Last Weekend...

was an absolute blast. Friday night I met up with what was scheduled to be 3 students and turned out to be 6 to play ping-pong. The three extras were beginners, so I am no longer the new kid on the ping-pong block. Which is nice. We played for a couple of hours during which began an incredible lightning storm. It was really beautiful. After ping-ponging, we grabbed dinner at the on-campus restaurant and then parted ways. I headed back to my apartment and chilled for the remainder of the evening... this entailed a nice cozy stretch on the couch with the book of the week Les Miserables. I am fairly certain that either parts of the book have been edited out or I fell asleep while still turning the pages. Regardless, I am enjoying the read much more than The Hunchback of Notre Dame which I shamelessy abandoned after falling asleep twice while trying to read the first page. Perhaps I will attack it with renewed vigor after I complete Les Mis.

Saturday morning Neal and I showed our new super-cool French-Spanish-Turkish-and now-Chinese speaking French friend around the city, stocked up on things for a party we were planning on hosting that evening. It turned out being quite fun. We made a pasta bake and had salad and some zucchini for dinner. Invited Nadeige, Julie, and Rory. Small crowd, but turned out to be a blast. Upon reflection, I wonder if such nights are un-lived college days. Like the parties I never cared to go to minus the throwing up and the sex. Just pure fun. Fantastic. Lots of laughter. We played the infamous "Circle of Death" which is a ridiculous game involving cards and beer, then a French game I will call "tops." It is rather simple: once everyone has an open bottle of beer, you place your bottle cap, upside down, on top of the bottle. You take turns throwing your bottle cap in an attempt to knock off a friend's. If you miss, you drink; if you make it, friend drinks. Obviously, the worse shot you are the more you drink and the worse your aim gets. Another friend joined the party just in time for one round of beer pong, Chinese style. We set up on our tea tables. I find it amusing that it took coming to China in order to be exposed to this game. Haha.

Sunday was pretty low-key (don't get any ideas from the above story, I was feeling fine). Had my second French lesson. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep my mind out of the gutter and many of the words sounded vulgar to me which caused several spells of inexplicable laughter. Nadeige certainly knows how to test us. She had us repeating dialogues without having read a text, just listening, trying to comprehend, responding, and repeating. I found myself trying to "read" the lines in my memory but couldn't find them there. I think that this method will definitely require extra diligence on my part as it doesn't involve any visual learning techniques. Perhaps as I get better, I will be able to spell what I hear in my head and read those prompts, but until then...it will be rough going. But, it is super fun, and I am very thankful to have the opportunity to not only practice my Spanish with her, but to also get some foundations in French!!

Still waiting on updates from Honduras. My mind has been on little else. I have already tried compiling a list of the necessities so that I can begin to collect my thoughts, etc. Geez...I know these next few months will whiz by, but sometimes the days are agonizingly long!!