FAME

Hello Friends,
Well, it has been another exciting week here in China. The weather has taken a turn for the worse. It seems that winter is upon us now and the gods are eager for us to know it. The past couple of days have not only been in the negatives as far as temperature, but there has also been a few snow flurries. Last night was a real snow storm. It was actually pretty nice. I have always liked snow and it is nice to know that people around the world share in an experience very similar to the ones we know from the U.S. That is, when it snows the roads become treacherous! Not only was the road extremely slippery, but the taxi driver could barely see out of his windshield because it was so foggy. I'm not sure whether or not they have snowplows or things like that to take care of the the snow, but it should be interesting when the snow starts to stick.
More exciting news from the front, I have now been in two Chinese television commercials. It seems that I am starting a side career of being a Chinese television star. It's actually not a very big deal, but it is kind of fun to be filmed doing silly stuff. The first one was about traveling to the city I'm living in, Dandong, and they wanted it to look like an international city. The second one was for rice...go figure. It was pretty funny. They just wanted to film some foreigners eating rice so it was me and two of my friends who are from England. They told us that they weren't going to use the audio from the filming so we decided to play a game. The winner was the person who could string the most swear words together. The most embarrassing part about it was the girl won. Oh well, I guess I can take comfort in the idea that I don't have the dirtiest mind out of the foreigners in Dandong.
I have also started giving speeches. Last Friday I gave a speech to a local high school. It was actually a lot of fun. I did everything from give them a little history lesson on the U.S.A. to sing and dance for them. The children in China take studying very seriously. The high school students have a very hard time. They start school at six thirty in the morning and finish at ten o'clock at night. They study a lot and they seem to have very little time for fun. Because of this I decided that I should try and make it as fun as possible for them. I tried to make them laugh as much as possible and actually have fun in class for once. I think that they enjoyed it very much because a lot of them have started to email me and ask questions. Some just email me to say hello, which is pretty cool.
Well, that is the story from this side of the world. I hope that everyone reading this is well. Thanks again to all of you that have been checking in on me. I miss you all and I hope that we will get the opportunity to see each other soon.
-Henry (Hank) Young