Normal Things

I guess I have been slacking on my blogging lately, but I've been quite busy doing not much of anything. haha.  Which is fine, honestly, if I could just convince myself that it was.  I genuinely like living more simply, sleeping 45 minutes more than I need per night, bumming around for a few hours in the morning, having time to go out for dinner, killing an hour on facebook, considering an afternoon of shopping to be my exercise for the day, sitting and thinking for half an hour before bed.  I like this pace.  I just have to convince myself of it.  I'm so wired to be living at maximum capacity at school that when I have not much to do, it feels wrong.  I'm not bored.  I just feel guilty. But if I could get over the guilt, and feeling naughty about not being crazed, I might actually feel content.  It's not like other people are writing novels or running marathons.  My roommate goes out drinking every night, gets up for class at 8AM, then sleeps from 11-5 and wakes up in time to go out to dinner with the European exchange students and then skype with her boyfriend.  So whatever, this is just how it is going to be for a while. 

In other news, I went to Macau this past Sunday with Cheikh.  This is exciting because:
1. We did not die, get arrested, get lost, argue (not that this would be possible anyway), etc.
2. A year or two ago, before I had any inkling that I would be coming to China, Dad bought me this novel about a piano teacher who moved to Macau in the 30s with her husband.  At the time I had no knowledge of Macau, and so much less of China, and I obviously didn't consider the setting in the way I would have had I known I would be visiting that city soon.  Actually I don't think I was even sure how to pronounce Macau when I was reading that book.  Anyway from what I remember, Macau was portrayed as this intense place with stifling humidity, and sudden rainstorms that drenched everything, and strange foods in street markets, and expats sitting in European-style bakeries, and scenic views of the coast, and Chinese people in rickshaws rushing around narrow streets.  Well, wouldn't you know it, it still feels like that.  Just like that, except with lots of Western tourists in the center of town, and fancy European clothing stores, and motorcycles, and a bit more gloom in the sky than I would have guessed from the book.  And we only spent five hours in the city, it's not like I lived there like the woman in the book, but it seems so crazy to have read about some unknown exotic place, having no idea you'd one day be there, and then be standing in the square that the narrator described walking through every day!  Like, I knew this city before I knew it but when I was learning about it I didn't even know I would eventually actually know it! Crazy.

Anyway when I got home I had a total mental breakdown and called Mom but of course she never answers any of her phones! MOM! So I sat in my room alone and cried for a while and then felt a bit better.  I think I was just emotionally exhausted from trying to navigate a strange land with someone who might as well be from Pluto.  I dunno.  I think it will just take some time for us to learn to function together out in the world, without google translate at our disposal.  I mean we had fun of course.  It's just fun mixed with stress and confusion, which is tiring. 

More to say, but I have to rework my lesson plan for this class I have in an hour because somehow things got chaotic in the last class.  Hehe.  Not that the Chinese mind a bit of chaos, but I do.