best time to blog is....

the night before your hardest final.

yes, my procrastinating habits have not been left in the u.s., they have faithfully followed me halfway across the world... drat.

plus, i slept 16 hours last night, but that's because i'm sick and trying to get better. but anyway, i thought i should blog about thoughts on this semester before my upcoming AWESOME trip around china where i'll be hiking mountains and valleys and roughing it with my limited 中文 (chinese) and ultimately, reuniting with the fam "down under" (relative to Beijing anyway) in my HK homeland. i'm leaving on saturday for a 3 day train ride to kunming, yunnan; on which, i will hopefully be STUDYING a lot :) haha yes, i did say study, but we shall see, as my plans never go as i imagine.

iceskating on top of the lake at our school. definitely one of the cooler new experiences :D:D:D this will also be my traveling buddy, sarah from south... dekota. which sad to say, i don't really know where that is. (so californian -_-')

anyway, in 2 days, i will officially have finished a semester of schooling, and all i can say is, i don't know how berkeley kids do it. it is so flippin LONG. additionally, chinese people don't celebrate thanksgiving or christmas, so i had a total of... 3 days of break in these 18 weeks of school. UGH. way too long. i miss america.

things i miss about america right now:
-the air. ohh i miss the clean fresh air of california, with the blue skies (which surprisingly, frequently show their face here, just with a layer of ucky brown stuff)
-running outside. only reason i can't here is... see #1. i mean i still remember the 7-10th grade pe where we ran in the freezing cold at 7:30am so it's doable.
-american holidays. chinese people need more holidays -_-' i remember in high school where we had like a week break every 2 months; here, that just doesn't exist :(
-cheese. and milk. and nuts. ooo i miss nuts so much :( they are sooo expensive here, hence i've asked everyone who has gone back to the states to bring back lotsss of cashews and honey roasted peanuts and peanut butter for me :)

me at an indian buffet restaurant :) i miss mi indian friends!!! and indian people in general! there's only one indian here at the university so far who i've seen.

but really, when it comes down to it, I AM LOVING IT HERE. :) the abovementioned is definitely the minority of my experience here and it's weird, but i really can't put it to words why i love it here so much. here as in china, but i mean after this travelling experience around china, i only expect to love it even MORE. cause right now, my view of china is basically beijing. man, i can't even begin to describe all the
awesome things i'm learning here, from the language, to the culture, to seeing all the insane amazing wondrous things that God's doing here, to making new friends and trying new things and getting outside of my bubble. it's awesome and i totally realize why people recommend everyone in college to study abroad. only because it is TRULy awesome; you learn so much about yourself, about the things that you have believed your whole life, etc. etc.

really though, you're supposed to have that experience when you go to college. for whatever reason, probably because 40 people from my high school went to ucla, i didn't. i didnt break out, didn't branch out, didn't try many new things. not that i regret it, the past 2 years i wouldn't trade for any other. but being here in china, the only person here from ucla, something about that. not that i'm really reinventing myself like i had envisioned when i went to ucla, but just finding out more about myself.

what's really funny, is that everything i just wrote, i wrote in chinese for one of my classes :) woohoo.

so thoughts about this semester, besides the fact that God has blessed me BAJILLIONS and shown me more and more who i am and what it means to follow him everyday, he's also shown me what he's doing here in china and it BLOWS my mind... God's so in control it's rediculous :) anyway, my chinese has improved (it better!) but definitely not doing as well as i hoped in the making chinese friends department. i definitely love the ones i have though :) i lovee beida, i love beijing, i love china, i love chinese, i love the chinese people; i might stay longer than i had planned, how much longer, i won't be sure of yet until the end of may.

christmas and new years were definitely weird here, there is no "christmas season" although it's amazing how they publically play carols and other songs about Jesus being King of Kings all over China, whereas 9 years ago no one even knew what christmas was. and of course, i had class on christmas, which i skipped, not really because i wanted to but cause it just so happened that i slept through my alarm, like any other day. good thing my roommate was totally up for throwing a party with me :) woohoo another first :) and then cooking (SUCCESSFULLY!!) rice krispies, punch, smores, hot dogs, sphegetti (haha mel and sofa that reminded me of camping days :) ) . twas fun :)

new years was weird, not being with the fam and all the wvcac ppl at auntie louisa's, instead went to a praise night, quite an interesting way to bring in the new year. there were pastors praying in every language for the world, for china, for beijing, for the church. proud to say that i understood a total of... 2 1/2 languages. sad that i understood more of the mandarin one than the cantonese one... oyy...
my friend, christian, playing his songs at a bar, one of my "new experiences" here in china :) bars are not as scary as i thought they would be :)

as you can probably tell, my english hasn't been doing too well, sometimes i leave words out and don't realize it unless i reread things. oh well :) uhm so yah i guess that's the update. it's flippin cold here, but thanks to my down jacket, i've been surviving pretty well. everyone's starting to go crazy with chinese new year coming up, and i'm excited to see how china will celebrate it. i'm guessing it'll be christmas, new years, and thanksgiving combined together in the states so it'll definitely be worthwhile.

mm lessee... not very homesick, but then again, that usually hits around the second year from my experience :) i do reminisce often, usually when i'm sitting on my bed, away from chinese people and sounds, facebooking and seeing what other people are up to halfway around the world. but i've come to realize that no matter what, even if i was back at la or in san jose, things change and there will never be another 2006 or 2007 or now a 2008. all my memories are just those, memories. when my friend came to visit me in beijing, he said that things aren't the same at la as i remembered, life still goes on. and when i look at lynbrook seniors prepping for their proms and think back to my proms, that was the past. i think about walking over to the girls' apartment and hanging out there all night with no agenda, talking about boys, God, life, whatevers, that was also the past. i think about hanging out with brandon and talking about God's craziness, listening to benson's wise advice about life, talking to mom about everything and nothing, sitting on my daddy's lap and crying over something stupid, reading the san jose mercury, watching saturday morning cartoons, that was the past.

and yet they are all so close, all i have to do is close my eyes.