espresso yourself

updates: i am learning to play my grandfather's 85-year old fiddle and enjoying it immensely. i have created 2 new ads at work for local businesses that are being published in "recipes to experience" this summer. i am addicted to jp cormier's music and smooth, smooth voice.

when people ask me what i miss most about china i find it really hard to answer, it's a whole needle in the haystack scenario and i have to blurt out something about the culture or the people, blah blah blah. how do you explain missing the way your life was then, the certain feeling you had wound up warm and strong in your chest? it sounds weird to say that, to explain just missing the comfort of not knowing, the bittersweet embrace of naivety, along with the comfort of routine. i miss that part of my life, that old self, but i'm happy here too and maybe that's the hardest of all to explain. i'm happy with my job (i love it, in fact), i'm happy living with my parents again for now, i'm happy being able to do things with my dad no matter how seemingly insignificant. i'm happy shopping for new lamps with my mom and watching tlc at night and sitting by the fire with my cat and going out for dinner with old friends, just as i was happy buying milktea and doing groceries at carrefour and teaching songs to my students and strolling along xi hu at 6am when it was already so humid your shirt would stick to your back. these are things i loved/love and i cannot pick one thing over the other as it's like comparing apples and oranges, or just completely unique chapters in that cliched book of life.

i honestly thought no one read this but one of my friends, steph, called the other night and told me she likes what i write. i guess it's a little strange thinking people actually check this stuff out, it's a diary really and didn't we all have little pink and purple flowery ones as kids that had those cheapy silver locks on the front? private, keep out, etc etc. i have been keeping some form of journal since i was about 9 or 10 years old, three diaries and three online journals, the former are definitely the most entertaining since at one time i apparently had a crush on aladdin. it was those bulging animated muscles i guess and everyone knows i'm a sucker for ethnic dudes.

this is a whole lot of rambling so bedtime, ciao bella