316A — Parece que anoche, te encontré en mis sueños...

So, the time has arrived. I stand on the precipice of a tumultuous time—travel tomorrow, the day after, and the 23rd and 25th; RSI business in-between and afterwards; NRP shenanigans for a brief, sleep-limited two days; so on, and so forth. Part of me—ok, most of me—is afraid to dive. Despite this, the inexorable march of time pushes me towards the cliff, so there is no choice but to jump—preferably of my own accord, in as graceful a manner as possible.

With all that in mind, today was a relatively decent day. Given that I had intended to sleep well, it was, of course, no surprise to find out that I did not sleep until around 2:30 AM, which was quite a journey. Part of it was simple insomnia, driven by excessive sleep. Another part of it was the release of our RSI room assignments, where my group got extremely lucky in having mostly singles. Every room has a view of the river, too, so that'll be nice. Two days and I'll be there. Less than 48 hours, and I'll be on a plane there. Wow.

I also got up this morning slightly earlier than expected, which made this sleep deprivation even worse than it would otherwise be. Fortunately, breakfast was good enough, and I managed to, with great difficulty (and the help of a very certain mouse), finish the questions I've been working on for the past duration of time. Of course, there's still the question of writing solutions, but we'll see how that goes.

My last lunch here (in Huaibei) was excellent, and afterwards I had a long conversation with an math boi going to MIT (that I've never actually met in real life oops) before listening to the Coco soundtrack (which is so good and I love it with all off my heart) and then falling asleep for a significant amount of time to compensate for the sleep deprivation, which, surprisingly, helps move me towards an Eastern Daylight Time schedule. I half-heartedly packed for a while after that, and then, following dinner, we did nothing for a while, before heading to visit one of my aunt and uncle's new house (which is currently being moved into!) again. (I think I mentioned this at some point, but damned if I can find it.) The house is still very pretty, and I had a lot of fun locking some sliding doors before we returned back to the house we're currently staying.

This trip was pretty fun. However, when we returned, we had to parallel park. There were five people in the car, and four of them could drive, including me. My aunt refused to do it, my mom gave it a go, and then my dad gave it like four or five go's. This left the car mostly in the spot, but like ten percent in the road (I gave it a 3/10 for a score), which we were going to call good. Then, on a dime (and because I had been desperately trying to give instructions which no one was listening to), they decided I should give it a go. I've never actually parallel parked before, but I pulled the car back out of the spot, and in one go (with plenty of going back and forth) parked in completely inside the lines (7.5/10? definitely a passing grade). This was a) stressful; b) illegal (I don't have a license here and you have to be 18 anyways); c) really funny because the adults couldn't do it. All-in-all, good experience! The adrenaline is definitely still running through my system, but apart from that, everything is fine.

We don't have anything else planned tonight (no soccer games until 3 AM sadly), so that's all for Huaibei! We're heading to Tianjin tomorrow (train leaves at 8 AM, so early morning) with transfer at Xuzhou again, and then we'll see what else happens. I'm basically packed and ready to head back to the USA, so it's an exciting time. I do kinda feel like I'm arriving at RSI a day late (3 PM on the day we're supposed to get there) and a dollar short (not being able to do anything on the 23rd/24th), but hopefully it's not that bad? Not sure. Not entirely my fault, but my heart does kinda ache a bit. We'll see how I feel later, I guess. Nothing I can do now.

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