Getting Back in the Saddle

Yep, as the title says, I'm getting adjusted to things. I've been enjoying some pleasant mornings out in the garden with my mother, and a lot of very active dreams which all seem to have featured something linked with the China trip. I've had dreams about hotel room mix-ups, refusing to pack my luggage, and then one last night where I had some very tiny frogs as pets. I wake up almost every morning with the excitement of these dreams running through my head, and then when I tell my mom about them later they sound so dull. It's so hard to convey the full sparkle of the dreams when I tell them...and I find myself forgetting why a certain event was so, so important that it made my heart race.

I've been reading, playing a little piano, cleaning the house, letting my rabbit out and cutting his knots of fur off, taking walks, trying to wake myself up in the afternoons when I get drowsy, studying Chinese, and I just started my online Environmental Science class a few days ago. So my good summer is continuing. There have been a couple of ups and downs...

Last week, I came home after the Antioch Writers' Workshop and ate lunch. I went through feelings while sitting in the workshop of feeling a little naive/weak/away from things...I was pretty much alone the whole time because the girls in the Young Writers' Workshop who also spent the afternoons together workshopping each other's work never really talked to me; and I suppose, after a little while, I just wasn't very interested in talking to them after hearing what they talked about. It's just sitting in a lecture hall, listening to someone talk about writing and trying to get inspired in a room full of inspired people, so you don't really have to interact with anyone. Anyway, my parents both left soon after I got home, and then I had a bit of a collapse because I realized I just really wasn't up for being alone anymore. I didn't know what  to do! And I was tired, and frustrated. (That was when I plugged my computer in and tripped on the cord, which I found out later cracked the screen...thank goodness I didn't see that it had cracked then or I would have been a mess.) But I only went through a few minutes of that, because then...

I started to think about Friends, and how it can cheer me up. Then my thoughts drifted to one of the characters, Monica, who loves to clean. She cleans for fun, anytime of day. And I, being in a bit of a crazy mood, decided, Well, let's try to be like Monica and clean! And ya know what? It worked. I scrubbed at the kitchen floor, and then the cupboards, and the handles on the cupboards, and the stove and the dishwasher...and it felt so good. I was completely wrapped up in it, and I felt so organized, so in control, like everything was in its place.

I'm very proud of myself for taking Monica's example in that situation. I've discovered a new therapy for myself! (I thought I was crazy - I've barely ever liked cleaning before. Now I've just got to get myself to enjoy the organization type of cleaning...like cleaning my room..ohhhh goodness...)

I've read (counting on fingers...) six novels this summer, I think, a couple of those for the second time. And almost all of them have had to do with war. I reread The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, both in the Hunger Games series, and those are about a future United States where the people are starting a revolution against the demanding government. Then I read A Thousand Splendid Suns, which is set in Afghanistan around the war, Catch-22, and Peace, by Richard Bausch. The last two are my summer reading books, the latter assigned by the school and the former assigned by...moi! Ironically, I finished Catch-22 on Tuesday, thought, I really liked that book and I don't want it to end (I actually read the first page or so over again because I just wasn't ready for it to be over) but I'm really done with all this war. And then. Tada - Peace, a book that follows three men who hike up a freezing mountain in Italy during WWII. More war (the same war as Catch-22, actually). But they were good books.... Now I'm ready for some plain old young adult fiction though, so I've started a book called Delirium, about a (probably future) U.S. where love is considered a disease and people are "cured" of it. Hm...scary thought. (Kind of goes against the entire theme of Harry Potter....speaking of which...)

Have I mentioned that the last Harry Potter movie was ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDINGLY AMAZING AND INCREDIBLE AND UNSPEAKABLY BRILLIANT!?!?! I was soo satisfied and happy and warm inside when it finished (along with sad because there won't be any more) and I wanted to watch it again RIGHT AWAY! I think I shall watch it again, in fact..in the theater. Oh, it was just sooo gooooddd...... (And so was $5 popcorn.)

So...there's more I could tell...but I've said enough. I'm looking forward to my dreams tonight...and hoping it won't be as hot tomorrow morning, because I'll be doing my first community service hours at a CSA farm owned by the parents of a fellow car-pooler and friend of mine!

Life is good....

An Update

This will be quick, since I'm using my mom's computer (due to reasons you'll find out in a moment) and she wants it back. I'll just say this:

A few days ago, when I plugged my computer in to charge, I set  it on top of a desk. But it wasn't pushed very far back on the desk, and when my foot got caught in the wire of the computer, it was easily pulled down and made the computer fall. The next morning when I opened up my computer to use it at the Antioch Writers' Workshop so I could take notes, I saw a green-ish screen with an internal crack through the middle, along with a ton of white dust on the screen. I'm not sure where the dust came from, but immediately I thought back to the day before when it had fallen, and it felt almost as if the wind had been knocked out of me like it is sometimes when I jump out off of a swing. When I turned it on I was met with a blinking white screen that scared me a considerable amount. The thing I was most worried about was losing all of the writing and the pictures I had saved on it. But just a few minutes ago, it was picked up by a computer mechanic, and I think everything is going to be all right!

I've been looking forward to tonight for this whole (slightly hard) week. Because... Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is coming out! The last in the whole series...it'll be over now...and I can't believe it! And beforehand, my parents and I are going to China Cottage...finally, I get American Chinese food! After about four days in China, I was already craving sesame tofu. 

I'll post again soon about the Writers' Workshop, which I've been attending the morning of which this past week. And I'll post my journals from China. I just wanted to post an update, since I haven't blogged in so long.

Back, Loving Democracy and Wanting to Eat

I got back two days ago. China seems like a dream now, a dream that brought the dream of my real life into contrast with the stark reality of the world. Almost three weeks of not being sure what I'd eat for the next meal, if I'd be able to use a sanitary toilet, and what the heck I'd be doing sure changes your ideas about time and being comfortable. Walking by dried up old women who carry trash bags full of empty water bottles and seeing people walking the city streets and waiting at bus stops with the saddest neutral expressions on their faces you've ever seen sure changes your perspective. Being fawned over by every other group of Asian people that you see, getting your picture taken, and sometimes even signing your name for a group of eager Chinese school girls, all just because you have light skin, light hair, and blue eyes, sure makes you realize how diverse your own country is. Seeing people constantly working so hard, putting up with heat and smell and uncleanliness, hundreds of school kids wearing the same clothes with their fixed the same way, walking around in groups , blending in with each other, and hearing them talk about how they can't get on Facebook or YouTube because the government doesn't allow it, sure makes you appreciate your own democratic country, where people have a choice about their job and value individuality instead of feeling obligated to be the same as the group. Driving through a forest of skyscrapers, apartment buildings that touch the sky, and standing at the top of the Oriental Pearl Tower to see that the city stretches beyond the skyline, sure makes you realize how small your own cities are. Walking on bricks and stones that are hundreds and hundreds of years old sure lets you know how young your own country is. And seeing women washing their laundry in the river, houses with their windows and doors open to let in a breeze which they depend upon for coolness, a little girl sitting on the street next to an old blind ma who plays a barely audible instrument counting bills, sure makes you believe that the streets in American really are paved with gold.

I don't know much at the moment, other than the fact that I woke up this morning at 4:00 and didn't go back to sleep, and that I've been craving a Chinese breakfast for several hours now. I must be insane. And also somewhat in love with China. So I'd love to write, but all I can really feel right now is the urge to stuff myself with food, familiar food - or food that has become familiar to me in the last few weeks.