Moved, Part 1: Video Games and Fireworks

All my stuff has been moved, my life has been re-arranged a bit, and I am settled into a new place, ready to start another chapter of my life. It may sound a bit melodramatic, but it is gonna be pretty different from here on out. Starting on Monday I will have the language pledge, which means that I am not supposed to speak English for the next four months. But I suppose I should back up a bit. When we last left our hero...

I was feeling a pretty sick, lonely and depressed about ICRP(Integrative Cultural Research Project) time, but as I was writing the paper itself I started to feel a hell of a lot better. This was mostly due to the feeling the I would soon be completely free, with no work, no responsibilities, and nothing but my own will and desires dictating how I should spend my time. During my Sophomore year I gained the habit of being organized enough to always finish my papers a few days before the due date, and it has served me well in China, allowing my the time to sleep, watch movies, and go out into the city while my classmates write their papers. I would love to deny it, but to be honest I got really into some video games one on Download.com, a really fun game which, according to the creator, was made with aesthetics, characters, and plot as a focus. Freeware, with a well-crafted plot? I don't care too much about graphics, which is good since it was made in an old-school SNES style. Ara Fell 2k3 sounded right up my ally. And boy was it. It got me on a bit of a thing, so for the next couple weeks I downloaded several games from an online community called RPG Revolution. These games were all home-made, mostly by individuals but sometimes by small groups of people. Using a series of programs called RPG Makers, these people use a standard set of graphics, music, fonts, and the like to create their own video games. Of course, many people import their own graphics, fonts, and music, and many write their own kinds of programs so make more unique and custom game. I ended up downloading and playing about half a dozen games. Due to the nature of them (homemade, often by a single person) they were fairly short, usually under ten hours. I severely enjoyed Ara Fell, the Legend of the Philosopher's Stone, The Way (a game which is actually in 6 parts. The first is nothing special, but the plot, intrigue, and development really take off in Episode 2), A Blurred Line, and Sunset over Imdahl. I would recommend these in the highest degree to all of my friends that enjoy video games, especially those that enjoy old-school SNES style games.

After turning in my ICRP, the following weekend was the Chinese new year, also called the spring festival (春节, chun1 jie2). Isaac, Stephanie, Steph's boyfriend, and myself went to 张强's house (Zhang Qiang, she was Stephanie's roommate during the fall) to celebrate the new year. We ate tasty food, gave them a bottle of booze, watched the new year's show on CCTV (there were some great acts!) and set off fireworks. For those of you who don't know, Chinese new year is REALLY big on fire works. Stepping outside of 张强's family's apartment around midnight to light the fireworks sounded like stepping into a war zone. More than one joke was made about the Arab-Israeli conflict and Gaza, or about making a video mocking a military invasion of Beijing. I can't honestly say that the sky was lit up as bright as day, but I can truthfully tell you that no matter what direction I turned I say displays of fireworks, from the little cracklers (one of my least favorite, as they are loud and annoying without producing any pretty lights) to the big flower explosions high in the sky. With a city of 16 million people, each of whom is going to light up a few fireworks, that ends up making a pretty brilliant show. It was really an amazing experience, to be in a place to loud, with all the lights, with all the giddy joy that came rushing over me as I stepped outside and fully entered the celebration of a culture so far away from the one which I was born in. We left 张强's family's apartment a little after one in the morning (Do you know how hard it is to find a taxi at one in the morning on the night of Chinese new year? For a while I was worried that we were gonna have to walk across the city to get back to our dormitory!). Arriving home around 2:30 am or so, and hanging our with some people until 3:30 or so, I figured that I might as well just stay up until 8 or 9 when I planned to move to my new dormitory. So I did. I watched a movie, played one of my video games, and even Skype chatted with a friend from Michigan! It had always been so hard to arrange skype chatting because of the time difference, but I solved that problem by not sleeping that night! Between that and packing my bags, staying up the whole night was no problem, especially since it was already four in the morning by the time I decided to do it. Moving into my new place was a bit hasslesome (my name wasn't on the list, so I had to call around and get somebody to come and talk to the landlord), but I was glad that I did it early in the morning when I did, because that afternoon I went with most of the other Kalamazoo kids to the airport to bid them goodbye. All the K students except for Stephanie, Jamie, and myself left China that day.

That is enough for now. I would love to have pictures, but they are all on other people's cameras, and most haven't sent them to me yet. In time I hope to have them though. I am really tired, so more to come soon... hopefully.