Reminiscing

Today feels like a day to write some thoughts down. Hey.  It's been a while. =)

Today's blog is about people.  People who have truly impacted my life thus far.

I have my forever people. 

My family, who, as I have grown older have only become more amazing and extraordinary.  It's funny that as we have grown older, we spend so much more time together than we used to.  For my family, at the very least.  Well, I guess not so funny.  A progression right?  As a child, you look at your siblings, cousins...parents and you can see your age differences as insurmountable.  As a child, you are progressing through so many changes for the first 18 years of your life, physically and mentally, you always just seem to be at a different place in your life, your experiences are practically unrelatable. But when you get a little bit older, becoming friends is easier.  Your age differences aren't insurmountable but, in fact, negligible.  And that is what I treasure about my family.

I  have my friends, despite how much time we can spend apart, when we get together, it seems like it was just yesterday when we last spoke.  And even if it has been a while, these extraordinary people are even better than the last time because simply put, they are just good people.  And I am in the firm belief that you can never have too many good people in your life.  There's too much negativity around not to appreciate what goodness you can have.  People who are sincerely generous, sincerely kind, just...sincere.  Sure, we have some wicked good laughs (sometimes at other people's expenses, because...come on, really?), but at the root, I'm of the firm belief that the people I choose in my life are good  people.  And that's all that I can really ask.

I have my for now people.  This I can categorize into 3 distinct categories.

I have my High School Medical Scholars peers.  Who knows if any of you will ever read this.  But man, you all were my first exploration of friends outside of school.  And what an amazing group of people I met.  Some of you are now working or are already working towards a medical career.  Congratulations.  For 3 weeks that summer before our senior year, you all showed me how easy it was to gain meaningful friendships just from common ground.  And, again, just being good people.  So even if I don't talk to you any more.  Thanks for everything.  I can look back 7 years later and just recall a truly amazing group of young people.

I have my study abroad friends.  Two years ago, many of us were preparing for our journey to China and didn't quite know what to expect.  I can't imagine going on those adventures and wanderings without you.  Again, just an inspiring group of young people who again, helped me expand my horizons.  Many of you are still traveling and still eking every moment for what it is worth.  Or moving on to careers and into your futures.  Young professionals and world travelers who inspire me to continue onward even with uncertainty because there is still so much out there for us all. 

And, finally, for coming on 4 years of my life, I have my coworkers at the yarn palace otherwise known as Jimmy Beans Wool.  A more eclectic group of ladies and gents, I sometimes can't imagine.  Some of you have moved into that friend category above.  With such a significant chunk of time spent in each others company, I would certainly hope so.  And some have even moved from the friend category to be included here as well.  My life is truly for the better for knowing some of the most creative and imaginative people I have ever met here.  People who have shown me through their own stories that life can take you in crazy directions, but in the end, it'll be okay.

So, really, what is this post about?  It's about saying thanks.  I'm really good at going through the motions.  But thinking about all the people that have moved through my life, there is not one single reason for not reaching for more.  So even though you don't know it, thanks for giving me a kick in the rear.  I needed it.  I'm all right, but sometimes, my own negativity gets me.  There's so much positive in my life but I can't seem to remember it when I get bogged down.  But it kind of is impossible with you all in my life to stay down for long.

So, if you are ever feeling down, just remember that Ailene thinks you're amazing.  That has to count for something right?  =)  See ya later.

Happily Ever Afters and Sunsets

I thoroughly believe that I will one day find my happily ever after and ride off into the sunset.  Today is not that day.

Until that day comes here are my options.

1.       Sell my soul to the devil so I no longer feel anything  (no guilt, no remorse, no responsibility)

2.       Find myself a sugar daddy who will leave me his millions in return for my amazing companionship.  And companionship only.  (None of that Hugh Hefner nonsense.) 

3.       Find myself a cardboard box, a ukulele, and a tin can (really, it can only go up from here)

4.       Be a dog walker that charges $17 an hour. (Now, I just need upper body strength.)

5.       Finish my degree and find gainful employment that will fulfill me.  

Well, my options are limited.  And only one seems entirely feasible.  Welcome to my new adventure blog ladies and gentlemen!

Starting to Say Good-bye

So I am here in the Hong Kong International Airport where everybody and their mother is on the internet, so I always have about 3 seconds of connectivity before it disappears on me.  So, you just might get this when I reach US soil.  I am currently just sitting on the floor in front of one of those information screens waiting for my boarding gate to be decided.  So, while I wait, I write one last post while I am here in Asia.  This one is going to be kind of long, so forgive me when I ramble.  

First, a brief description of our cruise on the Yangtze.  In one word: unexpected.  In many words: Oh my goodness. My initial expectations of this river cruise were:  Heather and me being the youngest on the boat and a bunch of foreigners cruising along the Yangtze.  So.  Not the youngest.  By far.  And they might be foreigners (in my mind they were German) but they are all ethnically Chinese.  So, Heather is the only one on the boat that looks overtly foreign and the two of us were the only ones who need English to be spoken.  Yep.  GOOD TIMES.  Talk about awkward.  If we weren’t on this cruise, they wouldn’t need to speak English at all.  I actually pouted for about an hour or so until I got over the fact that the cruise wasn’t going to be what I thought it was.  Lol  Such is life.  So, we move on.

The actual cruise was actually quite nice.  It wasn’t the best experience I have ever had, but it was just a nice break from the two weeks of traveling we had prior to boarding our ship.  Our meals were taken care of and all we had to do was show up when asked.  I found out on the last day of the cruise that we were actually upgraded a cabin through our travel agency because we didn’t get the original cruise ship we had wanted.  Which was amazing.  To be truthful, I was afraid that it would be one of those situations where you have interacted with a “travel agency” only to show up and be told that it never existed.  So, it was an enormous relief to not have that happen.  

I thought that it would be a nice way to kind of acclimate myself back into Western society, but that wasn’t the case at all.  In fact, there were an overwhelming number of ethnically Chinese people on this cruise.  We find out throughout the cruise that many are mainland Chinese nationals, but also people from places like Singapore and Australia.  There were a ton of people who spoke both Cantonese and Mandarin.  So it was an experience to help me in the airport.  And make me very aware of how very far I still have to go.  This time in China has been all about humbling experiences.

We actually also spent Christmas day on the cruise, which was a little bit odd.  The holiday season in China doesn’t feel like the holiday season.  So it just feels like another day.  It was interesting for sure.  The cruise made a small effort to decorate a little bit, which was certainly appreciated, but like I said, it just isn’t the same.  Corny but: There’s nothing quite like home for the holiday season.  I’m glad that I’ll be home for the tail end of it at least.

We got off the cruise a little bit early just so I could catch my flight home and it sounds weird, but it was kind of a relief to just get back to what I was familiar with and not be on that boat anymore.  I’ve found that my classmates and I have been the types to just avoid the tour groups the entire semester, and it is funny that I finally end up in one at the end of my time here in China.  

We came home late last night, and I entered the apartment I had been staying in for the entire semester only to repack and redistribute all the stuff that I had accumulated and hadn’t sent home.  My roommates had gone off for the holidays so I was all by myself.  It was a little bit sad actually.  I took a nap in my freezing cold apartment and woke up this morning to spend the last of the Chinese money burning a hole in my pocket.  We walked to school one last time and got some breakfast on our way to buy more souvenirs.  And we got lunch at our regular restaurant.  And I shopped one last time at the convenience store that is right by our apartment.

The moment I knew that it was time to leave for the airport in Chengdu, I started to tear up just a little bit.  Four months.  That’s all the time I’ve had here in China.  I wouldn’t have traded a second.  As I sit here, my time in Asia is over, my flight is about to leave in a couple of hours, I will stop living in the future, and get back to my present in America.

I'm happy to be going home, to be surrounded by familiar things and know what people are yelling at me about.  I'm ecstatic to be going home to family, excited to see friends (less so about school but that is another story).  But I'm really sad to go.  I've made some truly great friends here and met some incredible people.  I couldn't have imagined a better group of people to be in a foreign country with.  I have been able to explore and travel far more here than I have the freedom to do at home.  I've been learning here.  Maybe not as quickly as I would have liked, but it was a process.  One that I hope continues.  In all, China has been an experience.  Wonderful, inspiring, enlightening.  Stifling, uncomfortable, foreign.  It's all there.

Lessons that I am taking with me?  I'm not quite sure yet.  You expect to be changed, but you don't know quite how much until you get a proper gauge.  I guess my gauge is when I am back in the US.  I'll get back to you.  So, with that, it is time to sign off.  Time to go.  See you guys when I get back.

Not quite so haunted in Hangzhou

As some of you know, I’ve wanted to come to Hangzhou since I’ve decided to come to China.  Explanation?  Okay.  A couple of years ago, my history professor was telling a story of how he was just standing in Hangzhou one day and just out of nowhere, a couple of ghosts just floated by going about their merry way.  So, I too wanted that experience.

Unfortunately, that’s a no go for this particular trip.  But as I keep on telling myself, China and I have some unfinished business.  So I will definitely be back and much more ready to just learn and explore.

Hangzhou deserves a brief day-by-day description, because that is how much I enjoyed this city.  FAVORITE of the four we went to.

Day 1: Heather and I took the high speed train from Shanghai to Hangzhou.  It was one hour of pure classiness.  The seats were really nice, everything was high tech, and since I was one of the last people leaving, I saw them beginning to flip the seats around for the return trip to Shanghai.  They just swiveled around!  Too cool.  I wasn’t as enthused as I could have been, but looking back, it was neat.   Getting to the hostel was relatively easy, and we just ended up exploring the part of the neighborhood our hostel is in.  It was a fun area.  Definitely for tourists but that just means stuff to see nearby.  =)  I was very good about not buying souvenirs up until that point too.  Dang it, Hangzhou!  I knew you would get me.  

This picture deserves to be a little larger.  In one of streets near our hostel.

Oh!  And we got our train tickets to Yichang for our Yangtze Cruise.  Which was an experience.  Here is what I used.

Turn your head a little bit and this is what I used.  Characters and some hand gestures with little Chinese.  Good times.

 Day 2: Museum Day.  A little bit of a bust.  Lol  And by a little bit, I mean a lot.  First, we went to the Silk Museum, which is currently under renovation.  So we saw one exhibit.  Yep.  That one exhibit was pretty cool though!  It was on looms.  So HUGE.  The second museum we went to was the National Tea Museum.  Whose main exhibit is closed on Mondays.  So we walked amongst the field of tea leaves and saw a little bit of Hangzhou.  We ended with some more exploration and some good street food.

See the two ladies working on the loom?!  HUGE.

Tea leaves!

Day 3: The First Wandering Day.  So while my friend Heather decided to be productive and work on her thesis I was left to wander Hangzhou on my own.  So, I decided to go to Lingyin Temple, one of the biggest and oldest Buddhist temples in China.  Yeah, yeah, yeah…I’ve said that I’ve had my fill of temples, but I can’t help but fit one last one in.  And it was worth it.  Lingyin Temple, also known as the Temple of Soul’s Retreat, is located in the area also where you can find Feilaifeng, a place known as the Peak Flown From Afar.  Rock carvings and a cool temple.  You can’t beat it.  A highlight.  I would like to thank the best café owners in Chengdu for that suggestion.

Rock carvings all along the cliffs.

The most famous of the carvings, the Laughing Buddha.

Lots and lots of incense going up here.

But this was perhaps my favorite.

Getting there was kind of interesting too.  I was waiting for one of the tourists buses when a lady asked me where I was going.  She was very nice and showed me which bus to take and which stop, which I already knew, but don’t have to vocabulary or the rudeness to tell her otherwise.  So she was great.  I knew that I had to pay 3 CNY, but the bus’s tour guide told me to pay a lady sitting down 2 and the bus 1.  Which I proceeded to do.  And the lady I gave 2 CNY left the next stop.  And they didn’t collect that way from anybody else either.  Shady.  Interesting bus system in Hangzhou.

Day 4:  The Second Wandering Day.  This was the day that we left Hangzhou, but our train didn’t leave until ten that night, so I just ended up walking around Hangzhou more.  And proceeded to walk around a big portion of West Lake.  It was pretty cool.  It was 3 ½ hours of gorgeous scenery and people watching.  And as I walked along, it became less about West Lake and a little more of just enjoying China for a few hours more.  Misty mountains, beautiful scenery, interesting people.  It’s the Chinese experience.  =)

So our Hangzhou portion is done.  We just spend 17 hours on the train and proceeded to our hotel where I’m pretty sure our cab driver took us the extra long way and an interesting FAILED check in on my part since they speak no English here at this hotel.  At least we got our room.  COLLAPSE onto bed.   Now, we are sitting waiting for our epic cruise experience to begin later tonight and inching our way back to Chengdu, and for me, eventually back home. 

I’ll update you in a few days when I’m on my way home.  See ya!

Shanghai – My first taste of reverse culture shock

A park in Shanghai.

 We are now currently on the tail end of our journey, and Shanghai was our latest stop.  We were only there for 2 days so our time there was really relaxed.  When riding into Shanghai from Suzhou, I looked at the passing buildings and wondered where all the Chinese characteristic architecture was.  We entered Shanghai and it felt like we were back home in the U.S.  Crazy.  It felt a little bit like San Francisco.

One thing that I have enjoyed extensively about our trip thus far is the weather.  (Look at blue skies above.)  It is still really cold (in all of my pictures from the past week and a half I am wearing the same warm jacket), but it is a brisk cold that I am used to!  Like Reno weather.  I can deal with that.  Winter in Chengdu is something different.  Our apartment wasn’t the best for holding heat and the classrooms were often not heated as well.  With the humidity, it was just this damp cold that kind of penetrated and wouldn’t let up.  Brisk cold.  Yes.  Humidity cold.  No.  And it is only going to be worse in Chengdu for the next couple months.  I get to go home where the cold is a little more manageable.  Yay!
 

So, back to Shanghai.  We went up the tallest building in Shanghai, the Shanghai World Financial Center, to its observatory and looked at the city during the night.  Overwhelming to say the least.  It was spectacular.  Parts of the floor of the observatory were glass so you could see all the way down to the street below you.  Wild.  You could see the Bund across the river and the Pearl Tower, the most famous building in Shanghai, lit up.  The city was alive.  It was amazing.

Shanghai World Financial Center, observatory at the top!

And this is what you get to see.

Look at the Bund!

Glass floors, not as scary as I thought it would be.

 After we left the tower, I walked around, yes, another pedestrian street, and got a small feel of urban Shanghai.  I was able to just soak in the experience and people watch and write in my small memory journal.  Moments like that are priceless.

Awesome pedestrian street.

The next day was the French Concession and actually walking the Bund.  Wow!  This is where the reverse culture shock really started to kick in.  So many foreigners.  And none of them speaking Chinese.  The atmosphere, the people, the general feel of Shanghai was not of the China that I have come to know.  Each city has its own character but remains essentially Chinese.  Shanghai didn’t necessarily have that feeling for me.  It might be a little rougher going home than I first thought.  But it’s all a part of the experience right?

A statue in western, expensive French Concession.

House in western, expensive French Concession.

Christmas!

The Bund.

Across the river.  This wasn't even developed a few years ago!

At night.

It was really spectacular.

 Overall, Shanghai was a success.  It was worth the visit. 

Suzhou

Arriving in Suzhou was really great!  The bus station was a little less than 3 km from our hostel so the taxi ride this time around was much, much less.  Yay for buses!  I am a fan.  Public transportation.  If only it were a little more efficient in Reno (and in the US), I would definitely consider taking it, especially after this past semester.

Suzhou is known to be the Venice of China because of its waterways and gardens.  And man, did we load up on those gardens.  Our hostel was really great because not only was it in a historical section of town, but it was close to 2 of the gardens that I most wanted to see!  Of course with only two days there and not wanting to stress out, we didn’t see much outside of the gardens, but that’s definitely okay.  If and when I get back to China, I have a list of places that I would like to see because I didn’t get the chance this first time.  So, I am satisfied.

So in 2 days, we saw 3 gardens and 1 museum.  Pretty good, I would say!  Gardens were all neat, but they definitely started to have very similar characteristics after the third one.  Humble Administrator’s Garden was my favorite.  Then Lion Forest.  Then Lingering.  But with all of them, all I could think was, "I could use a backyard like this."  And Suzhou Museum was pretty cool.  They had an exhibit from English there.  All I have to say is that, wow.  British people are weird.

Pictures!

Canal!

Lion Forest Garden

There were openings and stairs and walkways amongst the formations.  So cool!

Canal at night!

Humble Administrator's Garden.

It is the most famous of the Suzhou Gardens.  It deserves to be.

There were signs like this all around the Lingering Garden.  I think they might have been my favorite part.

Boats, just in case you got tired of walking around your massive garden.

Suzhou Museum.  British artist trying to make a statement I guess.

I don't get it.

 There we go!  On to the next city!