A good ol' RANDOM post

1. My shoelaces have started to get untied on a daily basis. I haven't changed anything about how I tie my shoes--the laces are still strong and clean--there's no explanation. So, at least once I day, I feel like I'm 5 again.

2. The cold has settled into our apartments. My bedroom stays warm enough--but it gets to the point where we don't want to change clothes. It just feels too cold to get undressed even for a second--so we do the locker room thing where you change clothing without revealing any skin. It's not about modesty--it's about warmth.

3. I'm obsessed with cooking soups these days. I've made creamy potato and carrot soup, savory southwestern pumpkin soup and an impromptu one-serving tomato soup in the past few weeks. My online recipe file is getting filled with more soups to try!

4. India is postponed. Over here in China, our winter break is centered around the Chinese New Year/Spring Festival. We'll be in class straight through Christmas, but get about 4 weeks of a break in mid January to mid February. I had been planning on backpacking through India for a month--stopping in Calcutta for a week or so of service, working in the footsteps of Mother Theresa, checking out the Taj Mahal in Agra, getting a hut on the beach in Goa etc.... but the recent attacks have postponed that. Katera and I racked our brains to come up with some excuse that would make it seem less irresponsible for us to go in light of the new instability--and there was just no way to make it work. We're keeping our hopes up that we can go at the beginning of the summer--which could be even more awesome b/c we could backpack our way through Tibet, cross into Nepal, then make our way into India before flying back to America for our summer break. Our fingers are crossed and our eyes are on the news. Which brings us to:

5. SE Asia is coming!!!! After many hours staring at the globe and mourning our India setback (which--by the way--we are actually saddened by on a level other than the selfish one mentioned here--but that would require another post and sincere writing to express), we decided to head back to SE Asia and spend a month backpacking around there! Megan, Katera and I will join forces this time and we're hitting the countries that Megan and I didn't make it to last year (we both traveled through SE Asia on different trips). So we're starting with a cheap flight into Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and will travel into Singapore, through Malaysia, southern Thailand, and Laos and then hit the southern Chinese province of Yunnan. I'm extremely excited about it--I have two great traveling companions, the trip is dirt cheap (our budget for a month is somewhere around US$800 total), the weather will be warm, the food delicious, and I feel really comfortable getting around SE Asia after doing it last year.

6. I can't stop listening to The Cars these days.

7. I finally made it to the library!!!! Last year--in one of those wonderful moments of discovery mentioned before--I wandered through my university's library till I was delighted to find a section of English lit! I pressed the school this year to allow me a library card and after some warnings, we all received them. The selection is primarily literature classics--which works for me because I'm trying to take this time before grad school to catch up on many of the great works of literature as well as acclaimed works of recent fiction that I missed in my primary-undergrad education. Katera and I have both been in voracious reading moods--so it's been fun. This semester I've read (off the top of my head):

-The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
-A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
-Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence
-Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
-Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
-Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

and currently I've opened the Divine Comedy by Dante--but I can only find Inferno and Paradiso, so I might not make it very far into it! It's a shame, because the passages I've read from Purgatory looked the most interesting. Maybe I'll find it at a bookstore somewhere though! I just feel sooo thrilled that I have access to the library now! I can only get 5 books at a time--so I'm looking forward to finishing this round and heading back for more.

8. I've got my fake Christmas tree out and will decorate it and the house this week!!! It makes me miss home so much--but even that doesn't diminish the joy of Christmas season!!! love to you all!!!