Happy New Year

I am finally feeling somewhat settled here in Xi'an, though it's taken me about three weeks. I have been living in my new apartment for about a week and started cooking again and doing some simple yoga in the morning. Yesterday I also went into the office at Northwest University to catch up with my coworkers and keep working on our joint project -- writing a textbook for an experimental psychological health course that will be implemented at 35 rural middle schools this coming semester. They've already taken base measurements of the students' psychological health at these and 35 other schools that will not get our class (control group), so hopefully after a year we'll be able to re-do the tests and find that the class helped students improve their overall psychological well being! Technically, I'm only here for the next 10 months, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. I'm really excited to be a part of this project, and that's what counts.

Here's a couple of pictures of my apartment (more on facebook). I'm really satisfied with it. It took me 3 days to find a place this nice. It was exhausting; by the end of the first day I was getting tired enough to settle for a place with almost no natural lighting. Thankfully I stayed strong.

My adorable humidifier.

Aside from working, I've been spending a lot of time with my friends here. There are two other Fulbrighters who, like me, spent time in Harbin - AS and MG, along with another Fulbrighter who arrived only yesterday - JN. I'm afraid I don't really have pictures of them... Last week I spent a lot of time with YM. He was super helpful while I was apartment hunting, but now he has tests coming up and needs to study, so I haven't seen him much. I also have two other great friends in Xi'an. They participated in the ACC program in Beijing with me. It's amazing to me that even though we have never seen each other in the states, we have been able to meet twice in China. They (JP and AJ) are currently teaching elementary and middle school in a rural village southwest of Xi'an, but come back to the city on the weekends to relax, get warm (they have no heating in the countryside), and plan the next week's worth of lessons. A few days ago we met up at the amazing pizza place I found near my apartment, owned and operated by a real Italian man!

I hope everyone had a great new year's eve/ day and is looking forward to a fantastic 2013!