Early Turkey

That's right, folks, Thanksgiving Break has unofficially started for me!

I'll be leaving tomorrow morning to fly to Shanghai, and will get back the Sunday before Thanksgiving--flying directly from Shanghai home (with a layover in SF, but that doesn't really count). I'm incredibly excited, though I realized today how many errands I had to do and regretted putting them off.

Exchanging money was a huge hassle, as the banks around here apparently don't carry the Chinese yuan for some reason. I finally tracked down a place, but by the time I got there, they said they ran out of yuan....really? come on now! I figured I would be stuck exchanging and getting ripped off at the airport, but some girl in my dorm had some left over yuan, which I eagerly traded for. Now I at least have enough to get myself a taxi to take to the hotel!

I'm actually pretty nervous, having to figure out so many things by myself once I'm there. I believe some other Stanford people will be joining me Saturday night, but we'll see how the adventure from airport-->hotel goes. Let's pray for uneventfullness.

Stanford itself has been so-so. Finished my last midterm of the quarter yesterday and it was a huge relief. As reflected in my last post, I haven't had the greatest of few weeks here, but after my midterm, I suddenly just had an extra bounce in my step. I guess the anxiety of math had really kicked in and invaded lots of other areas of my life. Of course, the issues that were bothered me before still persist, but I guess my outlook overall is a lot more cheery and I'm not focusing as much on what's wrong. Midterms and stress were probably just the catalysts of a downhill spiral of self-pity and misery.

Well, I'm off to do some more last-minute things and hopefully prepare myself academically to missing a week of school. I hope you all are doing well and I look forward to catching up with you guys during Thanksgiving Break, even if you won't all be returning home.

Andrew

P.S. The Calvin/Hobbes comic today (maybe yesterday for you east coasters) is hilarious. Do girls really serve some purpose? Enlighten us, please, Stephanie.