I think I twisted my back line dancing

Is there a way to put that in smaller font? As in really, really small can't quite read what it says font?

Yes folks, this morning I woke up and couldn't move. And yes folks, I was line dancing last night. Shocked that there's a country bar in liberal hippie Ann Arbor? Never fear, Diamondback Saloon is conveniently located 15 minutes outside of the city on the I-94 Service Road. You'll recognize it by the hot dog stand located on its front lawn. A fellow country music fan and I had gone in search of our friends Garth, Alan and Toby. Alas, they were nowhere to be found.

The band started on the right foot. And with a 25 cent beer in my hand and my cowboy hat on straight I thought I was ready for the evening ahead. But then the band took a break and the hip hop started. Turn down the lights, queue the strobes, and let the line dancing begin! Girls came out of the wood works with the most complex steps I had ever seen. It took an entire song to learn the moves that you’d never get to show off because the music would end and they’d start a new one. Thank goodness they weren’t too good for the electric slide. Yee haw!

But back to my back. I don’t remember a specific moment when something got pulled the wrong way, but I really started feeling it playing darts later that night. And the surest way to feel the pain is with a scooping grapevine to the left. Ouch.

If you're going to San Francisco...

Be sure to bring as many outfits as possible. Because it rained on friday, it was hot and sunny on saturday, cloudy and windy sunday, and I stopped paying attention after that.

Oh San Francisco, it's good to be back. It's been almost four months since I left in June, and things are a bit colder but otherwise still the same. The massage chair at work clearly missed me, we had to hang out for over an hour. And it was awesome seeing everybody and catching up on old times. I've had to repeat "Yes, law school is awesome" on several occasions, but I'm getting good at telling the stories and describing life in Ann Arbor.

It's nice too knowing I can still get around the city no problems. After a few more months I'll start forgetting streets, new buildings will pop up, people will move and I'll feel like a stranger. But for now I can pretend I'm a local, eat at as many restaurants as possible, and hang out with my friends for as long as they'll let me.

Speaking of hanging out with friends...

How now, Trojan cow?

Here in Ann Arbor, everyone hates USC. Which means when Stanford played USC, the Cardinal cheering section was huge. And when Stanford beat USC last night 24-23, the whole city was celebrating with us.

I wasn't even planning on watching the game. A fellow Stanfordian and I had gone out to watch last week, only to slink away depressed from such an embarrassing loss to Arizona State. So when we heard the spread for this week was 41-3, no one even suggested suffering through it.

But good old KZSU is hard to resist with their excellent radio coverage of Stanford sports. And shortly before the half ended, my friend and I were engaged in a gratuitous text battle keeping each other posted on the game we were both listening too. When Stanford scored to make it 16-14, I think we both said something like "WE HAVE TO WATCH THIS!!" and within minutes were screaming at the TV screen at a local sports bar.

I won't bore you with the details, since ESPN and every one else is covering them pretty well. But yes, this was our back-up quarterback starting his first college game ever. Yes, our defense held one of the country's best running teams to under 100 yards total. And yes, this was the first time in 35 games USC has lost at home. Remember who beat them last time? You guessed it: Stanford.

What a great Saturday.

Guess Who's Back!

Wonder why I dropped off the face of the blogging planet? I can give you three reasons, though most of them are just lame excuses:

1) I stopped traveling. My blog is, after all, supposed to be about travels. Something feels a little strange about a public journal if all I did was eat breakfast, go to class, eat dinner, go to bed. Riveting, eh?
2) I started law school. Meaning I actually have real work to do: classes to attend, books to read, people to meet, etc.
3) I feel guilty that I haven't posted pictures from my trip yet and didn't want to write a new entry until I did. Well over a month later I still haven't posted them, but I promise eventually maybe one day sometime soonish I will.

But I'm over them, all of them. I might have to rename the blog Superflewis Studies, but we'll see. In the meantime, here's law school in a nutshell: I eat breakfast, go to class, eat dinner, go to bed.

Stay tuned for more...

Home Sweet Home

I suppose that's what I have to start calling Michigan since I'll be living here the next three years. I made it back to the States with no problems, and even got a free ticket from United for letting them reroute me through Chicago. Always a bad idea to go to O'Hare--my plane out of there was deemed unsafe to fly so we were delayed quite some time--but hey I've got nothing to do that's urgent. And now that I'm a student again I can't turn down anything that's free.

So here I am, counting down the days until school starts. Stay tuned for pictures and some final thoughts on the trip.

Overall verdict: awesome.

Made In China

In less than 12 hours I will be on a plane back to the U. S. of A. I'm of course filled with the usual excited to go home, sad to end such an awesome trip emotions that everyone gets at this point while traveling. But before I start reflecting, I should finish the story with some tales from Beijing.

Beijing is not what I expected. It isn't crowded, dirty, smoggy, humid, or cheap. Ok, it is all of those things for sure, but since I set the mental bar so high before arriving, I've been very pleasantly surprised at how blue the skies are, how much shoulder room I've felt in the streets, and how clean most places are.

I've skipped almost all of the tourist stops, save of course Tienanmen and a very nice Pagoda park in the city. Having Val here makes me want to explore more markets and streets where her language skills are a huge asset as opposed to places where I can easily revisit on an English tour group one day.

And when I say we explored the markets, I mean we fully detailed all eight floors of clothing, silks, jackets and jewelry. I've never bargained more in my life, nor left with the strange feeling that I was still ripped off for agreeing to pay $2 for a silk scarf. Everything really is as the title of this post describes.

We also attempted leg waxing, since it would cost less here than buying the packets over the counter at home. An hour and a half later, I would call it more a leg gooing and tweezing than anything else. Perhaps it was a bad sign when the woman took the jar out of a brand new box and started reading the instruction manual?

Last but not least, we've had lots more good eats: squid on a stick, melon on a stick, corn on the cob, popsicles (I average about seven a day, though the red bean and green bean ones are my least favorite, mango so far is the best), noodle soup, other noodle dishes, peking duck (for being the priciest dish here, it's not that good), taro pearl milk tea, stir fried stuff, really spicy can't breathe stuff, dumplings, and red bean cakes.

The food on the streets is insanely cheap and so delicious you scoff at anyone for eating anything else. That I will miss. In fact, a lot of this city I will miss. But it just means I'll definitely be coming back.

United Airlines, taaake me hoooome, to the plaaaaace where I belooooooooong.

Trans-Siberian Busway?

Ok technically we took the Trans-Mongolian Railway, but only as far as Erlian, the Chinese border town just outside Mongolia. There were no train tickets straight to Beijing for the month of August, at least according to the ticket office in Ulan Bataar, which is a separate story worth sharing at some point, so we settled for a sleeper bus. Picture a large tour bus, but instead of seats, it has three long rows (two aisles) of bunk beds each about half the size of a twin bed. I promise, it's not as bad as it sounds.

The positives: air conditioning, cleanish sheets, and no smelly bathroom on board.

The negatives: a "smoking section" (aka the driver and his friends), very loud karaoke television, and no bathroom on board.

Unfortunately for Frances, too much unpasteurized dairy consumption in Mongolia had left her insides pretty vengeful toward the outside world. I'll leave it at that.

Fortunately for Frances, I feel much better and China has been quite delicious. Already today I've had tofu soup thing, fried donut thing, mango popsicle, egg onion pancake thing, cabbage pancake thing, and it's not even dinner yet. Valerie can communicate which is a huge plus after dealing with unpronounceable Mongolian, and it's nice being able to just relax and enjoy the humidity and smog.

And you're right, the karaoke television was really a positive.