quick shout out to the beijing devil's rugby team

so this past week was my first week of classes, which i have been long awaiting. i am excited to feel like i actually have a reason for being in beijing. making new friends and drinking too much are not good enough reasons to spend four months in country where they do not provide toilet paper in public bathrooms. my first class was chinese. i have chinese for 2 1/2 hours every day of the week except for wednesdays. i'm not quite sure when i thought that was a good idea. there is no english spoken in the class whatsoever, which is really great. least to say i am confused 24/7. that class is going to hands down kick my butt.

tuesday nights i have intro to buddhism, which is proving to be a pretty solid decision. the class is supposed to last three hours and my teacher took up less than one. and the last 10 minutes of class we practiced the lotus meditation position and meditated. he read our vibes told us he could tell that we were a really great group. he was being serious. i am also taking chinese medicine, which conveniently counts as a science credit at sju. my teacher is a hippie and the class was so boring she spoke a lot of the philosophical elements that drive chinese medicine, yawn. she also said she wouldn't be able to perform any practices on us because of liability issues, why do they think i'm taking this class anyway? i'm tryna get a free acupuncture session out of this. hopefully it will get more interesting as the semester goes on, keep your fingers crossed. i am also taking chinese ethics and asian values, mostly to teach me how to be more asian-like. i need to make more of an effort to learn the ways of my people and i feel this is a step in the right direction. it also doesn't hurt that i will be fulfilling my last philosophy requirement through this process.

my next class, chinese foreign policy, seems like a winner. our teacher is a big shot around china who is not a fan of the united states. he also looks exactly like a lego man, esp. when he wears hats. the spitting image of a lego man. google image "lego man" and you legitimately see my teacher. lego man proceeded to tell us that we would have no class for the next two weeks because he would be on "a semi-offical governmental mission" to Southeast Asia. he proceeded to tell us americans he was going to talk about how we suck and make awful decisions. however, lego man was able to teach me that the chinese really do not exercise the humor of sarcasm. they really don't. lego man told us he wanted to schedule a make up class since he would not be around. he proposed friday night. our whole class looked at each other and went silent. i thought this was great. my friend chris and i looked at each other trying not to laugh in his face. i turned to him and said, "yeah, definitely! count me in." sarcastically, of course. luckily, lego man overheard me and said yeah! you'd like to do that. my face went blank. he then proceeded to schedule a class for friday night. i think its safe to say i will not be making any friends in that class. however, lego man did promise me he would bring me a six pack. i love him already.

overall i would say i had a good first week of classes. however my fellow tbc-ers and i were ready for the weekend. we spent most of it in the bar district of sanlitun. we went to the street where there are lots of international bars. fortunately last night i was sober enough to commit myself to the beijing devils rugby team. perfect. look out kaitlyn vaughn. a group of girls from the united states, england, australia, new zealand, etc. apparently thought my friends and i looked like we'd be into playing rugby. well they apparently were right. my friend taylor, mariana and i are now expected at rugby practice thursday night. this however is going to coincide with the ladies night specials at bar blue. ladies night, which is free cocktails from 8-11 no cover charge, is a very important part of my weekly schedule. its going to be difficult to tear away from that. so if you don't hear from me for awhile it is definitely because i died at the beijing devil's rugby practice. somebody let my mom know it wasn't because i brush my teeth with the tap water. thanks.