today on my ride to work (i take the subway halfway across town, and then my company provides a bus for the remaining 25 minute ride), our bus passed a huge stand that was set up in our building complex to sell fireworks. this is a major sign that the spring festival (chinese new year) is coming up. i've never been in China for the spring festival, but i hear there are fireworks going off everywhere. maybe since people are smarter here, they can manage not to blow their hands off. anyway, everyone says that you should try to get someone to invite you to their chun jie celebration, because its a really intense family event and is supposed to be pretty fun. but dandan is probably the only person i'm close enough with to want to celebrate with her family, and she lives up in changchun, where its still effing freezing. so screw that. i'm just going to enjoy my week off from work. incidentally, my nice boss decided to let us have that saturday and sunday off, even though technically we are supposed to be working.
in other news, i recently bought a translation of "On the Road," "在路上", and i'm very excited to read it. i figure the fact that i've read it before might help me out with the translating, although it's been like 6 years. also, i hope lots of chinese people read it, it should broaden their horizons. and they live in a country where you can still hitchhike. so maybe they'll be inspired to hitchhike across the country.