Take the Plunge

I Probably Should Have Just Gone to Sleep. . .

2007-04-24T12:38:28Z

Wahoo! I'm in the home stretch. I finished both of my take home anthropology finals (one being about an hour late but it's in, damnit,)and turned them in this afternoon. They were both heinous and one of them took me the FULL 24 hours I was allocated to research for and write. Essays suck. Give me the simplicity of multiple choice any day. I also BOMBED my China's Regional Relations final having sacrificed it in favor of finishing my ANT3380 final. I studied for a total of maybe 25 minutes for it, and was about 45 minutes late to class (frantically trying to complete my ANT3380 final) - not that it mattered much because I ran out of things to say in about an hour and a half. Uggh, those essay answers will be a JOY to read, I'm sure. At least, I'm fairly confident I nailed the IDs (only worth 30% of the test, though).
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meh. I'm done, and I'll care about the results when I get my academic report later in the summer. Got to keep my eyes on the prize. Generate a bull-shit 10 page research paper on Tibet, and then my finals are done done done.
I have a housemate for next year! Huzzah! I broke down Peter, and he's agreed to live with me and my cat. Great joy and relief. Course, we don't actually have a place yet, but Peter is quite industrious and is staying in the cities for the summer. I have full faith that he'll find a nice place for us.
I adore the Taiwanese drama I'm currently watching right now. It's based off of Hana Kimi - it pretty much is Hana Kimi and the boy in it is SO SO SO hot. I'm crushing badly, and it's refreshing. I hardly ever "crush" anymore.
And now, after 14 cups of coffee and 53 hours without sleep - I'm going to pass out.
Love you much :P

Options.

2007-04-17T11:01:59Z

I almost have three housing options right now! After much begging, emailing, and facebooking - it's come to these three:

1) I house with 4 boys I've never met who will be Juniors next year but come highly recommended by Alia (a girl who shares my love of horror) who I also only vaguely know. . .hmmm. . .this one could prove to be really interesting

2) I house with Mara (nice girl on my first year floor) and three other girls I either don't know or don't remember. . .hmmm. . .not bad but the rent is kinda steep

3) Peter gives in to my pleading and we get a studio apartment together . . .come on, Mama needs a new pair of shoes!

I'd really MUCH rather live with Peter - he loves cats, too. Plus, since my cat prefers short people(due to her runty nature, she gets nervous around boys/people who tower over her), it would be fantastic. That and Peter's personality and habits mesh well with mine. One of the girls in Mara's house is bringing a dog which could be problematic b/c my cat's never really been around them before. Hmmm, I should probably start introducing her to them over the summer if I end up living with the girls. *Crosses fingers*

Today, upon being asked: if you could meet one person in history, who would it be and why? I answered: "Andrew Jackson, so I could punch him in the face. I hate that man so VERY much."
Ahahaha - I didn't even pause. It came out before I'd even realized I'd said it. I didn't pick an ancestor or an artist, nor a writer or one of history's great orators. No. I chose someone I despised, so I could gain the satisfaction of physically assaulting him/her. I really am just full of rage. . .

P.S. Banking institutions in Hong Kong and China - BUREAUCRATIC. I don't know if I can live in the adult world. Bureaucracy pisses me off to the point that I want to pound glass until it's powder. I kept muttering angrily to myself and stopping every couple of hundred feet to curse loudly. Strange looks justifiably sent my way. . .

And I'm Still Sick. . .

2007-01-04T15:20:45Z

I think my cold mutated and circled back around. Bitchy bitchy germs. The good news is that I am now in HONG KONG. Yay! Almost missed my flight because I wanted to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken too badly. Stupid chicken. Why are you so delicious? I'm still hacking painfully, but now I have medicine. Again with the cheering. What's more it's FREE medicine. Having picked up my student ID today, I got free access to the campus clinic. I now have cough syrup and three different kinds of pills. Yeah. I'm just not going to question it. Popping that many pills is bound to cover ALL aspects of this cold. That's my reasoning, and I'm sticking to it. Man, it's been a while since my last update. Crazy shit went down. Spent the holidays on the mainland and missed you all like crazy. But it was good. Christmas with a mad mix of thrown together people. Ate delicious jerk chicken, real chocolate cake, and candied yams among other things. Cooked by one of my former classmate's mom and her. Jamaicans know how to handle chicken. Yum. Went clubbing. Smoked hookah. Got trashed. Not necessarily in that order. Repeat. Yeah, my week in Beijing did nothing to help me get over my cold. Send home a good friend and a bunch of your gifts! They're sitting in his garage in Rhode Island RIGHT NOW. But you'll have to wait. Patience. Patience. Flew out to Shanghai with Jen on the 29th. We stayed with Luc. Sweet guy. Crashed and burned at pool, ping pong, and badminton. The badminton was the last straw. BINDER. WE NEED TO PLAY WHEN I GET HOME. My skils flew away while I wasn't looking. Sucking that badly is just depressing. BADMINTON. Gah. That's just sad. Went dancing some more. Re-thinking this getting trashed business. Don't think my body much likes it. New Year's was low-key but sweet. Jen's friend had a friend who bought a table at this trendy very expensive club. Tables normally run for 1800 kuai. New Year's Eve inflated the prices at least 300%. Thank all that's sweet and good for connections. Skipped out on the cover fee and toasted the new year in with a mimosa on the roof of the building. The bar is located right on the Bund so we had an excellent view of the fireworks. Too bad they were a little lackluster. Nobody does flash and noise like the U.S. Regardless, it was lots of fun. Was going to go dancing after that, but the clubs were too packed. People were practically passing out from the heat. So we called it an early night and headed home. Learned how to play dice.
Played a little strip dice at a house party before we split off and went to Bar Rouge. No worries, left before it got really interesting ^_^
Managed to get into Hong Kong with over 15 extra Kg of weight. Yay for the cute, small, and female magic. Saved about 350 kuai.
I did say Hong Kong is amazing, right?
The weather is gorgeous and the air isn't too dry and nobody spits here.
Heaven.
My dorm is nice though the rules seem really strict. For example, you can't imbibe or possess high levels of alcohol. Has to be under 30 proof. No loud noise after 11:00 PM. No smoking. No drunken behavior. No one of the opposite sex allowed past 9:00PM. No one allowed to crash even if it's another CUHK student without prior written approval. Et cetera. Et cetera. Violation results in a $500 fine. Second violations result in expulsion FROM THE UNIVERSITY. Not just kicking you out of the dorm. You're EXPELLED from the school. Hot damn. Cramping my party life.
Meh. I'll work it out.
I think they thought I was a mainland exchange student since my address was in Beijing. They put me in an all girl's dorm with all asians.
I'm a little intimidated by my still absent roommate. She has a hello kitty bedspread. A huge poster of Titanic. Snoopy. Winnie the Pooh. Doraemon. I've never seen so many cutesy things in my life. Her entire side of the room is COVERED.
Nervous. Nervous, I tell you. I am highly nervous.
It's good though. This will force me to use my Mandarin as my roommate's English is kinda shaky.
I was going to make this entry pretty, but my English is shot to shit. Still. Gah, I need to read more. Get my vocabulary and word choice and flow back up to speed. Also, I have to stop this stream of consciousness business.
Anyway, the campus is an hour out from downtown Hong Kong in the hills. It's a hilly hilly campus. I thought about getting a bike, but I changed my mind after seeing the taxi loop around and go up and down. Walking is cool, too. I'll take pictures and post them. At my cousin's place now. It's really nice to have family around. They make transition and life so much easier. Met lots of nice people, but nobody lives remotely near to me - hopefully this friend thing will pick up. Lots of countries. German girl, 2 Irish girls. Washington D.C. France. Sweden. Chicago. One of the Irish girls wants to go sky diving with me. Oh yeah. It's happening this semester. That or handgliding or both. Mmmm. Fun. But I gotta go. My relatives are calling it a night. I got 2 hours of sleep last night, and I'm getting up at 6:00 tomorrow. I love ya. Got a new address - write to me!!!! Love LOve LOVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

back to the drawing board

2006-11-29T10:58:25Z

Not that I can actually draw :)
I'm over my momentary depression - turning 21 in a strange city made me a little sad, but onwards and upwards. Besides, it was a pretty good birthday :)
And I got to eat several different kinds of pie since it was Thanksgiving. Yum Yum. I didn't get trashed, but I did get tipsy and that'll suffice until I get back to the states and have a real party. Wow, that was a ridiculously long run-on sentence. . .meh. I don't feel like going back and correcting it. My travel plans are kind of up in the air right now. My gloriously cheap london tickets vanished overnight. Those fuckers, so now I must scrabble about. Here's hoping I can still find my way to Flumpy. I will be able to go to Yunnan, though which is awesome being home to pretty much all of China's minorities. Well, not ALL but most of them. Plus, it's supposed to be all naturey and pretty. Yay. I'm hopped up on the first cup of earl grey tea that I've had in MONTHS. Gods, I love this stuff. Nothing quite like earl grey. I went to a tea market the other day, and they were rather rabid for our business. It was very odd, being a market in China, 'course they were pretty much selling the same things. Going to a tea shop - a quality tea shop in China is pretty sweet. They brew samples for you right there, and they use the traditional method which is a bit wasteful but cool to watch.
i'm chillin' in what has to be the yuppiest coffee in Beijing which brings to mind a phrase I discovered in "That's Beijing" - a free magazine that caters to foreigners telling them all the secret/good spots to checkout in major cities. There's also a "That's Shanghai," etc. Anyway the phrase or rather the word. . ."chuppie." That's right - there are finally enough Chinese yuppies for them to warrant a phrase. Says a lot about how far China's economy has come since the opening up in the '80s.
In other news, I've received some of your letters and packages! They made me ridiculously happy. Much love!!!
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And now I'm done. I'm going to be so relieved when this program is over.

Squat Toilets Suck In General But After You've Climbed a Mountain - You Kinda Want To Cry. . .

2006-11-12T07:49:21Z

I'm so glad I decided to go to Huangshan for my vacation week. It was amazing and worth every last second of suffering. Auggh - I'm out of shape. Unlike most of China's tourist areas - correction, unlike most of China in general - smoking is forbidden on the mountain. Well, seriously, who would want to smoke while climbing? That's double the effort. I think Huangshan is one of the better kept of China's tourist traps - there must be a 1000 people employed just for the upkeep of the mountain. There are people whose sole purpose is to walk around and hunt for trash to pick up. They have thise long chopstick type things that come to a fine point so they don't have to use their hands. Plus, every couple of feet, there are these hollowed out stones used as trash cans. And there are workers who repair the steps everyday - they just walk around with a bucket of wet cement. So, Huangshan isn't so much hiking as endless steps. Ah wo de tian, I think I would have preferred just straight up trails. My legs are jelly - jelly I tell you. We spent 21 hours on a train to get to Huangshan City (the town that makes its livelihood off of tourists located at the foot of Huangshan). Leaving the town to start the climb was pretty cool, too. There were fields and fields of chyrsanthemum - dried, it makes a delicious tea that's good for sore throats. They're really pretty little whitish-yellow flowers. Only about 16 of us ended going to Huangshan. Everyone else went to Xian - so we all started together, but soon separated into groups. I'm. . .uh, kinda slow. I'm faster than some, but slower than all the "friends" I've made on the program. I had to keep stopping, and they weren't tired so I just waved them on ahead. Meh. It was kinda lonely, but at the same time, there were a lot of other climbers - businessmen in suits and leather shoes climbing - WTF? - so Chinese. . .
Regardless, when experiencing nature it's good to do it alone sometimes. I did get lost though so I ended up having to backtrack an hour >_<
Six hours later I made it to the mountain's summit. We stayed at a hotel at the top. The hotel was pretty awesome. Wicker furniture, great view, but no heat. Re: Ice Palace. So cold! It was actually colder inside than outside. Oh! There are monkeys on the mountainside! So cute - little and fat. I also frequently stopped to wander off the path - uhhh, I like high places? Hmmm? That fence means it's dangerous past this point? Nonsense!
My pictures don't really do the mountain justice -
Oh! yeah, so the only way to get supplies up the mountain is via manual labor - that's right, some of the townspeople make a great deal of money by China's standards hauling supplies on their backs via this wooden contraption. Huangshans' steps are very narrow - it's rather dangerous work. These guys carried up cases of water and beer, blocks of cement, furniture, vegetables, etc. It's an impressive sight. There was also the option of this sedan chair setup. I saw some old ladies sitting in them being carried down the mountainside on the shoulders of two guys each. Pretty sweet. There's also the cablecar but that only goes up halfway, and it's a bit expensive. Manual labor is still cheaper than machinery.
The next morninng, I got up at 5:00AM to see the sunrise - 60% chance that cloud coverage wouldn't be too dense - I have crap luck. The sun didn't show, but it was still a pretty cool experience. A TON of people got up to try to see it - so very China - the crowding and the excitement and the noise.
The night before, at the hotel, me and my roommate got one of the sketchiest massages ever. It was AWFUL. Half of it consisted of them slapping and pounding on us. Plus, my masseuse - not that he's earned that title - did NOT know what was MUSCLE, what was SPINE, and what was BONE. Ahhhh! Yeah, I'm grimacing! I'm whimpering because that's my bone you're digging into with all your strength! Bloody hell, I even have bruises! I can't believe I paid money for that bullshit. Plus, I think he might have been feeling me up! Son of a bitch.
On the otherhand, in Huangshan City - I got an AWESOME foot/leg massage. This lady really knew what she was doing. She worked out all the knots in my feet. Granted my calves are dying and thighs are DYING today, but at least I can walk.
Oh! yesterday I chewed on a stalk of cane sugar - peddlers in Huanghsan City and Hebei sold stalks of cane sugar. They'd peel it in front of you, and then you indicate how big of a piece you want, hold the end, and they hacked it off with a machete. SWEET. Literally. You basically, gnaw off a piece, suck on it until all the sugar/juice is gone, and then you spit out the plant part. IT's kinda messy, but really interesting. Ummmm, that's about it for now. I feel I could have written this better, but I can't adequately explain how amazing Huangshan really is - meh.