I’m terrified of bees.
Absolutely terrified.
Unfortunately, there are bees here that are the length of my thumb. Really. They are ridiculously large.
To make matters worse, They seem to be particularly fond of my lessons.
It makes for an interesting time, that’s for sure.

During library time this afternoon, I was talking to a group of my students about insects in Yizhou. (inspired by the giant bee that was buzzing at the window behind us)
Apparently many of them used to play with cockroaches as children.
One of the girls told me that she and her friends used to hold them still with their fingertips (to keep them from biting or flying away), then they would tie a string to one of their little legs. They would then have a little cockroach on a leash. My understanding is that the best part of this whole little game was when the cockroaches went to fly away- they couldn’t get far because they were tied to the string. The kids would stand there holding a string with a cockroach struggling to fly. It gave me this image of a small child with a really horrifying cockroach kite of some kind. Eww.
However, I feel that I’m required to mention the fact that when I was a little kid, I loved cicadas. I would definitely play with them and they’re certainly not a whole lot prettier than cockroaches. To be quite honest, I’m not sure what attracted me to those funny little bugs in the first place. Kids can be strange.

I’m listening to a World Cafe podcast (of course!) and there’s a guy named Joe Boyd who worked with Nick Drake talking. I’m an enormous Nick Drake fan (Pink Moon is possibly the best album of all time) but I realized that I know very little about him and his personality. It’s extraordinary to listen to this guy talk about what Nick Drake was like and how he felt when his albums failed to succeed. Tragic, really. I fall in love with his music every time I listen, so it’s sad to hear how depressed he was about it. I suppose that it would be heartbreaking to put so much of yourself into something and then have it rejected the way that his music was. I guess he was just one of those artists who was ahead of his time.
Actually, that’s a saying I have often heard applied to artists and musicians who failed be a success during their lifetimes, but who were wildly popular after death. It’s such a peculiar thing to say. Can someone be “ahead of their time”? I understand what it means, of course, but it’s an odd idea if you think about it. The phrase implies that each person has a “time”. That’s rather frustrating to consider. I don’t remember being given a choice about when I was going to be born, so what if I’m before “my time”? What does that mean for me? Does that lable always result in an unhappy and unfulfilled life?
I suppose that I’m just thinking about it too much. That’s what happens when you spend your days explaining the meanings of phrases like “identify luggage” or “to be faced with the problem of”. You start to analyze every phrase for every possible meaning.
Well, I’ll leave you with a bit of one of my favorite Nick Drake songs to enjoy.
Nick Drake – Way to Blue

It rained for a little while tonight. I’m not sure if it was enough to cool the weather down for tomorrow, but I certainly hope so.