Vacation Time

February 1, 2017
10:45 pm
Beijing, China

A week long vacation is a lot harder over here. I mean, I did basically what I would do on school breaks back home. I hung out with a couple friends for a few days, but spent most of my time sleeping late and watching TV in my apartment. I know, I lead an extremely exciting life. But it’s harder simply because I’m alone. I do have friends and they are great to hang out with, but it’s different. Normally when I was on break at home, I would go out with friends a couple days and spend most of my time sleeping late and watching TV at home. The difference is, at home would include my parents and my sisters. I’d also probably spend some time with my grandparents and the Myers/Newberry clan. So it’s a bit different spending every day by myself with no work. That said, I haven’t missed home much until today. I go back tomorrow, though, so everything will be fine.

So the last time I talked to you guys was on my birthday. That night, I stayed up until after 3 am FaceTiming my family. They were all on a ski trip to New York and I got to talk to all but Jai (thanks very much, young lady). It was nice to catch up and hear what was going on in their lives. My mom and I got to talk for a while, and I had the pleasure of sitting and listening to some conversations with other friends, as if I was actually there. It was a nice way to end my birthday. After I hung up, I had hoped to fall asleep right away. Unfortunately, I was up for another two and a half hours. By the time I finally drifted off, the buses had started arriving at the stop by my building. I had to laugh a little at that. Due to my extremely late (early?) bedtime, you can imagine that the next day was not very productive. I spent most of it in my apartment.

On Monday, Taylor and I headed out to go shopping at the international market, Jenny Lou’s. Unfortunately, we (I) forgot that some places stay closed for a while after New Year’s, so we arrived at a closed store. We decided to head back to Yizhuang, making a couple quick stops along the way. Once we arrived back at our subway station, we headed over to my mall (where my center in located) to grab some coffee and then do some grocery shopping. At Costa Coffee, I ordered a large mocha. This is a fairly normal order for me, but I often get it to go and sip it for the next hour or so. This time, we decided to sit in and the cup they gave me was HUGE. It looks like so much more coffee when it’s delivered in a soup bowl rather than a tall to-go cup. After we finished, we ran down to the supermarket to grab some necessary items. While I did grab a few food items, I was most excited to finally purchase a hairdryer (I haven’t used one since we left the hotel in November). I also purchased more laundry detergent. Fun fact: laundry detergent here is SUPER cheap. I bought 4 liters (~1 gallon) for 40元 (~$5.50). For reference, 3 liters costs over $10 from Amazon. It’s kind of sad that that’s what I consider cool now. Oh gosh, I really am becoming an adult, aren’t I?

Also, I swear I’m falling apart, guys :’-) While on my excursion with Taylor on Monday, I managed to pull a muscle or something in my right foot. Since then, it’s been a bit painful to walk around too much. While I had planned to go back up to Bookworm or do something similar in my last two days off, I ended up spending my days in bed with my foot propped up and icing 20 minutes an hour (or something like that). The farthest I’ve made it from my apartment in the past 48 hours is to the convenience store downstairs for something to drink and some junk food.  While I do wish that I had been a bit more productive with my days off, I’m actually happy with how well this vacation has gone (except for the foot XD).

Time for bed and then work tomorrow.

Talk to you soon,
Kristen

P.S. Wanna see the weird flavors of chips they have here.