life is good

so. good news - but i don’t wanna jinx it. i think the ‘intermediate stage’ is over. but so is tonight so goodnight. so.

it’s been 3 days since my last massage. a week since my last (and in my defense, only) pedicure. i travel on weekends and drink fresh carrot juice everyday. (which goes for $5/glass at home).

i was telling my good friend here that i’ve been getting frustrated lately and so he said i needed to tell him all of the amazing things about china that i can’t do in the states. and…after listing them all, we thought we needed to go at least get a massage.

oh and best of all i belong to a yoga..place. idk what to call it other than that - it’s not a gym. it’s a room with 3 yoga classes daily and has become my second home. at my real home, i could never afford to belong to a yoga…place. i love yoga.   

life here may not always be happy and easy (don’t tell the title of my blog), but it is indulgent. affordably indulgent.

sigh. back to work.

PS: to my one and only reader - congratulations grandpa!!

so. the philippines is evolving (like decision time is tomorrow, self-imposed deadline),
and i’m thinking. I realllllly realllly want to go with H to the philippines, stay
at this amazing $7/night hostel, on a beach with scuba diving. however, i haven’t looked
for tickets yet and the only ones she can find are almost $300. if i go to phuket, it’s
$20. it’s 10-12 days. what to do. wow talk about a win-win situation.

i went rafting this weekend. got really really beat up. there’s no worry of law-suits in
china, so safety’s less of an issue. i went w/ a bunch of thai friends, H, a french
girl, and some guys. i get in a raft with the french girl, we get 1 bamboo stick and 2
helmets, which turns out were optional. the bamboo stick is to try to keep up away from
rocks/steering/etc. the only part of the explanation i understood was to sit facing each
other, and that if you dropped your bamboo stick in the river, you could try to use your
hands.

so we go and get beaten up in the best way possible, well…it was better than like a
gang fight anyway, but with just as many bruises. at one point - ironically one of the
mellower parts of the river, we get stuck on a rock. the current’s not too bad and it’s
really really shallow, so we get out to try to dislodge ourselves - we were really not
going anywhere otherwise. we didn’t have our helmets on b/c after the last huge rapids we
had taken them off and used them to bail the water out of our raft.

the idea worked and our raft was successfully dislodged, and so immediately began to 
rush away. this would have been hell and about another 3/4 mile to swim back. so french
girl (really, we’re good friends, i should know her name..) so she jumps into the
raft and i leap on my stomach onto it as it’s sliding away. i make it w/ at least half of
my body on the raft. when i jumped on i landed w/ my hand on the brass closure keeping the
air in the raft and pretty much slit my wrist from thumb to mid wrist. but i made it onto
the raft. it’s very much a team-building exercise.
actually, thinking back on the gorge-jumping, bungee-jumping in beijing, climbing 6 hours
up wuyishan, etc. the most life-threatening, dangerous, or physically brutal experiences
are the ones that make me feel closest to these ppl. after rafting i really feel close to
french girl. maybe next i’ll remember her name. anyway.
so that was that.

and now back to tests and chaos and 20-page papers. wah wah. and apparently i’m in what 
Y calls the ‘intermediate’ stage of studying/living abroad. apparently, he tells me,
had i attended the meetings i would know this. the ‘intermediate’ stage is where you’re
sick of things. ie being stared at by absolutely EVERY person. eating the same greasy
food everyday and gaining 5 pounds b/c non-greasy food doesn’t exist in this country, etc
etc.

the daily doses of yoga and the $6 massages help, but i’ll admit i’ve been having kind of
a hard time lately. maybe it’s good for me…

anyway.

so i have no idea what to bring Y’s family for x-mas. or what to get Y himself for that
matter. also - no idea why i’m telling you, b/c this is not your department. but if you
have any suggestions…  so far i got them some special kind of tea.. and Y…well he
gets me for christmas!! hoooray! lucky him..

that reminds me - i have a minor issue there: he thinks he’s paying for our little
4-country adventure at the end of the year. he’s not. he booked the thailand tickets and
i asked how much they are and his answer was ‘don’t worry about it’. finally
he told me they’re over $200 freaking dollars. he later mentioned the hotel with too many stars. i
panicked a bit, suggested a hostel, and we’re working on it. i guess? but here’s the
problem:

i can always pay him back or pay for my half, etc. but if he thiiiinks he’s paying, he’s
gonna go for the expensive things, like nice hotels and expensive plane tickets.. and then i can’t really pay him back..

just realized maybe saying this to him could be effective…maybe.

anyway so i have another test tomorrow. things here just got realllllly freaking
stressful. and my grades suck. they’re b’s, but that sucks.

i love yoga. so much. if at some point in my life i become a part time yoga insructor,
life will be complete. haha - maybe mr p’ll have 1 massuese and 1 yoga instructor. both
unc educated.

maybe not. i’m gonna go finish chinese and move on to my econ book. my
paranoid paranoid professor’s new book about the soon coming nuclear war.
you’ve gotta read this thing - i’m sending it to you once i’m done. (it’s really not bad..)