A lost day. And more questions.

I lost yesterday to 怀吃, but so far today we're back in the saddle. Literally: I'm about to call my friend's father to borrow his bicycle.

I didn't let my 'pulled stomach' (those of you who are Chinese-English bilingual now know what was wrong) stop my library meeting though. It was a good one, and wow--Nanjing has a big beautiful new library. As far as contemporary buildings go, I'd say it's at least as good as Vancouver's, and I think I prefer it to Harold Washington in Chicago -- although its upper floors are still empty and unused. I think you can't really judge a library building until you use it, so I guess I'll just have to return to Nanjing after the move is complete.

Thanks for all the comments the past couple days. I passed through the English ones, but am holding onto the Chinese ones for translation. The recent festival in Lanzhou was 中元节。 The closest I can translate that is the 'First Middle Holiday' or the 'Middle Yuan Dynasty Festival'. Not sure which. And for the family: what's a DS?

On the language front: I successfully bought a train ticket today with only a little English help from the clerk. However, it did take 2 people. The person in the middle translated from Putonghua to Nanjinghua (well, from Chinglish to Nanjinghua anyway). The further south I go, the softer the zh's get, and the R's are almost non-existent. No more 这儿. Only 这里.