Okay, first off whoever reads these please send me an e-mail at marco.brundelre@gmail.com. For whatever reason I am unable to access my mises.com account, which just happens to be the one e-mail account that I actually needed. Actually this pretty much sets the tone for my post:
accessing e-mail: FAIL
So it's been three long, hard days in Beijing. I'll do a quick recap of the last 60 hours or so -
Day 1 -
tried to find a hotel: EPIC FAIL (this one is too embarrassing to even talk about)
Day 2 -
tried to order lunch: FAIL (I just wanted a simple lunch, I ended up with a mountain of food that included one half of a roasted duck, and a whole plate of spicy chicken peanut cucumber...stuff)
tried to make an international phone call: EPIC FAIL (tried to call home, instead I called a rather unpleasant woman in Florida...twice)
tried to do anything at all: EPIC FAIL (apparently I only had enough energy to find a new place to sleep, because I passed out soon after I got there, around 2:00 PM)
Day 3 - This day was actually going much better until about halfway through my trip to the Forbidden City -
tried to get through the forbidden city without getting swindled: EPIC FAIL (you know those idiots at popular tourist destinations who will fall for anything? you know, the really, really stupid ones? yeah, that was me)
Okay, so this trip so far has been less of a vacation, and more of a very painful learning experience. Being in a foreign country alone, when you can only engage in the most basic communication, has a tendency to expose your worst personality traits, and then multiply them by about ten. The first night I spent in Beijing may have been the most most terrifying of my life. I was completely alone, and completely helpless. Fortunately, I got through the first day, and then the second day, which still sucked, only it sucked a little bit less. And the third day was... not so bad. I'm going to trust that this trend will continue, and that I will be failing and generally sucking at life at little bit less each day as my travels continue. I'll leave this post with just the negatives, so that I can save all the positives for my next post, which I will write before I leave for Xi'an. Hopefully I won't fail again before I write that one.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Goodbye LA, Hello + Goodbye San Francisco
Tomorrow I leave for China. I will be away for close to a year, and I still don't know exactly what I will be doing past the end of September. This will be a trip of many firsts, among them:
first time traveling alone, ever
first time to China, ever
first time away from family for more than two months, ever
first time I won't be able to just go home if things go terribly, terribly wrong, ever
As excited as I am right now, and as confident as I am that China is where I need to be (and in some ways, where I already am), I'm still a little nervous.
Currently I'm in San Francisco with my cousin Galen. I spent about 10 days visiting my sister in LA prior to this, and so far I am enjoying my travels immensely. Let's just take a quick look at some of things I did over this past week that I won't have the opportunity to do again for some time:
spend time with family - I stayed with my sister in Westwood, our brother came to visit for a weekend, and we even spent a day eating Nonno sandwiches (created by our grandfather of course) with all of our cousins from the west coast.
see close friends - this has recently become very easy for me to do in LA
go salsa dancing - actually I might have the opportunity to enjoy this after all, apparently salsa is getting quite popular in some Chinese cities
enjoy a decent slice of pizza - D'Amore's in LA is fantastic
speak English - God willing, I will have very little opportunity to use my native language while I am over there
Of course there is much more to be missed, but in reality all else pales in comparison to spending time with close family and good friends. In fact, if all you losers would have just come to China with me, I might have not had any problems at all.
Anyway, enough of this slightly self-indulgent post. Bowls of ramen in San Francisco's Japantown call to me, and I will try to post again while I am in Beijing. Also. if any who read this feel so inspired, you can always send me an e-mail at marco.brundelre@mises.com. I should be able to access the internet every week or every other week, so I can be in touch that way as well.
first time traveling alone, ever
first time to China, ever
first time away from family for more than two months, ever
first time I won't be able to just go home if things go terribly, terribly wrong, ever
As excited as I am right now, and as confident as I am that China is where I need to be (and in some ways, where I already am), I'm still a little nervous.
Currently I'm in San Francisco with my cousin Galen. I spent about 10 days visiting my sister in LA prior to this, and so far I am enjoying my travels immensely. Let's just take a quick look at some of things I did over this past week that I won't have the opportunity to do again for some time:
spend time with family - I stayed with my sister in Westwood, our brother came to visit for a weekend, and we even spent a day eating Nonno sandwiches (created by our grandfather of course) with all of our cousins from the west coast.
see close friends - this has recently become very easy for me to do in LA
go salsa dancing - actually I might have the opportunity to enjoy this after all, apparently salsa is getting quite popular in some Chinese cities
enjoy a decent slice of pizza - D'Amore's in LA is fantastic
speak English - God willing, I will have very little opportunity to use my native language while I am over there
Of course there is much more to be missed, but in reality all else pales in comparison to spending time with close family and good friends. In fact, if all you losers would have just come to China with me, I might have not had any problems at all.
Anyway, enough of this slightly self-indulgent post. Bowls of ramen in San Francisco's Japantown call to me, and I will try to post again while I am in Beijing. Also. if any who read this feel so inspired, you can always send me an e-mail at marco.brundelre@mises.com. I should be able to access the internet every week or every other week, so I can be in touch that way as well.
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