the uselessness of making plans

So I've been in this relationship for 18 months now, and I think it's official: China and I are in love.  Sometimes we get upset with each other, and every now and then I want to call the whole thing off, but we've stuck it out and here we are.  I moved here a year and a half ago, thinking it would be two quick years getting experience then I could head elsewhere.  After a few months the idea of going back to school popped up, so the plan became saving money.  But now, I'm getting ready to head into a third year here, and I've realized that it's pointless for me to try to make plans anymore--to say that I'll be in a certain place X amount of years from now.  I've nested and settled in here, and met so many people and gotten to know some really amazing women (some of the guys are okay, too).  I am about as restless as possible right now, and the only thing to do is stay where I am while I can.

"Maybe warnings don't work, and maybe I had to see for myself"

full of excuses

Wow, over two months...and my journal has been suffering as well.  It's difficult to force myself to write for all the reasons I've mentioned before--being busy, spending time with friends, traveling for (literally) half of January, and my general laziness.  I hate to direct people to Facebook and Flickr, but that's really going to be the best place to understand my winter travels.  I spent three full days in Harbin, Heilongjiang, China, where the weather is beyond cold but the city is beautiful.  My friends and I saw tigers, belugas, and ice and snow sculptures, and walked across a frozen river.  After not even an entire week at home, I was off again to Weinan, which is an hour outside of Xi'an, to spend my first Chinese New Year in the country with a real Chinese family.  A couple days later my travel buddy Beth and I headed into Xi'an, the big city, to laze around for a solid week, casually seeing the sights and enjoying the AMAZING foods.  We had a good week at home to throw down before classes started, for me on Valentine's Day.  The graduate schedules have been re-arranged, so our Monday afternoon class is now on Friday morning...only I don't have students in that class, but they still wanted us to show our faces, which wasn't a big deal when it was in the afternoon.  February has also been a big birthday month, over the last weekend I made 4 dozen funfetti cupcakes and 1 mini-three-tier chocolate cake.  There is always something going on here, and I'm still having a fantastic time; we all can't wait for the warmer weather to arrive in a couple months, I've been doing some major shopping to prepare!

At any rate, I'm still in my pajamas and I've got less than an hour to get ready and be on the bus to campus.  Typical!