I think I will end up studying either Environmental development, some sort of health related degree, or Translation.

It’s just interesting to think back to when I was in school and was always winning, always the top of the class. ..teachers telling me I could be the future president, or to remember them when I was a famous scientist or something…

Come to think of it, alot of the smart kids I remember from back then are now working at stores….

What the hell happened?

But then I look at the people who are doctors and so forth. Job may be challenging, but they have no personal time or time to take care of their own health. Sure going back to school to get a grad degree helps your career, but people with jobs in business are so busy…

Does life have to be like this where you pick and choose? Can’t you have it all? A low-stress, challenging, but well-paid position and time outside that to have a social life and raise a family and still have time to keep yourself sane and healthy?

I want to cook more.

I want to take more walks with my family.

I want to learn that I am lucky enough to be at the wheel, driving through my own life. I can drive 10 or 70 mph. I can choose to pull over whenever I want, call a friend when I don’t know the way…there will always be another exit, interchange, or turnaround ahead…

I want to spend lots of hours laughing with old friends.

I want to drink tea and cozy up with a book.

I want to save the money that I have left in case I have to move somewhere and pay for a bunch of plane tickets/apartment move-in fees, living expenses. ..but still spend enough that I don’t feel like I’m suffering.

I want to put sad memories behind me, remember the happy times, and move forward to a better and more challenging future!

New post after quite some time.

Long story short, I am alive, well, had a good adventure, and have alot to be grateful for.

Miss all the people who’ve I spent many a wonderful time laughing with, but glad for the ones who were waiting for me here with hugs and positivity.

I can’t believe it’s already been over a month since I got back.

It’s nice that there are distracting christmas decorations and cheer everywhere so I don’t have to think so much about being unemployed.

I decided to make some goals and write them out for myself.

I will do something involving Japanese for an hour everyday.

I will practice violin at least 3 times a week.

And dink around on Molly’s guitar sometimes…

I will translate at least one article every week

I will not check my inbox 2000 times a day to see if that translation company in Tokyo has gotten back to me.

I will not beat myself up that I only apply to a couple jobs a week and have decided to let whatever job that interests me be the place I move to. I will email the Monterey Institute to see what I can see….

I will let life flow with me and not fight what comes..too much.

If I get a good-paying job, I will go on vacation somewhere until it starts and not feel a shred of guilt.

I really hope I get the translation job…

Good quotes from a book I read when I was in India…interestingly enough about another woman on an adventure.

“I feel the way about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless, newborn baby–I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to–I just don’t care. “

“When you are lost in the woods, it sometimes take you a while to realize that you ARE lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered a few feet off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.”

“I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. …There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”

“…Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that’s not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment. Americans work harder and longer  and more stressful hours than anyone in the world today. …we seem to like it. Alarming statistics back this observation up, showing that many Americans feel more happy and fulfilled in their offices than they do in their own homes. Of course, we all inevitably work too hard, then we get burned out and have to spend the whole weekend in our pajamas, eating cereal straight out of the box and staring at the TV in a mild coma (which is the opposite of working, yes, but not exactly the same thing as pleasure). Americans don’t really know how to do NOTHING. This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype–the overstressed executive who goes on vacation, but who cannot relax.” (61)

Ah…I don’t think “Eat, Pray, Love” is the best book ever written, but there are quite a few quoteworthy pieces within it.

Sickness is feeling a bit better though and my mind has moved on to other things.

So passing 1kyu has made me think alot about what to do in the future.It makes me extremely frustrated.

I could get a job in Japan yeah…but that’d be it. I wouldn’t be able to work in the US probably and I’d live out the rest of my life stuck in an expensive country where people work too hard and wouldn’t be able to have more than a few days of vacation a year. Wow, that sounds really negative. That and Japanese guys..and western guys in Japan…hmm. I would probably never get married. So hard working for the rest of my life, not able to return home, and eternally single. That sounds INCREDIBLY depressing.

Or I could try and get a job in the US: Craigslist shows some banking, export/import (bad industry with the economy the way it is though), teaching Japanese(people who study Japanese in the US are crazy though…just look at me! haha), teaching English over the internet, travel agency or tours (but all the people I’ve met who do tours say that’s only fun for the first month or so) working at an international school.Most of the jobs related to Japanese are in the tech/engineering industries though. Hmm…become a techie in the next 5 years?

I could go back to school for a degree in: Business, Environmental science, Education (long holidays, but from what I heard there aren’t alot of jobs available in the city..hmm), Accounting, Translation (ah…I want to study something new though )

I think maybe I should stick with my original plan…get a part-time job that is low stress and try going back to school for a year doing pre-req’s for an Environmental studies masters and see what happens. If nothing else, I can enjoy the studying and maybe just get a job anyways. Maybe I can do translation part-time or something…at any rate, it doesn’t make sense to launch myself into grad school or a job if  I can’t see a future in it and am doing a half-assed job of. I already forced myself through a Japanese major when I really wanted to major in Bio, Engineering, or computer science (glad I didn’t end up doing the last one..haha) I really wish I hadn’t gotten sick freshman year…I wonder if things would be different then. Anyways, if I go back to school, I want it to be for something that I really love. I should have that option anyways.  That and it’s inefficient to try to do too many things. Better to figure out what I want to do in the long-run, figure out what I need to do to get there, and then put all my energy into that one cause.

It makes me long for the situation in my book…the woman works in a post office back in the old days. People are always so happy to receive packages and she can take great satisfaction in her work and have a happy family and lots of time with her child.

I miss so much about the US when I’m by myself though.  My dad’s filthy house…costco…driving the neon on I-5 on rainy days with the music blasting the same stupid songs over and over on the radio when the lights…hanging out playing settlers til crazy hours of the morning with friends. Also Toyohashi and Nagoya…friends, taking walks along Sanagawa, going to ID, getting lunch at Happy Valley, taking overpriced trains…and my crazy little students who either beat me up or gave me hugs depending on what kind of mood they were in that day

If I could have a super power, I wish I could always be positive. Always be greatful for what is there. Now I am on vacation and am tired of it, but next week I will for sure be having loads of fun with Miyako and Daisuke and think that I’m crazy for ever wanting to stop.I should be grateful that I even have that option. There are people working themselves to death in Japan, eating themselves to death in the US, and dying simply because they don’t have access to clean water or their houses were swept away in a storm, or they caught a disease and there’s no hospital in Africa and other countries…life isn’t fair. I like work though. Even when I worked really hard at NCC every night when I got back to my apartment I felt that I’d really given all my energy to the day and it was a good feeling.

It helps to write everything out…otherwise it’s hard to rationalize and my thoughts and the excess of choices create a giant tangle of uncertainty in my brain.

生きがいがある人生がほしい。

As for Malaysia, it  is alot like Indonesia. I like it here, but I’ve had a bit of bad luck.

I was supposed to get an India visa in Beijing and was told there that it would take two weeks to process and I’d have to surrender my passport the whole time Not cool at all.

So I found out a cheap way to change my tickets for China and come to KL a few days early. It’s still going to take like 5 days to process here, but at least I can travel around and do stuff cause I got to keep my passport! I’m thinking of going to the Cameron highlands and if I can still get cheap tickets, to the Perhentian islands. Air Asia is ridiculously cheap in Malaysia. Unfortunately I found out the other day that I have SHINGLES. I thought that shingles was an old person disease and that young people don’t get it, but apparently I was wrong. Shingles is a form of adult chickenpox in that the chickenpox virus reactivates in the body and starts sending an itchy rash out of the nerves on one side of the body. So I started getting what I thought were mosquito bites all up and down my left leg, then they turned into these hive-clusters. That and I’ve felt like I’ve had the flu recently. At this I started getting freaked out and visited a doc (for 25 dollars meds and all! Yay cheap healthcare!), and apparently from here on they are going to turn into blisters and then pop and hurt like crazy. For 2-3 weeks. Like leg herpes, but not. I feel so sexy.

Anyways, I am stuck here in KL (stuck being a relative term because hey, I’m in a foreign country…lots of adventure to enjoy!) for the duration and Miyako and Daisuke are going to be having an awesome time in Southern India without me for the time-being. Can’t wait to go to Bangalore. Maybe I’ll have good luck and my visa will magically be ready on Thursday!

In the meantime, chilling in Malaysia. It’s not so bad, hmm?

I really should’ve just borrowed money from my friends and applied for my visas back in Thailand way before all this crazy started.Unfortunately should’ve’s do not change a thing in the present. I had all my documents ready today…went to the place where the embassy was supposed to be, there’s nothing there but some old buildings because the embassy has moved without changing their address on the internet. Was really lucky that a group of people called the number I had and helped me find the right place, but then when I got there it was after 11…an Indian guy working there said that that wasn’t even the application center and sent me to ANOTHER place. Then was really lucky that they started to help me process my documents. Unfortunately, they then tell me that i’ll take 2 weeks to get a visa 7 business days plus the effects of 2 holidays in India and the US slow down processing times…why the heck would I stay 2 weeks in Beijing? Why is it so hard to get a visa for India when every other country offers like 3-day processing and often you can do it in a day if you pay extra? Agh…I have only myself to blame for not researching this better.

Then I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get my new debit card, because the US embassy has informed me that they do not accept packages on behalf of US citizens. What happened to emergency assistance? What kind of emergency assistance do they provide if not stuff like accepting peoples’ credit cards and stuff when they’re stuck in situations like this.

I have really shit luck, but maybe this will teach me to be more on top of things in the future.

Someone send me good vibes and karma and pray that by some miracle I’ll be able to get my visa before the 8th so that I don’t have to try and change all my plane tickets and pay like 300 dollars in fees on top of the like 200 plus that this visa is probably going to end up costing

First time in my trip where I really just want to give up and go home although I don’t know how that’d really help anything. I miss having my clothes in a dresser…I wish I could hear a familiar voice, but then I think I might start crying over this mess and the cafe people would probably kick me out…lol.  Ugh. Somehow things will work out, right?

With that I should get back to getting stuff done…here’s some old blogs that I never got around to uploading…have fun.

Debated on whether to post this or not. It’s pretty crazy and will most-likely cause you to judge me…but here it is anyways…An eventful and chaotic week in Thailand
August 13, 2010
Wow…so I haven’t really had time to update for a week now. I am riding this as I take a minibus to Pattaya to visit some friends! Yay! 
Basically last Friday I flew to Thailand, took a bus to Siam Square, and then took a realllly long tuk-tuk ride that landed me at the wrong hotel which helped me take an over-priced taxi to the right hotel that was actually a 5-minute walk from Siam Square. Way to go in circles Katie.
Thailand has been tiring, but awesome. Tiring due to lack of sleep from too much craziness and awesome due to Mayumi, Kat, and Kazu and having way too much fun.
Saturday I slept in late and met my friend for lunch at MBK, a HUGE department store only 5 minutes from my hotel. I think I chose one of the busiest and most convenient places in Bangkok to stay. After having fun with them and watching some questionable free dance cover acts by ladyboys right in front of MBK, I went to meet my friends at the hotel. It was so good to see Mayumi, Kazu, and Kat!!!! I have missed them and all my friends back in Japan so much…After meeting up with them, we went back to watch more dances AND have an AWESOME dinner on the 5th floor of MBK…I swear…BEST cafeteria I have ever been…they have mouth-watering plastic models of almost any food you’d want to eat in the world.
Next morning we had to wake up at 5am to catch a flight to Chiangmai. I was beyond tired and was stupid enough to lose my debit card to an ATM in the airport…thus having about 100 dollars for Chiangmai…It’s been almost a week now and probably at least 10 calls to Visa…haven’t got my card yet…not exactly sure when I will be getting it. First they say one thing and then it turns out to be another…I really hope I can get it by Monday… Fortunately I could get 500 dollars through my bank and Western Union so I will be alright a little longer. Really regretting having not gotten more though. I need to book flights and hotels and get visas for the next places I will be going, but can’t because my Visa card is taking so long.
Chiangmai was amazing though! First day we had a “free tour”, which was basically a guy driving us around to a bunch of handicraft shops that would briefly show us the production process and then try to sell us stuff. We got to see Wood, lacquer, silk, silver, and umbrella crafts which was interesting enough anyways. After we went to Chiangmai’s Sunday market which was unbelievable awesome. Everything was so cheap and beautiful I just wanted to buy everything! I felt really bad for Kazu being the only guy…we girls were stopping every 3 feet to look at and try on stuff..it was kinda ridiculous. Even more so when we got stuck in a downpour and put plastic bags on our heads in an attempt to remain even slightly dry! Haha! Then we went drinking at a rooftop place called THC that was pretty wild. No, we did not smoke pot! But there were some people there that were dancing and looked COMPLETELY gone…we were celebrating Mayumi’s birthday so Kat and I attempted to find a cake and ended up with Starbucks sweets topped with cute little flower candles from the market. Around 11:30, Kat and I were pretty spent, took a tuktuk that got us lost despite saying that he knew where we were going and finally got us to our hotel 40 minutes late…O_o…I swear that Thai drivers have THE worst sense of direction.
We get to our room and find out our key is bent. Kat tries to open the door with it anyways (might as well try, right?) and the key snaps off. O_O We go down and the hotel reception seems pissed off and says that their “engineer” has left for the night and we can’t get into the room again til the next night. AHHH. We ask for a toolkit…they give us an exacto knife…how can hotel staff NOT have a toolkit AND not know how to break into a room?! I ended up prying the door knob off to try and unscrew it from the inside…nope the screws are screwed in from the inside of the room and they have no pliers. The staff seemed completely oblivious as to what to do. I finally managed to get the broken key OUT using my two hands and two mechanical pencils that were in my bag. VICTORY! Then the staff used the spare key to get us into our room…where we promptly fell asleep around 2…ugh. Crisis averted.
Sec ond day we went on a trip to a place with elephants! We rode them, went on a downriver ride on a bamboo raft, played with a baby monkey, had an amazing buffet lunch, and then went to see the longneck tribe with the brass neck rings. Their necks are long because the brass rings are so heavy that they push the shoulders down. Traditionally, the rings were used because people thought that tigers attacked woman and would kill them by biting their necks. Strange, huh? The thing that bothered me the most is that the part of the village that we saw was just about 20 souvenir huts selling the same wares and they were staffed only by pretty girls from 5 years and up…I would hate to be pretty in their village…no life, but to sit in the family souvenir hut and sell stuff to greedy tourists who for the most part just want pictures I felt really sorry for the little girls…
After that we visited an orchid farm and went to play with tigers! The latter of which was more like petting stuffed animals because according to the staff, tigers sleep about 18 hours a day. It was about 25 usd to spend about 5 or 10 minutes each with a bunch of baby and a bunch of HUGE tigers. Other than getting whapped in the head a few times by a HUGE tiger’s tail, it was pretty uneventful, but such a rush!
Our last day we went “trekking”(walking for about 10 minutes) to some waterfalls and visited the highest point in Thailand, a white current (?) tribe where the woman have to wear white until they get married. We actually didn’t see any women wearing white in the village we visited . I thought maybe all the single ladies get taken away by rich tourists
Later though we visited the King and Queen’s Pagodas though which has some of the most beautiful gardens I have ever seen. There we were lucky enough to run into a group of young girls who were wearing the white costume…along with baseball/cowbow hats and nikes…haha. Love the new generation.
Chiangmai was so great. Food and friends were amazing, tour guides cheerful and helpful, shopping outstanding and our 3-day package with hotel a 5-minutes walk from the city center, tours, and transportation was only 3000 baht or about 100 USD.
On Wednesday, back we went to Bangkok and did a bit more shopping and checked out Khao San road. We got dinner and after a few beers, a certain person (Not me! Haha) was begging to go to an erotic show. She cheerfully got the attention of our lady boy waiter and smilingly bubbled, “Where can we see an erotic show? Like the ones wher e the woman smokes with her pussy?” LMAO….it was incredibly funny…the waiter awkwardly replied that there might be a place about 20 minutes away. The other waitress, a pretty young girl then said, “oh, you want to go to erotic show? Like *naughty hand gestures with sound effects of a pingpong ball*” HAHAHA….So suddenly we were in a taxi on the way to a naughty show. It was 700 baht, a little more than 20 USD. We figured that we would just watch the one Mayumi wanted to see and leave…they showed us a “menu” of sorts which we had fun readin…”Man and woman have sex? Eww…I don’t want to see that…” “I wonder what ‘pussy rainbow’ is” (I now know….) and we figured 700 baht was just for the one show…anyways, we get there right as they are showing the man and woman having sex. Wow. It turns out 700 baht gets you everything, ongoing from 7pm to 2am if you like. We awkwardly joked about how funny it would be if the guy ended before the music did. At the show the only seats left were RIGHT next to the stage…talk about awkward. I saw everything from about 5 feet away. I thought it was incredibly interesting that the man and woman looked completely bored out of their minds through like over 20 positions that I wasn’t even aware existed! Other than that we saw all sorts of crazy things…it turned out that woman can do all sorts of things with their nether regions that I was not aware of…including drawing pictures, whistling, holding strings of razors, and shooting things out…EWW.
There was a moment about halfway though the show, when they took away the table in front of us and me and Kat were like…”uh-oh”..the woman was going to shoot a dildo out of her vag into an ashtray. The first time was fine. The second not so much. In fact very very bad or very very good aim. The dildo went right into my cleavage and then rolled down onto my bag that was in my lap. ..
I think there are some moments in life where really all you can is laugh.
“Oh sorry!” She said…kinda like the way that kids say it when they kick the soccer ball and it ALMOST hits a friend…ALMOST. NOT a dildo launched straight into my bosoms…WOW. From the tone of her voice, I guess that happens a lot.
Later my friends were teasing me that I will remember that moment everytime I wear that dress…then I reminded Mayumi that I was wearing her bikini…which totally got hit as well
The thing that bothered me more though, is the one of the staff then came, took the towel that they’d been using to wipe off the stage floor after each show and wiped down my bosoms with it…could I feel anymore unclean?! After that I excused myself to the bathroom and went crazy with the handiwipes and hand sanitizer.
The rest of the show was pretty uneventful. More tricks and so forth. The same woman who had sex with the man also did a lesbian show and a “pulling a string of razors” out of herself show…In order of how enthusiastic she was, the man-woman show she looked like she wished she was somewhere else. Didn’t really move other than what was necessary to change positions. The lesbian show she was more into it. Go figure that in Asia it is more appropriate for women to look comfortable having sex with each other than hetero sex. The razor show she looked like she was having a blast. Even finished the show by cutting a piece of paper to show how sharp the razor was.
Anyways,after about an hour they started to repeat and we decided to leave and go clubbing. Clubbing was kinda mediocre. The first club we visited was Lava…good music, but lots of what looked like highschoolers…we quickly left and checked out “The Club” which was a classy looking place, but unfortunately played nothing but washed-out techno. We headed back to the hotel and then slept for about 4 hours.
Thursday we went to the floating market. It took took us awhile to find our bus station…finally left at 8:30am…about halfway there our bus hits a vendor STRAIGHT on. Fortunately they weren’t going very fast, although what a vendor was doing in the middle of the road is beyond me. A replacement bus came after about 30 minutes, but there were no seats so we had to stand without AC for about an hour 
Finally arrived around 11 and they wanted to charge us 1500 BAHT per PERSON PER HOUR to ride a motorboat…insanity. I looked at the woman and told her we would leave and find a taxi to a cheaper place. A lot of bargaining and we finally gave in at250 Baht for an hour. I kept looking at the lady as she said cheaper prices and telling her she was crazy and we were going to leave. 250 was still overpriced I think, but it worked out for the best…there were cheaper non-motor water taxis, but we didn’t have a lot of time since Mayumi’s bus to Krabi would be leaving in the evening and it was 2 more hours to Bangkok.
The market was nice, but the people were nicer and I had some nice Ramputan
After that we had an uneventful ride back to Bangkok where all of could catch up on sleep and then went back to MBK for a last dinner all together. Then saw Mayumi off 
Since it was the queen’s birthday there were lots of events going on and we got to see fireworks and some free (non-erotic…I think I’m at my limit for that!) shows of Thai dance.
(After I arrived in Pattaya I had a wonderful time with friends enjoying the beach and some excellent food as well as awesome fireworks for the international fireworks fest! Thailand was great! )

Bu hao yi si…zhe ge la ma? August 30 2010
I arrived in Shanghai on August 26th 2010. A 202 yuan taxi later (Actually 200, the cabbie let us keep 2 yuan! We’re not in the Philippines anymore! ) and we arrived at our hostel in the city.
The first day we took it easy just walking around the area near our hotel. I love walking around foreign countries…so much flavor! We dodged bikes and cars and made it to a small restaurant where we ordered noodles and dumplings. People talk so loudly everywhere and always seem to be fighting…or maybe Chinese just makes them sound like that…
Also service for us was horrible. Waiters generally ignore you unless you practically yell at them and then seem really irritated while you pick out items on the menu.
Chinese people don’t waste any time…if you don’t RUN up to the register, trust that someone will be there to cut in front of you…this has happened to be so many times
Also, I am learning Chinese like crazy….it seems like no one can speak here!!! Both me and my friends noticed that even at the airports, World expo, and tourist information centers, almost no one can speak English. I am teaching myself the words for left, right, straight, and other basics because most people can’t seem to explain directions in terms other than grunts, gestures, or just talking to you in Chinese.
Also, when we ask random people for help (been doing this my whole trip and have had no problems in any other countries!) 90 percent of the time the person will either say, “NO” and walk away, babble on in Chinese, or just ignore us. Even at the WORLD freaking Expo and 2 international airports and like 90 percent of people just get a blank look when I talk to them in English or Japanese!
One time we said “Excuse me..?” to a guy and he responded not with, “yes?” or “Can I help you?” but with, “Excuse me” and then waited for us to say something. This is in Shanghai…In Japan, even if the person can’t speak a word of English will at least try to help you or find someone who can! It’s kind of ridiculous, but it’s also cool cause I’m learning so much Chinese because I have no choice as long as I avoid Starbucks.
On some other notes though, Chinese people don’t seem overly gawky like in some other countries. Almost no one stares at me, which despite my telling my friends is because I have a tan now and am no longer so blindingly white, is probably because they just don’t care! People don’t dye their hair as much, wear makeup as much, wear fancy clothes as much…I’ve seen very few people with “surgical” eyes like in Japan. It’s kind of refreshing. On the other hand the cutting is really really irritating. I may have been in Japan too long, but I really like that people in Japan are at least polite!
All things aside though, I had lots of fun in Shanghai! The food and shopping were amazing and the expo was crowded but awesome! The architecture of the buildings for the different Pavilions was simply incredible and the night views spectacular! I’m sad I didn’t have more days to spread it out over, but it was more fun with friends. I was bummed to say goodbye to my good friend Nana today though…we’ve had so many good times! Hopefully we can travel together again someday!
Now on to the rest of China, India, and then who knows? 

Today I went snorkeling and saw lots of little fishies and beautiful corals in the clear-blue water. Fish are so interesting…how they come to check you out…take a nibble of your ankle…get to know you. And then run away if you move too quickly.  We saw some little fish and shrimp living in the sand…they are symbiotic…the fish hangs out at the entrance and when it’s safe, darts inside…then the shrimp comes and brings out a load of sand and dirt and burries back down into its home. haha. When I see how fish behave in the water I think of how people behave and it makes me laugh.

Loving vacation…loving people…even loving all the crazy and exhaustion that goes along with it.

Grad school is leaning towards economic/environmental development more and more the more I travel.

Sleepy…going to drink with some new friends and then sleep! Tomorrow is another day!

Soo tired today…because.

Tried to get my pin number from my bank last night…they said they would mail it to my house >< Tried to get money from 3 different banks with my temporary visa card…can’t without the pin number. Tried to change 3000 Baht to pesos and they wanted to change it 1:1..no love. Need to get a China visa today, but I don’t even have enough cash for it if I went…ACK. Looks like I will be stuck in Manila longer than expected…

Also, everyone has guns here. Japanese people talk about how everyone has guns in the US, but here…it is ridiculous…There are armed guards everywhere, they put their batons through the doors of the banks so no one can go in..then people have to leave their guns outside when they go in…cause they have them!!!

Even 7/11 has two armed guards inside! This is crazy!!!

“Beautiful darling…let me see your smile…mmm yeah” LOL

And

“Miss…I love you…transport, massage, anything I give you free”

I was almost like, “Really? For free? In that case…” But I’m pretty sure that’s a scam…

Anyways, today I am a happy Katie J

I am writing this from a plane flying to Kuala Lumpur!  Am feeling a million times better after spending almost my whole time in Bali sleeping and being sick in my hotel room :/ Need to go back and do Bali again for sure! I finally caught up with my surf teacher and had a half-day lesson this morning and it was  such a rush! I need to live somewhere warmer so I can enjoy all these new things like surfing and diving! It’s like riding a roller coaster except you can fall off! I dunno how much saltwater I swallowed and I scraped up my knee pretty bad on the sand, but the waves were HUGE and I was actually able to catch quite a few! The hardest part of surfing was trying to keep my bikini on! Haha! How do people not have swimsuit malfunctions ALL the time? Can’t wait to go surfing again soon!!!!

Another thing, when learning new things, it helps if your teacher is a really, really good-looking guy. No, this is not as shallow as it sounds! I mean, that I am a giant wimp, but if the teacher is good-looking I can suck it up and pretend not to be afraid. And then once you’re actually diving or surfing it’s so fun and interesting that it’s too late to be afraid, and hey, you’re with a cute guy .

It’s just frustrating cause being a female traveling by myself, I think I’ve been asked out like 20 times….Ok, so half of those were my taxi drivers…lol, but still! Nobody ever asks me out in real-life, but when I’m traveling and can’t date anyways…go figure.

Anyways, on to Bangkok and exciting adventures with Gazzhi, Mayumi, Kat, and Kazu for a week!

Good music…I don’t listen to that much music usually, but being on vacation I’ve been listening to much more than usual which is nice

Shakira-Waka Waka

Lady Gaga-Bad Romance

Rihanna-Hard

Train-Hey Soul Sister

Iyaz-Replay

Justin Bieber-Eenie Meenie

Kesha-Your Love is My Drug

Taio Cruz-Break your heart

Daughtry-Life After You

Jason Derulo-Sky is the limit