In honor of black Friday (cough, cough – NOT!) I went shopping. Okay, so in my defense I totally stumbled upon the opportunity and totally didn’t mean to end up shopping. It just kind of happened. I had spent all morning (and half the afternoon) wallowing in my apartment, watching the intersection below for amusement…

The line snaked around the door, around the privacy wall, and onto the Metro station platform. I totally admit my planning hadn’t been ideal, but sometimes a girl just can’t wait. And even if it meant missing a couple trains while waiting for my turn in the toilet, it had to be done. To add…

Today, life in China is exhausting. Actually, every day in China is exhausting. Somedays I am just more capable of battling through it. A Finnish gal (who has lived in my apartment building for a year now) explained it to me this way: “When you go out of your apartment, you have to prepare to…

John arrived home promptly at 530pm, as promised. Dark had already fallen over the city and the neon lights had begun twinkling on. I say twinkling. I mean booming. With the flip of the clock from “daylight” to “nighttime”, Nantong transforms from a respectably gray-and-brown-built city to its truly inspiring red-and-orange-and-purple-and-yellow technicolor glow. With that…

I was groggy from my “little” afternoon nap intended t o combat jetlag without succombing to it. The 45 minutes had turned into four hours. And, really, sleep is important, so why not take an extra long nap? Groggy was gone, though, as I watched four white gloved, reflective-yellow vested begin an unknown pattern around…

  Let’s just mark this as my first adventure in non-communicating.  In a world where English just isn’t very common, life in this foreign country becomes a game of pantomiming, synonyms, and the Google Translate App on my phone.  “Gym?” “gym?” “workout room?” “running room?” “exercise?”  “gymnasium?” After much head-shaking and putting three heads together,…