Tianjin, China

my journal on the 28th of may (caution, the following might be considered a little crude to some people so i apologise for any offense caused. if you dont want to hear about toilets in china, skip the next paragraph):

we arrived in China today and made it to Tianjin so easily! last time we had to go 4 hours and the bus broke down and ra ra ra. this time it was only 2 and it was such a fun drive. we stopped to go to the toilet at this pit stop type thing and there was a bathroom with only squatters but it was so nice and clean! didn't even smell. I was worried because I remember the bathrooms at Guilin airport last year being so horrible,but this one was really nice. Anyway so there we all were squealing away because we had to squat and "wiggle" because there was no toilet paper. and the cleaning ladies were laughing so hard at us because we didn't really know what we were doing and were all shouting advice at each other at how to avoid peeing on ourselves all at the same time - there were lik 20 cubicles so no one had to wait. poor (name deleted) had to wash her feet afterwards, i guess she had a little trouble. but it was awesome. definitely feel like the team bonded a lot as a result. probably my best toilet experience ever!

so that was the beginning of our trip. it was a lot more fun and foreinger friendly than last year anyway : ) the bathrooms didn't flood at there was bread at almost every meal, so we did alright with that. they had some awesome markets in Tianjin so everyone shopped up a storm, almost everyone in the team (except me) bought a fake prada/chloe/puma/gucci/luis vuitton bag for like $10 NZD or something, it was pretty sweet deals. i bought some cool stuff, but didn't find the right bag. being not the biggest bag person, i'm very fussy even when stuff is cheap.

the water polo wasnt very good at all, we lost all our games which was really disappointing but we didn't have any time together before hand so it wasn't that surprising anyway. we just didn't mesh well as a team. since we got back, our coach has resigned and i'm starting to wonder if it's my turn too. but then who knows. maybe i could just keep playing without international water polo? yea right. anyway i'm glad i don't have to make any decisions right now.

anyways, so now i'm home until august and have found myself a job at an office i used to work at before i left. so at least i know the people and even though the work is totally menial i'm looking forward to catching up with people and earning some money to keep me out of trouble! no more water polo except club so that will be interesting, playing for fun with absolutely zero pressure or expectations...we'll see how that goes anyway!

since being home i've had about 12 hours sleep each night which is totally amazing, haven't even stirred during the night. i love my bed! but tomorrow i start work so that is the end of that. it has actually been really nice to just sit on the couch all day and not do anything and be even too lazy to think about feeling bad for not doing anything.

good to be home, it's not too cold at all, quite nice actually probably like 15ish which is pretty nice for winter here, all the seasons have been coming late though so by the time i leave it will no doubt be very good timing. it's kinda sad to leave the summer in the air feeling though. was talking to my friend in Long Beach today and i got really jealous because she's just chilling at her house in the summer, playing water polo and enjoying evenings on her verandah with friends and riding her bike around everywhere, and i was like, wow. fun.