We opted to attempt the all nighter in the face of what seemed to be an insurmountable wall of homework. Our plan was homework, then gym, then homework, then sleep at 3 if we can get done. If we were not asleep by 3, we were gonna bust out the movies, buy some late night snacks from the market, and dig in for the long haul.
The gym was what altered the course of the plan. It was our second time going for the day, and our gym itinerary wasn't the normal "I will work this body part for this many sets, going for this goal and this result," but rather the popular Trunks-style, "I will lift as much weight as I can and make lots of noise to get myself psyched up and have fun." To aid us in this plan, we took our pre-workout drinks like we would for a normal workout, and that is when things went terribly wrong. We are not sure if it was the caffeine late at night, or the fact that it was our second time taking it, or because God decided we needed to show the Chinese the meaning of crazy Americans running wild, but we went insane. I remember distinctly running from our dorm to the back gate to get a cab because running just seemed so NECESSARY. On the way we saw a group of our teachers walking after a peaceful dinner, which caused us to take turns yelling 健身房！ and "SPARTANS! WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION? HOO HOO HOO!" They were frightened.
At the gym we saw the program director, who was happy to see us if a bit confused as to why we were at the gym at 10pm right before it closed. We proceeded to do gratuitous amounts of bench press, and I'm pretty sure I set new world records for looking like a meat head. JJ and I were yelling at each other in English, Chinese, and I think some caffeine fueled mix language that no one but us understood. It was fantastic.
After we got back we were riding the gym high and the caffeine and we just refused to stand still. JJ and I decided this is what it must feel like to use the dark side of the force. We realized that we needed to use our new force powers, which caused JJ for some reason to move all the plants around, then caused a handstand pushup contest, followed by running to the balcony on the fifth floor for mop fights.
At some point we also found a dry erase marker and wrote "I am man!" and a Chinese equivalent of it on the board in the community study room about 50 times each. After declaring our manhood, we finished our homework and began the long road of recovery that ended this morning when I woke up.
On an unrelated note, I found some awesome Chinese music from my roommate. It is Iron Maiden in every way except for the words, which are not English but Chinese. In addition to that, I now have a Chinese cookbook written in Chinese with some of my favorite dishes, a fantastically biased map of China, several children's versions of popular Chinese stories, and the 56 episode 红楼梦 Dream of the Red Chamber. The Dream of the Red Chamber is tied as the most popular story in China, it is one of those novels that has its own college courses and people that dress up as characters from it on certain days of the year. The Chinese cookbook looks promising, too, I've already made one dish out of it yesterday. The only daunting part is buying the ingredients, some of the things you see in these markets are frightening beyond words. There are an abundance amount of cute and possibly disease ridden birds, I want to buy one but I don't want to die of Avian flu.
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