It's been a whirlwind of a summer "vacation"... I suppose starting from losing hundreds of dollars in move-out, sprinting through NY with Aileen to move into our new apartment, scouring LA for the best deals, wine-ing my way through Portland, then scrambling to prepare for 4.5 months abroad... But here I am, no worse for the wear. I arrived in Shanghai Sunday night, only to find that the airline had lost my luggage somewhere along the way. Enter the superheroes, Jon and Eric, who took me out to dinner and helped me find an overpriced Japanese drug store. My biggest surprise? There is so much Chinese. It sounds silly, but I forgot what it feels like to be alone in country in which you don't speak (and particularly, can't read) the language! Since my initial panic,
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