I had the weirdest night two days ago.
 
We are off from school, but I don't leave for Gui Lin until Friday, so I have a few days to myself.  I decided to again go get lost in Zhuzhou, as it was so sucessful last time.  I took the bus to town, walked down a main street then off into an alley.  And what an alley.  After a few twists, turns, and walking through holes in walls, I really was lost.  But happy.  All I wanted was a little tea house where I could read my book (I'm reading Anna Karinina now), but this alley was getting shadier and shadier (literally, there wasn't as many streetlights).  What should I stumble upon but a massage house.  Oh good, I thought, I haven't gotten a massage in China yet.  Now I know what you're thinking, but this place looked fine.  There was an old women in there getting her back kneeded by some man, and the other massuse was very friendly.  They had their prices posted on the door, 5, 10, and 30.  Well, I thought, I'll get the 10 RMB one.  I pointed to it, saying I wanted that.  I layed down on the bed and they asked the usual questions.  Yes, I'm American.  A teacher, down in Nanfang.  Then she motioned for me to take off my shirt.  Alright, I said.  I layed down again and she started tugging at my pants.  WHOA, hold on, I want that, I said, pointing to the women getting massaged.  Then the man left and came back with a bucket of these bamboo cups.  I gave him a confused look.  Then he said something in Chinese and lite a cotton ball on fire and motioned towards me.  WHAT!  I don't know what the hell you think you're going to do but I can tell you you're not!  The women motioned me to lay down again, and I did (I kept my pants, thought).  Then she started suctioning these cups on my back.  It felt strange, but when in Rome.  I layed there for a while, my back covered with suction cups.  Then she took them off, oh much better, I thought.  Then I looked in the mirror- it looked like I had gotten in a fight with an octopus.  Huge red spots then were a good eighth of an inch off my skin!  I paid my money and left.  I even thanked her. (the spots lasted a good 24 hours)
Feeling a little depressed I walked on, taking in the ambiance.  A while later I found a tea house and walked in.  It was empty and a little old lady came over and said to sit down "Qing Zuo, qing zuo!"  I thought, this looks like a nice place to read, so I sat and she quickly brought some tea.  Only when she brought it, she sat down with me and  started talking to me.  After some initional confusion she realized I knew little Chinese, and I that she knew no English.  But she stayed, asking simple questions.  We talked like this for over a half hour, which is a long time when only one in ten things said is understood by either party.  But we progresed and had a simply wonderful conversation!  I told her I was a teacher from America, and that I had two brothers and one sister and where they were.  I was 23, had been in China about a month and was going back in a year.  She was 56, did some sort of job selling stuff during the day (coudln't quite tell what) had a son who was 21 and was studying singing at college.  Ever time we successfully communicated a complicated idea we both were so happy.  By now it was very late and I had to hurry to catch the bus back to Nanfang (they stop at midnight).
 
Yesterday was Mid-autum festival, equivilent to our thanksgiving.  People gather with their family and have a big dinner and everywhere mooncakes are for sale (very tasty pastry filled with fruit and egg).  We foreigners were invited to a teachers home, where we ate with her parents and husbund.  Very good, home cooked food.  But the mother was sadistic, making us eat more and more and more!  "Please, help yourself" her daughter would translate, whenever we took at break from eating to breath.  And before we could leave they made us take oranges, bananas, and mooncakes home with to eat later.
 
My applications to law school has been completed and sent in.  Now we wait.  
 
In lieu of random observations, I will leave you with a famous poem about the Mid-Autum festival by Li Bai from the Tang Dynasty.  It roughly translates to this (this is from memory, so I may mess it up a little)
 
-I awoke and the moonlight on the ground was so bright I mistook it for frost.
I looked up at the moon, then looked down and thought of my home-
 
-the Wandering Norseman-