It's like French: I can't understand, but now can barely speak it.

I still do like surprising people that yes, I'm not totally retarded. I do understand a few words in Mandarin. My ears to prick up when I heard Fang de Wen (my Chinese name) or Jia na da.

On that note, I have been missing home. I really do think that when I go home, I'll still be using phrases like "wei shenma?" or "duei" or my personal favorite "shenma de fuck?" Ah, le melange de langue aus francais et chinois. But yes, I've been very homesick. Quite in tune with these volunteer programs, as I've found half way is the time you get very homesick. We hit our one month mark just the other day. I'm quite proud.

We have been slightly more busy, but it still seems so sluggish in comparison to what we could be doing. But it's all connected as to how things are related. I'll explain that later. Some things we've seen as of late have been minor, but still interesting visits. We've seen two art buildings. One was a jade factory, but more indeed a gift shop. We seen how several chinese-culture art pieces are made, including silk rugs, vases, glass sculptures, clay dolls, jade art, bone, and leather work. Seeing the finished pieces is one thing, but seeing how they're are meticulously made is another. The next place we went to was a cloissone factory, whatever that is. There, we saw the process of how those shiny copper vases were made, with the intricate designs on them. Intricate indeed! They are put on, small piece by small piece, covered in a sort of paint/sand mixture and grinded down to a nice finish. And we can buy them in the market place for so cheap! It's quite neat. In the gift shop (naturally, they have a gift shop) we even found a 1,100,000 yuan vase bigger and wider then a door. Now seriously. How pompous and rich do you have to be to need to buy that beast? We joked you'd have to build your house around it!

We also went to the 200 day count down the Beijing Olympics. We were to perform "Hey Jude" there. Silly Canadians, we can't sing! Especially this one! Liu Meng was actually the MC, along with his girlfriend. There were other performers, including young children, some dancers, older woman doing sambas, and this HORRIBLE teenage girl singing Celine Dion songs. I thought the Peking opera was bad, this was unbearable. I got a movie to share with everyone when I get home, lol. And there was a african man who sang Chinese songs, which was very impressive. Surely, it wasn't best for last. But we tried, and they liked us. No big ovation this time. I guess they prefer Christmas songs.

The weekend was actually a quiet one. Most people were busy with their host families. All of the youth from universities are home for vacation now, so I spent some time with my host sister. She took me to the White Cloud Taoist Temple. It was very similar to every other temple I've been to so far. I think they have a temple-TEMPLATE. They had this large disc with a small bell inside of it. You could buy coins to huck at them. I found it an interesting place to be at none the less, as the taoist principles coincide with mine that I've been pondering for a while; all about balance, the ying and the yang. Alluding to buddhism, positive actions lead to happiness and fullfilment while negative actions lead to unhappiness. May the force be with you.

I was trying very hard to use up some gift certificates we were given for spending so much money at the spicy restaurant awhile back. I managed to get Felix and Stephane to come. We made it a guys night out. Good, meaty, spicy food, followed by some a medium bottle of bai jiu
between the three of us, which juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust did the trick. It was another well needed night out with some friends, as I was feeling very depressed this weekend. We just bullshitted, about the group, things back home and guy stuff. And what's more manly of an after-dinner activity then going to the arcade and playing some shooter games? My aim couldn't have been better. Jamie was absent though. I think he missed out.

And with that positive mind-set in motion, we seem to be having some group problems. As I mentioned, most are connected. "Participation" levels are low, especially with the Chinese participants it seems. Our supervisor isn't happy that we aren't happy with our counterparts. We barely see them, and work seems to be a problem. Because of their hectic schedules, we don't see them and they don't/can't participate in many group activities. There's always someone missing. Shit, half the time during EAD's or whatever, they're on their cell phones taking important calls. And there seems to be plenty of work for them, but none for us. We are getting a bit fed up with this. We understand they are busy, but the work placement is an important 3rd of our relations in CWY, the other two being host families and the counterpart themselves. If we complain about our workplacements, even to another supervisor at work, it reflects on our counterparts, whos responsibility actually IS to find work for us. Same with if we have a problem with our host families, despite the counterparts not living with us. So it's been stressed that we need to work on group dynamics. Mid-project camp is coming up very soon, in the next week or so. We plan to have lots of group dynamic workshops, but want to fashion them into a constructive environment rather then a blaming one, but doing so seems harder than we thought. Although it has nothing to do with group dynamic, I have this idea for a food workshop that I think has promise; it will go in depth as to what exactly is breakfast, lunch and dinner for the two countries, what foods they eat, customs, traditions, and maybe a few recipes. So I hope I can pull this off.