One of my classmates dropped out because she decided to enter a law school program that starts in the middle of May. Last night was her last night here, and we all went out with her for dinner and then to a bar where our teacher joined us. Our super cute teacher. In the third hour of class, my mind sometimes shuts off to Chinese. You could say "你好嗎?" (How are you?) to me and I'd be like, "Strange noises are coming out of your mouth". What gets me through that hour is staring at teacher and appreciating the cuteness. I think this is fact, it's not like I'm hot for teacher. The Korean woman in class also agrees about this unwarranted cuteness. A lot of the cuteness is in her actions and gestures. Not to mention she's funny and quick-witted.

April 28, 7:47 p.m. - hot pot

9:00 p.m. - Kathy reading farewell cards

Soon after getting to the bar, before teacher arrived, I was regretting being there and pondering my exit. This social situation couldn't be good, and could only get worse. Remarkably, after teacher arrived and several pitchers of beer, it got better. I didn't zone off into my own world wondering what I was doing there, and rapport was decent with teacher – surprising since if you divided the class into good students and poor students, I would firmly plant my abilities on the poor side. I'm fine with classwork, homework, and tests, but I can't hold my own in the simplest conversation. Simple sentences and phrases and clauses, I can do. As soon as sentences get a little bit complex, syntax goes out the door and is replaced with goo.

April 29, 12:28 a.m.

1:26 a.m.

This is all backdrop though. I ended the evening/morning with giving our departing classmate my mindfulness bell which I've had since my first visit to Deer Park. She had expressed interest in mindfulness practice after I told her I had spent time at Deer Park, and she has read some of Thich Nhat Hanh's books. Some of our discussions also indicated that she might be pre-disposed to benefiting from the practice, otherwise I wouldn't have done this. I gave her the briefest and most general of transmissions regarding the bell, bits of philosophy and psychology and our role in our relationships, just for the purpose of giving her something physical in her reality so that if she ever arrives at a point where she might find some use in the practice, she will have a reminder of what to look into.

So this morning I found myself without a bell. I must admit, with all the ceremony and respect that surrounds the role of the bell, I think we really use it just cos it's fun making noise. It's fun hitting things. After the rain stopped this afternoon, probably for the first time in almost a week (oy lordy, that's a totally different story), I felt confident enough about the look of the sky to head out on my bike to the Longshan Temple area with my camera to find a new bell.

On my last roll of film, I took some shots pushing the XP2 Super to 800, and the results were quite good. The lowlight shots at 800 were better than the lowlight shots at 400, even though the camera indicated it could handle them at 400. So on this roll, I'm going to try shooting the whole thing at 800, even the bright shots, and see what comes out. After buying a satisfactory replacement bell, bigger than the one I had and not much more in cost, I shot around the Longshan Temple area, peeking into alleyways off the main roads. It's a cliche, but that's where the more interesting subject matter is, if not the more interesting views.

The infamous Huaxi Night Market, aka "Snake Alley", during the day

2:22 p.m. - bunch of Buddhist supply stores in the Longshan Temple area.

2:29 - 2:30 p.m.

8:29 p.m. - new bell

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Breakfast of Champions (Rainer Maria)
2. Drugs (Electricity) (live) (Talking Heads)
3. One on One (Hall & Oates)
4. Sympathy Crime (The Black Heart Procession)
5. Invisible Sun (The Police)
6. You Could Drive a Person Crazy ("Company" - Sondheim)
7. Lords of the Backstage (Marillion)
8. Dog House (The Pugs)
9. Long Hot Summer (Paris)
10. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise) (The Beatles)