And the hits just keep on coming!

As mentioned somewhere around clicking in this area, I have had a difficult time getting to school. Besides red lights, there have been other strange things going on as well. They include:

1. The size of my class fluctuating from 8 up to 12 and then down to 1 and now leveling out at around 6 most of the time.

2. A Korean student brings their kid to school. This is great because we can her him/her crying in the hallway while we are studying Chinese. Did I mention that this is a University?

3. Instead of "Sincerely" or "Regards" the foreign student liaison ends every bulletin board announcement with "I hereby notice that!". He also sends me invites to "Netlog", some sort of Chinese social site. Oozing professionalism. I might have to ask him to stop attaching my email address to the other 130 foreign students that attend the place.

The latest in the humor department showed up in listening class （听力） today. We were going through the usual; listening to the dialog tape, filling in the blanks, etc. when I noticed that my teacher was at the desk in the corner with her contact lens case out. She said that she rubbed her eye and that it irritated it. That is a reasonable enough excuse, and if it were true that would be fine. But, my friends, it was not true at all. You want to know how I know? Well, I'll tell you.

When class started everything was normal. I have had my teacher for 2 semesters and I know her quite well. Sees a really nice lady. Her family lives in our building complex. I even complemented her on her haircut one time, something that I usually do not notice on most people, especially my wife since she is always beautiful and that is unchanging, therefore, not noticeably different. Anyways, something was different when she returned from her contact lens case in the corner. Something in her eyes seemed darker. Black, actually. She had put black contacts in her eyes halfway through class! The craziest thing about it is that she thought that we wouldn't notice. I almost jumped out of my seat. Noticing that she was trying to act casual about it, I was able to calm down and act casual with her. But for the rest of the class I could not look her in the eye. She looked like one of those creatures in the scary movies.

Maybe she got the order in the mail and couldn't wait until she got home to try them on. Maybe she was bored. The question I had at the moment was why on earth would anyone want to put black contact lenses in their eyes?

I went home and went straight to Yoda... Um, I mean, my American neighbor Joel.

My neighbor told me that he's seen this before. He asked the lady about it and she said that some Chinese women do it because they think it will make their eyes look rounder. I would disagree with that idea. More demonic? Yup. More like a souless robot? A little bit. Rounder? Not really that much. He then figured that, in the US, if a cop pulled someone over and the driver was wearing black contacts the cop would take them in, assuming that they are high on goofballs. I did the math and, yes, he figured correctly.

So, now people are wearing black contacts to try to improve their appearances. I thought that the earrings and makeup was complicated enough. I wash my face and brush my teeth.

Now I wait and see which one of my teachers shows up on Monday morning; friendly fashionable lady or friendly fashionable scary lady.