I AM A DORK

I realize that I could just go in and erase the blog that I posted a few minutes ago, but then I would deprive my friends of getting to laugh at me and I do want everyone to know that I am a dork. I have a very small apartment and did not think that the bag of winter long johns and pajamas could hide, but they did, and I found them!!! Yeah! So now I have Paul Frank elephants and Fa la la la la and everything is good.

City Reflections

I went to the park the other night with a friend because she wanted to take pictures of the buildings. It turned out to be really cool because we were able to photo the reflections in the the lake as well. There is also a bridge that has a water fall coming down off of it. The lights on the bridge change colors making the water change colors also. It looked pretty.

Pajamas

I have a thing for pajamas. With some girls it is shoes, purses, belts... but for me it is pajamas. I love wearing cute pajamas! My summer pjs don't mean very much to me, but my winter ones do. It all started back when I was 7 or something and my mom unknowingly started a tradition of giving us new pajamas every Christmas Eve. This has been a true annual tradition. Even with me on the other side of the world, I have still gotten pjs for Christmas. And they are always so cute! So why am I writing about this right now? Because I discovered a very sad thing today. I was getting my winter stuff out of storage in preparation for the change of seasons and I discovered that the bag with all of my long underwear (very important here) was missing. Somehow it did not make the move from my old apartment to my new one. This discovery did not bother me too much until I realized that my winter pjs were in that bag too. Upon this realization I began to cry. It is strange the things that can make one cry. I miss my blue Paul Frank elephant pajamas from my last Christmas in the states and my green Falalala pajamas from last year. What will I ever do without my pajamas (melodromatic sigh). I realize that life will go on and I will eventually (years down the road) get over the fact that some Asian person somewhere is wearing my pajamas to the market (yes, they like to wear their pajamas in public), but for right now I am going to cry a little. My pajamas are like a security blanket to me. A little bit of home, a little bit of tradition that I was able to bring with me.
Would everyone please have moment of silence for my pajamas. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Thank you!

Pictures of my city

We finally had a very low polution day in the big N so I was able to take some pretty good photos of my city. These are taken from the 19th floor courtyard of my apartment building. I live on the 20th floor, so this pretty much my view also (I just don't have panarama).

Nightmare

This is a little bit of a strange topic for me to be posting for all to see, but it was just so oddly my life that I had to share. I only know of one person who can identify with this nightmare, but if anyone other than Kim has experienced this, I would be love to hear.
So in village houses sometimes there is a place to use the restroom, but a lot of times you have to go outside to do this, and sometimes you have to walk a ways and then go in someone else's home. Because of the amount of water I intake, I usually have to get up and go to the restroom in the middle of the night. Knowing that this is a very difficult thing to do when sleeping in a village, I try not to drink any water after a certain hour so that I can make it through the night without having to get up and go to the restroom. For some reason however, I seldom accomplish this. So imagine, it is five o'clock in the morning. You have been holding it since 3 (i know because my watch has a light), and you are trapped inside a house that is bolted on the inside and you are not sure how to open the door. Plus, even if you did open the door you would have to walk about 50 yards to another house that is most likely locked.
So this is the situation I was in a few nights ago (and I have been in this situation before) when I had my nightmare. I was in a village house and there was no where to go to the restroom but I really had to go (of course I really did have to go, so that part of the dream was real). The villager told me to go outside and just find a spot. When I went outside I was suddenly outside my parents' house (well kind of) in America and I was looking for a place to squat down. But no matter where I went, there was always someone who could see me. I finally just squatted down and then a bunch of people (mostly from my youth group) came out into the yard and were sitting around. This dream had suddenly turned into the going to school with no clothes on dream. I quickly woke up (it was 5:30 and the house was sound asleep) and decided that I must find a way because the real nightmare was reality and not my dream. So I got up as quietly as I could, went over to the door, and took over a minute trying to figure out in the dark how to open the stupid thing. I then found a place to end my agony. After ending my pain I looked up and saw a sky full of stars. Oh so beautiful. Then I went back in the house, rebolted the door, and went to bed.
I hope you got a good laugh out of this story. And if you have any cures for not having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (I took my last drink at 5pm), please let me know.
Another side not. The local polite word for the restroom is "fangbian"- which means "convenient", but in the countryside it is not so fangbian.