2136 5-16-10
Alright let me get the unpleasantness out of the way. So remember that semi-date I went on like on Thursday? As I said that was kind of set up by the girl name Jing who I've talked on and off with for awhile. Anyways apparently when I asked Han Lin and Yin Ting (the two girls I went to dinner with) to ask if Jing wanted to come along, they didn't actually do so. So Jing got pissed at me that I didn't invite her to come, and did not care that I didn't have her number, by her logic I should have asked for it before hand. I had of course assumed since Han Lin would be there that any contact I wanted to make with Jing I could do through her.
Anyways long story short I try tried to make amends by saying sorry and that we should hang out next time and go on a walk. The reason why I chose the word walk is because that's what she mentioned she liked to do. She then get's pissed that I would take the other two girls out to dinner, but not her. At that point I simply told her to go fuck herself (maybe slightly nicer than that, but no less direct). One thing I hate is drama, and it has become apparent that Jing likes to create that. I think this friendship, or whatever you want to call it, is probably over. Anyways sorry for that, it really all sounds childish, but I wanted to just get it down on the blog so I could remember it later.
NOW FOR TODAY'S STORY
So today is the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival, which is celebrated by having races in, that's right, Dragon Boats. These things are basically really long rowing boats with dragon heads at the end. But in order to find a place to do this we had to load up on buses and travel over too ECUST's 2nd campus in Fengxian.
Teams had already been selected before hand and it looked like it would be 5 Chinese teams and then us, the foreign kids. Tokkie named us "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" and the team consisted of 12 guys and 6 girls. Some of the foreigners on the team I hadn't met before because they were part of a much longer study program then us and had already been through the courses that we were currently taking. They seemed to be mostly from Germany, Greece, and Sicily.
So the morning mostly consisted of just practicing our rowing, and getting use to synchronizing our paddles. We also explored this campus a bit. The campus was really new (like 2-3 years) and was built mainly to serve and house the undergraduate students. Being outside of actual Shanghai it was much more spacious then our campus, and kind of had a nice modern vibe to it. Not saying I would want to study there, being that far out of Shanghai for an exchange student would really suck. Once lunch was consumed we headed back to the lake for the real competition.
Now you might think of this as just a friendly race amongst students, and that it was all just fun and games, but we all knew better. Freedom and Liberty were at stake here. If we lost Today, Democracy would lose Tomorrow. The world order was in the balance and defeat would bring it crashing down around our ears. The stakes were high and we had five other teams to beat, most of which had probably at least seen or even a part of this festival before. The odds were truly stacked against us.
The competition was set like this, first there would be three rounds of two team races, based off of your time the top three would then compete against each other, and the bottom three would then compete against each other. Our first battle went well with a nice victory, but then we found out we had just squeaked by into third place based off our time. After some drifting around in the boat (actually a lot of drifting but I won't get into that) it was time for our final race.
It was game time, we sang out our cries of battle to the other team and they… they did something not quite as loud in return, not really sure what because I was crying out our battle chant at the time and didn't really pay attention. We lined up the boat at the starting line and putting our paddles in the "Attention" position. With Antoine at the drums we waited like hunting dogs, just itching for the gun blast that would set us free.
BANG!!!
The shot was heard echoing across the water and it was the only thing we needed to unleash our might fury. We could not loose, we could not fail our countries, we could not bear the burden of defeat. Our paddles rang out these Truths, slicing deep into the water we heaved with all our might to the sound of the battle drum in order to launch our boat cutting across the water.
We were all neck in neck, but in utter terror it looked like the Chinese teams had gotten the best of us. Their harmonious indoctrination was paying off as they were immediately in synch with each other. Our chances of seeing our children grow up in a world of McDonalds, Guns, and Pailin were quickly being dashed against the Blood Red Great Wall.
But Today was not our Day to die. With our mighty strength we persevered, putting our backs into it, we fell into a firm rhythm like the gears on a well oiled train hurtling towards the vast West of opportunity. We soon overtook the other teams, hurtling past them with such might that I'm sure our oars were actually pushing their boats BACK. Across the finish line and the sweet light of Freedom could be felt on all of our faces. We had won, we had WON!
We even got prizes afterwards, Winnie-the-Pooh prizes in fact! With my big pink Piglet in hand I walked back to the bus, and rode back to campus. Ahhh Victory.
I don't know whether to write something to downplay that bullshit, or just leave it as it is. Regardless, it was fun to write…
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