Happy Chinese National Day!

Hello everyone!
I just wanted to update you on the ongoings of this past week. On Tuesday, I helped the newly founded Exchange Activities Committee with their first ever event. Sumana asked me to help them out because they felt as though they would not be able to reach the masses when they attempted to everyone make mooncakes. Wait, let me explain what a mooncake is. A mooncake is a staple dessert of Hong Kong (and China?) that is eaten around the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival (which is on Saturday). A mooncake has a very thin layer of sweetened dough on the outside and a type of filling on the inside. The filling, on the inside, can vary a lot in the types of flavours...they have lotus, blueberry with jasmine, red bean, mung (some type of sweet lentil, I believe), green tea, coffee..I think you could put just about any flavour you want. Traditionally, Mooncakes have a egg yolk filling but now the filling types have changed a lot. A friend of mine, Ben (from Minnesota), tried a traditional mooncake and absolutely hated it. I can imagine why, an egg yolk filling would be just awful. Actually, Haagen Das is here and they make ice cream mooncakes specifically for this region of the world but I hear they are really expensive. Even normal Mooncakes are served cold, but not frozen.

Anyway, sorry for my random tangent about mooncakes. So this event was called "Mooncake Making Maddness" or something along the lines of that. The committee planned it out so that everyone would arrive and would sit at tables, at which the ingredients to make the mooncakes would be, and then as the committee members demonstrated how to make the mooncakes, the tables would do it as well. There were about 90-100 people there and I think everyone had a pretty good time attempting to make it. After they finished the preliminary steps (including stuffing the dough and filling into a mold and squeezing out a mooncake, the mooncakes had to be placed in a fridgerator for an hour. While they were cooling off, everyone had some dinner and the UST band society played. They played a couple english songs (and weren't really that great) and then everyone just mingled. We pulled the mooncakes out early because the fridge wasn't working so well and people ended up not really liking the mooncakes, though that might have been because we forgot to tell them to make the outside layer of dough really thin. woops. Oh well.

Anyway, I can't tell you how awesome it was to be a part of that event. I know I wasn't really a part of the planning process or anything like that but just to feel like you helped accomplish something at this school for students to enjoy is just always a really great feeling. I feel totally worthless here. Semesters are really killing me. I feel like I have too much time on my hands and yet, not enough time. I am sooo used to always being on my toes and always knowing when things are due and not having much time, in between, to prepare for assignments and all..but here, its just awful. I am not really a partof any organizations, I don't have meetings that I have to attend or extra lessons or anything. I have no sense of urgency in anything that I do. I hate it. I need my days to be somewhat planned. I need a routine and busyness in my life. I need my meetings and work and organizations and other meetings and random lunches with people. I can't wait to get back to OSU, in that respect. Its going to be awesome.

So Wednesday was pretty uneventful except for the fact that Sumana and I and Ben for most of the time watched Lagaan! We rented it from the UST library (its really cool that they have it) and we watched it. I have been wanting to watch this movie for sooo long. I don't have my copy of that movie anymore because I let one my high school teacher's borrow it and I never got it back, despite the teacher saying that he/she would mail it to me and what not. Thoroughly depressing. Anyway, we watched the entire movie and I realized 1. just how long that movie is (225 minutes!!!!) 2. Just how long the cricket part of it is and 3. How not so flattering they make the women look. Not pleased, in the slightest. But its a really fantastic movie and I love it a lot and its totally worth the 3 hours and 45 minutes even just for the incredible music. Some of my favorite bollywood music of all time. :)

Anyway We didn't have class today because its CHINESE NATIONAL DAY! 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. I am not exactly sure how I am supposed to feel about it being the 60th anniversary of a ruling communist party but people seem excited, so I am excited, I guess. We went to Tsim Sha Tsui to watch the fireworks and boy were there SOOOOOO many people there! It was nuts. I'll post pictures on Picasa. The fireworks were awesome and some of the biggest I have ever seen. Everyone was oooing and ahhing at the same time. It was soo funny. :) In the US, people would not have been as vocal in their ooooohing and ahhhhing. It would not be as communal at all. It would probably be more sarcastic than anything else. Anyway, afterwards, we went to grab something to eat and it took absolutely forever for us to get served. Oh well. Sumana and I got a mango shake to split and boy, oh boy, was it AWFUL. It tasted like medicine. I don't know what they think of when they think Mango but it surely was not that. We got back a little bit ago and now I am getting sleepy.

This weekend we decided not to go to Shenzhen and Guangzhou because there might, potentially be an even better China trip that some peoople are doing later and I didn't want to potentially miss out on that by going to Shenzhen now. I only have two China entries and I am certainly not paying another 150 US for another two. Thats absurd. Its very annoying because essentially all other nationalities can just go up to the border and get a visa then and it would cost about 40 US but US passport holders have to go, IN ADVANCE, to the embassy and pay 150 US to get a DOUBLE ENTRY visa. Not even multi entry. Its pretty frustrating but I shouldn't complain because US passport holders don't need a visa for a lot of other countries so I guess it evens out with China or something? I don't know. I know the US Consulates are very hard on other people that want to go to the US to visit or whatever so maybe the Chinese government is trying to get back at US Citizens. Who knows. Their way of distributing multi entry visas is ridiculous as well. My fellow Buckeyes, Diana and Evan, were able to get multi entries but when Kyle and I tried, the lady told me that, because we had never been to China before we could only have a double entry. Though, I don't think that Diana has been to China before. It doesn't make sense to me but thats neither here nor there. Back to the topic at hand, it looks like Ben, Sumana and I and probably some other random people will be going around Hong Kong this weekend! I am super pumped.

Anyway, I am super tired so I will talk to you soon! Comment or Email or something! I would love to hear from you! :)

Neesha