Easter, Babies, and everything in between

It's been a busy past couple days for this girl...on Easter I got up at 6 am because there was supposed to be a sunrise service at Weiming Lake here on campus, but by the time I got out there it was 6:40-something and apparently the people had already left, which was a shame, but I enjoyed a peaceful morning stroll around the lake, so it wasn't all for nought. The Easter choir had to be at church at 7:45 to practice, and then we had services at 9 and 11, so I sang some whole bunch and listened to the sermon twice and missed my family a little bit because I didn't think anybody here would fully appreciate my responding to "He is risen" with "You betcha!" It was still a great day though. The choir rocked out, and the church was packed, and everything was fabulous, and afterwards a whole bunch of people went over to the Cantonese restaurant next door which had an all-you-can-eat buffet (traditional Easter food, I know), and I didn't actually get home until about 2:30, at which time I commenced taking an excellent nap, because darned if I hadn't been up and singing and dancing around in tall shoes since very early, and it was tiring.

Sunday night a bunch of CIEE students had a big ol' study-homework party at Be For Time Tea House, which has an 18 kuai unlimited-free-beverages and snacks deal. It sounded awesome, but we were so determined to drink our money's worth of beverages that after a while we all felt a little bit sick, since it seems that they make all their drinks from powdered mixes. Also the coffee was horrendous. We played little games with each other and the loser had to drink the coffee. Mmmm. I was still a little bit queasy when I woke up in the morning the next day, so I don't think that's going to be a frequent study location anymore. However, one good thing did emerge from my time there, which was another funny sign about water conservation, albeit less drastic than the last one: "Cherish the source of life and close every drop from dripping apart." Yes.

Monday was super warm (it got up to 74! which reminds me that sometime I should learn the metric system), and roomie and I declared a Skirt Day, and I wore one of my new T-shirts with silly English on it and my sparkly red "bride shoes" and was in a super awesome mood even though it was Monday and I hadn't slept very much. Wooo! It caught up to me today though, ahaha, and I was majorly tired in class, but today was the day that I was supposed to go volunteer with the Kind Heart Club to take care of babies with medical problems, and mid-morning I got a text message saying that we were meeting at 12:30 and not 1 as I had previously thought, and I had wanted to take a shower before I went but I only got out of class at 12, so I strategized a little bit and then pulled a super-duper awesome half-hour efficiency maneuver. At 12 o'clock sharp, I left my classroom (which is on the complete opposite side of campus as my dorm), sprinted across campus to my dorm, took a superhumanly fast shower, got dressed, and hustled back to the other side of campus where we were supposed to meet at the bus stop, pausing only to buy some food on the way. And I got there on time. I can't be modest about this; I am totally cool for pulling it off. Today and the next couple days are like intense time management exercises, because in addition to class and volunteering and meetings with my tutor, I have two midterms on Thursday to study for and a composition due at the same time and a quiz tomorrow plus an above average amount of normal homework in my Hanyu class for some reason. Suoyi (English: therefore), I am time-managing every minute of the day.

But yes, volunteering with babies. It's actually about an hour-long bus ride to get there, so the combined transportation time there and back was almost as much time as we actually spent there, but it was soooo awesome. I went with a girl I had never met before from the Kind Heart Club, so she knew the way there and what bus to take and such. The babies were still napping when we arrived, so they played me a little video about the place (Ping An, which means Safe Haven, approximately), which is a medical foster home for orphan babies. It's a small place, and today there were only three babies: one really small baby boy with a heart defect, and two babies with cleft lips, a boy who had gotten surgery and a girl who was going in for surgery next week. The little girl liked me the best, I think, and laughed when I made silly faces at her, and she was sooo cute. By the end of the time quite a few more adult volunteers had arrived than there were babies, so I had to stop hogging the babies' attention, but I had a really good time anyway. I was generally quite impressed with the organization, which is headed by an American (the wife of the CEO of Amway, apparently), because in China there isn't a whole lot of provision for people with any kind of medical handicap, and it's really easy for those children to fall through the cracks, although my Kind Heart Club friend explained that a lot of the children from Ping An get adopted by Americans. Interesting. I was so tired afterwards though that I slept almost the whole bus ride back, because as soon as we arrived I had to grab some dinner and go to meet with my tutor.

I know I've said it before, but my tutor is so awesome. I got there late, and I was so frazzled because I have so much to do and it seemed almost insurmountable, but after working through my stuff with Joy for an hour, we got so much done and I was so happy and I knew I would survive! I'm going to meet with her again tomorrow morning to edit my paper, which is due almost immediately after our meeting. Once again, time management is our watchword. Not that I budgeted any time for blogging...whoops.

But yeah, two random things to go out on: one, when I was entering the building where the Ping An facility is, I noticed an ad (presumably for Canadian vacations? beats me) that
advertised "Amorous feelings of Canada coast." Ah well, you know Canada, it's full of amorous feelings. Of course. The other thing was something I said by accident. I was talking about buying things, and "buy" in Chinese is "mai" - they rhyme. Anyway, without even thinking about it, I told my friend that I wished I had mought some ice cream. Then a couple seconds later it sank in to my brain that I had just said "mought." It was Chinglish on a new, ridiculous level, and I kind of like it. Hen hao! Now time to get back to homework and homework and homework and studying for the quiz I have tomorrow in Hanyu even though our midterm is the day after, I don't know what the teacher is thinking, exactly, but hey, this is China. We just have to accept things as they come.