Keep going and going and going...

I feel like the energizer bunny right now, and I don't think the feeling will go away until I get on that flight home. This past weekend was anything but relaxing. In spite of getting enough sleep, I still feel exhausted.

Friday, I spent all afternoon baking. I made two pretty awesome pies, but didn't take pictures of them, and two batches of banana bread. I went into Beijing on Saturday morning, carting way more stuff than seemed humanly possible. I'm not sure quite how the morning hours got away from me, but they did, and soon enough it was one o'clock. Dan and I met at the supermarket to do our shopping for the party and had a hard time figuring out how much stuff to buy. In the end, we only wasted a little bit of food, so we did O.K. A lot of people showed up, which was cool, and in general it was a good time. I think I prefer smaller gatherings, but every once in a while it's O.K. to have a big one. It was exhausting though, and I pretty much crashed after we cleaned up. The next morning, I had to wake up at 7:30 to do the tutoring I had put off. I tutored all morning and then went to the rock wall. Before I got to the wall, though, I made the mistake of eating hot pot (sticks of various things like meat, tofu or vegetables in boiling broth) at a street stand. The food was good but way too spicy! I had heartburn for the rest of the day. I still climbed a little bit, but I spent most of my time laying on the mats at the bottom.

Later, bad weather gave me an excuse to go inside and just hang out for a bit. I love the people there. They're fun and so nice to us. After the storm subsided, they took us to a restaurant nearby, but all I managed to eat was some rice. Stomach still on fire, Dan and I headed home. I passed out at eight o'clock and it felt so good! Today we had to get up at the crack of dawn to get to work, but it was totally worth the extra night in our apartment.