Reasons today was mostly good.

Today was an interesting day. First of all, I woke up at 9 to the sound of some people outside yelling and whatnot. No, there wasn't a commotion or anything. People just talk loudly in China. Really really loudly. The first thing I noticed after that was the rain. It's been raining here for two or three days, so I'm starting to get tired of it. So I'm thinking that today is going to be a dreary day. I get up and get to moving around. I'm dressed and ready to greet the world by 9:30, which is not the habit I formed in the last two weeks. When all of your classes are from 6:30 until 9:15 at night and you have nothing to do before lunch EVER, you don't form great habits. Anyhoo, I was up and dressed earlier than usual, which was a good feeling. Then around 10 or a little after I went to the phone station and called different people in the states for about an hour. Just so you know, I spent 132 yuan on the phone this morning. That's why you should call me or get Skype on your computer. It's cheaper! Anyhoo, if you're upset about not getting a phone call from me don't worry, I may call you tomorrow. I think I'll be calling more people tomorrow. So talking to people until after 11 really got my spirits up and it was kind of fun walking through the puddles and stuff outside. After an interesting lunch in which I ate some deep fried minnows (there was a mistake in our ordering, if you were wondering) Angelyn, Derek, and I walked around for awhile. We got Derek's glasses fixed so they sit straight on his face, bought some milk, and then decided to hunt down a good place to chill and read a book. After dropping off the milk and picking up some books to read, we headed downtown to UBC Coffee, which seemed like a good enough place to chill. It's a really nice place, but coffee costs about 30 yuan per cup. And it's not good coffee. But they have couches instead of chairs, so it was a great place to sit back and read. So we read for two or three hours. It was really relaxing. My favorite part was when Derek started talking about some things he was reading in his Book and we got a conversation of sorts going on. It wasn't anything super deep or anything, but it felt great to be hanging out and just talking about things like that. Around 5 we headed back to campus. At this point it was even more dreary and grey outside. At 6:30 Nancy was supposed to come over for our Wednesday night meal/study session. She cooks and then we eat and work on our language skills. We teach each other English and Chinese at the same time. It's a lot of fun, actually. Well she called when she got off of work and said she wasn't coming. I think she had a headache, I'm not quite sure. So instead I went to dinner with Angelyn, Derek, and a student named Grease. Yeah, some Chinese students have really interesting English names. Like Pig or Cola. Anyhoo, it turns out that we thought his name was Grease because that's what we heard him say. Turns out that it's Grace. But he will forever be Grease to us (partly due to Grace being a girl's name). After dinner we decided we had too much strange energy so we folded up the umbrellas and ran around in the rain, jumping in puddles until we were soaked. Then we jumped the fence to the football (soccer) field and ran a lap or two around the track, kicking water on each other and singing in the rain. It was quite fun and was turning out to be one of the best, most relaxing days I've had in a while. Of course, after running in the cold rain for so long we were all ready to get a hot shower and dry clothes. When I came back to change I found that our plans for the holiday vacation had gone sour. Other than that, today was a very theraputic day. I can only imagine the joys that tomorrow will bring.