I caught the right tram to go home but somehow it dropped me off somewhere and it wasn't my stop. It stopped one stop before my exit and jet lag hit me hard today so I was completely zoned out. We stopped at the last stop -- I'm sure the conductor made an announcement and I just didn't understand it. But I remember thinking to myself, gosh, a lot of people are getting off at this stop, then went back to staring out the window. It was 9pm by this point and still light outside and all I wanted was a glass of wine, then bed. The conductor came walking towards me and said something and then I finally woke up out of my daze and looked around and realized he was shooing me off :)

So then I start walking in the direction of home. Except I clearly have no sense of direction because I went the wrong way and only after a few blocks did I have the sense to look at a map. I'm an extremely slow map reader, but I can usually figure things out.

Today was the first day the weather has been beautiful -- it's been raining and overcast since I arrived on Sunday morning. As I made my way back home, I saw tons of people filling up all the outdoor spaces, eating and drinking. When I got to the hotel just after 9:30pm, my lovely little outdoor courtyard was full of people having dinner. It wasn't the quiet peaceful retreat it was last night, but still a lovely place for a glass of wine and an email.

The saving grace of being lost in a new place, is that I don't mind :) No matter how tired I am, it's still a pleasure to see streets I haven't seen yet.

I just recently finished Rice Bowl Women, a collection of short stories from China and Japan as early as the 600s which, of course, includes stories of foot binding. Coincidentally, I had dinner at a friend's house recently and she was telling us a story about her Chinese friend -- a strong independent girl. Her grandmother had her feet bound (in my ignorance I hadn't realized foot binding happened as recently as the 1930's). One day, this young woman had her feet up in plain view and her father said to her, "Who's going to marry you with those giant feet!"

Everyone knows that the ideal of beauty is varied and diverse, but it seems to me that the idolization of these tiny, little feet must not have extended to the naked foot. If you do a Google images search on foot binding, you'll find actual photos of feet that were bound. I have a hard time imagining men found those deformed feet sexy. Surely men only appreciated the foot when clothed in elaborately embroidered litle shoes, no? But shoed or unshoed, the little feet were adored -- and apparently, that adoration hasn't been completely forgotten.