Backmail from Last Sunday

Sunday, September 7, 2008 It’s Sunday. Weird to think I’ve been in China for nearly a week now. Our apartment doesn’t have internet yet, so I still haven’t emailed my family since those first two days… mom and dad are probably dying a thousand deaths. I think we’ve FINALLY stopped buying stuff for the apartment. It feels like we’re spending a lot of money, but then when you realize I got all my bedding for under twenty bucks, I guess it’s a bit less disconcerting. Everything’s super cheap. I bought a pretty tasty rou bao 肉包 for 1.2 yuan (or about 15 cents). In Taiwan, those things cost nearly twice as much! There are seven of us in the apartment. Here’s the breakdown: Greg- he’s the program facilitator, which, in his words, means that he “makes it so we don’t have to talk to Prof. Lefgren directly.” We all laughed. He served his mission in England, speaking Chinese when possible. James- our resident married man. His wife’s back in the states, and won’t be coming to meet up with him here till December. I don’t envy him, but he says they both felt right about it, and I guess that’s what counts. James hails from New Mexico and served his mission in Indiana. Keith- he and I were in Prof. Honey’s Chinese philosophy class winter semester of this year. We liked the class, but it was pretty special. Prof. Honey spent most of the last half of the semester talking about some meditating survivalist’s book and how his mental marker for meditation was a huge ice cube on his butt. Good ole 韩老师。 Keith served in Gaoxiong, Taiwan (高雄，台湾)。 Trent- also in Prof. Honey’s class…though he spent most of the time surfing the net. Good subject matter, he said, but too many tangents in class. Trent’s something like fourth generation Japanese-American…went to Hong Kong on his mission and spoke that bastardized version of the people’s language they call Cantonese. Dave- for some reason, Dave decided he wanted to learn Chinese after serving his mission in Spain. I should ask about that sometime. Poor guy’s currently on the floor in the spare bedroom (because the landlord hasn’t brought up that extra bed yet…he said he’d ordered a new one that was soft so that he didn’t have to sleep in hard beds like the rest of us…except for Greg, of course, who’s sleeping on the couch). Matt- he’s Canadian. Served in Ogden, Utah, and met a bunch of Chinese people that he taught in Logan. He says he found out that BYU had Chinese classes and that once he started he couldn’t stop. And yours truly- I’m sharing a room with James. Short story: Last night, I was coming back to the apartment at about eleven and I said hi to the zhuguan 主管 at the bottom of our building. He was chillin on a chair, leaning up against a car, just watching people come and go. We started talking and he pulled up a chair and asked if I were in a hurry. Nope! I’m wandering the streets looking for random Chinese people to talk to! So we talked for a bit. He introduced himself as Mr. Hua 华, and was pretty dang impressed that I knew it was pronounced with a fourth tone instead of a second tone when it’s a last name. Thank you Elder Manjarrez (his name was hua too). He taught me a few phrases as we were chatting, and I wandered in a half hour later feeling pretty happy about life. AAAAAND…. We’re off to church.