Books, Couchsurfing dinners, and hotsprings

I am officially off of work for Spring Festival. Also called 春节 (chūn ​jié​), or Chinese new year, it involves lots of people traveling. I want to save money for debt payment and for future travels (especially Spain this summer!), and it is still a bit chilly outside for my preferences, so I am gonna be staying at home for most of this vacation. Fortunately, I have some things I want to take care of at home. Primarily, I am zooming through China Shakes the World as fast as I can because I am very eager to start Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism. I also have a book on Latin America that I am very excited to read. Unless something unexpected comes up, China Shakes the World should be the last China book I read for a while. I am still interested in plenty of China-issues, and there are still loads of books in the China section of my "books to read" list, but I am trying to focus on Latin America. I have ordered Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America's Soul and Open Veins of Latin America off of Taobao, so those are my planned readings after Spring Festival.


Reading isn't the only thing that I will be doing though! In addition to the 40 Gigs of movies that I have gathered over the past year that could use watching, I plan on practicing some juggling everyday, and hopefully some P90-X driven exercise. I also am going to make regular use of some instructional breakdancing videos I got from a Russian guy at the juggling club. Hopefully I can get some basic toprock down by the time my vacation is over.


Much like many Americans spend Christmas at home with extended family, most Chinese people go back to their hometowns for Spring Festival. This means that the majority of my Chinese friends are out of town for the week (some for the month!), and Beijing suddenly becomes a much quieter and calmer city (except for the fireworks). Most of us foreigners don't have an ancestral hometown in China, though, and some Chinese people don't go home, so I will be going to a big couchsurfer gathering on Wednesday night to celebrate the new year with our international community here in Beijing. Comprising, dinner, watching the fireworks, and dancing, I think an event like this will be good for me. Regardless as to how much I normally yearn for more downtime to read and watch movies, I know that having nothing at all on my schedule is the opposite end of the spectrum, and is no better for my mental health than being overly busy is. Having some social things like this planned will keep me from going crazy and getting bored with my schedule of reading and other self-focused activities.

I am also going to to and check out some nearby hot springs with a Chinese friend whose hometown actually around Beijing, in a nearby area called Yanjiao (燕郊), so that will be another fun time out being social. Not to mention the idea of relaxing at a hot springs for a whole day is very appealing in itself.