i know, i know.

ok, so i haven't posted in a while. i know. things have just sort of been puttering on as usual here. and i started my new job and i feel like all i do now is sleep and work. which is sad, as even if you include my travel time, i'm now working like, 16 hours a week. but it splits my day up weird so i feel like i'm always napping. anyway, nothing too new there. my new job is pretty fun though. teaching adults is SO MUCH BETTER than teaching junior high kids. seriously, their english is total crap, but they TRY and when i ask them questions they ANSWER. they even make JOKES! it's amazing. oh, and then they buy me lunch. perfect. although, i've found that eating a meal with chinese people is just always, always awkward. they keep taking me to these weird places where it's like a mix of family style and individual dishes, and i never quite know what i'm supposed to be eating. the first time they took me out they got us all forks. they didn't say this was because they thought after 8 months in china i still couldn't use chopsticks, but everyone else in the restaurant had chopsticks and no one at my table was especially adept at fork usage. although, to be fair, i found it difficult to eat my dish with a fork as well (no, i haven't forgotten how to use a fork, however, the way they serve food here makes chopsticks much less awkward than a fork, esp as there is no knife). darren is the main boss, and i think ben is also my boss, and they speak almost no english. then there's lynn, and i don't really know what she does, but i think she's married to darren. she is taking expensive english classes and speaks the worst of everyone. then there's casper, and he's basically fluent, but still says weird chinglish shit to me all the time. and likes to disagree with me when i explain to him how to say something, usually using a movie like "bring it on" as evidence. in fact, i had a 20 minute conversation with him about bring it on. i tried to explain to him that only bring it on was popular in the states, and not the sequels. to be frank, he thinks bring it on 2, 3 and 4 are also quite excellent films. then the other day darren said "humped into me" instead of "bumped into me" while reading a dialogue. it was funny. anyways, i'm still looking forward to it being less teaching and more... whatever. i spent a couple of days last week polishing english, however, it was way harder than i anticipated. for example, "more jarless in capacity" is supposed to be "increased stability". and that was one of the sentences i had to fix that made enough sense to remember. but i get to go to egypt. i just keep telling myself that. egypt. 

annnyways, on the non-job front... last weekend jess, linda, audrey, megan and i went to hong kong and macau. hong kong is a mecca of delicious and comfort, but gd it's expensive. as is macau, or at least the venetian in macau is, as that's the only place we bothered to go in our 8 hours there. but dear god, that place, so wonderful. it's like everything you could ever need in one place. oh, and a casino. but seriously, an array of delicious food, bars, shopping, and a 5 star hotel. it would be almost a quarter of my (combined) salary to spend the night there, but dear god, so, so tempting. perhaps it's time to start loitering outside the bentley dealership.....

then this weekend we all went out to longgang. such a painful bus journey. but actually pretty nice once you get out there. anyways, saturday we had a cookout in the park and it was so, so fun. it was maybe the most gorgeous day we've had all year, and the park was really big and nice. all of the usual gang was there, and then a bunch of people we don't see as much. i bought a margarita that came in a souvenir glass complete with a neck strap when we were in hk, so i used that to drink my jack and coke. hands free! i got so drunk, the highlight of my night was rolling down a hill. then we went back to frank's apartment and my drunk ass joined in a poker game. the boys made it a for money game instead of a for drinks game like i suggested, so when i got first place i got 150 kuai! the whole day was so much fun and really reminded me of summer.

speaking of summer, still no news about my summer plans. but i'm asking casper soon. i keep forgetting, but i don't want to get totally fucked. i was talking to some people on saturday though, and they said you do have to leave the country, but you might not have to be in your home country. so i might just get shipped to hong kong for a couple weeks, which would at least be a (distant) second. missssssssss y'allllllllllllllll