I wave the Red, White, and Blue

4 July

To all my fellow Americans, HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! (I always want to watch that movie on this day.) This marks my third 4th of July outside of the USA, not many to some; and yet more than others have experienced. Each one is a bit different from the last, and I hope this one will be just as memorable!

My first in Paris, I was staying that the "House of the United States," so there was beer, BBQ, fireworks, and beer pong (I blame that on the Texan contingent represented!). Once our supply of beer was gone, we went out and bought more on our way to the Eiffel Tower where we laid on the green and watched the it light up every hour on the hour after dark. The best part is the French will sometimes come up and wish you a Happy Independence or Freedom Day if they realize your a friendly American.

The second in Germany, I once again celebrated with a group of Americans; however, we roped quite a few Germans into our fun with promises of beer, meat, and smores. We could never run out of beer because we lived in a Student Commune, and there were three Getrinketverkauft (mini-marts that stocked heavily towards beer) within 1000 feet of our BBQing location. The highlight of course were the smores since most of us had been out of the States for a year or more, and marshmallows are just not something Europeans understand. We got our hands on about six bags of marshmallows, and then tapped into our brilliant American ingenuity and used butter cookies topped with chocolate rather than graham crackers and Hershey's. Perhaps better than the smores were our German friends reaction to them: something along the lines of "This is a hot sticky mess that doesn't taste like anything but chocolate and sugar!?! Why do you love it so much?" There isn't much of a response besides "It's American!" to explain or counter that observation ....

.... but that meant more smores for me!!!! Win-win in my opinion.

So my third in China, and not even a big city where you are guaranteed to find ex-pats, a small town in Northern China called Chengde that gets the occasional tourist, and us students who are dedicated to learning Chinese. Tonight, after six hours of one on one with my teacher (guh) and dinner with my host, I can celebrate. The options are limited since I wouldn't trust myself with American fireworks so Chinese are out of the question, and while there is BBQ it is mainly kebobs, no big slabs of cow, pig or chicken happily roasting over some coals ... I just made myself really hungry = (
The plan right now is for the three waiguorenmen (foreigners) consisting of myself, another American, and a Brit to celebrate by playing "foot birdie"in the park followed by ice cream.

A quick note on "foot birdie" and ice cream. The Chinese term is ti jianzi, but it follows the same rules as hakiesak, but you play with something resembling a big badminton birdie that is flat at the bottom, and weighted. Hence "foot birdie" seems like the most reasonable thing to call it though my dictionary tells me it means shuttlecock. Ice cream is our reward because this is actually much more difficult than we imagined, and last night we were only able to get eight hits in a row. However, ice cream here doesn't taste like it has dairy/milk in it. I think of it as the difference between my delicious cup of Starbucks dark roast with two shots of espresso vs. Nescafe .... something is just missing.... but refreshing and delicious all the same.

Hopefully, I will get some photos of this for the next post!