The media and people’s access to media here amazes me. This covers the way news is broadcasted to the control over the news people can get.

I have a classmate right now researching media control in China and it seems like the government information agency needs to play a constant game of catch to block all the news that people within China are trying to broadcast. She told me one story that a person she had an interview with told her. Their website’s tactic was to broadcast real news, that China would allow them to broadcast. After the officials do their obligatory check of the websites contents, maybe a week or two later, their company will change the links to the actual articles they want to share. Of course these articles contain content which the government would not want other people to see.

Being that this whole internet thing is being controlled with computers and there are always a million ways to do things with computers it is not really hard to get around the national firewall. Just use a proxy. The problem is that you can’t easily find these proxies from within China. Their happened to be a person who had a blog hosted by blogspot.com that decided to share these proxies through his blog. Not long after the government simply blocked all of blogspot. Talk about a few bad appples spoiling the bunch. However, this may not be the only reason. In a country where media is so heavily controlled it would be dangerous for them to potentially give a large portion of their population the freedom to say whatever they want, whenever they want and have billions of people around the read it. So now the only way to be able to read your blogger blog in China is to have it hosted by a 3rd party server.

I find all of this really interesting that it seems like everyone knows, but no one has the power to do anything about it. This is just reflective of the divide between the rich and the poor and the powerful and the powerless here in China.

Today signified the end of another week. The week went well. It had it’s up and downs. All I can say is thank goodness it is Friday … speaking of which, tonight 代老师，刘老师，泰立，李迈轲，魏立德 and I went to T.G.I.F’s for dinner. We could not help but ask the waitress about her “flare” each time she came by. By the way, here is the best burger I have eaten in China so far.

Besides going to 星期五餐厅, today was fun because our third classmate in our listening class finally came back. She missed the first four days of this week because of work and illness. She came back just in time to participate in a little in-class performance where I was an unreasonable kid who did not want to do anything but play games online. She played the role of my teacher and my other classmate was my father. It turned out to be hilarious even though we took the performance in a direction the teacher did not expect. The result was that my father and I criticized my teacher for being so strict and that when my computer company made me millionaire she could criticize me again when I rolled up to school in my nice new BMW.

After classes I decided to kill a little time by skateboarding. I went to a little spot that I like to skateboard at. I had not skated for very long until I noticed a student walking by. Each time I would do a trick she would stop to watch. After she continued on I noticed that she hesitated and turned around and kept watching me. Anyways, I decided to talk to her because she was at least somewhat interested in my skateboarding. I talked to her for a few minutes about nothing in general. After I skated for a little bit longer I decided to head home, so my new friend Wendy and I chatted for a little longer and then parted ways. I was really glad that I met her, this is because every morning when I skateboard to class it seems like people don’t like my skateboard too much, but this afternoon Wendy told me that she thought skateboarding was cool. Even though I don’t need people here to accept my skateboarding it is always nice to find some support. Also these kinds of situations make me even happier at the fact that I decided to bring my skateboard to China. It has already helped me make a few friends. I wish Seattle was like this.

I am absolutely stuffed right now. My friends and I just finished eating dinner at my place. I invited four good friends of mine over for a meal since I have already been to their places to eat food. The lady I am living with invited her friend over and we all stuffed ourselves until we could not eat anymore, well at least us kids did. I took a couple of photos and thought I would share them with you guys, so you can finally see who the lady I am living with is. She is the one in the grey sweater and I call her Xu Laoshi.

The lady in the brown sweater is the lady MCK lives with. MCK is the one in the striped shirt. Taylor is in red. You should recognize them from my trip through Central China. Janny is the one wearing red and the girl next to her in brown is my friend Tammy, from Canada.

So I only have about 5 weeks until I come home. It seems like a long time, but I know it will fly by quickly. I have already been gone for over 3 months now and the time has seemed to go by very quickly.

Some days I want to go home, but most days I don’t. I know I am going to miss all the people I have met here. I am going to miss all my teachers, my classmates, Taylor, MCK and Dave from Princeton, Kitty, Judy, Cici and lots of others.

Anyways, between now and then my friend Eric Stowe will be coming into town. He and I studied Chinese together at the UW and now he works for an adoption agency, so he gets to come to China every once in a while. It just so happens that I will be in Beijing this time, so we are going to go hangout together. I am excited for his arrival in Beijing.

My classmates are also going to put together some parties in the middle of December. We are going to burn cds and share music, but there is also going to be some sort of birthday / going away party for all the students only staying during the fall. I can’t wait for the party, but in one sense I don’t want it to come because it represents that I will be leaving.

On a better note I get to celebrate Christmas in Beijing! I hear that it is a lot like America. People hang lights and all that good stuff. I am ready to experience a Chinese Christmas. I have been thinking of ways and asking people where I can get a small Christmas tree, so that I won’t miss home too much.

I think this last month is going to be a blast. I am going to try and cram as much fun into my time as I can between taking the HSK test, my midterms, my finals and the test you take when leaving IUP. I also have to throw in two presentations. If I come out of it alive I will be seeing everyone in Seattle on the 7th of January.