It's a holiday!

Just got the word that there's no school tomorrow, because another typhoon is whipping up the wind and rain here. The eye won't even make landfall, but they're expecting some high winds tomorrow, so schools are closed. Darn, have to stay home and play, ha. That's fine with me, because tomorrow is a military exercise at 2:00 p.m., and I would have had to remember to be underground or in a restaurant, because no one will be allowed on the street from 2:00-2:30. Like being in the underground mall will save anyone's butt if the Chinese decide to bomb us.....

It's been a quiet week, not really much going on. My "better-than-a-boyfriend" chum Hiyoshi returned from Japan on Tuesday, but didn't get back to class until yesterday. He graciously consented to go along with Guoxi (who also falls into the "better-than-a-boyfriend" category) and me to Carrefour to buy stuff. I hope the women these two guys end up marrying will thank me for all the husband training I'm doing by taking them shopping with me. I know Guoxi is doing it because he feels he owes me favors for the help I'm giving him with his English, but I'm not quite sure why Hiyoshi is willing to tag along after me through a crowded supermarket! I guess life way out in Wan Li is pretty boring and almost anything is preferable to being stuck out in nowhere alone. Anyway, I finally got a cute little vacuum cleaner and a blender - and a full-length mirror. No more kidding myself about how I look, because now I'll be able to see the full picture .

Today, since it was raining so hard, Kieko, Hiyoshi, and I headed for the underground shopping mall to have lunch and wander around. I like listening to the two of them chatter away in Japanese, even though I don't understand it. I get a completely different view of Hiyoshi when he's speaking his own language. His Chinese is better than his English, but it's still difficult to converse with me, because my Chinese isn't as good as his, so he can't really express himself well. I knew he was good at making jokes, but the way Kieko laughs when they talk, I can tell he's funnier than I imagined. She thinks he's pretty strange, and we constantly tease him that he's an alien from outer space, not a real Japanese, because he seems unfamiliar with so many popular Japanese things. I think he's just led a rather sheltered life.

After Kieko took off for work at 3:30, Hiyoshi and I went up into the rain to get to our favorite coffee hangout, Dante Coffee. It was, for once, very quiet in there, no obnoxiously loud music playing, so we sat drinking iced coffee and talking in English to give him practice until 7:00. We kept hoping the rain would let up a bit, but it didn't, so we just decided to hell with it and got wet. By the time I got back to Zhuwei, it was a downpour that had water three inches deep in places. Of course, as soon as I got in the door, the rain stopped. Figures, huh? Hasn't been too bad since then, and the wind is pretty minor, and it's nice and cool in the apartment, yay!

So tomorrow, play with the new vacuum and put the mirror together. And make a smoothie with the new blender. And maybe read the last of the four new books I got. Heck, who knows, maybe I'll even study!