I’m knackered, both mentally and physically. I can’t wait to see C but I think trotting about Hong Kong, Taiwan and China for 2 and a half weeks is going to finish me off. If we have to stay in a room with a glass bathroom, I just cannot. Even if I was on my own I wouldn’t want that! It’s like rooms with bathtubs in the bedroom, its just not needed. No one wants it. ...

Took Mum to Kaldi and we came out with two boxes of Twinings tea. ...

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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