Things That Make Me Happy

1. A really good dinner with friends.

We went out to a local chicken wings restaurant for Scott Bruce's 21st birthday. There were 23 of us total, and we got a private room in the back of the restaurant. We ate over 1000 rumbles worth of the best chicken I have tasted in China! Honey wings, normal spicy wings, and abnormally spicy wings. The wings were served two at a time on a skewer. Usually I do not like spicy foods (I can't even handle the spicy hot pot!), but the spices they used on the chicken wings were TASTY! I ended up eating everybody's abnormally spicy wings because they didn't like them, but I loved them! We were also served spicy lamb on a skewer, which I liked because they used the same spices as the chicken, and the lamb had no bones.  We also ate soy beans, tomato slices topped with sugar, apples and pears covered in a sweet fruit salad sauce, and a round pumpkin pastry drizzled in condensed milk (my favorite!). We also shared a vanilla birthday cake with chocolate frosting, and it was shaped like a basketball, just for Scott :)

2. Swimming

Ever since we found the pool, Caroline and I have gone there every single day possible. Unlike Singapore, the water is pleasantly chilly, so it's much more refreshing to swim in the afternoon in China. The water keeps getting clearer everyday we swim. I'm not sure why,  but it's far from the murkiness it was when we started swimming there last week. The good news is that I can see in front of me, the bad news is I can see how dirty the bottom of the pool is, haha. Unfortunately, our class gets out at 4, and the pool closes at 5, so it gives us about 45 minutes of swimming. I like to see how much I can swim in that 45 minutes. It hurts, but I like that I'm getting back into some kind of shape. I'm no where near where I was when I left Atlanta, but just getting the feel of the water back is a start.

3. Being Ian Crocker's friend on Facebook. YUM.

4. A shower.

At the end of a long day in class, at the pool, at the weight room, biking through the dusty streets, I love when I turn on the shower and it actually works and has good water pressure. So incredible. Showers in Beijing are much different than showers in Singapore. In Singapore, showers were a way of escaping the heat and humidity. In China, showers are a way of escaping the dirt, haha.

5. Hearing from friends and family back home.

Thank you Facebook message threads, e-mails, blogs, Skype, and AIM.

6. Finishing a homework assignment in less than an hour. BALLIN!

7. Apple bottom jeans and boots with the fur.

8. The Great Wall of China.

9. The Olympic Fuwa mascots, especially JingJing the Panda!

10. Music that gets me through the day.

Currently, Chris Brown, Casting Crowns, and Colbie Caillat (wow that's a lot of C's! I promise I did not plan that).

11. Marking my weeks by my malaria medicine.

12. Being a baller in China, duh.

13. Using the Chinese Language.

When I recognize Chinese characters, such as "middle", "entrance", "exit", and "people".

When I hail a taxi all by myself and tell the driver where I want to go in Chinese, and he understands me and takes me there :) So exciting!

When I check into my dorm complex and tell them my room number in Chinese, and they understand :) 

14. The sun, chocolate, and hugs :)