1027 7-8-10
I promise I fully intended to write an a post yesterday, but I was so tired I took a nap around 5 and was suddenly woken up at 7 to be told that we were throwing one final party before various members of our group left. So I basically had 30min to get ready and by the time I got back it was around 2:30 and I just didn't feel like staying up any longer.
Luckily not too much has happened in the last few days. I have weighed myself and found out I've lost about 15 pounds since I've been here. Sadly I think a lot of that is muscle so I'll need to really step up my work out schedule when I get back to Hendrix.
I did meet someone interesting last night. We had gone to Elkien's (he's the Swedish guy) new apartment and (this gets complicated) had let a guy from Barcelona sleep on his couch (it's literally called couch surfing and there are huge communities that do this) and now this Barcelona guy was staying elsewhere in Shanghai with a Philippine woman named Stacy (I actually don't remember her name, but I think it started with an S and she needed a name for this blog).
ANYWAYS I talked with Stacy for quite a long time. She just quite her advertising job and has decided to take a long vacation (like 6 months), to go back home to the Philippians and then will travel over to Hawaii for the rest of her vacation. If I remember correctly she's worked in the Philippians, Singapore, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. But now she wants to do a career shift simply because she came to realize she no longer had a life and just needed a change of pace. She has three siblings, two living in Singapore, and a brother living in Austin.
We talked a lot about her experiences. I asked her if she was ever lonely with all the traveling she does, short answer is yes. But she says it just means you have to constantly be out there meeting people. She says the biggest problem with making friends in places like Shanghai and Singapore is the large expat populations. Basically this means that you spend effort getting to know someone, only have them to up and move after a year or two. Sometimes she could stay in contact with them but mostly they would just fade away. However she did briefly join this yoga group in Shanghai, and even though the group has long dispersed they still meet every 6 months in various cities around the world, and supposedly their next trip is to Egypt.
Other than that the only major piece of news has been the gradual departure of all of the international students. Clement has left for Mongolia, Sandra and a few others have also gone traveling, and all of them will leave Shanghai shortly after they get back. Simon has just left tonight to go back to Germany. Almost everyone will be gone by the end of next week.
Reflecting on American politics I came across this article and it really resonated with me:
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