A Gift Stitch for a Great Professor

During the 2012 fall semester, I took a class called Humanities 124, in which we read lots (and I mean lots) of ancient literature and interpreted ancient ways of life through them. We did Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Israel, Greece, and Rome. (There may be some others I'm forgetting.) Now, the Humanities series is generally a much-hated group of courses which we are required to take, so I was dreading taking it. Whether it's all the writing you have to do or the fact that most of the professors are boring or difficult, not many people like the humanities.

However, I took the class with a brand new professor named Nina, during her first semester teaching at UNC Asheville. Young, energetic, and enthusiastic, she taught this class so well. She gave my class an experience nothing like the horror stories I had heard prior to signing up.

Her favorite part of the course was China; she'd been to China before, and had taught little kids over there for around six or seven years. So of course, her excited nature really came out when the China unit began.
She was undoubtedly my favorite professor that semester, so I really wanted to stitch her a gift. So, towards the end of the semester, I asked her what her favorite colour and hanzi (Chinese word for kanji) were. She replied with lapis blue almost immediately, but had to think about the other part of the question for a while. Eventually, she decided on "fei," which means to fly. And it looks like it has little wings, too. :) It looks like this: 飞

So there it was: a character to stitch, and a colour of thread to use on it.
I printed out some graph paper and made a pattern out of it; here's my set-up.

The needle case, the four colours, the pattern, and what I've started n 14-count Aida. The bamboo is there because the hanzi on its own leaves such a big, open space. I would have put a bird, but couldn't find a good reference. Also, my camera couldn't capture the difference between the teal and the royal blue.

I hope to have it completed by the spring 2013 semester! I've deemed it my current big project.

...Oh, and here's the lovely chalkboard of what each person in the class will remember the most!

I have no idea what the plastic titty balls were about.

Best. Class. Ever.