alanis morisette song lyric potential

The absolute hilarity of life never ceases to amaze me. Thankfully, I have the presence of mind to be able to look at otherwise crappy situations and laugh them off. I encourage everyone else to work towards this goal...because otherwise you're in for a hell of a ride.

Life's a bitch and then you die, right? Or you could just laugh and say, "Thanks, bitch!" and continue on your merry way. I have been known to let life get me down, but lately I've made a huge effort to just roll with the punches. It's so much easier that way. And funny.

Flashback to Xi'an. Rod and I went there for the weekend to see the city and the famous terra cotta warriors. Xi'an has the largest still-intact city wall in China (it's really old, so I hear), so our first full day there we decided to walk the entire thing. All 9 miles. It was really cool being able to see the entire city from the top of the city wall, but it was also really, really tiring.

The smog in Xi'an was horrible, and I remember thinking to myself, "This is the kind of smoggy, overcast day where people get sunburned" and then also remembered that I had not applied sunscreen that morning. I brushed the thought away, though, figuring it wouldn't be that bad because it was VERY smoggy, and the sun isn't that strong, right?

Wrong. I got one of the worst sunburns of my life. I wanted to look cute so I was wearing a dress which left my chest and neck completely exposed to the sun's powerful UV rays for the 4 hours it took us to walk the perimeter of the city. With my red hair, freckles, and sunburn...I looked like a tomato.

We wanted to pack a lot into the day, though, so we decided to try to find this temple that was outside of the city wall where monks play chess. It started raining and we didn't know where we were going. Two hours later we still didn't know where we were going and my Uggs were soaked all the way through. We hopped on a crowded bus with barely any standing room. Sunburned and thoroughly soaked from the rain, I was not a happy camper.

China has over 2 billion people, so it's pretty much a given that public transportation is going to be crowded. On that day, though, everyone was wet and grumpy and I was in a horrible mood. I didn't even care about this stupid temple and just wanted to go back to the hostel, but we had already gone so far and it was important to Rod so I stuck with it.

After what seemed like forever, we arrived at the temple (thanks to the impromptu tour guiding of a very nice Xi'an citizen) and IT WAS CLOSED. So perfect, right?

It gets better.

The thought of getting back to a nice, warm bed soon put me in a better mood and we stopped by a local market to get some food. I ordered in Chinese and they understood me, which put me in an even better mood. Rod gave them too much money, and they made sure to give him the correct change, which he was surprised about (he worried frequently about getting ripped off).

At this point I was feeling pretty euphoric. I love using Chinese and being understood. I was happily chirping about how trustworthy all Chinese people are while I looked for my wallet to buy a yummy baozi.

"Seriously, everyone I've met in China is so kind and honest I've nev...shit. My wallet is gone."

And at that moment I remembered exactly when it happened. It was on the crowded bus just after I got on-board. A man next to me bumped into me and I felt my purse tugged, but I was so tired, grumpy, sunburned, wet, and hungry, to care.

As I was standing in the middle of the market with the realization that I had been 4. pick-pocketed in Xi'an, I started to laugh. I mean, what are the odds that I would be cooing the virtues of the Chinese people and how honest they are at the exact moment I realize my wallet was stolen?

Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?