i guess this is it.

So I guess this is it... Almost four months ago I set out on a journey that would change my life, forever. I was given devastating news, and then took off overseas to experience what would end up being the craziest, toughest, and more amazing time in my life.

This was a test, could I do it? Could I handle this crazy disease in a completely foreign environment? Thanks to perseverance, new found strength, and some of the most amazing people I have ever met, the answer is yes. Did I almost give up? Many times. Did I call home crying, telling my parents that I wasn't strong enough to do this on my anymore, yep. But never did I completely give up and follow through with it. The best decision I ever made.

I've grown up. I'm coming home much different than when I left. Is that scary? Yes. Was it much needed? I think so. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine what ended up being the past few months. I mean nobody dreams of become a diabetic, lets get serious... But travelling asia, trekking through the jungle, battling weight gain and hair loss... I never thought it would happen to me, none of it. Things I took for granted before have now been put into perspective, and I can now allow the simple things in life to make me happy. Taking care of myself has become a priority, in a way I never had to conciously consider before.

Packing up my things was hard. I'm leaving a certain life behind. Coming home will be therapeutic for me, but I would be kidding myself if I said I wasn't really going to miss it here. Even through all of the sweaty nights, awkward roommate moments, ridiculous gym sessions, and hospital visits, I was thankful for being here. I had a different experience than a lot of the other kids here, partying and making ridiculous memories weren't my immediate goals. But hong kong played host to the wildest nights of my life.

I've made what I consider to be lifelong friends, and had it not been for them, hong kong wouldn't have been the same. Ridiculous nights out, and mornings after. Times where we would sit and talk, about maybe even nothing at all... Sessions in 336, and wild southeast asian adventures, they made it all. This is me signing off for now. In less than an hour I'll be in a taxi to the airport, making my way back home. There have been some tears, and I'm sure that there are many more to come, sad, and happy at the same time. Over and out from hk.

goodluck and goodbye.

Judgement exam this morning... killed it. No joke. I was done the two hour exam in barely over an hour. Now THAT ladies and gentlemen is preparation at it's finest. 4 perfectly constructed long answers, and 18/20 sure mutilple choice questions later, I left my VIP exam with a larger-than-average smile on my face...

Alllllmost there I thought. I then proceeded to the lab to finish my marketing assignment that I thought was due at 6pm. Surprise, it's due at noon. As I look at the clock on the computer reading 11:46, I literally break a sweat. I decide that this is an appropriate time to email my teacher and pull the diabetes card. Ahhhh the d-card, always a reliable weapon in any situiation. I explain to her that since I've had to change my exams around due to an unforseen medical emergency, I had mixed up the time the assignment was due. The outcome: perfect. She immediately replies, telling me that it is no problem and just to get it to her when I am done, along with her best wishes for a safe and healthy journey home. For anyone who is shaking their head right now, until you stab yourself repeatedly on a daily basis, don't judge... You'd pull the card too.

After that debocle I return to my room to find my roomate and her bf here, getting their things ready to go away for the weekend. I'm sitting here wondering how strange this goodbye is going to be. We're not really friends, but we've lived together for the past 4 months, I sat here awkwardly waiting for them to get up to leave... Then the moment comes, well I guess we'll be leaving now, she says. "Okay well I guess I won't see you again then?" I respond, "No, I won't be abck until Monday"... Well thissss is just getting weird now, I contemplate going in for the forced hug and decide that it has been way too long to just shake her hand, so I get up and go in for the hug, thankfully she gave me a little squeeze back... It could have been an epic fail on my part otherwise. We exchange goodluck's and Goodbye's and thats the end. 4 months of too much silence, a few arguments, and many awkward moments later it's all over. SO strange.

I am now working on my final school-related task for the semester. A take home, open book marketing exam in which I have to create a sales promotion for the "Kindle" to boost summer sales while maintaining brand equity. Not the best assignment, but who can complain about a take home, open book exam, right? Anxiety is starting to creep in, I will on a plane in 48 hours, this is too weird.

some sort of pokemon haircut.

Two sidenotes I felt compelled to share:

I don't know how I did not announce this earlier, but my roomate's boyfriend has been in town since last Friday, meaning only one thing, solitude for me, finally. SHe has been styaing with him in a hotel in Mong Kok, which meacns that I have had 7 glorious nights of sleep to myself, butt naked, and in complete and utter peace. He's here until Monday, meaning tha I have the room to myself until I leave, halllllelujah!

I saw Kevin yesterday and proceeded to comment on his new hair cut, it was a lot shorter, but looked good. He proceeded to tell me that he went to the salon on campus and they "completely butchered it", so he had to get Mosi to buzz it all off. I inquired as to what sort of butchering took place, to which he responded that he was given "some sort of Pokemon haircut" bahahaha. He later went into further detail explaining that he felt like fricken Pikachu. ahhhh only in hk.

over and out. big day tomorrow. exams.com.

回家不久=）

If one of your worst nightmares is sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair, looking at a sheet full of garb that looks like this:

哇中国是荒谬的，而且可能是最困难的东西会

then welcome to my life.

I spent 50 minutes of my day today in room 5559 trying my hardest to decipher sentences like the one above, and translate it into english. Fun, not quite. I mean, of course there were other parts to the test, translating english words into chinese, and reading a chinese business card. WHY do I do this to myself? I have no idea?

So needless to say the 50 minutes actually went by so slow because all I could think of was retreating to my room for a nap of defeat. The chinese characters were making my head spin, and I was literally falling asleep. I managed to eat something before going back to my room and passing right out.

On to the next task, MGMT 332 exam at 10am tomorrow. This one I am not allowed to complain about, as it was I that arranged the early exam in the first place (helllllllo coming home in three sleeps!), but 10am ahhhhh the worst. So currently I sit in the library, with 10 lectures worth of notes in front of me, trying to absorb all that is Alex Markle, not as easy as it sounds.

Adding on to that, I just had my very first sit down dinner alone on campus, not as sad as I thought it would be. Maybe because I was so focused on learning the availability Heuristic that I really did not give a flying _____ who saw me eating alone lol. So, eating alone, not that bad; getting ridiculously sweaty because I struggled to handle the heat of the pork curry that I so randomly chose to order, not good times. Maybe asia hasn't built up my tolerance for spice after all.

Time for me to delve back into Judgement and Decision Making for Organizations, jealous? Didn't think so. 3 sleeps. count. it. down.

liz beast is gone.

Today marked a sad day. Elizabeth left to go back to LA for graduation. To most people here, it wasn't as tough of a day as it was for me... See, liz beast is coming back next thursday to write finals, but I'm leaving this sunday, meaning that today was the last time I will see her until I visit LA in August.

I had a little sobfest of my own after she left, she had given me a letter and told me not to read it until she left, for reasons now evident.
Bawling like a little baby, I read the letter to mos. She said she didn't read my email because she didn't want to cry in the airport, ahhh waterworks alll over hk. I feel like we've broken up or something, I guess I've just never spent so much time and grown so close to someone over a period of time, only to have them leave and know that I won't see them for months to come... It's a lot harder than I thought. 90 days and counting =)

a real prize.

It is now Sunday but I have decided to record yesterday's events based on the fact that our evening was ridiculous.com.

I slept in decently, until I realized that it was only a couple of hours until the rugby game we had promised our friends we would attend. I quickly hit the gym before meeting up with Kev for what would end up as a mad dash through Causeway bay trying to find the stupid field. Stopping to ask locals, waste of time; trying to find it on our own, an even bigger waste of time lol. We went up to the first white guy we saw to see if he could be of any help, thenk god for Scotland.

We made it for the full second half, and although our team got spanked, it was a really good time. Kevin had been prviously instructed to take lots of pictures witha camera given to him by Ramin. Based on the fact that he was struggling, he let me attempt to be the photog for a while, I honestly don't know if there was one single picture I took that didn't end up being ridiculously blurry... The worst.

We came back to school after making the decision that we would get changed and go out for a nice dinner. The group ended up being 8 of us, and we headed to Soho in hopes of being able to decide on somewhere good to go. About an hour later, everyone was still arguing about which restaurant to go to, people were threatening to split up, and I was slowly slipping into hypoglycemia, which means only one thing. Bitch.com. Tania suggested that maybe I should get a snack from sev (more than likely she saw the horns slowly making their way out of the top of my head at this point), so off we went to deal with the blood sugar issue.

We decide on a greek and middle eastern restaurant called Olive. Hummus, Salmon, and 3 glasses on Pinot later, we were on our way to feather boa (a teenie tiny bar that serves ridiculous chocolate girly drinks). I took one for the diabetes team and opted out. Instead I decided that it would be totally appropriate to call Kevin (an east coast frat boy) out and challenge him to try and beat me in shotgunning. Next thing I know, we're outside of 7eleven, each holding a Budweiser tallboy, and I begin to wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life, am I a complete IDIOT?! Ah well it was too late now right? Our friends count us down and we're off. I realize I am now done and drop my empty can to the ground. FIRST. I then proceed to turn to Kevin and tell him to "take that to the bank and cash it" lol, ahhhh only I would say something like that... So classy.

Next stop, Gecco. Where I ingest zero alcohol, and once again, give myself a pat on the back. Not having the greatest time, me Kev and Ramin decide to head back to shotgun city, aka 7eleven. We proceed to sit there for about an hour having an uber serious conversation about life, until this gay couple comes up and starts tell Ramin how beautiful he is haha. These guys hang around for a while, and then retreat to some gay bar they were headed to. We continue on to meet up with everyone at "Pie". This place turns out to be fairly awesome, and the Peach Absolut just sits there staring me in the face, obviously I give in.

Pie was our last stop for the night, or so we though. We hop in a taxi, and before we even get 400 meters, the guys ask the taxi driver if he can stop at McDonalds, and tell him that we'll be right back, he says ok. What happened in the next five minutes is ridiculous and scary at the same time.

Everyone is ordering and the driver comes down the stairs screaming and shaking, this guy is so fuming mad that it looked like he was going to cry. he's screaming in cantonese at us and we have absolutely no idea what is going on. We're looking around asking people if they can help us and explain what he's saying, everyone responds with a blank stare. We offer the guy money, because the only thing we can guess is that he thinks we were trying to skip the cab and not pay, even though the fare was literally $3CDN at this point. I turn back around and all of a sudden my friends have gone upstairs and this guy is now screaming at me so loud that everyone in the restaurant has stopped eating and is staring. I just stood there as this guy was threatening to call the police, I told him to go ahead and call the police, figuring that would probably be the safest thing for me anyways. Some guys beside me tell me nto to worry, that he;s jsut drunk. DRUNK?!? This guy was our DRIVER, what a psycho. All i wanted were some fricken nuggets.

My friends come back down, and the police remove the angry, drunken driver. We get in another taxi and make our way back to school. We spend some time just hanging out outside of hall 7, before I made a short stop in hall 4 to see team india. t this point I was barefoot since my feet were hurting from heels. The whole barefoot thing has never posed a problem before, but of courrrrse tonight was the night. As I'm walking back to my hall, I stumble and scrape my toe in the ground, nto really hurting I don't think anything of it. I proceed to look down and see that the skin on the top of my big toe has been peeled back and I am bleeding like it's my fricken job here, perrrrrfect. Bloody, shoeless, and returning to my dorm at about 6am, I'm sure i looked like a real prize.

I rinsed it off and put on some bandaids, but have yet to remove them due to the fact taht I'm scared of what my throbbing, newly-skinless daddy toe looks like. I'm hoping for the best.

Time for the gym, have to work off last night's good times lol.

hong kong brushing style. bothering.

8:30am - Drag my ass out of bed in hopes of making it to my marketing group meeting on time.

8:35am - Realize that people here brush their teeth in the most bothering way known to man. I'm standing at the sink, and look to my right only to see this girl bent directly over the sink, brushing away like theres no tomorrow, which is fine, I'm a fan of oral hygiene as well. But, her mouth is completely open and she is letting the toothpaste just fall out of her mouth as she's brushing, I have never seen so much foamy toothpaste in my life. This goes on for MINUTES. It's like a bad car accident, I didn't want to, but I just couldn't stop watching. If this does not give you the creepy crawlies, then once home, I will demonstrate the "hong kong brushing style" for you, you will never look at a tube of Colgate the same way again.

8:55am - Email my group to tell them I will be late, as there is no chance in hell of my making it to barn B in 5 minutes.

9:30am - Wonder why I even showed up for this meeting, based on the fact that all of my local nard groupmates are conversing in Cantonese, and semi-rudely butt in, asking them what we are talking about, and what exactly the problem is.

The next hour and a half continues on as such, cantonese chatting like it's their job, me sitting with my head in my hands, an abundance of blank stares at the "fishbein model" table that is up on the computer screen, with nobody saying anything. I had had enough and was like "okay so what's the issue here?", immediately wishing I hadn't. A million dumb ideas come spewing forth from one group member in particular, who also has the tendency to "suggest" things that had JUST been decided on like 5 minutes prior, soooooo over this. Finally the meeting ends with me being appointed to handle the Q&A in our presentation on Monday, and for some stupid reason, me offering to draft a copy of the recommendations section (6 pages, idiot much?).

Following this retarded ordeal disguised as a meeting, was a ridiculous, much needed recovery nap.

1:35pm - Wake up (once again) to go to some marketing experiment, during which we are asked to drink an entire cup of milk tea which "consists of black tea sweetened with evaporated milk", umm diabetic disaster? i think so. I explain to the experimenter that I can't drink the whole thing, but could maybe just have a few sips. She tells me to "just hold it" instead. Weeeeeird.

3:05pm -Meet lizbeast in the cafe for some diabetic-style french toast. Almost non-diabetic based on the fact taht the lady was half a second away from squeezing this big thing of honey all over it, it was literally a scene out of a movie, me running towards the counter yelling "nooooooooo", as if my life depended on eating those exact 2 slices lol, funny now, nerve racking at the time. She stops in the nick of time, and I happily break out my sf syrup in the oh-so-classy plastic bottle.

4:05pm - I am now searching through the halls for room 4218k, in which my next experiment is supposed to take place. I find 4218, and go inside, its a small hall with a collection of small rooms, assigned letters A-I. Hmmmm no K? Some little chinese girl joins me in the serach for the mystery experiment location, no dice.

4:25pm - I return to my room to send an angry email at this stupid experimenter that chose the most ridicuous non-existant room on campus to conduct research. Followed by me writing this entry. That is all for now.