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This week has been pretty crazy! 

It was a little strange being in school for New Year's Eve, but it also made me realize how arbitrary the meaning really is that we give to some days of the year. 

It's another year full of possibilities, but the opportunities to live my life to the fullest don't just start when I enter into 2014. I do feel empowered to continue taking good care of my body, mind and spirit so that I can feel proud of my language progress and make the most of my overall experience in China though.

Also in our art class this week, we did write down things we'd like to see / make happen in 2014 on these awesome red lanterns that you let drift off into the sky. Returning to the States in June and starting school in September will be much larger transitions than that between December 31st and January 1st, so that's when most of my lantern-list will be realized, but in general I feel really excited and optimistic about this coming year. 

As for this week: 

On Monday we gave our NSLI-Y 1st semester research project presentations! It was fun to see what my American classmates had discovered through their research: 

Sara's project was on student diet and health; Tilden explored the world of Chinese wedding culture; Megan looked at child-rearing; Brady described Chinese gaming culture; Maike's topic was Shanghai's elderly population; Carmen talked about foreign trading in Shanghai; Paris discussed Chinese math curricula; Keiondre did his project on Chinese social networks; and of course I examined the cultural role of public green space (parks and squares) in Shanghai.

They were all excellently researched/presented topics and it feels really good to finally be done, at least for this semester. 

For next semester's topic, I'm planning on researching Chinese medicine, which will give me the push I need to go out and explore that part of Chinese culture a little more. 

Tuesday night I spent at my host family's to celebrate the New Year. I took it pretty mellow, staying up with my host sister and watching Inception (which I had never seen). 

Although Shanghai is a very international Chinese city where there is a large party/performance downtown (a little of which we watched online), the shift from one calendar year to the next isn't a huge deal here. Lunar new year on the 31st of January is where it's at! 

I really look forward to celebrating that here this year. 

New Year's Day I made dumplings with my host mom and grandma. I'm definitely improving the aesthetic quality of my dumplings and look forward to making them all the time for everyone when I come back to the States :) 

After the brief respite, I went back to school for night study and to finish up the rest of the week. 

Next week is our last before winter break! We have finals and the HSK and then we're freeeee! I'm quite stoked.