my team made me wear nice clothes during lunch. I hope they're thankful for that. We also tried to watch an old Thanksgiving Day NFL game (mainly failed though) with the likes of Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, et al. For Max, the Jungs' dog who has bitten me twice now, we let him run in the park near by and let him wallow in the mud while we threw the football around. For the girls, we watched Elf for what I'm sure was the 1st of 13 times before Christmas Day. If I've learned one thing, its that December is just as much Elf Season as it is Christmas Season. I personally celebrate by telling someone that "you're so pretty, you should be on a Christmas card" once a day. I think Josh thinks it's weird and it makes him uncomfortable.

-Work is going really well too. Can't share many details here, but I have lots of friends here who like asking me about important things.

-The Jungs are hooked on The Wire now! Jarred bought a Glock and a doo-rag while Shelley's language has gotten noticeably coarser and talks constantly about how weak "the product" is lately. Expect more posts about this as promised in the "about me" sidebar.