On the day I decided to remain in Luguhu, I wrote in my journal, "To stay here - to not have to leave on Monday - is like being given a beautiful present." And such has proved to be the case - it is a present I open every day and every night when I go to sleep I am so filled with thanks. I can't seem to refrain from cheesiness, I apologize - I'm just so gosh darned fond of Luguhu. And it's hard to say what it is, exactly, that I love so much, but here is an account of an average
day here. Maybe a bit of the beauty will leak through.

Every morning, I wake between seven and eight o'clock and lie in bed for a bit, thinking of this and that, watching the dim light coming through my opaque blue curtains. There's no rush; somehow I always manage to wake well in advance of breakfast, which is almost always xifan, a watery rice porridge which at first I found unbearable but I've gotten used to it. Occasionally we have noodles, which is always exciting, and once we had sweet green pea soup. Lately we've also been having pickled eggs, which are so much tastier than you would think. I'm already
thinking about the pickled egg situation when I return to Beijing, and the entire aisle of pickled eggs in the grocery store I patronize.

Breakfast is rather catch-as-catch-can because it's served ten minutes before classes begin. I do not have any classes until later in the morning (and I have only five classes a week which is not very many) so I generally sit outside on a bench under a tree and watch the lake and read.

When I do have class it is a challenge. Teaching elementary school, it seems to me, is chiefly a matter of keeping order. Make them love you, my grandmother advised me, but it is just as important to keep them in line. The two are not mutually exclusive - it's one of the mysteries of children that they often seem to love the strictest teachers the most. The thing is, Chinese child management involves a lot of hitting. We have a special riding crop sort of thing that is used to hit the children's hands, and when they won't present their hands to be hit a smack to the head is administered instead. "How do I keep order?" I asked Luo Wei and Hou laoshi one day when I first arrived, and in their meandering Chinese way they told me not to spare the rod. I felt like Anne of Green Gables.

What's worse, when I don't hit the children and they misbehave, Hou laoshi
generally comes in and hits them for me, which causes me to lose face in front of
all the children and the other teachers. So what is there to do? I slap the children on the hand when they misbehave, but I use my hand, generally not the stick. It's a compromise but it's
the best I can do. After classes are over we have lunch, which, although generally the same, is
filling and tasty. In the afternoon I am free, so I usually read or hang around the kitchen and chat with whoever else is hanging around the kitchen. Sometimes Zheng Xiaoxue and Hou laoshi and I go down by the lake and sit on one of the boats and talk. We have dinner at eight, and after I have helped to clear and wipe the table, Zheng Xiaoxue and I generally go for a walk down by the lake. When we come back, we hear the horn being blown to signify the start of evening classes, which are for the local adults. Then Luo Wei, Wang Cheng, and I have our English/Naxi
lessons. Unfortunately we've been neglecting the Naxi side lately (Naxi is so incredibly complicated it makes Mandarin look like a picnic), but I love teaching them English. Luo Wei is Sichuanese and so does not distinguish between the "n" and "l" phoneme, either in Chinese or English. It's very interesting - he claims he can't hear any difference at all between, say, "light" and "night." I made a list of l/n words for him and we practice almost every night. "When you say 'light' your tongue is on the outside of your teeth," I say. "For 'night' your tongue is on the inside." This observation has helped a lot. It's much more fun to teach English to Luo Wei and Wang Cheng because they are learning on purpose; also, Wang Cheng's hilarity makes everything fun. Even when I can't understand a word he says, his delivery never fails to crack me up.

When the boys are tired of English, Luo Wei politely suggests that I go to bed. When I first arrived, he told me proudly that he had an English name, and I thought he said it was Terry, which suits him admirably. However, one day during our lesson he wrote his name down and I saw that it was, in fact, "Cherry." "What's so funny?" Luo Wei asked, bewildered. "That's a stripper name," I told him. I was pleased with myself for knowing how to say "stripper."
"WHOO!" Wang Cheng shouted. "Get up on the table, Luo Wei, and dance for us!"
"I don't understand," said Luo Wei. "It's a cultural thing," I explained, and could not explain it any further. But I still occasionally laugh when I think of Luo Wei, a famous architect, coming to the U.S. to design a high rise or something and introducing himself as "Cherry Luo." Someone needs to supervise Chinese people when they choose their English names; when we were in Xi'an, Lili met a guy who introduced himself as "Superman."

Last night some of us went to Wang Cheng's house after dinner. Li laoshi had insisted that we eat beforehand, but when we arrived at Wang Cheng's house he insisted that we try Naxi Hotpot. So we sat around the fire and ate sunflower seeds while the hotpot was prepared. Naxi houses are all very similar - a large room with a raised platform in the back with a fire for cooking, heat, and light. Wang Cheng's house has posters of Chairman Mao and the Dalai Lama (the Naxi are Buddhist) on the walls. In addition to the school people, there were five or six Naxi men, including Wang Cheng's father, two women who kept in the back, and a little boy of maybe three named Eight Kilograms, his weight at birth. There are at least two other Eight Kilograms
that I know of, and a Six Kilograms. Chinese hospitality can be intense. "Eat that!" Wang Cheng commanded. "Don't be polite! Finish that so I can give you more. Ou laoshi [that's me], Cheers!" Then when I attempted to toast with my tea (the Naxi corn liquor is very strong and very vile) he whacked me on the leg. "NOT OKAY!" he shouted. There were many toasts - to Fang Laoshi and his girlfriend, who arrived yesterday; to me and Zheng Xiaoxue - "You should stay forever," said one of the men, raising his glass to us, "Stay forever, and if either of you and Wang Cheng -"
"AIIAAAA!" Wang Cheng shouted, and Luo Wei nearly died laughing.

After much hotpot and much corn wine, the four of us made our way homeward, the boys with their arms around each other, Zheng Xiaoxue and I holding hands as close female friends do in China. There were no lamps, but there was the brightest moon I've ever seen and more stars than we have even in Northampton.

"I saw a moving star!" I said. "Did it have a tail?" Zheng Xiaoxue asked. "You can make a wish." "We have that custom, too," I said. "What did you wish?" Wang Cheng demanded. "She can't tell you," Luo Wei said. In fact, I can't remember what I wished. But at that moment there was nothing I could want.