ha ha ha, they couldn't keep me away for too long.

wow, saw great fireworks. never been that close to them before. went to a crappy festival the other day. today, the ice sculptures were amazing and got to say hello to the great wall. oh, and last night, i won second place at poker night. a whole 70 rmb, but still. i only put in 25, so i made back that money plus what i spent on beer and snacks and ( Read more... )

wow, i had a great night last night. i don't celebrate valentine's day, but it was one of my friend's last night in bj. she returns to korea today. it was a wonderful night of friends, chocolate, and dancing ( Read more... )

when i was in school, i used to have anxiety dreams before tests. you know, the ones where you show up for the test without a pencil or accidentally studied the wrong chapters. oddly enough, yesterday morning, i woke up to one of those-a dream with a test in it and the whole scenario. i can only guess it was due to nervousness about the performance ( Read more... )

i realized that my profile had my location listed as the united states. for right now, that is wrong. i'd set up my lj profile when i was interning in dc and i figured that putting the us would keep it general enough so that no matter where i'd go, it'd still be right. little did i know, i'd be here, outside the us and on the other side of the ( Read more... )

i'm back in the us. back where people speak english. back where i can ask for what i want from whoever i want. back where i can read things and find my own way. back where maps have street names labeled. but i don't know what to do with myself. i'm so confused, disoriented, lost. this feels so strange. i'm home but i don't know what to do with ( Read more... )

tonight, after dancing, i went for some food with a friend. we ate in this chinese restaurant with no heat. there were people sitting at the tables in their coats watching the tv hanging in the corner of the room. we had gotten soup, some fried rice, a veggie dish, and a tofu dish that ended up having seafood in it. anyway, we got the leftovers ( Read more... )

having now been in thailand, there are some things that i now know are specific to chinese and cannot be generalized to all asians ( Read more... )

i had been planning to continue posting on vacation happenings but now there is a matter at hand that has overshadowed other thoughts. the arrangements that we made for kylie the kitty and henry the turtle was that our maid, who normally comes mon, wed, fri (yes, in china everyone has a maid. we are actually weird cuz ours is only part-time. most ( Read more... )

the entire plane was my favorite color of purple including the pillow and blanket. it was as if i had designed the decor. the female flight attendants wore thai silk outfits with a long skirt and fringed scarf. right before we landed, they gave each of the women a pin with three real orchids.

we arrived in bangkok and got into a taxi. my father ( Read more... )