after getting back from china, i feel like im in this perpetual purgatory without the stuff to look forward to at the end...

well, harvard...but i still don't want to start thinking about school yet

i miss being with friends (most are all gooooooone) and i miss relatives (surprisingly, cuz i never used to)...i think what i need is just for this jetlag-induced delirium to end

don't they make any prescription drugs for what i have?

so, after almost a week's hiatus from this wonderful world of xanga, i have returned to report:  "yes, i do still exist"

so much fun stuff went on this past week...can't even itemize them all, so just briefly:

1)  saw some relatives i haven't seen in a while....boy, do those babies grow up quickly; got cute pictures with all of them....im related to so many bratty, mischievous kids....i wonder where they get that!

2)  took my parents' immediate families out to dinner; korean again!  haha, dog tastes great the second time around too!

3)  went to hangzhou again, this time with chang, cousins, kenneth (a singaporean at cambridge i just met), adrian and shi-ming (two great southeast asians from H)....it was a blast this time around too, and i got to see so much more stuff!  aside from arguing with the sketchy travel agent women whom we threatened to call the communist cops on if she didn't return my harvard ID, everything was perfect

4)  today i took my cousins and one of their girlfriends out for the japanese all-you-can-eat place again; still delicious, and still only RMB150 per person; sat next to some stuffy germans at first, but then they left and a group of athletic 20-something-yr-old brits (gawd, i hate the way they talk) settled down and started chatting....im good at faking love for all the anglophones when i, in fact, want to sock them somewhere

5)  started to realize i much i miss home and all the stuff that im longing to see everyone again (tho i won't get to do that until christmas)....i didn't even know that i'd spent so much time away from alabama already until i heard most everyone had already moved back to school....sigh, it's like losing them all over again

oh well, im generally chipper right now; i've really loved every part of being here this summer....i think i've found all the things that are important to me, as well as who i am (i guess....okay, maybe that's still an ongoing process but it's come a long way since may)

so yeah, looking forward to being back home, taking a couple of weeks to relax for the last time, and talking to some people i really really really miss

ok, now that im being completely random, i have just started doing crazy things that i would never have thought of doing a year ago

tonight i went to pegasus (a well-known shanghai nightclub that's really hot on thursdays) with a bunch of princeton guys who happened to be at the HPAIR (harvard project for asian and international relations) conference...i met up with dongbo and grabbed a beer right before heading over to see some folks at the conference

didn't get to see chang as planned, but i saw shi-ming (he's coming to hangzhou with us on monday), jennie (rob's ex, who was quite drunk), sonali's old entryway-mate (sarah, i think?...whatever, she was really wasted too), and met some other folks who i kind of knew...the most random people have wound up in shanghai this summer...

so, yeah, after sharing a cab back to the city center with dongbo and the random princeton dudes we just met, dongbo took off and i headed over to club with the tigers...very fun people, tho it was, again, THE most RANDOM thing i've ever done in my life; it was just too bad that i promised my grandmother i'd be home at a certain time, and since i had to go back home to her, i couldn't drink enough to go up to all the random hot asian girls and start dancing...oh well...next time

all i have to say, michelle, is that the princeton guys could give the stanford guys a run for their money...or maybe it's just that everyone knows how to party except for the fallible harvard guys???

ps...to all your nitpickers out there, i do realize that i've used the word "random" far too many times in this entry

so yeah, on my list of crazy things to be done, i have now marked off another food consumption one...

i just came back from what was possibly one of the best meals i've ever had...an awesome korean restaurant nestled conveniently near the colony of korean students studying here in shanghai right outside of fudan university; wow, four entrees and an appetizer for two people, and it was only 12 US dollars...i love countries with cheap food!

i do feel a little guilty tho, for completing my weird thing, cuz yeah, i ate a plate of spicy dog meat...what i feel even more guilty about is the fact that i really really enjoyed it

im sorry fido, spot, rover, and sparky...you were just way too delicious...and im sorry to the owners of fido, spot, rover, and sparky; your dogs were just way too delicious

ah, sigh...nine more days here; wonder what weird thing it'll be next