I am very proud to report that the way I spend my days in China has settled in to a vague feeling of the semblance of normalcy. Very, very, very proud. I think it took one month, two weeks, four days, and nine hours…. or somewhere around there. It took a damn long time, is […]

Here is one of the most depressing truths about China: the beds are as hard as Donald Trump’s resolve to continue making a fool of both himself and the United States of America. Seriously, it’s almost like I’ve embarked on a year long camping trip and forgot to bring my sleeping pad. That might even […]

Ho-lee Mo-lee. I cannot even EXPRESS to you how uh-mazing China is. I just love love love every bit of it; the transition has been so smooth, I already feel like I blend right in, and I’ve got such a busy social life between expat friends and Chinese friends that I had to turn down […]

The familiar sound of cars driving down Poplar Street were an immense source of confusion when I woke up this morning. I’ve woken up to that sound for the last eight months or so, and yet I still looked up to see the still more familiar silohuette of the rhodendron-like tree that stands outside my […]

I sobbed in my bed last night. It was the first time that I’ve sobbed in my bed in about two months, an odd amount of time considering the conglomeration of life events that have happened to me in that time span. Clarification: I’ve cried in plenty of other places, just not in my bed. […]

Today is the first day of “fall” and to celebrate I’ve done nothing but lay in my bed and pretend I’m getting stuff done on my phone while netflix-ing. It’s Alejandra’s birthday, and I posted a picture of us from the beginning of summer. Last time the season was changing I was in Soria playing soccer […]

I think that it was in a dream sometime lately that someone said to me–no wow. It wasn’t in a dream, it was real, people are too kind–they told me that my writing sounded like me talking. That was the first thing I loved about this book. It sounded like the inside of the character’s […]

Last night my boss gave me a tirade about why Hillary is so awful that it might actually be better for Donald to be elected so that “people will take to the streets,” “we can change our political system.” … Three nights ago, a 70ish year old man gave me an unrequested, slobbery kiss on […]

Everyone’s their own unique brand of crazy, with that I’m intimately familiar, but I discovered last night that I expect normality out of the people around me. … I didn’t want to take the table in the first place. What I had presumed to be my last table of the night was doing the I’m-too-full-to-eat-anything-more-but-this-is-too-damn-delicious slow […]