New Year's!

新年快乐!  (Xin nien kuai le!)  Happy New Year!

The end of 2011 came rather quickly and I am still surprised that it is actually over.  Here’s to the last year of the world!  (I think I’ll watch that movie tonight, just to see what’s in store)  Luke and I had a lovely and quiet New Year here in Pengshan.  The other Americans went into Chengdu to dance and party the night away, but we stayed here to celebrate with our Chinese friends and have a more low key night.  Good thing too because I came down with a cold (感冒, gan mao) and spent most of the day watching movies.  We ate pulled rabbit spicy dish and broiled fish at a local restaurant downtown, both of which were considered spicy and were coated in the red Sichuan fire-oil spices, but to illustrate our conversion to Sichuan-hua, we were able to answer “bu la (not spicy)” whenever anyone asked if it was spicy.  Delicious.  Looking around as we ate at a picnic table on the street, drinking hot beer, joking in Chinese and laughing with our friends, and having a drinking game of the foreigners only speaking Chinese and the Chinese speaking only English, I was very thankful for our life here.  We have great friends who all love to smile and from whom we get to taste and live a life that is authentically Chinese.  As the weeks have flown by at dizzying speed, my admiration and respect for the people we can call our friends and co-workers continues to grow.  Smiles are never far from their faces and they are always attuned to caring for each other. 

       After dinner we ventured downtown and bought the cheapest bottle of liquor I have ever purchased: a 25 yuan (4.5 USD) bottle of Chinese brandy.  Our Chinese friends were absolutely dubious, maybe even appalled, but we were excited.  Back to our school and to the KTV room, where we celebrated the end of the year in true Chinese fashion: singing karaoke.  Luke and I have learned a Chinese song together and I’m learning another on my own, both of which never fail to amaze the audience, even though we sound terrible.  How I wish I had taken voice lessons somewhere along the way!  But we also get to sing Sean Kingston, The Beatles, Jason Mraz, and many other English songs.  And the Brandy was awesome.  Mixed with Coke, it made vanilla Coke, and soon we were all singing, dancing, and laughing in true New Year’s volume and fashion.  One thing I have noticed about the last two months is that they have been truly joyous.  This has been the most I have laughed in a long time, even though it brings many, many strange looks from the Chinese.  Traditional Chinese culture does not condone filling the air space with deep bellowing laughter.  But somehow screaming at the top of your lungs into your cell phone is fine.  Our close friends find my laughter humorous (or so I think).  They are definitely baffled when I cry from laughing too hard, which has been happening at our truly amazing Chinese mishaps, in which we say something completely unintentional.  The list is coming soon.  But all this is to say that as 2011 came to a close, I looked back at the year with happiness in my heart.  I am in a place I enjoy and feel at home, surrounded by people I really like and feel comfortable with, and I have a great family and friends back home sending support.  Thank you all.  I was sad I missed the traditional phone list of New Year calls, but know that you were all in my thoughts. 

       One person who had a monopoly on my thoughts as the year came to a close was Mr. Luke Sanford.  If not for him, I have no doubt that I would not be here.  And without a doubt, if I were here by some far-fetched possibility without him, this experience would be drastically poorer.  He has been my ever patient Chinese teacher, even when I ask the meaning of the same word over and over day in and day out; he has been a rock of stability in a stormy sea of unpredictability, which has been the norm in our life here in China; I will always remember coming home after a hard class and just venting on the couch of one of our rooms; he has been my teammate and teacher in our afternoons of daily sports, teaching me (again, ever so patiently) tennis and learning basketball together, playing Frisbee on the soccer field, and lifting weights in the gym 3 or 4 days a week (and here again, as a teacher and friend pushing me); he has been a dream travelling partner—be it going to the mountains or other big cities, riding the bus for 12 hours or sleeping on the train for a day, handing me plastic bags to puke in after bad hot pot, and simply navigating a sea of Chinese with what feels like a broken rudder sometimes—he has always kept his cool despite me feeling at my lowest.  I said that my admiration and respect for our Chinese friends has only grown throughout this semester, and the same goes for Luke, but to an even greater degree.  As this year comes to a close, I am deeply thankful to have been able to spend so much time and explore this crazy place with him.  And I am looking forward to even more fun in 2012.   So, if you ever need a travelling partner reference, Mr. Luke, put me at the top of the list. 

       We sang until 10:30, when the Brandy ran out.  Some friends went to bed and we walked around campus, eventually falling into the grass and staring up at the red lanterns floating into the starless abyss above.  These are a particularly endearing aspect of China—couples write their hopes (or maybe it can also just be someone single, a little hazy on the protocol) onto a paper lantern and light a ball of fuel that is suspended at the base.  The lantern then fills with hot air and after countless false starts, alights onto the wind and begins its fragile, but beautiful journey into the void.  We have seen these lanterns on many holidays, and I was very happy to see them flying away on New Year’s. 

       We lay on the grass and watched the red stars shrink into the universe, laughing at brandied Luke making jokes in Chinese.  After the cold crept through our jackets, we played hide-and-seek around the campus and watched the fireworks from our roof top at midnight.  Even by American standards, they were poor showings, but I was happy just to see the New Year commemorated.  It was a great New Year to end a great year.  For resolutions, I am shamelessly stealing Luke’s- 1) study Chinese on my own; that is, learn outside of what our friends teach us.  That way I’m more interesting to talk to.  (This also just means study more; I’ve come a long ways but have a lot farther to go).  And 2) write on my blog more.  Even if its just a few sentences a here and there, I want to be more diligent about recording what thoughts are happening out here.  Thanks again for sharing Luke!  And thank you all for making life so rich and wondrous.  I am looking forward to what adventures 2012 brings!

Matt