Welcome the Weekend

Well, first week of school is over, and I'm still glowing with happiness. Nice classmates, great teacher, not much homework - just what I wanted! On Monday I will have my first lunch date with classmates, two Japanese girls. Yesterday was Ryoko's birthday, so I baked a Kahlua cake Thursday and brought some to class with me. Everyone was suitably impressed with my cooking skills, except for the Korean girl who doesn't like sweet stuff. The teacher (Wang Laoshi) wants the recipe, because she also loves to make cakes.

Last night Caroline came over for a bit of chat, eat, drink beer, watch Bollywood movies. She wasn't able to get out of work early enough to get to my place before 9:00 p.m., so we didn't have tons of time. I think I'm going to her place in Banqiao this evening, though. I ate way too much fried chicken nuggets and squid tentacles last night, must try to do better today. But dang, they're so good....

The other evening one of my friends saw Wu Bai's car in front of a little noodle stand on a street close to my school and saw him outside waiting for his order. It's a distinctive car, an Alpha Romeo, and she recognized it as she was going by on her scooter. She gave me the name of the stand, and you can bet I'll be going to scope it out ;) Of course, he was there in the evening, and I'm only in that area during the day, but maybe he'll wander over for lunch someday. I want to try the food, because she said it's the Sichuan hot and spicy kind, which I love.

A bit of sadness on the horizon: Guoxi leaves for Australia tomorrow, gone for a year to train as a pilot. I'll miss him, and I hope he stays in touch. I'm wondering if he'll come back speaking English with an Australian accent.

And it appears that I now have arthritis in my right hand. On every finger the first knuckle is sore and swollen. This distresses me to no end, because it's just another sign of my ever-increasing age. It also makes it a little more difficult to practice writing Chinese! I'm taking MSM tablets every day, thanks to a gift from Cheryl, and I'm taking my liquid glucosamine, and while this helps with my knee problems, it doesn't address the arthritis. I've stopped taking ibuprofen every day, like I was for months because of the knees, after hearing Caroline's tale of her grandmother collapsing, vomiting blood, because the ibuprofen had worn a little hole in her tummy. OK, maybe Grandma was sucking down ten pills a day to my two, who knows, but still....I don't think I want that effect. I'll have to see what kind of Chinese medicine is out there for arthritis and give it a try.

It sure seems that last year by this time it was much cooler than it is right now. I clearly remember freezing my ass off on December 16 at the Indie Music Festival, but November holds no clear memories. It's definitely a lot more pleasant than mid summer, less humidity, cool breezes, not much rain, and if it stayed like this I wouldn't complain. It's still warm enough that I have the fan on at night, and also when I'm just sitting and reading (never realized that light bulbs emit that much heat!). Most of the Taiwan folks are wearing jackets these days, but I'm still just in short-sleeved t-shirts. I can't consider 68-70 degrees to be jacket-wearing weather, unless there's a very cold wind blowing.

I hope everyone in the US had a happy Thanksgiving. Try not to stress out too much over Christmas shopping and such ;)