Requiem

Right now, according to Bloomberg News, there are 268 people trapped in a sunken ferry off the coast of South Korea.  28 more people have been confirmed dead.  Of the estimated 475 people on board, 325 of them were high school students in the eleventh grade, on a school trip.  This means that almost half -- and probably more -- of the missing were teenagers.  And given that the ship sank about two days ago, we can probably assume that those we've been counting as missing can be added to the ranks of the dead.

We should mourn every death, I know.  There were fathers and mothers and grandparents on that boat, as well as grown-up sons and daughters and nieces and nephews.  But I can't stop thinking:  how does a school come back from the death of over half of its junior class? 

Rivers in China

I have published a thousand blog posts in my head in the past two months.  I've been tossing around writing ideas based on things like:

• animals in Beijing (where ARE they?)
• a wild, starry-eyed week in Paris with my mom over Chinese New Year
• what it was like to come back to Beijing and a week of horrible pollution AFTER a wild, starry-eyed week in Paris
• feeling disgustingly behind on learning Chinese
• going to Singapore, and how it is NOT A REAL PLACE, OKAY?
• and traffic patterns.

I even started an entry about schools, and how I've spent my life thinking of school buildings as an extension of my home.  Really!  It's about four paragraphs long so far, and will include an anecdote about how I was recently thrown out of a cab in the middle of the street (tears and snot streaming down my face) after flying into Beijing on a red-eye.  One of these days, I'll finish it.