Back to School

For about two weeks, the population of Hebei College of Finance has been as follows:

12 stray cats
5 women hired to shovel snow
2 guards at the front gates
myself
my roommate, Jon
our neighbor and teammate, Bethany

Since we returned from visiting and traveling in the South of China, our time has rushed by in a whirlwind of Settlers of Cataan and catching up on the latest season of "Lost." I have cherished this time to refresh and enjoy imagining the things that will come with the new semester.

One vital cog in our daily life that we have missed during the holiday season, which officially ends tomorrow with classes beginning at 8:00 AM, has been the cafeteria. Now, I know the images that such a word conjures in most peoples' mind: something along the lines of food fights in high school where sloppy meat balls and cold noodles are carried around on pink-styrophome trays, only to be tossed into the trash along with the bag of chocolate milk that you accidentally poked a hole through on both sides, causing it to leak into your overly-salted, frozen-on-the-inside-and-burnt-on-the-outside french fries. "Hao chur," perhaps, is just the sound of the person using the toilet to vomitt as they enter the cafeteria in these scenes, but here we use this word (which literally means "delicious") to describe our daily intake of delectible foods, ranging from the tang su li gi gai fan (sweet and sour pork over rice) to the always-solid chou mien (fried noodles...don't forget to add the egg on the side!). Certainly, our cafeteria gets a low score when it comes to cleanliness-- sometimes we have to avoid other peoples' trash and soup puddles when trying to sit down at a table-- but what it lacks, it makes up for entirely in the food department.

This afternoon, after Jon led us in an incredible time in the word, Cameron, Jon, Tim, Amelia, Bethany, Kerry, and I walked outside and braved the flurries assaulting our faces to make our first ascent of the semester to "Cantine 1," the cafeteria where we often go to eat. As we walked, it was almost overwhelming to see dozens of students mulling about, carrying huge plastic bags stuffed to the brim with clothes and supplies, preparing for the semester at hand. I walked by one small congregation of guys chatting when one of them yelled to me, "Hello!" I don't actually know who he was, but I stopped for a few minutes to ask how their holiday had gone. In true back-to-school style, I must have answered that question a dozen time over the next two hours as I made my way through the cafeteria, ordering the dishes and enjoying the atmosphere with my team.

"Di di! Mei mei" I shouted when I was making my way throught he crowd in the main stretch of the cafeteria, past the two rows of long tables, and seeing a young boy and his sloghtly-older sister playing cards at a table in the corner. His long, black hair curled into a rat tail behind him as he grinned through one or two baby teeth he has left, as his mouth begins to take a more mature form. These two friends I call "di di" (little brother) and "mei mei" (little sister) because of how much I see them on a weekly basis during the semester. They both seemed excited to see me and my friends returning to their mother's store, the small gai fan place where we often (literally everyday, in fact) eat dishes over rice.
"I will never know what that is like," I often think when I imagine the position the owner and workers of this store are in, working almost everyday from 7 AM until 10 PM, serving food to college students and teachers. The mother of these children has a raspy voice and always wears an orange rag over her hair, but always seems to spare the energy to smile as she ask, "Chur she ma?" (What do you want to eat?) It was truly an experience of reclaiming a familiar position as we enjoyed our meal together and celebrated the new semester's beginning.