Sunny Guiyang Days

It seems that the last few Mondays have been gloriously sunny, while
the Tuesdays tend to be lackluster in terms of weather. It happened
again this week, and usually I want to spend most of Monday
sleeping/recovering from the weekend. But I didn't want to waste a
nice, hot, summery day so I went out to walk around.

I thought perhaps with my sunglasses it would be less obvious that I
was a foreigner, but I was one of the few girls not carrying an
umbrella. In China you are going to see more umbrellas on a sunny day
than a rainy day, and the sort of pretty, lacy umbrellas not intended
to keep out water. All the women want whiter skin and are afraid of
getting a tan. It was the type of day where at Bryn Mawr, everyone
would be sunbathing in the grass.

I sat out on the balcony of a cafe and later, sat at the Wen Chang Ge
Pavilion across from the school. Kids were flying kites and sliding
down these flat slabs next to the stairs (or trying to run up them and
sliding back down). It was so nice to sit in the sun. I'm reading a
book I borrowed from Matt, "You Will Know Our Velocity" by Dave
Eggers. I like reading travel books (like "Eat, Pray, Love"), and this
book is quite weird and quite good. It has a lot of those little
details that world travelers notice. Like he talks about seeing a
house in Senegal with a random "Indiana University" umbrella outside.
You see lots of weird stuff like that- once I saw a guy wearing a
University of Arizona t-shirt and flipped out. He, of course, had no
idea what Arizona was.

This Saturday we are having our morning classes at Qianling Park. I
think it's more promotional than anything- they hope random passers-by
will see us teaching our classes and want to come to our school. Let's
hope for good weather.

I've found iTunes podcasts a good, lazy way to keep in touch with the
world. And NPR has an awesome one I've recently discovered called
"Tiny Desk Concerts." Sort companion to "All Songs Considered." They
are just live performances filmed in the office at a desk. I think of
them as "Tiny Desk Concerts" in that I play them on my tiny computer
at my desk, and it feels like someone is performing in my room (with
my speakers, I get excellent quality sound). They have a great variety
of music- the expected bearded indie types to fantastic world music.
The video is really great for artists like Abaji who bring along some
weird instruments. I recommend checking out Abaji, Tarrus Riley, and
Brooklyn Rider for some good fusion with world music.