Worthless...

I've pretty much been a worthless blogger for the past 2 weeks. But in all honesty, a lot has been going on that's been leaving me frustrated, and I try not to post when I'm cranky because it tends to get a lot of bad feedback. And it also seems to illicit a lot of "pep talk" type comments, which I understand, and appreciate the intent, but sometimes in China, I just want to be frustrated, and I don't want to get used to certain things, a there's so much that no matter how much I explain, no one can truly grasp until they live it. So, as I said before, I try to just let things blow over before I spill my guts into cyberspace and risk a more negative outcome.
Anyways! The weekend after our dinner/lunch adventure, Laura and I were invited to go have dinner with my student SongXian, her family, and her best friend, Connie (another one of my students). She is from a larger city near Siyang called Suqian. When she extended the invitation, she said dinner at the weeekend, because the students would have a rest. I said we were free both weekend days so whichever was better for her would be fine. So we made our plans to go Friday night. During the ride there, we were talking about the city, and SongXian mentioned going shopping and taking us to see the ancient home of some very important man to Suqian, tomorrow. Tomorrow?! Apparently, being free for both days of the weekend equated to us spending the whole weekend there.
We agreed to one night, but explained that we would need to get back the next evening (especially since we weren't prepared for a sleepover, we had to buy toothbrushes etc at a convenience store). We went to dinner and met a lot of SongXian's family, and then her parents drove us to where we would be staying. The home they currently have was too small to accommodate us all, but they had recently purchased some property that was not decorated as a home, but would suffice for a sleepover. The apartment had 4 different rooms, 1 set up with desks, 1 office, and two dorm-style rooms. Students at a nearby school used this place as a "club", somewhere they could study and rest while not actually on the school grounds. SongXian's mother made up 4 beds for us girls, and then went back to their old house with her husband. The four of us stayed up, talking and practicing/teaching English for a while and then we crashed.
The next day was filled with shopping, food, wandering, and touring. The girls bought each of us a hair clip, not really my style, but thoughtful nonetheless. (The crazy dinner/lunch man tried to contact us, but we said we would be out of town until very late Sunday and could not have dinner with him, and we haven't heard from him since...win!) We found a supermarket with western booze, and got to try some local dishes that were quite tasty, and did some touristy things. We caught the last bus back to Siyang, and spent the evening sampling out some of our purchases, and had a rather relaxing Sunday before the week began. Add to that a HUGE sweep for UW Badger Hockey over Michigan Tech, and it was a good weekend. The next week succeeded in throwing a huge wrench into things, hence my cranky mood, but I'll get to that in my next post, hopefully tomorrow. I'm quite optimistic about that...let's see if I follow through!!! :)