WARNING: I plead not guilty (for the style and appearance of this entry) by reason of (hopefully temporary) insanity.

sort of freaked out last night for various reasons and didn't write because i didn't have internet access in my apartment and aaaaaaaaaaahhh, they are currently playing really horrible screaching noises over the p.a. system. anyway, i've been uber jittery this whole week and last night was just sort of the worst. i was up well past midnight reading things in sort of a last minute attempt to cram everything ib myp means into my head. needless to say, it was a failed venture and then when i did try to sleep i found it near impossible. i actually had to do yogic breathing to fall asleep.

going back about a week now (time is going by sooooo quickly!!), i didn't do a whole lot on the weekend aside from going to ikea on saturday which was not really fun to say the least. i went with a list of things i thought it would be easy to get there and managed, more or less. i bought dishes and sheets for our king sized bed :-D a cookie tray, and other random things. i had about forty-five minutes to shop and we got there right when the store opened, so i just sort of shot through the store and then didn't really have time to get distracted by things, which was good. what i did buy actually came out to a little over 1000 kuai!! the most expensive items, though, were ones like the italian coffee maker (like the old one except with spare rubber thingies in case dan forgets to add the water again ;-) and the dishes and sheets.

in the afternoon i had planned on going climbing, but i was exhausted and it looked like it was going to rain. i ended up buying some food and going home to eat and sleep. sunday i spent most of the morning doing laundry and discovered the hard way that the exit hose was out of the drain... oops. water was all over the bathroom! and it wasn't clean either, it had all kinds of lint and crap in it. it was fun cleaning that up. the washer and dryer are actually really good though, i'm super happy with them.

sunday evening i went to changping to meet up with john and jennifer. taking the subway to jishuitan, it took me almost exactly an hour and a half to get to changping. i got there around 6 and both of them came to pick me up. it was really hard without dan there. i found i could communicate some stuff, but some of it was just impossible. they were asking about his brother's wedding and practically all i could say was that it was in a big hotel and it was really fun. i tried to explain that it was jewish, but they didn't get it and i didn't know the right words. all of this while i am riding a bicycle was a bit much.

when we got where we were going to eat, john handed me the menu to pick something. i really wished i could have spoken fluently at that point to tell him that we usually just point and see what we get, but that was too hard to say, and i don't really know if he would appreciate how amusing it is to us so i just told him i could only read two things. anyway, we had chuar and some bean things that were really good and we ate some jaozi on the side. we couldn't put them on the plates because they were pork jaozi and we were in a muslim restaurant. that was probably a total faux pas i think, to eat it there in the first place. anyway, it was good food and i'm not sure what we talked about but it wasn't painfully silent. now that i think about it, they may have just talked to each other most of the time, but i was fine with that. we drank a lot of beer, of course, and by the end of the meal i was pretty tipsy.

we went shopping for a bit (by that i mean we went to buy anti mosquito stuff and look at dvds for a few minutes) and then we went back to their place. since their new place is still just one room they set up a curtain between jennifer and i and john. i ought to mention that before i came, i had no idea i'd be spending the night and it was really bizzare to me that john had to sleep on the little bed and jennifer and i on the big bed. it was like some sort of false modesty or perhaps something cultural that i, having had many a sleepover in college and beyond, did not understand.

i brushed my teeth. they have running water, but no place for the dirty stuff to go, so that was interesting. they have the sink set up to run into a large bucket which they periodically empty. of course, this means that they also have no toilet, so we had garbage cans with lids to go in should the need arise in the middle of the night. i managed to hold out, but woke up every single time they had to go because peeing in a plastic bucket is LOUD when there are no other sounds. and jennifer pees a lot during the night!

5 a.m. rolled around and it was time to get on my way. by that point i regretted staying overnight and regretted having to work. but i made it through the day on monday the same way i've made it through most of the week, with horrible jitters and a lot of nervous energy. i'm sort of wondering what's going to happen when i'm not nervous anymore. i might just stop functioning all together and have a breakdown!

anyway, since monday it's just been one meeting after another and frankly, i'm really sick of meetings. i still don't have my room decorated and new kids and parents come to see us on saturday morning. yay. seriously, i will be enormously grateful for the first weekend i have when i don't feel like there are a million things i have to do, none of which are really to benefit me. this whole teacher thing... maybe i meant i wanted to be a professor. we'll see once the kids get here. i do have one kid that i'm already excited to see because he's from madrid. he's apparently sort of a pain in the butt, but i'll deal. anyway, i need to go get food and such so i am off for now.