the month of april, in a nutshell

April was a crazy month for me. Rod came to visit, I had a ton of grad school work to finish, midterms to proctor and grade, and lots of traveling/sight seeing/tour guiding to do around China.

I tried to get as much stuff done before Rod's arrival as I could, but the 3.5 weeks he was here were still jam packed from morning until night with constant go-go-going. It was a fantastic vacation and I'm so glad he came to visit, but I definitely need a few more days to recuperate and catch up on some much needed sleep. I haven't walked so many miles, hiked so many mountains, or slept on so many uncomfortably small and hard beds in the 8 months I've lived in China as I did in the 24 days Rod was here.

I have a lot of stories to share with everyone about my travels with Rod around Shanghai, Hangzhou, Xi'an, and Beijing. The top ten most memorable moments of the past 3.5 weeks (in chronological order of occurrence) are:
1. Ordering vegetarian bao zi (Chinese steamed bun) in Chinese and having the person actually understand me.
2. Accidentally scoring a free night in a hostel.
3. Taking pictures with the stars of The Mummy III.
4. Getting pick-pocketed in Xi'an.
5. Unrecycling at the airport.
6. Walking in Michael Phelps' footsteps. Sorta.
7. Eating a Clif Bar at the top of the Great Wall.
8. Using Magic Chinese medicine.
9. Celebrating my 8 monthiversary with China.
10. Being a celebrity for a day.

reasons i hate flying

The main reason I hate flying is because every time I board a plane I'm afraid I'm going to die. To combat this pretty irrational fear, I've developed several "don't freak out" flying techniques, including (in order of importance): 1. xanax 2. soothing mantras such as "the pilot doesn't want to die today, so he'll get us to our destination safe and sound" 3. sleeping 4. more xanax. If I'm awake during a flight, chances are I'm highly medicated or I'm quietly freaking out inside my head, trying to convince myself that everything will be alright.

For someone that travels as much as I do, you'd think I would have gotten used to the whole flying experience by now. But no, it doesn't work like that I guess.

The OTHER reason I hate flying is because airlines today totally suck and flights are always late and/or canceled.

Rod was supposed to be here two hours ago, but he's not because his flight was delayed leaving LAX and he missed his connection in SFO and they couldn't get him on another flight until tomorrow. I literally had a minute-by-minute countdown going on until his arrival, so I was very sad when I opened my Gmail inbox today and saw a message from his brother explaining that Rod wouldn't be arriving in Shanghai until Saturday.

Current countdown: 22 hours. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong tomorrow. I'm also going to be buying a direct flight home so I don't have to go through the hassle of being stuck in a connection city. Can you imagine how horrible that would be after 10 months in China and just wanting to finally be home? It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

hump day and what not

I hate the term "hump day". It always makes me think of dogs humping each other, which is weird since our dogs never humped each other ever. "Hump" is a gross word to me. But today is hump day for me, after Wednesday my teaching schedule tapers off and it's all down hill from there. It's quite wonderful, actually.

I got approximately 1.2 hours of sleep last night. More of a nap, really, than actually sleeping. Hopefully my body will be so worn out by the end of the day that I won't have any problems getting to bed tonight.

In preparation for Rod's arrival on Friday I spent the entire weekend doing grad school homework. I feel like a zombie. Way too much mind time for me, thanks. I think that has contributed to my inability to sleep, and I'm also nervous and excited to see him. It feels like Christmas! Only it's finally getting warmer and shifting from wintertime to springtime in Shanghai, thank gawd.