Sunday~

The crazy social schedule came to slamming halt as I rolled out bed this morning. Instead of spending the day shopping and running around like mad, I opted for an afternoon of cleaning (yes, occasionally, I will do my own cleaning), yoga, reading, grocery shopping, massages and prepping for my language exchange party.

Around 3.15 in the afternoon, I stopped what I was doing and sat perched on my bench starting out my window. I realized today that my chaotic social schedule was not so much to imitate or recapture my life in New York, but an attempt to fill the void made vacant by my displacement. Moving to China, as amazing and wonderful as it has been, has not been easy-I know I have mentioned this before-but I feel like talking about it again. The better my Chinese gets and the more accustom I am to my daily trials and tribulations, the less exotic this nation becomes. The initial thrill has worn off and now I'm left with the reality that I have changed my life. Not to say that I regret any part of my choice, but I had, until today attempted to distract myself from accepting the consequences of my actions. I used work, shopping, and yoga as a means to fill the time until Jeff gets here or I return. At first, I thought this was merely homesickness, a natural sadness in response my transcontinental move, but it was going beyond that-I was getting used to missing my former life. Now, I am actually embracing my situation and am making the vow to enjoy each day as it comes.

Now that I'm done yabbering about that, I thought I would mention that I'm toying with the following ideas while I'm here.

1) Fashion/etiquette training for the upper class Chinese women. The fashion is awful and people wouldn't know western manners if they slapped them in the face. My idea is to take my natural flare, gift for style and my rigid etiquette upbringing and introduce them to the ladies of Shenzhen. Ranajit thinks I've missed my calling and should begin to develop this idea. I'm working on it.

2) Writing a book about Shenzhen People-I'm not much of a novelist, but you meet some very interesting people here and I have some downtime to kill...

3) Hosting a speeddating event for all the foreign expats and fluent Chinese peeps-a must once Jeff gets out here.

Any thoughts?