Careening down the highway at 80MPH in a Chinese bus of questionable maintenance is surprisingly easy to adjust to. Last night at 2am I hopped on such a bus, arriving within 8minuted of the departure time due to Katherine and me forgetting about that whole “directions to south station bus terminal” thing. The wifi advertized on these buses seems to not include leasing an IP address with the reception, so no actual internet access, but full strength wifi. Arriving in New York’s Chinatown at 5:30am was exhilarating, given it was still dark and all I had were google directions and a map Dana gave me to fine my way. I started to follow a fellow passenger who looked like he knew where he was going, but if he did it was not where I was going, as I realized within a block. I love how my brain works with maps so well- I could tell by the layout of the streets that the angles weren’t right for what I had glanced in the map earlier that day. So I turned around, returned back to the bus stop and ran into a middle aged Chinese woman who asked me if I knew how to get to the Chinese Consulate! I told her that’s where I was going, too, so we decided to stick together- power in numbers for women during the witching hour in a city infamous for violent crime. Yay, self-care! Doing this adventure with a stranger was a lot of fun, and of a type I had not really experienced before, given that I often am hit with bouts of shame regarding inflicting myself on strangers. Joyfully that insecurity was gone today, I believe because this was me doing My Thing, and I not-so-secretly love my own style and so gave myself permission to attract attention- and boy did I ever! I forgot to mention that while the main purpose of this trip was to get my Chinese Visa, I was also using it as an experiential lesson in What Not To Carry To China. (more…)