the weather was so brilliant today i could walk back from work without my coat.. and i'm starting to see more and more pretty flowers on trees =)
had lunch with a fellow intern today, after weeks of being AS...she was originally from Kuwait and according to her, there are many American schs there, and that was how she learnt English... the foodcourt was teeming with high sch kids and so it was a bad choice to go down...it's prob their spring break now? or either that school trips to DC have started, since the weather has improved substantially...
i had the privilege of reading the first part of my prof's unpublished book and it was pretty interesting to hear her narrate her experiences as a foreigner involved in the Tiananmen Incident. one thing that really struck me was how many Chinese had to lie, during the 'biaotai' after the incident... in order to 'survive'.. so much so that they sometimes couldn't distinguish what was truth and what was fabrication... similarly, during the Cultural Revolution, people sometiems had to lie blatantly.. accuse their loved ones of deeds they never committed to prevent persecution or being labeled as rebels... i can imagine how horrible it must have been to have to live amidst all these lies, to be forced to commit atrocities against innocent ppl... was also somewhat proud to see a few sentences of what i translated for her in the text, but was totally freaked out upon discovering that she used them as quotes when they weren't exactly direct translations from the original book... so i had better tell her that else i might get her into trouble!