Post the Seventeeth: Harry Potter and the Purple Potato Fruit

Intersection near our campus. I almost died taking this shot.

Notice the bus has BOTH DOORS OPEN.

Okay, it's official. I am really quite awful at blogging. I blame final exams. I blame the economy. I blame the expanding economic gap between the rich and the poor (came up every business class). Anyways, so a couple weekends ago I went to see the 7th Harry Potter film on Zhongyang Dajie. I t was a hilarious experience. My two friends and I got some of the last tickets to an English version (with Chinese subtitles), which meant that we had absolutely abysmal seats (theaters in China have assigned seating). Anyways, the movie experience was SPECTACULAR since it was in 3D (probably some sort of gimmick by the Chinese version of Hollywood) and the 3D glasses that were supplied were actually the worst I've ever used in my entire life. They were reminiscent of Cyclops' visor from X-men, though his visor probably doesn't limit him to sitting down with his head slightly tilted to the right in order to get the full effect of 3D. I also couldn't understand why so many Chinese people had showed up to watch the English version of the movie as there were five Chinese dubbed movies for every English one. Also does Harry Potter make since when it's translated? So much of the content/names/spells are derived either from English or Latin, so I'm not sure my Chinese companions found it as entertaining as I did (which explains why my three friends and I were the only ones to clap at the end of the film). Whatever, the movie cost us about five USD and was a thrilling end to my childhood (sob).

Super Mum: Alliance Restaurant.

Mmmmm, tasty tasty!!

This had GMO written all over it.

Sailor Venus. Unclear if these guys know that she's actually Japanese (cue torches and pitchforks).

On Wednesday evening, all of the CET students had to give a 5-8 minute oral presentation about their 1-on-1 topic to a panel of Chinese teachers. The student then had to field questions from the teachers for another 5-7 minutes. This would have been totally fine except the teachers are known for asking totally off-topic questions and taking points off if you secretly didn't know that they were asking you about DNA because they used the long Mandarin version of the word instead of the commonly accepted "DNA". In some regards I got luck since my topic (Chinese Healthcare System and Coverage Reform) was not something any of the teachers were familiar with --> I could have told them literally anything if I said it with enough conviction. I was lucky in that I didn't have to make anything up since I had one of the best 1-on-1 teachers in the program, Sui Laoshi. Just to give you an idea of the scope of the presentation, here are some of the vocab words I had to memorize:
~ 耐多药肺结合: multidrug-resistant tuberculosis
~ 合作医疗保障制度: Collective Health-care and Coverage System
~ 化学疗法: chemotherapy
~ 终末期肾病: end-stage renal disease

My one-on-one teacher and I. I'd just finished explaining HIV-related complications in treating multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in Mandarin Chinese, hence why I look like a hot mess.

So glad it was over.

Anyways, I'm going to try to put up some more pictures.

魏德