nerding out

Hello world.

As of today I have yet to obtain a massage. Unlike the other cities in China I travelled to in which massage parlors seemed to be on every corner, I only know of one in my area. Either way, the massages here are wonderful. Most of them are acupressure massages that churn you into a whole new person. I had an acupressure foot massage in Kunming and swore i started feeling my stomach and arms twitch when they pushed on parts of my feet. It's also interesting, because many of the massage parlors in China are places for blind employment. It's nice to know that China has some niche in society for the blind, but at the same time to know that because one is blind and might be confined to a life of foot massaging is also dismaying. Nonetheless, those who give massages do a wonderful job of realigning my Qi.

Other than reliving memories of past massages, nothing really exciting has been happening. Oh- well. I am getting kind of excited for my slowly being able to read. That's sort of nice. What's fun about learning the characters is that the visual etymology that one must practice in order to write the characters. When describe a character, they don't say its definition. They give a series of examples that use the word or explain the words "radicals" or root words. I have spent much time laughing and the history of the words coming to life as i learn them. For example. The characters for direct (the adjective) are 直接。The first character's root word is an eye. But the second character's root words are a hand with a man standing on top of a woman.

So apparently when one makes eye contact with a woman and stands on her with his hand raised, this IS direct.

That being said, it's also been really interesting to see how allegorical language is, especially chinese. Even abstract ideas like "directness" are rooted in historical examples of what one would be considered direct.

Fun huh?