When I was a freshman in college, a good friend of mine (who was a 5th year senior at the time) gave me some advice that has stuck with me throughout my academic career. He told me that you never remember the nights where you only did your homework and then went to bed early. The nights that will stick with you are the ones where you do something fun with friends, stay out late, and do your homework later. This advice paid off for me Tuesday night.

Before I begin, I do want to state that this advice is not some long version of YOLO, it means to go along with the unexpected BUT still take care of your responsibilities.

So, on Tuesday night I realized that due to the differences in the shape of outlets in China, I was unable to charge my laptop which I needed to do my homework. So I went down to the corner store to buy an adapter. It was raining quite heavily, it is RAINEY season after all, so I brought my large umbrella. On my way to the store, these two girls ask for my help. They are trying to find a Pulp Fiction themed bar (which is one of my all time favorite movies), so I agree to help them and the three of us huddle under my umbrella. We kept walking back and forth on the street, looking desperately for it, but alas it could not be found. I was able to practice my Chinese quite a bit, asking random people on the street for directions. Unfortunately for us, nobody knew where it was and some people actually gave us bad directions. They sent us into an apartment building to try and find it, but of course it wasn’t there. It didn’t really matter though, the three of us were laughing and having a wonderful time. We went back to my hotel to get Kris, who had studied in Suzhou before, to help us find it or the other near by western bar, the Drunken Clam (it is named after and has the same neon lights as the bar from Family Guy!). So we accompany them to the bar where we all hung out for a while and got to know each other. The two girls are from Germany and they took a year off to travel all over Asia and the world. It was amazing to hear their stories. The bar itself is amazing as well, and every time I have been there it has had the most recent cavs game on replay, so at least I was able to keep up with that a little. Overall, it was a great night and I met some great people!

I wish I could have stayed out longer or joined in some of the festivities, but I still had to do my homework and prepare for the next day. I left them at 11 pm, went back to the hotel, and finished my homework. I wish those two the best of luck on their travels and I hope they have the time of their lives!