All quiet in the eastern hemisphere

So, my appologies on it being more than a week since I last wrote. The week itself was pretty uneventful. I went to class, I did homework and that was pretty much it. Friday night though I finally went out, which was much overdue. I actually happened to just fall into plans. I had spent most of the night talking to Adrianne and Michaela and had just gotten back to the room when my roommate, Lara, invited me to go out with her and some other TBCers since I had just been saying earlier that I haven't been out in a while. We went to meet up with people who had already been out for a while so I grabbed my bottle of baijiu (the stuff that's 65% alcohol) which had about a quarter of it left and had a little bit on the way there.

Our first stop was Paddy O'Shea's, an extremely overpriced Irish pub. A few people bought drinks, but inevitably we decided to head over to Smugglers which is more bang for your buck. We ran into people outside finishing their 3 kuai beer, bought at the street vendor, so I finished off the baijiu before heading into the bar. I mingled for a while since there were quite a few TBCers and I wanted to make sure to say hi to everyone. I eventually ended up at a table with Lara, her boyfriend and his russian friends, Z (who's actual name is Zehar minus any spelling error I may have just made), Anastasia and two others whose names I didn't catch. Lara wandered away to talk to Lara and I ended up leaving with her boyfriend and the russians to find an atm and somewhere else to hang out. We drove around for a while in search of an atm (the russians had cars!!! :) yay for not having to pay for a cab) then went to a bar long enough to figure out it was too pricey and about to close in 30 minutes anyway. We stopped off at a convenience store for some snacks and a bottle of tequila then came back to TBC to hang out in Lara's boyfriend's room. It was nice. We just chilled and talked and Z made me drink more...apparently he didn't think I was drunk enough. I also tried anchovies for the first time. Not my favorite thing, but not as bad as they smell.

Quick side note - Z was friggin' tall! I'm guessing 6'5" at the least. And Anastasia was really sweet. I found it funny when she asked if I had a boyfriend and I said no. She corrected me by saying not yet. I just had to laugh because I'm not really looking, but a lot of people seem to be preoccupied about the whole significant other thing, no matter what country they're from. All in all it was a fun night except for the fact that we ran out of power in our room so trying to get ready for bed was a mite bit tricky.

Saturday was uneventful. I did laundry, went to the bank to get some more money and payed for the power. I also even started on my homework. You may remember that this was the day that Kathleen and I were supposed to hang out with Lily, our new Chinese friend, but she called having to cancel because she was sick. I went to lunch with Adrianne and pretty much just lounged around. In the evening I borrowed my roommate's copy of Gossip Girl Season one and ended up watching it until nearly three in the morning.

Sunday brought an early morning. I was up at 7:30 a.m. to get ready for meeting at 8 to go to the great wall. We didn't actually leave until 8:30 a.m. because punctuality is not of high value to some people. The pièce de résistance, we got lost while being pursued by a man who was obviously trying to scam us. After much complaining, frustration and attempting to figure out a new plan of action, we gave up. I decided just to come back to campus because I had quite a bit of homework and a few of the others decided to go to the Forbidden City. I did homework, took a nap, met with my tutor, watched a documentary then finished Gossip Girl (I think I'm addicted now!), going to bed around 3:30 a.m.

Getting up today was rough for obvious reasons. I stopped off at the stadium store before class to grab some Coke, hoping for a caffenine boost. Class was good, as always, despite the quiz AND dictation that we had. I really really like my chinese class because A) I enjoy Chen laoshi B) the dynamic in our class is really good and C) I think I just like learning languages in general. I'll be sad if and when the classes get rearranged (technically both intensive classes are too big so they are making a third one and some of us will be moved to the other class) because whether or not I stay in the class, it'll be different. After class I had lunch with Tiffany, Matt and Martina. I hadn't actually gotten to really talk to Tiffany or Matt in a while so it made me happy. Then I went to the library to get some homework done, came back to the room to do more homework, checked e-mail, did more homework, napped, finished off most of my homework, went to eat then talked to mom. Now I'm here and after this, I'll be going upstairs to talk to Adrianne and finalize stuff for faxing about class selection. I don't have a whole lot planned for the week because school work is keeping me busy, but if that changes, naturally you'll get to read about it later. Until then!