life as usual

ha! how ironic. as i was trying to save the post i just wrote, knowing that there was a good chance it would be deleted, i accidentally deleted it. so after a bunch of kicking the ground and cursing, here i am re-writing my post.
basically, it never rains but pours, and my social schedule has gone from basically nonexistant to off-the charts busy. last wednesday, i went to a book group meeting. it meets once a month in a restaurant and we try to read quality modern english-language literature, which is hard to find in qingdao--the english language sections of bookstores are always filled with "classics," often rewritten in simple english for esl students, which means if you're not interested in an abridged version of "a tale of two cities" or something like that, you're bascially out of luck. the head of the book club finds english books and then has them photocopied, and then we all just read the photocopied book, which is the really only feasible way to get bulk copies that isn't prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. i just joined so i didn't get a chance to read last meeting's book, but the book for next time sounds interesting, it's by an indian-canadian author (i don't know if that's native american of south asian) that several people in the group had read and highly recommended. there were about 15 people, and i was the youngest person in the group by a bit, most people seemed to be in their 30s, but it's nice to meet other westerners whose idea of a good time isn't getting really drunk all the time.
on another social front, i have also made to female friends my own age, which is nice because many of the women i've seen at bars look about as friendly as pitbulls and completely uninterested in meeting other women. my one friend is studying chinese at qingdao university. she's been in qingdao only for about 2 months, but lived in kunming two years before teaching english and german. she's technically italian, but is from the culturally austrian part of the tyrolean alps. my other friend studies chinese medicine here, and is from berlin. it's nice to meet other girls who have similar interests as me. i've also met this woman from england who is really nice and who i also have lots in common with, but unfortunately she's going back to england in about 3 weeks.
also, this weekend was halloween, which doesn't mean all that mush if you're chinese, although there is a chinese word for halloween, it's "wan sheng jie," "or 10,000 spirits holiday." the foreigners in qingdao do dress up and have a party, so my italian friend and i went shopping for costumes this past friday. we went to this market known for cheap and gaudy clothes, which there definitely were (though not as cheap as they ought to have been, considering the outrageous markup some saleswomen tried to charge). i ended up with a hideous white satiny skirt for about 10 yuan, as well as some fake flowers and beads. we decided to be angels, and so we also bought some cotton and my friend got a white sheet to make a skirt. though after lots of experimentation, we couldn't get the skirt to look anything like an old sheet wrapped around her waist, so she ended up wearing a different skirt of mine. our wings turned out well, we cut them out of cardboard and glued cotton onto them. they looked really good, except after about 20 minutes in a crowded bar much of the cotton fell off.
dan wins the prize for best costume, he dressed up as a french man. he wore a striped 3/4 length sleeve boatneck shirt, my incredibly petite roommate's jeans and her white belt, a neckerchief, white socks, and a beret. he looked both incredibly ridiculous yet strangely good. dan wasn't as convinced about the "good" part, even though numerous people told him he should dress like that more often. it seems in an international community of europeans, australians, and americans, the one thing we all seem to do is make fun of the french. (the french students studying here did not seem that impressed by the outfit however. that seems to be a general trend though, with me and my friends attempts to impress them with our deep knowledge of french language and our beautiful renditions of french songs.)