Earthquakes and other midnight alarms

Last week was my first earthquake. I had been thinking a lot about earthquakes since the one in Japan induced by nuclear testing in North Korea. But when it happened, it wasn't as fun as I remember. It kind of made me feel like throwing up.

At first I thought I was just feeling ill from writing my essays for grad school applications. But my hanging plants were swinging like pendulums. Wang Laoshi said there was definitely no earthquake, but the next day the newspaper said it was a 5.5 about 100 miles off the coast of Taiwan.

There was also a tiny lizard on my bedroom walls. Unlike the cockroaches, I tolerate the lizards, which are cute and small and alarmingly fast. They're like pets you never have to feed. Sort of...

[Michael would also like me to say that all these pictures are taken by him]

Mid-Autumn Festival

I haven't written in a while because it's been a holiday. The moon festival, or mid-autumn festival, followed by independence day (10/10), left everyone with a five-day vacation and the weather was gorgeous. On this holiday, people generally eat moon cakes and a kind of grapefruit, and barbecue in the streets and parks on small charcoal grills. Basically, though, people just get together with friends and families and eat a lot. This is like most Chinese holidays, I gather.

Before that, Michael came to visit me from Jin Hua for a week for his mid-autumn festival vacation. It was a whirlwind of sight-seeing during the week, although I had classes every day so we couldn't leave the city. It's a lot to talk about, so I'll be brief:

CKS Memorial Hall
Da-an Park
Yong-Kang Jie Market
Shi-Da Night Market
Long-Shan Temple (and the night market there)
Costco (this was surprisingly comforting. We bought pasta sauce and hot dogs)
Grand Hotel (and the park there)
Gong-guan (for eating ice cream)
Elephant Mountain
101 Building (the tallest in the world!)

But mostly we just hung out and ate a lot, drank too much coffee, stayed up late wandering. Everyone's been really generous, so we ended up with a lot of free meals and moon cakes and tours. My coursework felt it, and I was exhausted and slept all day Saturday, but it was wild. We also met some friends and went with them to a restaurant where you grill your own meat on top of a bucket of charcoal, which was brilliant and really relaxing. We ended up spending five hours grilling and eating and talking and drinking unlimited tea and small small glasses of beer.

Since then I bought two cool plants at a mammoth flower market under a highway, been treated to a few more meals, and made a few new friends (including a computer guy). Yesterday, on National Day I spent the morning at a two-million person protest against presidential corruption, and then had my first ride on a moped. I was surprised at how thrilling a moped can be, and if I was staying longer and had a job, I would start shopping for my own. For one thing, you can get into the mountains on it. For another thing, its kind of a rush: you could just jump off it and die, so you have to hold on.