Apparently we had an earthquake here in Yichang last Saturday and I didn't even know it. I'm a little bit disappointed that I didn't even feel a tremor, because I've never experienced an earthquake before. Not that I wish one to happen, but since it did, I wish I would have known it. I live on the fourth floor so I'm not sure how I didn't even notice, when one of my friends was on the third floor and was so scared she ran outside. I must not be very observant when the ground is shaking under me.
As I have proudly declared before, pumpkin pie is my favorite food, and I find it tragic that so many people on this earth have never tried it before, so Wednesday night I had a group of students over and fed them all this delight. They all claimed it was "delicious" and I hope they weren't just lying to me to make me feel good :) Of course delicious is sometimes the only word that can be used to describe food in their eyes. Here are a few of us:
“God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say ‘thank you’?”
-William A. Ward
In a totally unrelated yet fun story, yesterday I was on my way back from trying for the 3rd time to buy some books when I flagged a taxi, opened the door, and told him I wanted to go to 三峡大学 (my school). He pointed at the passenger seat like he wanted me to sit down. So I got in the taxi and he took off. I mean, he really took off. We went flying through traffic, using the horn almost continuously and I swear he actually sped up for the speed bumps. I was wondering what in the world his hurry was for, when matters got more interesting. He proceeded to spout out a bunch of completely unintelligible sentences to me, getting more and more frustrated when I "ting bu dong" (don't understand). He continued to try to tell me something and laughed hysterically every time he said something I didn't understand, which was most of the time. I was starting to get a little irritated with him laughing at me, I really don't understand why it was so funny. We stopped at a traffic light, amazingly enough, instead of just plowing right through it, when he leaned over and opened my door and yelled to the guy driving the taxi next to us. They had a nice little conversation with him leaning on me and then he started gesturing for me to get in the taxi next to us. I was utterly confused but I obeyed, even though my fare was around 4元--I left him without paying and got into the other taxi, which proceeded to take me the rest of the way home. I still have absolutely no idea what happened or why but I just wanted to give you a little glimpse of what it is like to do a simple task in China. Nothing is ever easy or logical. That's what makes it fun!
This is the famous Buo Lin himself, making Thomas' 'Ireland Coffee.' They're gonna be on CCTV next week so I asked for an autograph.
And in honor of coffee in general I present to you a sign I found at a shop on Coffee Street in Wuhan (my new favorite street): 
Ladies and Gentelmen, "We are opposite but sit, Drink the coffee; Hear the beautiful melody in that melody, Tasty life in bitterly and sweetly."
After skipping rocks and catching crabs got old, I went with some of the girls to wash our vegetables in the stream. In America, when you have a picnic you cook the food first, and then go to a pretty place to eat it. Here, you bring all the water, food, pans, spices, and dishes outside and cook them there. Hence the 8am start time. The Chinese method is undoubtedly more fun. We "washed" all the vegetables in the incredibly clean stream water and then attempted to build fires in the multiple stone fire pits we had set up. At first I was silently ridiculing the students for only feeding the fire with dried reeds instead of wood, thinking it created an awful lot of unnecessary work for them; but I took over one fire pit and tried it for myself only to discover that the wood simply wouldn't burn. So I resorted to an endless game of gathering dried reeds and stuffing them under the pan to try and keep it hot, just like everyone else. Eventually we got all seven dishes finished, although the first five were ice cold by the time the last two were finished, and we squatted around to eat. 
If there were a contest for the most fun day in China, Saturday would certainly have a strong chance at winning. We bravely set out after our meal, hoping to conquer the cliffs towering over us, but after a few minutes of crumbly, dangerous-even-for-China stairs we relinquished our hopes and settled for dangling our legs in the water and singing together until the bus showed up to take us home.