Freedom!

So HBA ended last Friday and since then I've been living in a hostel (actually, two different ones). I'm taking a train to Shanghai on Thursday morning, where I'll be for a week (in a $50 a night hotel - sheesh).

I'm not even sure what to write about right now. My last week of HBA was very sad. I'm definitely going to miss my teachers and classmates. On the last day of our program, we had a nice banquet, during which the teachers were only allowed to speak English to give them an idea of what the students have been going through this summer. Most of them were too shy to actually keep this language pledge, but most of them speak English very well so they had nothing to be embarrassed about. That night, we all went out for kareoke, and then to a cafe where we all chatted until 3 in the morning. I definitely plan to visit Beiyu's campus next semester and visit them.

The next day, I moved into a hostel. It was very stressful because I have these two enormous heavy suitcases with me. It was also my first time in a hostel. I shared a room with five other guys, and the bathrooms had no toilet paper or soap or towels and I did not like it. The next day, I had to move into a different hostel because at the time that I decided to extend my stay in Beijing, it was too late to extend my stay in the first hostel. Luckily, this one is a lot better. It's cleaner, the staff is friendlier and more helpful, it's in a better location, and I'm only sharing a room with three people now. Everyone at this hostel is one of those free-spirited travelers with no plan who just backpack around the world and don't have a job and just meet people on the road. That's a lot different from the kind of person I am. But this has its advantages - the hostel pretty much empties out during the day while everyone is out touring and exploring, giving me time to relax. It's nice not having anything to do.

On Saturday night I felt really lonely and stressed because it dawned on me that I'm on my own for the next three weeks. I started to regret very, very much not having booked tickets to go home before my fall semester starts. I even considered e-mailing Kelly, cancelling my Light Fellowship, going home, and starting me junior year at Yale. I even searched all over the ACC and Yale websites to see if it wasn't too late to do this.

However, the next morning I felt a lot better! I no longer feel lonely, because every day this week I've been meeting up with friends still in Beijing. One of my best teachers in high school, Mrs. Tambuscio, let me know that a former student of hers is working in Beijing right now, so I gave him an e-mail and we met up. He was really nice, and treated me to sushi (I ordered a really weird "New Zealand" roll that was topped with kiwi fruit and pop rocks). On Sunday night I met up with a Yale student who's doing the Princeton program right now, and some other Yalies who did a program in Harbin, China. We all went out for pizza. Then yesterday I met up with my food friend Jackie, doing ACC, and we went to Trivia Night at some fancy bar-bookstore place called The Bookworm. I also had dinner with one of my HBA teachers yesterday.

Anyway, greetings to everyone reading this. I'll update later with videos of my performances at Beijing Night, including the very well-received Romeo and Juliet skit. Zaijian.