In Like a Lion...

It's raining. What a surprise. Bah.

Friday night was a lot of fun. Zeno and I spent three hours making some super delicious dumplings. I took tons of pictures and videos and I will make a whole post about it ASAP. We had our dumplings and chicken wings and jellyfish salad and watched Slumdog Millionaire while we ate. It was a good night.

Saturday morning I woke up early to go to another River of Hearts clothes sorting party. Remember how last time I apparently looked "in charge" and had people asking me what to do, where to go, and even asking permission to eat and take breaks? Well this time immediately after signing in they had me run registration and bag check. I mean...wow. From 9am to around 2pm I sat behind the desk and asked people to sign in and then took their bags and coats. It was a little crazy. It was like a huge memory game. Everyone had to put a name tag on their stuff and when they came to claim it I had to remember where the heck I had put it. It was also good practice for my reading of Chinese since some people wrote their name tags in Chinese.

I don't have a picture from Saturday yet, but Zeno did send me this VERY VERY SILLY picture of me from the last time. While I was packing/sorting stuff, I found a mesh shirt and decided it would be funny if I put it on over my shirt and apron. Um...yeah.
Once things quieted down I went to the "buy stuff" table where they were selling donated brand new items to raise money to pay for the shipping of the used clothes. I got two very pretty chenille scarves, a ridiculous rainbow hat with a smiley face on the top, and a blue Hugo Boss silk tie. Total cost? 30RMB, or a little less than $5. Just cuz I was curious I looked up how much a Hugo Boss silk tie normally goes for and the average price seems to be around $80. Wow.

Our plans were to go to the Dongbei restaurant where I was going to treat Zeno for her birthday, but the sorting party wound down kind of early and we weren't really hungry yet. We decided to go to a foreign langugae bookstore and reschedule the restaurant for next week. I picked up Dune since I've been told by many people I should read it. My plan was to go back to my apartment and have a nap, then meet Isabelle for Ladies Night at Shanghai Studio, but napping only made me more tired, so I had to cancel.

Sunday I cleaned. I cleaned EVERYTHING. I swept the whole apartment, dusted, packed up my Christmas stuff (finally), reorganized some stuff in my bedroom, did a massive amount of dishes, two loads of laundry, scrubbed the shower, oraganized my desk and closests...it was intense. And now my apartment is SPARKLING. It's a good feeling.

I've been meaning to go get a massage for a while now, but I still haven't gone. I'm hoping once the massive pile of knots that used to be my back muscles get worked on, I'll be able to sleep better at night.

Anyway, if I get my butt in gear at work today and finish everything I need to by 4:30, hopefully I can put together that dumpling post tonight.

Sending love!
-Me