Xichang wasn't as remote as we thought!

We went to Xichang! What a wonderful time! We thought we were headed to a tiny little village with nothing there, but turns out it was so fun and charming and met so many nice people. It was awesome. Click -->here<-- to see it on the map!

Since it was the Labor Day holiday last week we all went to go hang together. I think I have mentioned in one of my previous posts how crazy travel during holidays are in China, but I would just like to reemphasize this via a brief anecdote: there were so many people in line that me and vicki missed our train! We got to the station about an hour yearly, like normal, but we just couldn't fight our way to the front of the line to get our tickets in time. We were so upset! There were literally lines like I have never seen at the train station, and those lines are ordinarily plenty long! You live and learn: next time we will make sure to be early on a holiday. We hopped the next train in the evening.

So we left around 7pm, and arrived in Xichang at about 3am. We got the "hard bed" so I could sleep most the way there.  Xichang is located in Sichuan province in southwestern China, in the Liangshan Yi Tribe Autonomous reigon. Liangshang means "cool mountain" in Chinese. As you walk around, you can see people in traditional dress, and doing traditional rituals. My friend +Shayn Stephens explained to us that there are many social problems in Liangshan: drug use and crime like robbery is unfortunately widespread. She told us to be careful not to step on needles when we were walking on an unpaved road. She said some of these problems come from the resentment of the Yi people towards the Han Chinese for their takeover, and that they feel like their disobedience is almost a form of payback for their hardships. I'm not sure what the initial situation was when they took over, but I can imagine that it wasn't pretty.

Anyways, most crime occurs after dark, so we just took care to make it back to the hotel in a timely manner. We ate Xichang style BBQ, went to the ancient city, bartered at the street market, and saw a traditional ritual performed by a shaman! We met Shayn's coworkers, celebrated Jacob's birthday with cake, played majiang, and made it back to our overnight train on time! Vicki, Shayn and I had girl talk until late into the night, and (tried) to help Jacob on his online jazz test. Overall, it was just fantastic.

Take a look at all the fun we had:

Good reasons for a bad habit

Midterms are funny to me, this time in the semester, because the difference between what I want and what the reality is is so large and noticeable that it spills over into absurdity and all I can do is just laugh. 

Come time for midterms, it's like halfway through the semester (obviously). This means that I've been like working my butt off for a good number of weeks already! To my mind, midterms is like, the time when I should be getting ready to take a long weekend or something like this. Of course this is never  the case according to the school calendar: it is the time when the real works starts, as if all that you had been doing before that was just like, for fun. The teachers are all like, "oh you thought that was bad??" And then they pull out the midterm assignment. 

So I just have to work with it. I have a really good method down, where I do exactly what I want when I want  over midterms period. For any sane and reasonable person, I probably wouldn't recommend this. But there are some good reasons why I have made this bad habit work for me. 

The first reason is that up till now if I have been legitimately working hard and doing homework, I usually have a pretty good understanding of the class material. I can just do one really big cram session before the test and work it out. My grades usually are pretty sturdy anyways, so if I do bad on a big test, it won't be totally devastating to my grade. 

And the second reason is that if I don't feel relaxed and happy and ready to get my stuff done, I will just stare at my computer screen for unreasonable amounts of time, or like watch movies online. I might as well admit that I am stressed and not ready to go to work, unwind, and then get to it when I am ready. I feel like doing "fun" things is time spent more wisely than just forcing myself to do something that I am mentally resisting. Then I usually end up spending less time and getting a better product. 

So anyways, midterms is upon us, and I am feeling pretty resistant against the giant stack of papers and presentations and reports that are coming up here... Going to probably do some more fate-tempting here in the next couple of days, so wish me luck! I'm gonna need it!

Travel Physical, pt. 2 or, Things Get Testy: One Quick Trip

I messed it up!! I thought I wasn't going home until Friday, but here it is on Tuesday, and I am sitting on the MegaBus heading towards Sacramento.

It all started yesterday when I was (still) working on getting my visa packet together. It dawned on me that it was due this coming Friday, only a few days from now.  So I was going through my things, seeing what else I had to do, and there it was: PHYSICAL EXAMINATION RECORD FOR FOREIGNER. Remember all of those forms I told you about in my last post, Travel Physical, pt. 1? The giant one that the doc refused to take? That is the one that is due in the visa packet. I about had a heart attack when I realized it. 

The good news though? By some stroke of luck, it just happened that the day I scheduled my health exam for was the same day that it is due in Washington D. C. Mia said it would *most likely* be okay if I just FedEx them over on the same day. 

So why am I going to Rocklin today, Tuesday? Well the forms include some lab tests, like blood work and an X-ray, and if I were to take those lab tests on Friday, I wouldn't be able to have the results ready to be recorded and FedExed. SO. Here I am on the way to Rocklin. Only to head back to SF tonight. 

Now that you are up to speed with all of that, let me just tell you that I am not feeling my best. Lab work comes with fasting, no eating for ten hours prior to the tests, which wouldn't be so bad. Except for... COFFEE. I don't do so well without any coffee. My head feels like there is a clamp on it, and my eyelids have need drooping since I got up this morning.  I got up pretty early so I'm a little low in sleep too. 

But that's enough whining for now, plenty of good things await in Rocklin. My dad is going to pick me up from the bus station where it will be nice and warm, so I am looking forward to that. My mom has the day off too so we will also be able to hang out. And of course Wolfie my mom's dog will be there to play with. So it's not all bad. 

Should be making it home in just a few hours!! Hopefully this trip goes smoothly. What if I go into the office and my doctor goes "I ain't doing it!!" Lol. We shall see.