Hanging with the Minorities (arts & crafts time)

In Beijing, they are having an exhibition on ancient Chinese handicraft as made by different ethnic minorities (non-Han Chinese.) There are 55 official ethnic minority groups in China (56 if you count Han.) There were people there demonstrating their techniques, such as pottery, paper cutting, silversmithery*, liquor making, paintbrush carving, tea pounding*, embroidery, all types of great stuff. (*I don't know what the words for these skills are so I just made something up) My favorite by far is my homie, pot man with the blue hat. He made me a big vase right before my eyes; furthermore, screw technology. He spun the pottery wheel manually with his feet.

I wore a very similar shirt once when meeting Hillary Clinton (who btw is in Beijing this weekend). Mistake. My shirt choice, not Hillary's trip.

I wish I had had time to ask this lady what ethnic group she's from, but alas....its pretty, she's pretty.

This is incredibly intricate. Super thin red tissue paper. My mom used to make these for me when I was younger.

I bought a full length mirror today (bonfire of the vanities, much?) and after lugging it up 4 flights of stairs, I realized the paint on it smells like...death. I'm not quite sure what death smells like, but it can't be worse than this. I want to go back to the shopkeeper and return it, but I also really want a full length mirror. (ego > sense of smell)

My first week went really well; I'm really enjoying this 1,000 times better than my worst times at ML, and 998 times better than my best times at ML. Working on Wall St. is only fun if you can have people work for you and not the other way around.

I hung out with my colleagues for the first time last night and had a blast!!! I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. We had a orientation in a huge mtg room where our administrative bigwigs showed a fancy-schmancy powerpoint about how awesome we are, ending with a slide proclaiming "Our dreams have come true!" Afterwards, there was dinner on the top floor of the skyscraper. Too bad the Siberian winds were blowing like crazy; there was a wraparound terrace that would have been amazing to walk out onto. Apparently, you have an awesome view of the Olympic Bird's Nest and Water Cube from out there.

My co-workers are, in every meaning of the words, awesome and fabulous. I think the best quote of the night was when...in the middle of a discussion about planning our trip to Tibet...Richard, the Brit, turns to Patrick, the Californian/Coloradian....and just asks him directly...

"Patrick........are you into weapons and mass warfare?"

The randomness and hilarity of the comment was elevated by the British accent with which it was delivered. Patrick's retort was priceless.

".....Not if I'm on the receiving end."

Sunnia is one of those chicks who is just effortlessly supercool and she's seen like 99% of the world. I'm sad she moved out of my apt building; she would have been my floormate. She just moved into a hutong with Steven, whom I adore. You gotta see this guy act out his stories. His facial expressions are priceless; I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe. Carol is this awesome girl, from Michigan I believe; she has one of those infectious laughs that you just start laughing with even though you don't know what the inside joke means. Patrick is like the sweetest guy in the entire world; his girlfriend is a lucky gal! Richard, I would assume is from England based on his accent, but could be anywhere in the UK. He's like the British version of Anthony Bourdain, traveling to places like Burma, Mongolia, and Laos--without visas by the way...sneaking in through loose border points...driving a day outside of Beijing just to visit one of the world's most dangerous mountain roads, spinning donuts in the snow in the parking lot with his van.

I have quite a bit of free time to explore the City; I'm done from 10am onwards on Tuesdays and Thursdays, plus no work on Saturdays and Sundays. Basically, that amounts to 4 days of freedom/week. There are so many new people I want to get to know and become friends with in town...the H Alumni (both old Chinese alumni and younger American alums), the new Law & Business School networks (time to start networking again), family friends, colleagues, new acquaintances. Not to mention U.S. State Department/Embassy events; Jan is awesome for tipping my attention in that arena.

Also, I must be masochistic to an extreme. My advisor just asked to write a full length research paper on the educational differences between China and the U.S. from a Chinese-American point of view, for a global conference on education that will be held here in Beijing and being in a great mood at the time, I agreed. HOWEVER, the deadline is in March. WTF was I thinking?!! So ix-nay the free time...

I'm heading up to Changchun tonight to spend a (freezing) weekend with my grandma. I plan on staying indoors the entire weekend because I think the high today was -12 degrees F. Also, a co-worker of mine , Niffi, gets to meet Hillary Clinton tomorrow with her peace corp group. So happy for her, that's going to be such a blast.

PS: I wrote this entry while waiting for my student loans for law school in the fall to load online. Gosh darn that website is slow....maybe its because I'm in China and they think I'm a hacker.

Furthermore, if my entire room somehow smells like that damn mirror when I get home on Sunday night, I might sleep in the hallway. (Note, I still will not get rid of it)