It was kind of a sad farewell seeing Yuka off--she's in Japan now, and then off to the USA next week, but I'm busy back at work. School started last week, and I've been doing all the teaching stuff--planning classes, grading 160 papers a week, running the film club, etc. I am coming off a 2+ month holiday and it's been tough transitioning back into work.

After my third day of class (which ended at noon), I came home to find Yuka and a mutual friend Lilly waiting for me. "Do you want to go to the hot springs?" they asked me. I didn't have class until 3 p.m. the next day, so I was all for it. Some Lilly's classmates joined the happy group, so ten of us ended up taking a bus out to the nearby resort town of Anning. It's on the other side of the massive Lake Dian, a geothermically active area full of hot springs. After we checked into the hotel, we went out for hotpot. As soon as we walked into the restaurant, a man stood up and said (in Chinese), "Oh behalf of the government of Anning, I welcome you!" and handed me a beer proceeded to toast me. I decided then that I like Anning. After hotpot, we went for some karaoke. Two hours was enough for me (and I had been up since 5:30 that morning), so Yuka and I called it quits at 11. However, the rest of the party kept singing away until 1 a.m. In the USA, we have baseball/football/NASCAR as a national pastime; the Chinese have karaoke.

The next morning Yuka, Lilly, and I did some searching for a good hot spring. There was no shortage of facilities; it was just matter of finding an outdoor spring (who wants to sit in a white-tiled room?). Finally, we found an outdoor "Japanese-style" hotspring consisting of 13 pools in the middle of the forest. It was early, so we three had the entire complex to ourselves. The proprietors took it a step further and added some ingredients to each pool--one was lemon juice, one was rose petals, and one was milk. It was a relaxing way to spend a couple of hours, although it was very difficult remaining awake for the rest of the day. My 3 o'clock class was inevitably short.

One advantage of working at a forestry college is the campus--there are over 300 species of trees here. Kunming, being the Spring City, is glorious once real spring comes around. All the trees and flowers are in brilliant bloom and everything smells wonderful. Yuka and I also got to see the cherry blossoms at Cuihu Park. I got a lot of good pictures and short video clips of the traditional music going on there every day--Yunnan Opera, huge choruses singing communist folk songs, some traditional minority dancing. It's been sunny and 27 degrees (around 75 Fahrenheit) every day for weeks. Welcome spring.

Two weekends ago Yuka & I got invited to a luncheon at Lilly's grandparents' house. It was a jaozi (Chinese dumpling)-making extravaganza! When we arrived they were pounding out the dough from scratch, and rolling it out into perfect flat circles. Also it was a sushi-making extravaganza! There was a woman there whose family was from Henan, but was born in Guangdong, and did her Cultural Revolution time in Hainan. So she was speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hainan minority dialects. Her husband, also an employee of the forestry college, is a moss expert who speaks fine English, Russian, Mandarin, Kunming-hua, and some native Yunnan dialects (from his Cultural Revolution time). Yuka speaks Japanese, I try. So it was a very multicultural party. I have become quite accustomed to eating spicy foods (three times a day, every day), but it was the first time in six months I had had sushi, and the accompanying wasabi (Japanese horseradish), which is a completely different kind of spiciness. The first jolt, tinging in my nose and throat, almost knocked me off my feet. A second warning to myself & others: take it easy on the Japanese mustard, too. There was the great triad of beverages served at every Chinese banquet: Coca-Cola, Sprite, and orange-drink (beer and baijiu are obvious fixtures in any establishment great or small and therefore don't even need to be mentioned).

The next day one of my students invited Yuka & me over to cook, and we made jaozi again. By this time I was quite adept at folding the pastry up into perfectly formed jaozi--I had been trained by a northern Chinese expert (I have heard, from Northerners, of course, that the Southerners don't know how to properly make jaozi). The small, subtle four-movement gesture he taught me resembled a martial art, but in the palm of one's hand. In Japan, they have a similar dumpling called gyoza (which I assume derives from the same etymology), and Yuka was applying a completely different folding technique. However I proudly adhere to the Northern school of dumpling-making.

I am still waiting to hear from Japan about the results of my JET application. The interview results and subsequent recommendations are sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan, and it's Tokyo that makes the final decision. The anticipation is killing me. I have about two more weeks to go.