crazy eights

so, i don't know if y'all have noticed, but this year, thus far, has certainly been an interesting one for china. according to superstitious folk, however, this is not a coincidence. in china, eight is the luckiest number because the word for eight 'ba' resembles the word for prosper 'fa'--source: 'numbers in chinese culture'. yeah middlebury, i referenced wikipedia, whatchu gonna do bout it?! anyways, since the beijing olympics are in 2008, the chinese figured, well shit, that's kinda lucky, now lets make it even more auspicious...so the opening ceremonies are scheduled to begin on 08.08.08 at 8:08:08pm. recently, due to unfortunate events, some are nervous that all this eight business is backfiring. check out this nutso/creeeepy conspiracy i just heard. (ellen-i basically copy-and-pasted this from the email i sent you, so you can skip over the next paragraph)

since the start of the year there have been 3 major, not so fortunate events: a massive snowstorm that stalled all the trains and prevented a whole lot of people from going home for the new year, the riots in tibet and now, this devasting earthquake. here's where shit gets totally crazy...the dates of each occurence add up to eight... snowstorm: january 25 (1+2+5), riots: march 14 (3+1+4) and earthquake: may 12 (5+1+2).....ahh conspiracy theory! clearly there is some sort of higher power and it is not happy with the chinese. i have decided that for the remaining "eight" days--tomorrow for instance--i am going to be extra cautious.

in other news, the olympic torch came to hangzhou on sunday morning. ann, chynna and i went to check it out, but due to a two-layer wall of people--see picture--we were unsuccessful. nonetheless, it was still quite an experience. a lot of screaming and 'i heart china' t-shirts, my favorite was the 'i heart china more than ever!' slogan....because let's face it, before i only sort of loved china, but now, maaaaaan, you don't even know!

even though i am taller than most chinese, i'm not that tall. bummer.

everybody was screaming, and i mean screeeeaming, 'jia you (gee-ah yo)!'
direct translation: add more gas!

my entourage