life is good

i had to take a public bus to an underground Russian goods store. no taxis allowed, but if i found a place to rent a bike, i could do that. i have no idea which buses go where, the name of any underground russian stores - or even if it’s literally under the ground, or if it’s black market, or both.

i’m not allowed to ask the mentors or the teachers for help or clarification. and i need to come back and write an essay or tell the class tomorrow about the quality of the goods, how much i could bargain down a women’s clothing item, what the bus fare was, etc etc.

i had a freaking ball. and bought a polka dotted dress for 40 kuai. it was originally “538″. (they started for real at around 180). the rest of my homework is in books though and i haven’t started. i’m going to go to my zhuyi’s room to go over it later, which forces me to do it before it gets too late. 

yesterday afternoon our ‘class’ was tai ji lessons. which was more stressful than it sounds because you can’t always see the instructors and if you hadn’t studied the tai ji words you’d end up in some weird positions trying to guess where they were directing your body to go.
at one point i turned around and was facing my friend (which means one of us was at least 180 degrees off) who was in a completely different position. we both mouthed ‘how did i end up over here’ and then the instructor, who was the scariest 90 year old woman you could imagine, came over and yelled at us. tai ji’s not my forte. it’s also all on film.

homework.