Halloween

This blog post was written on October 31st, but somehow not published. Apologies for the extremely late post.
Today is Halloween. This morning, my alarm broke. Thus, my dad woke me up at 7am asking me if I was going to school today. I did, in fact, plan on going to school today, although at a much earlier hour. So, I woke up at the time I usually leave the house and speedwalked to the bus stop. I arrived at the road across from my bus stop just in time to watch the road become dangerously congested with cars and to see my bus pull up to my stop, and then pull away. I made eye contact with the driver of the 104 as I reached the other side of the road and watched my ride to school rumble away. So I waited another 15 minutes for the next bus and desperately attempted to memorize my Chinese presentation. My memorization efforts were unsuccessful; the presentation, once I arrived at school, would most likely go under the label of "disaster". And so began my Halloween.

The rest of the day proceeded as per usual. Thursdays always fall a bit short of a good day, because school is 45 minutes longer than usual due to Society & Culture class. And tomorrow, we have a Tie Laoshi test. My excitement truly knows no bounds. We seem to have tests every two weeks in Chinese class, a quiz every week in history, some sort of English assessment every week, daily tingxies, and a math quiz every three weeks and a math test the following week. So, my Halloween is ending with a lengthy reflection on assessments.

At home in America, I would probably do something tonight - with friends, or family, or family friends. Note: my family has never handed out candy on Halloween due to our location on a tall hill that intimidates trick-or-treaters to a degree of nonexistence. But tonight, in China, I will be studying hard for my Chinese test; my plans for tonight stand in stark contrast to what most likely would have been a fun night in America. When I think about it, though, the amount of Chinese holidays is probably essentially equal to the amount of holidays we will miss in the United States. Halloween and Thanksgiving can be replaced with the Mid-Autumn Festival and New Years. I will probably never have a better chance to experience a Chinese holiday such as the New Years festival in China itself. And this is the reason I came to China; to experience it as much as possible. Despite my whining about "missing" Halloween, I ultimately am completely fine with missing the holiday. And so, as my Halloween comes to a close, I will sit down with a Chinese textbook in a Chinese cafe and attempt to improve my mastery of the Chinese language. And honestly, I'm glad I can do that; it's completely worth foregoing the commercialized, sugar-filled event that is Halloween.