Trying to look for hotels in China and a lot of them seem to just have glass bathrooms right in the room. I’ve been friends with C since I was 11 but no, I can’t deal with that!

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Hair cut on Sunday, just how I usually have it done. At first Mum didn’t notice and then her response when I said was, I was just about to ask if you’d been to the hairdressers (no you weren’t). Then she said, it’s really nice and she kept saying that over and over until I told her to stop. And then she asked a bit later, are you happy with it? That just told me everything I needed to know about her opinion on it. Thanks Mum! ...

I think it’s going to be harder to get around China with no Chinese than C thinks. I’ve started trying to learn it on Duolingo but so far all I can say is ‘I am American’ which I’m not and ‘I speak English’, which I can just say in English. I’ve also got ‘I am a teacher’, ‘I am a lawyer’ and ‘I am a doctor’. I can’t even really say them that well, I can read them which I could do before Duolingo because they are really similar to Japanese. 我是美国人.我说英文.

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I’ve got so much to do and as usual I’m doing none of it. I’m just putting it off until the very last moment when I’m forced to shape myself. ...

I’ve eaten 1kg of peanut butter in 13 days. That’s insane! It wouldn’t be so bad but they’ve sold out of the one I don’t mind from the supermarket here. That only comes in 330g jars so it never lasts very long. I was even willing to buy the smooth one, but they didn’t have that either. I don’t know what I’m going to do now. ...