Jessica Ralston's Blog

To Do List Before I Leave China (In No Particular Order)

• Pack.
• Travel to Dandong. Wave hello to North Korea, go to the Hushan Great Wall, have some good Korean barbecue.
• Clean the apartment. Top to bottom.
• Take and print pictures of each of my classes. Write my e-mail on the back, give to students on the last day of their classes with me.
• Get the bulk of the timeline business of my novel done and out of the way. That part takes up a lot of floor space. Neither an airplane nor my parent’s house have that kind of room.
• Did I mention pack? This also includes sorting through all the crap I’ve amassed over the year (souvenirs, cheap books, silly tourist T-shirts) and deciding what comes home with me, what gets thrown out, what gets passed on to the next teacher.
• Write up detailed class descriptions for each of my classes and one one ones for the next teacher’s reference.
• Buy more chopsticks, little tchotchke things, and some of the non-perishable foodstuffs that I want to bring home (date flakes, tomato and egg convenient noodles, baijiu, sachima… I’m pretty sure there’s something missing from this list).
• Do laundry. My mother would kill me if I came back with dirty laundry. ETA1: S1 informed me that this is included in packing. Okay, then.
• ETA2: Did I mention WORK? Yes, I still have classes in between all of this. Sigh.

There’s too much to do! I have about two weeks left here, and traveling to Dandong is looking less and less likely. That’s upsetting because I really want to see North Korea (from the Chinese side of the Yalu River, but still) and the easternmost section of the Great Wall.

…Instead of sitting here writing this blogpost, I really should be writing these items on a piece of paper and start doing them.

Yeah.

When I come home on Saturday and Sunday nights (usually with takeaway from the vegetable place around the corner) I really don’t have the mental capacity for anything more strenuous than changing into pajamas and collapsing at my desk in a miserable, moaning heap. (I work about 8-10 hours on those days.) During my boneless, mental mush time, I tend to put on a few episodes of Friends just to unwind.

My sisters and I love Friends. There was one summer were S1 and I watched every episode in the ten seasons. The pair of us would sit on the couch in the living room after everyone went to bed and watch a few episodes. This would baffle our mother because she said (and still says), “I don’t know how you can watch so many episodes in a row. Doesn’t it get annoying after a while?” I don’t know either, but we can, and no, it doesn’t get annoying. There are some episodes we skip, just to get to our favorites within a season because we know it that well. We’ve seen every episode at least once, and a lot of episodes more than a handful of times. Nearly everything can be brought back to a specific moment in the Friends timeline. It’s become a point of discussion for us.

S2 resisted for a while, but eventually we brought her over to the “dark side,” which I think happened she she hit the age where suddenly adult humor makes sense, rather than just being funny because everyone else is laughing, or the delivery is a bit humorous. However, S1 is still the bigger fan. If she catches an episode on TV and I’m around, I’ll throw on the same episode and we’ll watch and chat on Skype.

It’s nice to have something like Friends to remind you of the special bond you share with your sisters, even though I’m in China and my sisters are in New York.

Sidenote In the spirit of helping fellow Wrimos, please head over to my friend Theo’s NaNo blog and join me in supporting his efforts! November is right around the corner!