I went to a kids dance class and a fight broke out!

 A friend of mine recommended a dance class for Babes.  The class is pretty cute, there are 10 or so little girls, all dressed up in their tutus, following the teacher.  It's not an intense ballet class or anything, there's 45 minutes of pretty intense stretching, then a break and thirty or so minutes of dancing.  All of the girls look to be somewhere between 3 and 5.  Oh they are so cute!  Anyway, yesterday there was some sort of extra class to make up for a class that they missed so we parents brought our kids up to the studio in the day instead of at night.  I missed what started the fight, but all of a sudden there were two middle aged Chinese ladies screaming at each other at the top of their lungs.  After maybe a minute or two there were five more Chinese ladies, and another minute later and all the moms (and grandmoms) waiting for their little girls were screaming at the tops of their respective lungs!  People were coming from down the hall, around the corner, all of a sudden there were grown men in on the screaming.  I don't know if they switched to Sichuan dialect or if they were screaming obscenities at each other but I didn't understand a single word of it.  I only know that there was a little pushing, a lot of finger waving, and I expected the slapping to start at any minute (it didn't). 
But this brings me back to the whole China is a powder keg....  Any little thing, and I mean little, can start people off on the yelling and screaming (often fighting too).  I'm out a little more than I used to be, but I used to see fights on the streets all the time.  Over train seats, over prices, I'm fairly sure the dance class fight was over a bump (someone bumped into a chair) or some other such nonsense.  Even here in laid back Sichuan people are ready to fight. 

Hair

I have been experimenting with my hair. I know, this is nothing exciting, women do it all the time, but I really have not. The biggest change is that my hair is now natural. No relaxer, nothing that won't wash out. I have been doing a lot of online research trying to find a product that will give my natural hair some curls without frizz and have come across a lot of angry black women. I didn't realize when I put my hair in braids three years ago that I was joining a new edgy "natural" movement. I was just pregnant and didn't want to mess with my hair. When my baby was a year and a half I figured I had 15 minutes or so to devote to my hair so I could take the braids out. At that point I was completely natural, and I loved the hair. I didn't know what to do with it, but I loved it. Now leaving my hair natural is not a political choice, or a black awareness statement, or anything. Like I said it all started out as being too lazy to take care of my hair, then continued on as hey maybe I don't have to have my husband perm my hair while we are overseas!
So it came as kind of a shock to me that so many women AGONIZE over whether or not to go natural. There are SO many websites, articles, tweets, etc written by women who have decided to thumb their noses at America and go natural I was surprised. In fact, my natural tresses could be signaling that I am edgier, or trendier than I actually am. I think I am saved by the fact that I still straighten my hair on occasion, but when I go back to the states I intend to have my hair professionally looked at to see if I can get the most AWESOME AFRO ever, just because it looks cool, not because I am in any way Afrocentric.... you can ask almost anyone... I am the least Afrocentric person you will ever meet.
Anyway, I have decided to share my experiments with the world. So I will post some pics of the experiments as the happen.