Lasagna, Dead Babies, and Care Packages

It is finally Friday, and I'm glad.  This week has been longer and more bizarre than almost any I can recall.  I went to a new Sunday School class, turned 22, entertained my parents, mapped out the lobby of my building for museum construction, celebrated a friend's birthday, wrote two grants, bought footie pajamas for kids, cleaned out Goodwill's theological books, washed my shoes, began pretending to be someone's best friend/long time travel companion, watched several movies, had Chinese and chemistry tests, had my lobby plans shot down, and am typing all about it on Friday morning.  There was more to my week, and, frankly, the bizarreness went unmentioned in that list.

Movies watched lately:

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

Look Back in Anger

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Nosferatu

Invisible Children

Song of the South (a perhaps less than legal copy)

Hamlet (with Laurence Olivier!)

Yep, I watched parts or all of these movies this week.  I did miss The Office yesterday because of a birthday party, so I'll catch it online soon.  Don't talk about it, please.  About 4 Months, I have wanted to see this film for several months.  I saw it for sale in the bootleg shops in Beijing, but the covers were printed in French, and so I never bought it.  I knew what it said, but the last movie I watched in French without English subtitles was Amelie, and I'd been in China for a few weeks, and the fact that I didn't know what anyone was saying hardly phased me.  It turns out that the film is Romanian, which I think I knew, but even so, the subtitle menus on cloak-and-dagger dvds are hit and miss at best.  I'm glad to have seen the film, but I will say that it definitely put me (and everyone else in the room) into a contemplative and tenuous funk.  What terrible things people put themselves and each other through.  I often wondered why the young lady needed the abortion.  However, I'm not so naive as to think that adoption in Soviet-era Romania would have been an attractive choice.  I'm reminded of Olan in The Good Earth, when the baby is born, she delivers it, smothers it, and buries it immediately.  (Of course the dead babies have different fates... one is eaten by dogs, the other cast down a garbage chute.)  

No more talk of dead babies.  It has been a bizarre week.  I told you!

This weekend seems promising.  I have only to write some film responses for class on Monday.  I'm hoping to settle down into some Zhang Yimou films tonight.  Tomorrow there is a birthday Lasagna-palooza slated in honor of yours truly and my friend Callie, as hosted by the Temples.  I'm planning on making my world-renowned (though, admittedly, it didn't turn out the best when the pan didn't fit into the Filipino oven all the way) bread for the occasion.  It promises to be the Pasta-Based party of the year.  Mark my word!

I am working on a China-bound care package, and it's almost complete.  I'm pretty excited about the whole thing.  I think it's going to rock.  I'd give details, but it would spoil the surprise.  

T