Another busy weekend has passed. This Sunday night, I am neglecting my study a little bit, as I've been looking at moving my blog to another site, one that isn't so limited by the Great Firewall. I've struggled lately with uploading photos, somehow the image never fully loads. Anyhow, all these things are leading me to think that it is time for a change. Of course, you will know as soon as I have a new site set up, and truly, I might not get to it. Spare time is short, especially as the end of PST draws near.

So what was I up to this weekend?

Friday night was an early night, I went out for dinner with my little brother Chen Chen and two of his classmates. Both of his friends had very strong English-speaking skills and were sweet girls. The three of them all just finished their first year of university in Beijing. They study, respectively: chemical engineering, astrophysics and English for astrophysics. Like many young Chinese, they are bright and motivated students. When I told them that I studied politics in college, they were kind of puzzled. My major doesn't really exist here, according to them. From what I could gather, they study Marx, etc. but when I mentioned other, equally famous old theorists, I got blank stares. I haven't yet learned of anything like a liberal arts concept here. Another interesting aspect of Chinese youth is the compulsory military training. All youth have to take part in military training, and while I'm short of the precise details, I believe they have to do it at least twice during their school years. Chen-Chen and his friend Amy both did their training the first half of the summer, and they described it as less-than-fun. Lacking from their description of the mandatory training was any feeling of resentment, though. They took their duty seriously and easily, even if they didn't enjoy doing it. As they were telling me this, I was trying to envision these cheery, very young-looking and somewhat timid kids going through a short version of boot camp--I'd like to witness what it is like, because it was difficult to imagine.

Saturday I spent at Zhoujue Temple, a Buddhist temple that is still active in the north of Chengdu. Before, when I had heard "temple," I envisioned A temple, the way one would see A cathedral or A mosque. But this was more like a campus of temples to various Buddhas and gods, with wooded paths, a vegetarian restaurant and a tea house. The day got off to a wet start, with pouring rain, but by the time my friend Brian and I reached the temple by bus, the rain had mostly stopped and by early afternoon the sun and sky actually appeared! It was a beautiful, peaceful place. Monks were strolling about, reading and studying, and many visitors were making offerings of incense and candles. We spent the entire day there, going through the temples, observing a prayer service complete with chanting and proceessions and basically just enjoying the sunshine and tranquility.

To cap off my weekend of activity, my host family today took me to the Panda Research Base. Sichuan is one of the few natural habitats of the Giant Panda and this Research Base is pretty famous. Again, it was nice to have a little sojourn outside the city. The pandas are very cuddly and cute, with many seemingly-human characteristics. They are very sluggish in the heat, so I mostly observed them napping, but did spy a couple of them moving about or eating copious amounts of bamboo. Tonight my classmates and I were invited to my teacher's apartment for dinner. She and her boyfriend cooked us up a feast. Neither of them are originally from Sichuan, so we got to sample some dishes from other parts of China, which was nice. The Chinese could really teach all of us something about hospitality; across the board, they are so eager to make guests comfortable and happy.

It was a good weekend. But, another grueling week ahead, I must sign off now. All of you in the West, enjoy the last day of your weekend. Until next time.