Still alive.

Fuck, it's been a while. I didn't want this to happen like it did with my Japan blog buuuuuut yeah. Life kinda catches up with you.
It's been a whirlwind month-and-half-ish or so since I last wrote.
Greg left in late May. We went to Shanghai/Suzhou/Hangzou. Climbed fucking Mt. Tai, aka Taishan. Alan moved in with Sadie. Began dating Antoine. And a whole bunch of other melodrama with the fa-guos. As usual.
Finals are coming up and I'm feeling about them as usual. I really don't know what i'm gonna do when I go back to UIC this fall and actually have to work my ass off as opposed to doing the minimal and getting by. I barely remember how to write a decent paper anymore. This is feichang bu hao [really bad].
Oh yeah, I've begun interjecting my everyday speaking with chinese phrases. It's ridiculous I know but awesome at the same time.
This whole experience has been so different than Japan. I'm glad I decided to come though. I remember having dinner with Jocey on my 20th birthday, talking about studying abroad and where I wanted to go. She suggested Beijing and I remember being apprehensive about it for various reasons. But it all worked out in the end, I suppose.
The whole atmosphere is so much more like a typical college campus than Temple ever was. Temple was five floors of one building and two floors of another and that was it. We lived in a hotel. Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad that I went to Tokyo. It really was an amazing experience and I hope to go back sometime soon. But I guess my time here was been much more of what I expected study abroad to be. Living on campus, meeting international students, etc. The people I've met here have all been pretty amazing for the most part. As opposed to Tokyo where I was only really close to Christie, I've managed to get fairly close to some people here.
Saying goodbye within the next few weeks is gonna suck ass. Tokyo was kind of 'easy' because, like I said, I was only really close to one person [although i'll admit, saying goodbye to Tokyo was haaarrrdddd. I really didn't want to leave]. I don't know. I've never been particularly good at goodbyes [although, who is, really?]. I have a feeling I'll dwell for a while. But now that I think about it, I don't think I'll have time to dwell since I only have a week before heading back to Chicago to move in and get back to school. Real life.

I've realized that this entry wasn't particularly insightful or there weren't any good updates but I felt the need to at least let people know I was still alive. Or whatever.
I'm hoping to write an actual entry later on. Perhaps after finals are over and people have left, when I'll have like, a month by myself in Beijing to just hang out. Yeah. I dunno.