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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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. ...