Long Vacation: Day 1

I’ve decided the best way to go about blogging about this colossal vacation is to choose 5 pictures a day and just mention other details. It will be hard to show so little but it’s the only way to keep me sane and get it blogged before I go home when I will have no motivation to do it at all (at least in theory, I could surprise myself). And due to circumstances out of my control I have to learn a new teaching method and teach first grade using it for the next 2 weeks and it might just be the death of me. That’s just me complaining but it’ll be alright. It just means I have other responsibilities and 9 days of vacation are looming over my head (known across the ILP board as the infamous "Long Vacation", hope you don't mind me referring to it as such). I’m also gritting my teeth and using smaller photobucket pictures because it’s faster. Oh the things I have learned to put up with here, you have no idea. Anyway, blabbing, let’s get to it!

We had to teach that morning, so instead of worrying about teaching I kinda lost it and just started being over-enthusiastic about everything and wasted time letting them pose for pictures. I was on the brink of vacation, can you blame me?

I sure love these kids :) Sometimes they give me grief but they’re the best.

Then it was a mad hustle to catch the bus downtown to catch a bus to Guangzhou to the train station! (I ride a lot of buses here..sigh). I can’t even remember what the train station was like, other than a lot of running around like chickens with our heads cut off, hauling our luggage up long flights of stairs and just feeling perplexed and stressed about making the train.

Took a break for a photo in the station but do I look as frazzled here as I felt? I sure think so. Still though, it was my first time on a real passenger train so all stress aside, pictures must be taken!

We got into the train and da dad a da! Behold, the sleeper train! And what a glorious thing it was, 6 bunks in a cabin, this was tons cooler than the Hogwarts Express!

The climb is pretty perilous to the top bunk! We had fun exploring for the first three hours, but with a total of 21 hours on it we got pretty creative.

What did we do, you might ask? A momentary shot at entertainment that was one of the only ones documented:

Trying to perfect the one eye crossed, the other eye not thing. I was getting pretty close before the combination of a moving train and going cross-eyed started making me sick.
We had a Chinese woman on the bottom left bunk who we made friends with but once again the language barrier was a problem. We watched for the noodle cart, met a Chinese rock band, used train squatters (interesting..), watched funny Chinese reality shows and finally turned in for the night. The beds were pretty comfortable, but cool factor of sleeping on a train at all made it a lot better. Before it got dark we got some awesome country scenery shots like this. We knew that once we woke up it’d be tons different. Before Beijing we’d never traveled more than a couple of provinces away. Traveling almost the whole height of China now, we hoped it was ready for us!

How I've been keeping "busy"

Having so much spare time has been more paralyzing than I could have ever dreamed. It's kind of like how in May you can think of all these things you want for Christmas but two weeks before, when it really matters and people are asking for ideas persistently, you can't think of a single one. When I was incredibly busy with classes, reading, homework, etc. I had so many things I wished I had time to do. Now I wish I had written them down.

It's especially hard to keep busy when you are trying to save money (it would be effortless to find entertainment otherwise! Food, clothes, movies, ah! Just thinking about it entertains me! And makes me feel broke). Every day is a little bit different! Here are a couple of ways I've been keeping myself occupied:


This one has not been optional-- Isaac has made sure I play with him daily. I was exceptionally surprised the other day when I played a level for the first time...I was pretty sure I'd experienced all of them by now! I'm almost as good as Isaac with all the practice I get. Should I be proud of this?


I had an amazing sleepover with my roommates the other weekend. I love those girls :) To expound: at one point in the night, Stacey, Megan and I randomly came up with upwards of 10 ways to wear a Snuggie in the time that Kristin and Sarah went to get pizza from Brick Oven a few blocks away.

Headless Horse Guy, a little German girl, and a Jedi (just to give you a sample!)

Fantastic :) All of the sudden I realized a major source of my boredness at home: I was having amazing roommate withdrawals! I tend towards staying 3+ hours whenever I go back for a visit and just love soaking in all the wonder and fun of Apt. 201. I may not pay rent or own a bed there anymore but I am still a resident at heart :)


This picture combines two ways I've tried to occupy my time: figuring out my new camera and making bracelets!
The bracelets provided entertainment for about...2 days. My mom found me the thread and I was well on my way to anti-boredness! Right? It was short-lived. As soon as I had made the 2 types of bracelets I knew how to tie I realized I'd maxed out my bracelet making-knowledge...and youtube videos just weren't helpful enough to keep me trying.
And I actually started reading the manual to my camera. Some of the info was more "Well duh" than others of it, but it was still really helpful. I haven't learned everything there is to learn yet but it only held my "pleasure seeking/stay productive" attention for one solid afternoon.


And definitely a lot of this...
I had a piece of music I'd found before fall semester started that made it pretty sad to move to a pianoless apartment and not be able to practice. I was way pumped to move home and work on it! Although two weeks of living here and I've nearly mastered it...now what?? Play until it's memorized??? Not the funnest thing ever but that's probably what'll end up happening. And the hymns :) Oh how they bring me joy for so many reasons! It's nice to slide this hobby into my day whenever I need to do something fulfilling right away (there's a certain amount of time you can go without doing something amazing--anything more and you scramble madly for anything worthwhile! Have you noticed that?).


Annnnd I had an amazing video of Isaac and I jedi battling but it's too big to upload through Blogger. I've tried a couple other ways and it's just not happening. I'm devastated. Just know you are really missing out on some major action, homemade sound effects (mostly me going "swish, wishoo, wheeeow" imitating a lightsaber and Isaac narrating the action), my epic death and re-death as another character a minute later, a 4 year-old running around in his pajamas and a storyline that rivals Lucas' work itself.

Yep. I get to do that a couple times a week.

It was definitely on my To Do list to watch Mulan before going to China and I can check it off now! Amanda and I are already planning to use some of the lines from the movie at some point during our trip, whether it be pretending to be Huns on the Great Wall or asking, "Who spit in your bean curd?". We'll be all grown up and safe in China soon enough!


I've been exercising my creativity: I decorated all by my lonesome for Josh's birthday (everyone else went to bed...) and over-compensated by putting up more streamers than usual plus an awesome trail of streamers leading from Josh's bedroom, around the family room, and up to the kitchen where a birthday surprise awaited him in the cupboard...

(It was late, okay!)

Other sanity-saving activities I have tried: going to the library, working out, starting a scrapbook, cleaning, loading the dishwasher, doing my hair (novel, i know), picking up carpool, watching Idol, doing laundry, babysitting, playing freecell (which proved too easy...), going to dinner with friends who have begun to realize how long 4 months really is, walking home from church with Isaac, making my room messy, cleaning my room so I can mess it up again, checking the mail, checking the mail again, sending packages, thinking about packing, making lists of what I'll need in China, sleeping in, staying up, uploading pictures to Facebook, selling my books from last semester, watching Phineas and Ferb (re-runs included), eating those little tangerine Cuties things, listening to music, reading the Ensign, checking my email (with no professors to send me class announcements this one has actually proved pretty disappointing!), helping with the nursery at my stake's humanitarian service day, and planning a bridal shower. That's pretty much it! No really, that's January up to this point.

Things will start to pick up with the less time I have left, I'm sure of that, but ever since the kids went back to school after New Year's, life has definitely been interesting.

I leave in less than a month though! China is almost here!!! And then this can officially be my "China blog."

Won't that be nice :)