I thought about naming this blog post Electricity, Pizza,
and Bicycles or Power, Frustration, and Thievery. However, I didn’t think that
these were clever enough to actually catch your attention, so I came up with
this brilliant title, and I sure you are waiting with bated breath to read
about my adventures. Never fear; I shall
not keep you waiting any longer.
Most expats in China have what we like to call a Bad China
Day. This is a day when things are frustrating or overwhelming because life is so different from our home cultures, we don’t speak the language well, and
there are people EVERYWHERE. Yesterday evening was one of those nights. The day
itself was good, but the evening was another story.
It all began on Sunday night when our power went out. To
people living outside of China you are probably thinking was there a storm or
some other problem. The answer is no. In China, you buy electricity on a card.
Then you put this card into box in your apartment building that controls the
electricity. When you run out of money, your power goes out. There are other
warnings such as blinking lights on the box. Anyways, our power went out, but
if you put the card back into your box, you get 10 RMBs worth of electricity.
So we had power the rest of the night.
Since it was somewhat late on Sunday night, we didn’t go to
get our card refilled that night. My roommate went the next day to get the card
refilled. Now for Qingdaoren, you need to know that we don’t have those ATM
things that we used to fill our cards. We take our cards to a shop and they
fill it. So my roommate took it to be refilled, and I was supposed to go pick
it up that night at 7:30. Our 10 RMBs worth of electricity ran out around
4:30ish, but we had dinner plans, so it wasn’t a big deal.
After dinner, I had a pizza box with leftover pizza in it,
which I carried with me to the shop (Hence, pizza in the list of proposed
titles). Using my limited Chinese and some charades I asked the man for my
card. He looked through the cards that
he had and went to the back. Then returned and looked through the cards again.
He told me that I would have to come back
tomorrow. He said a whole bunch of other words, but that was the basic idea. It
seemed like he didn’t know where my card was, which really worried me. I called
my roommate thinking that maybe she had picked it up already or something like
that, but I couldn’t get ahold of her. So I walked back to my apartment
wondering what to do next.
Soon after I entered the darkened abyss of my apartment, my
roommate called me, and told me that she had taken the card to a different
shop. (I have only been here a month and a half and I only knew of the one).
Very excited that I was not going to have to sleep in an un-air conditioned
apartment all night, I merrily skipped to elevator. When I got downstairs, some
of my enthusiasm had worn off, and I really did not want to have to walk to the
front of the apartment complex again (about a 7-10 min walk), so I decided to
ride my bike.
I went over to my bike and unlocked it and was about ready
to climb on it when I realized that my bicycle seat had been stolen. Needless
to say, I made the long trek to the store on foot.
This particular store is a rather overwhelming store because
so many people are crammed into such a small space. So I waited in the “line” for
my turn, and people cut in front of me because this setting makes me even more
timid about using my terribly impressive Chinese skills (emphasis on the
terribly). Finally, I was able to squeak out that I needed my electricity card,
and low and behold they had it. Thus
ending adventures.
(Please note that while the events in this blog post are
entirely factual some of the emotions may have been exaggerated for effect.)
Yes, I have finally finished the Harry Potter series. As you
can see all of the books that I have read this summer have been young adult
books, but the Harry Potter books have a quality to them that the other books
simply do not have. The world is so detailed and real, and everything so intricately
woven together that I am simply amazed by Rowling genius. There were definitely
sections that I read several times because they were so beautifully written.
When I saw this book in the library, I thought I loved Stargirl when I was in middle school.
They didn’t have the first book, but I figured that I could still enjoy this
book without rereading the first one. However, if I wanted to read the diary of
teenage girl pinning after her former boyfriend, I would go back and read my
old journals (except that I have don’t have a former boyfriend, but you get the
picture). 
A boy whose mother was killed in a train accident discovers
an alternate reality in which a girl version of himself lives and his mother is
still alive. This book was very interesting and it made me want to keep
reading. However, I thought that the author introduced too many plot points
that were unresolved by the end of the book. The ending was still good, but it
left me with some questions. I did not realize until I began to write this
review that this is the first book in a trilogy, so maybe these questions will
be resolved in the next two books. When
I finished the book, I was not looking for a sequel; I just wanted a few plot
points wrapped up a bit. Now that I know there are two more books, I am not
sure how I feel, and I am not sure if I will read them. 
In a future perfect word, the Society picks your perfect
spouse for you except somehow Cassia has two matches: one is the one the
Society wants for her, and one with unmentionable secrets. The world of this
book very much reminds me of The Giver.
I don’t think that the world itself was unique enough or developed enough to make
it interesting. Also, I don’t know why all these authors think that love
triangles are in and of themselves a good premise for a book. I still enjoyed
the book, but I would not go as far to say that it is “storytelling with the
resonance of a classic” (as it says on the inside front cover). I think that
this author attempted to be literary, but she falls short. The concept of the
story is interesting, but the pacing of the story is pretty slow, and it was
very obviously written to be two books. I think that this is rather lazy
writing though because she cannot make the reader interested enough in the plot
to want to keep reading, so she drags out the plot until there finally is
conflict and ends the book. That way the reader will feel obligated to read the
second book. 
The second book Crossed
begins pretty exciting, but towards the middle the pacing slows down and once
again it is a bit boring. Then at the end she makes it exciting and once again
ends the book. I was reading other reviews on this book and one of them said
this, “It's like Condie had enough material for 2 books but the
publisher's wanted to squeeze out three, and Crossed resulted.” I, personally,
disagree with this reviewer. I think that Condie had enough material for one
book, but dragged it out into three. These books are quick reads though, and if
you want fluffy books that attempt to be literary and, mostly, fail then go for
it.