Can you relate?

• Choosing your dinner by looking at what other people are eating and asking them for their recommendations.
• Sitting in a lounge area of a nearly empty hostel, getting in touch with your colleagues.
• Finding signs in Chinglish and also finding time to disobey them.  “No striding” (found in a monastery) “No sitting or leaning or leaping” (in the inside of a pagoda)
• Getting sick and not being able to enjoy a beautiful city and its surroundings.
• Being stampeded and overrun by flag-toting, red-hatted Chinese tour groups.  Also, having to endure the noise pollution of a megaphone-holding tour guide.
• Taking 1376 pictures of pandas (or fill in the blank) in the same pose.
• Trying to not to talk about school-related topics on a long bus ride.
• Being in awe of the time management skills of bus passengers at a toilet break:  Less than 5 minutes,  off and on with military precision.
• Being able to watch the latest “straight to the bus screen” movie release of the Hong Kong film industry on a long-distance bus.
• Being serenaded by a saxophonist, seemingly the only one in a town of 200, 000 people.
• Traveling with one person who likes to plan ahead and the other person who flies by the seat of their pants.
• Hostel or hotel, are we adults yet?
• Being away from your computer, off-line as it were.  Though actually bringing your laptop and not being able to access the wireless internet.
• Being out of the concrete jungle, enjoying perfect weather and the sound of birds chirping.