Spring Break 2010 is over. I had a lot of fun in Bali, relaxing for the first time in nearly four years without having to think (much) about school. On my last night there, I had dinner by the ocean and was able to capture the last dregs of sunlight fade into the clouds. Since my toe was still infected, I couldn’t go swim in the water or get it wet for long, so I was beached.

While there, I was shocked (surprised?) to find that people spoke a lot of Mandarin there. In fact, when speaking to me, the locals used Mandarin as opposed to English as the de facto tourist language. Part of me felt resentment as I slowly began to realize that China was really starting to take a greater role in the world. Well, most of me felt that way. I know it’s really lame, but China to me represents communism, suppression of human rights, workers’ rights violations, pollution, weird new middle class, tainted milk and lead-lined toys. Seeing that seemingly replace the free “Anglophone” world almost made me fearful. Or maybe it’s just because my Mandarin is kind of bad and I didn’t feel comfortable speaking it all the time. Whatever it was, it creeped me out.

On another note, graduation is in exactly 2 months and 1 day. It’s kind of surreal since it feels like just yesterday when I was just starting my freshman year, but at the same time it’s moving too slowly and I want to just graduate already without having to deal with AP and IB exams and the like. With that said, I might as well go sleep now. The more I sleep, the faster until graduation, right?