life is good

In the beginning of June I head back to the land of two dollar massages and daily yoga (I will find a yoga studio). This also happens to be the land of concrete-hard beds and constant stares, but I’m absolutely pumped.

Unlike last time, I will be in an icy icy tundra of a city, but I am confident I will survive. And pretty sure I’ll return much closer to fluency than this out-of-practice lbg is right now.

And jiaozi. I’m going to be in the jiaozi-center of the jiaozi homeland. I will get to study and live in the region where dumplings were born. How could that possibly be bad? Fattening, yes. but China’s always fattening for Westerners. Jiaozi pounds are welcome pounds.

I love new experiences. I’m so excited.

there are screams and violent noises coming from the lounge across the hall. if there weren’t music in the background and periods of dramatic singing here and there I would be worried.

but that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I read an article about how thinking about a positive part of each day not just makes you balanced and happy, etc, but also benefits your health in concrete measurable ways.
so I just wanted to say that yesterday, I went to see a professor read. This professor is amazing and so talented and the place was packed. I stood at the back and said ‘no thank you’ when people offered seats in the front because I wanted to be able to sneak out if I needed to and because a ton of other people were standing.

Right before it began a guy from one of my classes brought a chair to the back of the room by the shelf that I was half behind, put it behind me, tapped my shoulder and pointed to the chair and smiled. It was amazing. Idk if this is just the southern way that I’m still not used to, but it was nice and friendly and so small but it made my day. well, a good 12 minutes of my day. and I sat. thank you friendly guy from class.

Today I stopped by wholefoods because I had to get gas and was right next to it and I wanted sparkling water. The sparkling water selection at wholefoods is kind of intense and I decided to look at the different kinds. I had spent 10 minutes in the sparkling water section staring when this guy came up and asked what difficult decision I was making. I told him how sparkling water costs a pretty penny and I didn’t want to mess up and choose the wrong one. We talked flavors and brands etc for a minute and then he grabbed one out of a pack and put a ‘paid’ sticker on it and told me to come back and tell him what I thought. He was the manager.

Anyway, these aren’t amazing stories just little things that could restore bit by bit someone’s faith in humanity. should  it need restoring.

just answered the phone to hysterical crying. just found out i am the world’s most useless friend to call when you’re hysterically crying. when you don’t know what to do. turns out i don’t know what to do either. i’m calm, i’m a rock, but i’m a completely useless rock. ‘it’s gonna be okay’ just doesn’t cut it in real life like it does in lifetime originals.

being 1,000 miles away doesn’t help.

my roommate on the other hand is amazing at dealing with these situations. she’s currently got me hysterically laughing over her stilt-walking skills. which meant talking about her family and her mom who passed away last year. so now she’s gotten me happily distracted picturing her jogging on stilts and she’s crying a little bit while we switch subjects…

i’m so bad at sad situations. so useless. and now with her i feel like an idiot for getting so upset over something that comes nowhere near losing a parent. i think for now we’ll just keep talking about people and presidents until there’s no more sniffling in this room…