XingBaKe Kafei

Today I didn't have any class (insert joke here), so I was pretty much autonomous. I spent part of my morning double-checking with student accounts how much my excess aid check will be at the end of this week. We can't afford another mishap like last semester's $640 oversight. It turns out that I pay the Honors College a $100 fee on top of my $25 dues per semester, so that knocks out of my stipend, and my mailbox is likewise not scholarship covered, so away whisks another $5. Even so, I should have enoughto cover supplies for Stage Makeup and have a bit left over to pay some outstanding little debts and to live for a couple weeks. Also, I will get the first portion of my grants for this summer, and I'll use that to pay the deposit for my Shanghai trip.

I'm increasingly excited about the time this summer in Shanghai. I think it will be a good opportunity to be on the ground in China working here and there on a couple of projects as well as being in language classes and doing obligatory tours of silk factories and parks and temples. I will likely be in a class of language beginners, which is less than exciting for my linguistic acquisition, since I probably won't be pushed like I was back at BeiShiDa, but it will make the summer much less stressful. I am also planning on getting some endorsements from either East China Normal University (where I'll be) or Shanghai Institute for Social Sciences as I pursue my thesis work on Christianity in China. I told Adam, my research advisor and former prof, that I will be a research assistant on whatever project he has cooking for the summer, as well. He's one of the trip leaders, and so it seems that it could be profitable to get my name attached to whatever he's working on there.

I went to the library today and discovered that there is actually a whole section about missionaries to China. There's a handy discovery early in the game. So, the question of my thesis is something like "What path did Christianity take from the Nestorian monks in the 6th and 7th centuries to the Three Self Church of today, and how did the governments of China shape that through the ages?" I know that the Taiping Rebellion will be a large part of it, as will the Cultural Revolution, but what about Reform and Opening and the increased globalization wrought by the rise of the internet? Anyway, I'm interested in seeing what it is to be Christian and Chinese. Hopefully I'll be able to bring a personal side to it since I'm a semi-native ethnographer on this project. I am, after all, a Christian who has lived in the ol' Middle Kingdom.

The weather outside is frightful. It's been sleeting and misting and freezing all day. I hunkered down in the Starbucks inside our library all evening and worked on a few homework loose ends, offered my ear to the entire staff as they cycled through their breaks, performed a spontaneous rendition of "For Good" from Wicked for the store to hear my devotion to Patrick the latte boy, and eventually checked out my first books of research material for the thesis. It was a semi-productive 5 hours. I also had a mocha and some brew coffee (though honestly not much because it makes my stomach hurt to have a lot of straight brew), and some pastry goodness.

I left the 'bucks around 9 and walked toward the Forum to hang out with Jenny and blog and perhaps read the books I checked out. On the way, though, I stepped up onto the sidewalk after crossing the street that feeds into Alumni Circle, and it was completely iced over. I went down like a cartoon character, both feet way up in the air over my head. Miraculously my coffee did not dump all over me, it only spilled a bit on the sidewalk. My butt and back are kind of hurting now, but at least I didn't hurt my legs, arms, head or neck. It could have been much worse. After a few unsavory words aimed at sleet and ice and concrete and my sore coccyx, I made it back up on my feet, recovered my coffee and my bookbag, and walked ever -so-carefully to McAlister Hall's relative safety from ice underfoot.

I made a (mostly) magnetic poetry poem today:

see nefarious juggernauts
make austere cunning caterwaul like din
gratuitous you
always wry lest I was to
find joy

I had to write "find joy" on a piece of paper and stick it to the board wit the magnet that says "to" but I think it adds a certain homespun charm.

T