irony anyone?

whenever anything good happens, something bad happens just to balance it out.
so i got a new apartment. i'm renting it for 6 months which is perfect. initially there was no furniture and she wouldnt sign it over for less than 1 year. but luckily with some skillful chinese baragining, my roommate managed to smooth things out and we got some basic furnitures and the 6 month deal. we looked for soooo long it seemed. maybe 3 days of walking around to every empty place in xiangzhou. which is a big area, btw. up 7 flights of stairs just to find out there was no western toliet. but the place we ended up getting was the 2nd one we looked at.

about it, it's 3 bedrooms, 1 nice western toliet, no tub, a GREAT kitchen, a HUGE living room, and a nice little balcony for laundry. the area is a little further from gongbei than i'd like to be, but eh. what's another 10 minutes on a bus. more time to listen to my chinese lessons on the ol' ipod. what else... oh! it's near the bus stop, but not next door like my current place. which means i'll be able to sleep at night and in the morning instead of listening to the constant traffic noise of large busses. other good things, it's away from the central hub of TPR and TPR teachers. there's a new crop of foreigners coming in soon, and while I plan on being friendly and helpful, i'm not going to get too close. i hate investing so much in people only to have them leave, or they're might not be worth my time :) as it stands i have enough friends and drama to deal with now. call me anti-social.. but it's not true. haha.

anyways, back to the fabulous new place. so we had to buy some appliances for it and a few more furnitures. so that was an adventure yesterday, in itself. joe and i went to this second-hand market to look around and save ourselves as much money as possible. it was a lot of fun, except of course, i'm probably the only foriegner they've seen out there. maybe that's not true, but damn if it didn't feel like it. i mean people stare and look everywhere i go, this is a fact of daily life. however, i felt like they should be throwing peanuts because i was such a freak show. well my sociabablness got the best of me and when one of the toddlers walked over to me i started playing and talking to it. which made the parents go ape shit. and then they were even worse when i started speaking chinese to them. it was great practice. but after about 4 hours of shopping and talking chinese i was getting pretty tired. we managed to get out of there with almost everything we needed (mattresses, washing machine, fridge, stove, sofa, office chairs, rice cooker, big toaster over, water dispenser) for under 2000. including the 50yuan delivery and moving service :)


so there are some pictures of yesterday and my new place to be uploaded soon. bubblshare is still acting a little weird. i might stick them at the google place.

anyways... so that's the good stuff. however, bad stuff. i lost my cell phone. pretty sure it got stolen. mostly my own fault. however. worse stuff... you can't reclaim your phone number with out this little card they gave me 6 months ago. anybody know how good i am at keeping up with things? yeah, so i lost it.
but oh, it gets better. after about 2 days of no phone, i couldnt wait any longer. i bought a new number. better than that, today after cleaning up and preparing to move. i found the only card with my old password on it. AH. so now what?

there are worse things in life i'm sure. it's just a pain.

hmm anything else exciting? maybe i picked up a part-time job like thing. an english club-ish deal except instead of lecturing and being really ineffective for 2 hours, we sit and watch english movies, then a little english-lesson/activity, then we play this game called "the killer game" which is basically a murder mystery type thing, where people play different roles (cops, killers, civilians) and everyone tries to figure out who's who. but people lie to protect themselves, and time is agaisnt you because every turn someone else is eliminated. it's a nice change of pace to sit and play mental games, instead of drinking the night away. it doesnt hurt that one of the managers is a cute guy who's a little older than me, speaks fairly good english, is cute, can drive a car, is really friendly (i know he just wants me for my english, but hell, who doesn't here?) and i found out yesterday when he was helping me move furniture, is single. hehehe.

yes brandy is on the prowl for a potential boyfriend. the single life is just working for me anymore :) not that i planned on getting married (calm down mom) i just want something to occupy my time for the next 6 months or so. and plus maybe it will keep me at home more, cooking and watching movies. i need to save money for a plane ticket home, and for future travels around china.

so these are just somethings going on around me right now. my chinese is going really well i think, so is the weight loss. i'm determined to start exercising but haven't settled on anything yet. ashley is going to do yoga and he goes to the gym. and now that i moved i'll be walking a bit more just out of necessity. so that should help. i'll probably get another bike, so i can come down to wanzaisha more easily.

anyways... hope this is a long enough blog to satiate you brandy-starved people ;)
leave me some comments. send me an email! i need some love!!!