nostalgia forever bike

Hello, this is Laura. Emily's in China and can't get to Blogger because of the Great Firewall, so I'll be posting blogs she sends me from now until she gets back. xo

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dear friends,

beijing is strange/amazing. parts of it are super modern and fancy, and other parts of it are just...exactly what you might picture when you think of china. there are these small streets where people share the road with bikes, scooters, cars, rickshaws, food stands, and restaurants. there are no stop signs or street lights or lines dividing the road in half. cars will honk but they won't slow down and my number one fear is getting my toes run over. but the street food is so good. they have these long grills where they grill meat on a stick and it only costs 2Y (about $0.25). yesterday i bought one and it was so spicy but so delicious.

on sunday we went to the silk market. it was like canal street in new york city times 1000, but in a mall. there were different floors for all kinds of fake things. one floor was devoted entirely to shoes and bags, and every stall had the exact same shoes. every time you walk past a stall the vendors try and get you to buy things in broken english. i think there were more white people than chinese people there. on our way back to the subway (which costs 2Y one way, btw), i passed someone selling photographs on the stairs. there was a sign that explained how the pictures captured all of beijing, including "nostalgic Forever bikes". languages are weird/beautiful.

mandarin is hard to learn but fun. i had my first class this morning and all we did was learn the basic phonetics. there are so many, and half of them aren't pronounced the way they're spelled. there are even some sounds that sound like french words, which makes it easier. there are also 4 different tones in mandarin. so the word "ma" can mean 4 different things depending on how you pronounce it, which means that half the time i'll probably be saying completely random things.

i'm taking a lot of pictures and walking a lot. my feet hurt and i'm still jet lagged, but everything is so incredible that i don't mind. i woke up at 530am this morning which is kind of a nice habit to have, but by 5pm i'm exhausted again.

tonight i walked in a big circle twice looking for the street with all the food and eventually gave up and had some disgusting flavoured milk for dinner. too tired to even make an effort to eat.

nostalgia Forever bike,
emily

gonna take you for a ride on a big jet plane/pre-departure panic

tomorrow i go to china.

in true fashion, i've packed everything at the last minute.

but it's okay because i've been mentally packing for the last week.

on the campus that i'm staying at, breakfast costs $0.50. apparently.

i feel sad because laura wooley left my house today, but i'm excited for breakfast. i mean, i hope someone will eat breakfast with me.

also it's entirely possible that i will not have access to most of the sites i use because of the great firewall of china. obvs i can't go 2 months without contacting north america, so i'll get laura to post some stuff that i send her via email. i make laura do so many things for me, i should buy her a present of 6 pairs of underwear.

in all this rush of goodbyes and "don't forget this", i feel like i'm going away forever. sometimes i forget that i'm coming back. like i'll be home in two months. and i'm thinking there are stores in beijing that will sell me all the things i forget at home, probably for a cheaper price. it'll be okay, you know?

everything is different at night. i need to go brush my teeth.

Some Pictures From Last Summer

Sometimes I'm a little slow to develop pictures. This time I'm pretty much 9 month late. Here are some pictures of trees and shit from last summer. They were all taken with my lomography camera.

these are trees and sky that looks like paper

this is what my backyard used to look like:

these are some buildings in new york city

this is laura on the swings

this is me at the park when i was 5

Dianna Agron's Hipster/Perfect Tumblr

I think Dianna Agron, star of Glee, pretty blonde flower dress girl, is secretly a hipster.

And I secretly love her for it. (well not so secret anymore).

First, I have to admit that I love Glee. I was about 1 and half seasons late to the party, but whatever. I'm all caught up and a little bit disappointed I'm missing the season finale because I'll be in China.

Second, I have to preface this with the statement that I don't think Dianna Agron is the pretentious douchey too-cool-for-you hipster type. She just likes hipster-y things like film cameras, underground music, the iphone hipstamatic app, and post-modern art like drawings of smiley faces pasted onto a photo of real people.

from dianna agron's tumblr

Ladies and gentlemen and all the genders in between and outside, I present to you:

Dianna Agron's tumblr.

I like Dianna's tumblr because she seem to like a lot of the things I like. Also she makes playlists a lot, which is my favourite, and I've youtubed all the songs and have thus discovered a bunch of new bands/songs because of her. She quotes people like Rainer Maria Rilke, whom Riese loves, and I love what Riese loves.

She doesn't post pictures of other celebrities or shit cut out of Cosmo. She knows the difference between "it's" and "its". There are some behind the scenes pictures of the cast members of Glee, which comes off as special and cute, rather than "look at me I'm famous". She seems excited and maybe surprised that people are paying attention to what she's doing. I don't know. She seems to genuinely want to share with people what she's working on/found/likes.

Here are some songs I really like that I heard from Dianna's tumblr:

+ The Dodos - Fools

+ The Walkmen - In The New Year

+ Radical Face - Welcome Home

+ Atlas Sound - Walkabout

+ Deer Tick - Baltimore Blues No 1

felldowntherabbithole dot tumblr dot com

You Are A Tourist

Apparently Death Cab for Cutie's new single "You Are A Tourist" has been out for a month now, but I just heard it today. I have to say, I'm really, really liking it. It brings me back to the good old days of Transatlanticism, which is a relief because I was worried they would continue in the direction of Narrow Stairs. Not to say that Narrow Stairs was a bad album, just not one of my favourites. Anyways, check out the video for "You Are A Tourist". It's pretty cool too.

So I know if I ask questions probably no one will answer, but I'll ask just the same: has anyone heard DCFC's new album? Is it good? Do you like this song? Do you have feelings about it? Do you have feelings about other things? Don't be shy.

Won't You Come On Over, Stop Making A Fool Out Of Me

[valerie - glee club]

Naya Rivera rocked this version. Seriously, I can't stop listening to it. Plus she's hot.

Anyways, I hope all you Canadians voted today.