half way

hello everyone.... sorry that i was completely mia for the last week. i had a lot going on with school, and not so much other stuff but i'll give an update.

our friend that got lit on fire at the teppanyaki resturant, katherine, went home on thursday. we all miss her a ton but it was for the better. she definitely cant attend class or anything so she might as well go home and get the best treatment possible. as for my hair, i went to this swanky place in the french concession and had this, none the less, french lady cut my hair. she did an excellent job, so i didnt turn out looking asian, haha. on the way there though we spotted a TGI FRIDAYS.... it was like jesus finally came to china. we ordered long islands, margaritas and AMERICAN FOOD. it was amazing... and the best monday ive had to date.

so for tuesday, nothing exciting besides class, ect. wednesday brought us the ever famous ladies night at zapatas. all i remember is that the free margaritas sucked, so i ended up persuading some nice man into buying me a mojito. friday night we broke down and ordered delivery subway via sherpa. yet again, it was amazing and the best 5 dollars ive ever spent. we went out again and then visited old town and the yu gardens. for any of the ANTM fans out there, this is where they filmed the final show for one of the seasons. its an extremely beautiful place, even though it was packed full of japanese tourists. we also went bartering out in old town and got some fun stuff to bring back home. bartering is one of my new favorite things to do because it is just a game here. they expect you to get a super low price and haggle with them. jordan is the master though and got me a better deal a few times.

since last night was the most recent occurance, i'll talk about that for a bit. after the gardens we came home and got ready to go out. one of the things ive come to love about this place, is that i can buy two 22's of beer for one american dollar.... so basically im the cheapest date there ever was. plus i also managed to not spend any money at the club we went to, so it was a well played out night for me. being that you stick out like a sore thumb in china if you are white, especially blonde, you tend to attract the other non chinese people. we went to this club, muse, which is probably the best ive been to yet. as soo as my group of friends and i walked up stairs, we were eagerally greeted with free shots from some other white people. about four hours later, jordan and i realized that it was 330 in the morning. i dont know where all the time went, but by the time we got back to our dorm it was light outside. ive never partied till dawn, but i almost got there.

anyways, thats the short break down of my week. i just went out for a run, and its surprisingly not too hot out today. i have to meet with my tutor in a bit, and then we are going to go to KTV (karaoke) with our teachers. they are required to organize outside class activities, and i guess this is probably the best one we could have gotten stuck with. by wednesday, i only have a month left to go! things have been flying by really fast, even though i look back and think that ive already been here for quite awhile. we finally went and bought our train tickets to beijing, we'll be leaving friday night at 8. its a 12 hour train ride and we'll be there early saturday morning. the only bad thing is that we cant check into our hotel until 3, so we'll have to find things to do (which im sure wont be hard) until we can go settle in. we have an AMAZING pool, you should go check it out online, we're staying at the grand hyatt beijing. we are also going to get to sled down the great wall... thats right, you can "tobagon" down it. i just hope that i dont hurt myself, because im pretty sure they dont insure things like that or have safety regulations. after all, TIC (this is china, for all of you who havent seen blood diamond).

im going to go enjoy my delicious cup noodles now, and yes they do eat cup noodles in china. i picked it over the other ones because its was the only thing i could recognize. ill try and post before beijing, but i will have my computer with me so i can update while im there.

em