Reporting From Where I Shouldn’t Be

I shouldn’t be here.  This is bad.  There’s been a mistake.  I should be in an entirely different place.  I should be much farther West than I am.

So where should I be?  In Kashgar, that’s where.  In the wonderfully not Chinese province of Xinjiang.  And where am I now?  Still in Xi’an.  Damn it!  So why am I not there?  Because I missed my flight.  In the US, airlines are somewhat flexible about check-in times and all that.  Not so in China.  Check-in is closed 30 minutes before any flight, and that’s final.  I found that out the hard way because I showed up 20 minutes before the flight.  I tried to explain that I wasn’t going to check any bags and that I could get through security in time.  No dice.  Unless you have serious guan-xi (sort of translates to relations), which naturally I don’t, then you are screwed.  They offered to put me on a later flight, costing over 600 RMB more and causing me to land in Kashgar after midnight.  That’s a no go.  After a long phone conversation with the very nice people at eLong I will be able to reschedule my tickets for up to a year and only have to pay the difference in cost.  Not a bad deal, I think.  Still, I would much rather be in Xinjiang right now.

Though part of me thinks that this turn of events is a blessing in disguise.  My health has taken a turn for the worse in the past week shortly after booking my tickets.  Without going into the details, I will say that I was left nearly incapacitated for a full two days after it happened.  On the day I was supposed to leave I was still not 100% recovered.  I think backpacking around Xinjiang for 2 weeks would not improve things.  So now I have some extra time to lay about and recover.  At the moment I’m a bit too paranoid about Chinese doctors to go see one and so I’m left to self medicate (which I know is a really bad idea, but what’cha gonna do?) until I return to the states.

That being said, writing here and reading other blogs has dropped a lot on my list of priorities.  I may not be commenting a lot, but I’m still reading here and there, just very slowly.  My motivation is just completely sapped at the moment.  Between ending the semester, working hard on my blogging and writing, having dear friends leave my life (probably forever), and now this, I feel completely drained.  Fortunately, I have a few things pre-written in anticipation for my trip to Xinjiang, so there’s not much work I have to do for the coming week.

Speaking of working hard on writing, I had my first and second guest blog posts published within a day of each other.  The first is about my trip to Nanjing over at Asian Ramblings.  Originally I promised Stevo an article on a particular topic, and ended up writing something completely different.  He was kind enough to publish it anyway.  The second is an article I wrote about spending 48 hours in Xi’an over at My Several Worlds.  Both Carrie (at MSW) and Stevo have been incredibly supportive of me and always ready with advice and sound counsel.  I am very happy to have been given the opportunity to give something back to them.  Thanks guys!  I hope my work helps.

That’s all I got for now.  I just wanted to let you all know what’s going on and why I’ve been relatively quiet.  I feel like I should be more active than ever considering my two articles being published, but I just don’t have the energy.  I’m tired.  I’m filled with ennui.  I know I need to do something, to get outside and see some cool stuff.  I just can’t motivate myself at the moment.  On the flip side, there will be a 4th of July barbecue this weekend hosted by my Hash Run friend, which should be a lot of fun.

Have a happy 4th of July everyone!

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