Do you need a hug?

Slowly recovering from a migraine that took hold at a baby shower. My guess on the trigger was being out all day; I’d worked out in the morning (13km), then swam, then ate pancakes and headed out to the Western food store with a friend.

I didn’t need anything but was due for some chat time, so we walked 30 minutes to the store. Today’s quite humid and maybe that started to do me in, but I didn’t notice. We shopped – well, she shopped, I window-shopped – and then walked back. I drank more tea and prepared for the baby shower.

I’m close to the end now and my metro card doesn’t have too much left. I’m saving that for next week’s trip to Hong Kong – I have to get to the train station. So I walked to the baby shower. Luckily, although I had never been to the exact place before, I had a good idea. Again, it was about a half an hour. (Seems walking here is like driving in Orlando – everything’s 30 minutes away.)

Had a good time – not enough people to overwhelm me. I’m still quite the introvert and I really have to psych myself up for these, no matter how much I like the people involved.

I did get a little lost on the way. I knew it was off a certain metro stop and I got there OK but wasn’t sure how exactly to get to the actual apartment. It was within site, but getting there was a little tough.

Anyhoo, the brownies were worth it. The party – a TexMex baby shower, if you can picture that – had good food and these amazing brownies. I thought they were blonde brownies, but they were Mexican brownies. Apparently that means “add cinnamon and cayenne pepper.” I’d made similar cookies for a Christmas party, but the brownies were WAY better. I am getting that recipe.

But as the afternoon wore on, the migraine started. It didn’t blow up until I got home, thankfully, and I downed Excedrin migraine and watched “Tomorrowland” while laying fairly still. It wore off, thankfully, but now I’ve downed Tylenol PM and headed for bed so I have to make this quick.

Two similar but random events happened on my little excursions. As my colleague and I were headed back, we crossed through this park-like thing and this well-dressed woman, wearing what appeared to be professional clothes and who was walking with a group of people, broke out from them and ran toward us. She had this huge smile on her face and said, “Welcome to China! Can I hug you?”

Both my colleague and I were completely taken aback and shook our heads no and kept walking. She was closer to the woman, and as a black person, probably was the one who caught the weirdo’s eye. There are a lot of Africans in the Guangzhou area (when ebola was hot, it was reasoned that if it started in Asia, it would have stated in Guangzhou), but not so much in our little area. And as a tall redhead, I get long stares all the time. Together, we were quite a pair, and apparently we needed a hug.

I’ve no idea what this woman’s friends thought. It was extremely random, and I thought fairly unique. But then, walking other party, this random guy walked up to me and wanted me to “talk for a minute.” He was holding a phone, and I figured he wanted a photo and I said no thanks, I was late which was true.

Maybe I should have accepted the hug.