In the Jing

I've arrived! It's colder than an Eskimo's ass over here - it snowed last night! I landed around 10PM on Friday night and realized the folllowing: (a) I forgot to pack sneakers and a winter coat, (b) ballerina shoes and a cardigan aren't enough to ward off the freezing ass cold, finally leading me to (c) i'm a shitty packer. So much for my attempt at being an organized and prepared traveller. Anywho, the flights were as good as 14 hours in a teeny tiny seat next to a dude hogging the arm rest can be, and minus that fact that I didn't have any warm clothes for the taxi ride home and thought I might freeze to death in the unheated taxi.



I got to my folks palce around 11PM and had some soup and caught up with my Mom for a little bit. She seems...OK. My Dad wasn't home yet because he had a performance that night and was still at a cast party. Around midnite, I headed out to meet Anna, Steph, and David for drinks. I was delusionally tired (I can't sleep on planes), but I had to go because Steph was moving back to Sweden the next day. Anna and Steph were so drunk already when I saw them, so I was greeted by very emotional boozy affectionate kisses and hugs. We had a drink at Richshaw, then headed to a club thingy that we decided not to go into because we couldn't rationalize paying 120RMB (divide by 6.84 for American dollar value) for crappy electronica-type music. So, we went to a crappy (the good kind) cheap pub called Smugglers to meet up with my old friend Tequila and I got home around 4AM.



Yesterday my Poppa and I hung out. We talked over coffee in the morning, watched a movie, and he went with me to buy DVD's and a pair of sneakers before heading out to his performance. My Mom was mostly holed up in her room. As my Dad put it, "she needs a lot of space letely."



Last night I went to a Christmas party with Anna and David followed by bars and shots and yaddah yaddah blah. We kept seeing small clusters of foreigners dressed like Santa because they had come from a Bad Santa-themed gathering at Tianeman Square - awesome. Coming back to my Beijing life is a pretty smooth transition. There's the inital, "I missed you so much, what's been happening in your life recently?" conversation, then things go back the way they were when I lived here. It's pretty comforting actually. I get to just hang out and let loose, not worry about relationships, jobs, room mates, plans, etc. It can't last forever, but it's a nice little reprieve.



Today is hangover/reading and movies day. It's -12 degrees outside, so there's no way i'm going out there!



To be continued.