Climbing Hills

What to say, What to say. Life has truly been a rollercoaster. I keep saying this, but I can't think of a better metaphor, since it has been a week (yes only a week) of amazing highs followed by pretty intense lows. I don't think it is a coincidence that the lows usually coincide with me having to go to class, for these are the times when I realize how little I know, and how steep of a hill I still have to climb, and how quickly they want me to climb it.
On the other hand, the most well spent afternoon that I have had was yesterday when I spontaneously ended up going hiking near West Lake with an american friend. It was incredibly beautiful (whoever says China's environment sucks should see this place). We hiked around and explored and got attacked by mosquitos and miraculously found our way back to the correct bus stop. We spoke Chinese the whole time and both realized how ridiculous we must have sounded to all the people we passed; two sweaty american girls, wandering in the woods, speaking Chinese to eachother as if this is a perfectly normal thing to do.
Tonight my roommate and I went to Tesco (le gou), which is basically a British version of Walmart, and spent an incredibly long time wandering through the isles. The main objective was to buy some snack foods to eat for lunch on the train tomorrow, since we are going away for the weekend to my roommates home in the southern part of zhejiang province...but ofcourse we got sidetracked. I ended up buying a lot of mysterious food (meaing the labels are mostly in Chinese.) I also laughed out loud many times at the English that is written on clothing, notebooks, food packages, etc. It is really difficult to explain to a Chinese person that these are not "normal" (meaning American) advertising strategies. For example, my roommate often wears a T-shirt that says in large letters:
TOOL. Not the band. I am just a tool.
The notebook that I bought declares:
This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into. You will feel like writing with it all the time.
My golden fibre candied dates assure me that:
When it is severed, its fiber will still be connected, It features fresh flesh, delicious taste... and richly many kinds of trace elements which needs including the human body, actually old and young all suitable leisure food.
With advertising like that, how can you resist?
I love translation, and I also love how pretty much every T-shirt in China declares its love for me. How can I be unhappy when so many inanimate objects love me?