Much better. :)

5pm China time, so 4am for you folks - and I must say, things are much better now! I am absolutely exhausted, but there are still fun things to look forward to tonight (the Sichuan Opera!). We finally got to meet the rest of the group; we had breakfast and then went on a very, very long tour of this enormous campus from 10am to about 1pm, when we headed to a restaurant for a hotpot lunch. :D I really like everyone so far, it seems like we have a really good group (there are 10 of us). One poor girl, Mary, got stuck in Beijing last night and didn't arrive until late this morning - she must be totally out of it.

When we got back to the dorm around 3, I think most people (everyone?) headed back out to do some exploring. I feel like I should have joined them - don't want to pass up on any socializing/exploring opportunities while I'm here, I know. I really needed to cool down, though, and I absolutely had to sit down and get a few things organized - how much money I really have, for example. In the future I'll try not to miss out on anything like that, but I had taken in enough for one day and really needed some alone/organizational time.

I have taken nearly 100 pictures so far - I'm sending an email to Kat shortly with some photos to share with you all. I can't access my blog at all, but luckily gmail is working, and I am able to send an email to the blog to publish a post. Gmail isn't allowing me to embed photos, though, so thankfully Kat is helping with that (you're the best!). :)

We'll have to head to dinner soon and then off to the opera, so I hope they return soon so we can eat together - they promised to return for me for food. I could honestly really go for a nap; the adventures in the heat today were exhausted. I've sunburned a bit - I remembered to put sunscreen on this morning but forgot the back of my neck. I have a weird light burn with a gap in it where my braid was hanging. Yeah, I'm cool like that.

I'm definitely feeling loads better about being here - eating and sleeping regularly and meeting other people/having a guide for the day was incredibly helpful. Six weeks still sounds like an insanely long time though (especially considering how much was packed just into the first part of today!) but I'm trying not to think about it and just enjoy things for now. I'm in China...!