The World on Empty

So, just in the interests of keeping everyone (and this blog) up to date, I would like to make a wonderful announcement. I have been accepted into the State Department's Critical Language Program in Advanced Chinese for the summer of 2012!!! This is a huge accomplishment for me and it still hasn't quite sunk in yet that I pulled this off. I feel like I need to thank those Professors who recommended me for this award (Camilla Hsieh and Yvonne Chang), because aside from the essays, the professor recommendations are the most important part of the application. This is the second time Professor Hsieh has written me a recommendation letter for a program I thought I had no chance in (the first was my CET application), and I'm noticing a very strong positive trend here.

Receiving this award is the first step forward for my future professional and academic goals. It may sound lofty, but I really would like to be a diplomat (or even Ambassador to China) one day. With the accomplishment of this goal, I'm beginning to realize that these things I plan for myself are in fact attainable goals and not merely the daydreams of a naive undergraduate student.

After completing the CLS summer program (which will place me either in Beijing, Xi'An, or Shanghai, I'm hoping for the last!!), I plan on teaching English for a year and volunteering with an NGO in my free time. This way I can pay off a good chunk of my student loans and gain valuable work experience before applying for graduate school. After that, it's up in the air. I would still like to complete at least a Master's Certificate at the Hopkins-Nanjing center in Nanjing, which would focus on international affairs. After that, I plan on returning to the U.S. to complete my graduate education in Foreign Services or Public Affairs (either with an emphasis on International Relations, and the schools I'm looking at offer concentrations or a dual Master's in Asian Studies, woo!!). I'm already looking at graduate schools I'd like to attend, and I'm basically stuck between Georgetown and the LBJ school here at UT. Of course, I'm also seriously considering getting my graduate degree solely in Asian Studies, which is what I really love (obviously).

Of course, all that is still two years down the road. The main reason I share this is because I feel like if I have set concrete goals and the path I intend to take in order to accomplish them, it makes everything I want to do more real in a way. It also makes everything seem more realistic.

My blog will start up full force again in June! Stay tuned, my travels are no where near being over with!!

This is a blog post that I've been mulling over for several months now. Ever since I got home I've been trying to process (and relive) my experience, trying to figure out how it has changed me as a person and what that means for my future.

The biggest hurdle for me still is an overwhelming feeling of reverse culture shock. It goes something like this. I spent a year of my life trying, in an ultimately futile fashion, to integrate myself into a society that doesn't easily accept outsiders. This can somewhat be traced back to the Confucian relations for "insiders" and "outsiders". If you're in the out crowd (originally non-Confucian men) you're in the out crowd and there's nothing to change that. Pile on top of that generations of isolationist policies and you have a society that is only very recently warming up to the idea of accepting foreigners (this includes Chinese ethnic minorities, to a certain extent).

So, to put it shortly, no matter how well I speak the language, no matter how well I understand and appreciate the culture, I am always going to be an outsider. And I'm always going to be an American and very proud of that fact. I ultimately learned by the end that I have to be who I am and find people who will accept me on certain levels. Only once you get really close with someone will they stop only looking at the fact you're an American and take time out of the conversation to explain the historical background of that obscure chengyu they just used instead of blowing it off by saying "Well, You're an American, you can't understand and you don't really need to". I'm fine with this idea, or became more ok with it as the summer progressed and I spent time with the people close to me who really mattered.

Now flash forward a couple of months. Being back home still feels like being in a foreign country sometimes. I spent all that time and effort learning a new culture, only to come back to the US and feel completely out of place and uninterested in relearning my own culture. So I'm essentially blocked from one culture's "in" group and alienated from the other. Can you see how confusing and frustrating this is?

Not only am I out of touch with the general things that go on around me, but this causes me to feel like I'm out of touch with people as well. I try not to be the pretentious one who can only talk about "China this", "while I was abroad that", but the fact remains that my life up until very recently has only been about one thing. This is the thing that has helped shaped not only my personality, but shaped my goals and future career plans as well. No wonder I'm so fixated! It's like I'm still stuck in a time rift. Everything else kept moving forward while I was gone, and I was expecting to play some serious catch up once I got back, like hitting the fast forward button three times in a row. But it's like I can only hit the rewind button and think about everything that happened in the past year. The only time I look forward is when I'm planning and doing things that will get me back to China.

I am trying to remain positive and keep moving forward though. I'm applying for the Critical Language Scholarship, which would put me in either Xi'An or Shanghai for 8 weeks in an intensive language program very similar to CET. I'm also applying for the Master's program at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center to study China-US relations. Moving forward for me seems to mean moving closer to when I go back, and that's just the reality of the situation.

I'm still pondering over the question of where "home" is. In our society when you move out of your parent's home you move on to make a new one for yourself. I still haven't gotten to that point yet for obvious reasons, mainly being I can't stay in one place long enough. However, I feel like being in China was very much a combination of being in the right place at the right time with an added dose of serendipity. There's something so magnetic for me about the country that is constantly pulling me back. Maybe it's the feeling of unfinished business and my desire to become as fluent as possible in the language. Maybe it has something to do with my obsession with the history and culture. Maybe all these things combine to form a certain irresistible pull. In the end it's all about perspective, and for me I guess home is where my Mao cap is.

I have been a busy bee since I've been back. Not having internet in my apartment means I actually tend to get things done. Well things aside from studying. Then again after an entire year of nothing but studying the language, I'm pretty much on auto control now. I never actually thought my Chinese would reach the point where I could have a conversation with just about anyone one pretty much anything and be fine. I keep a notebook for words I need to look up and on the rare occasion that I have internet access I look them up, that mode of "studying" has suited me well. More than that has been finding out what words I don't understand mean through the context in which they are used in day to day speech. This extends to even words I learned my in my first semester of Chinese. I feel like this is a much better and more natural way to approach the language, and is possible since I have an actual base to build upon. I still learn something new every day, so I feel like not actually studying my textbooks is ok.

I finally have internet in my apartment! It was mainly a problem of finding the landlord and asking her what the password was, and then having her get very touchy with me, saying if I wanted to use the internet I would have to pay. I'm MORE than fine with that. 100 kuai for a month of internet in the apartment is far cheaper than all the diet cokes I order in cafe's in order to use their internet.

So I've recently found out that teaching can be a little fun sometimes. If I'm having a bad day being around my students actually makes me feel better. Of course sometimes they also give me migraines, but I guess you take the good with the bad. I have a new student now, a one on one, and good lord. Is this situation interesting. Her parents want her to test into the Harrow International School of Beijing, Beijing's best international school. She's taken the test once and failed it. When I heard that I thought it was going to be bad enough, but I couldn't have dreamed of what I was getting myself into. I love this little girl. She's energetic, has a ton of personality, would rather be playing sports or outside than in a classroom (much less learning English, in which she has NO interest), and her happy personality is infectious. However. I was given one month to get her English up to par in order for her to test into this school. How hard could that be? Well, when she doesn't have any grammar (sorry, the small grammar she does have is all wrong), and nearly no vocabulary, I'd say it's pretty hard. That and since her desire to learn English is pretty much non-existent, her ability to remember what it is I've just told her repeatedly for 3 hours is also pretty low. That's the other thing. I teach her for 3 hours straight every day Monday through Friday. With one of my bosses sitting in on the class the entire time. This means after every class, one of my bosses is there to tell me what I did wrong, what I need to change for next class, and various other critiques on the lesson. Let's ignore the fact that they gave me this student without giving me any sort of materials or lesson plans or anything to go off of. Let's also ignore the fact that they don't even know what they are talking about (One of my bosses said "Teach her phonics so she can sight read better. When I said "That is not linguistically sound. In order for phonics to work in English you have to already know how the word is pronounced...English doesn't have nice patterns like Chinese" I was met with the response "Well, just teach her phonics. She'll sight read better"). This goal is somewhat impossible.

The first week I was pretty stressed about the class, worried about whether or not I could be successful. Now I'm just having fun with it and doing what I can, and she's actually doing much better for it. Things I didn't think she was remembering she's now easily recalling, which makes the classes easier and less frustrating on my end. Though when I spend 2 hours trying to explain what the difference between the past tense and present tense is only using English and she still doesn't get it, I do get a bit frustrated. I'm more frustrated with myself (and my bosses than anything). Another downfall of them sitting in on my classes is that I can't use any Chinese at all to help this poor girl. I can tell when I'm explaining things and they are just going right over her head, she gets this glazed, far off look in her eye and tunes me out. Sometimes if my boss leaves to answer a phone call or get food or something I'll explain the harder concepts in Chinese, which she immediately understands. I can obviously understand them wanting her to have an immersive environment. At the same time, I'm not a teacher, so sometimes the way I explain things is not how someone who actually teaches the language would explain them, but rather how someone who studies the language explains them. There is a huge difference, especially when talking to a 9 year old. But like I said, it's not nearly as bad as it was when I started, and I look forward to the class every day (just not the getting up early to be there part).

If no one had told me that Monday was July 4th I would have never known. I stayed in the whole day (my student cancelled class), and was going to go to sleep when suddenly Jesse called me and was like "Hey, we're all meeting up for Independence Day Chuanr. You should come!". Talk about being a bad American, or just really unaware of what is going on. So my July 4th passed in probably the best way possible, which was doing absolutely nothing all day long and then going out for the Chinese equivalent of BBQ and drinking beer with good friends. Nothing to complain about there.

I read the other day that 28 people were injured and one killed after the escalator (elevator?) malfunctioned at the Zoo subway stop. That was interesting to read. After moving away from that neighborhood I've only been back once to have dinner with everyone, but I still think of it as my "home" in Beijing. To think that this happened in the subway stop that I used pretty much every day for ~9months is a little mind boggling, though not at all surprising.

My time here is drawing to a close. I need to motivate myself to do some more stuff around Beijing. To just go out to random subway stops and walk around, get to really know and see the city. Part of me is already satisfied with what I've done here, and the other part of me is self scorning for being so lazy. I was looking through pictures of the fall semester earlier today and realized how many more pictures I took, how much more enthusiastic I was about being here at the time, and in general how much more happy I looked in all those pictures. It makes me kind of sad to realize that. I feel like I maybe kind of wasted this semester a bit wallowing in a set routine and not seeking to break out of it. There's still stuff to be found and do here in the city. I still have two weeks. I'll see if I can find a last little spark to make myself go out and find some excitement before I leave. I don't want to go home feeling unfulfilled in anyway.

So when LeiLei's family said "We are going to go climb HuaShan tomorrow", I was under the impression we would be doing actual mountain climbing. This expectation was exacerbated by the fact her parents kept going on and on about how dangerous it was, how steep it was, and how long it would take. One year in China and I still haven't figured it out. Every time someone says "climb" something, it's really just a euphemism for climbing a whole lot of stairs.

Hua Shan is an important mountain in the Chinese Daoist tradition, with a history spanning hundreds of years. Previously it was so secluded and hard to climb that only those who had attained the highest level of hermit (ie highest level of daoism) went there on pilgrimage. In modern times it has been made more easily accessible, with more stairs carved to the summits (instead of wooden planks along the face of the cliff, now a tourist attraction), and rails to hold onto. That being said, I can easily see why this mountain was the prime place to found a Daoist temple. Luckily we went on an off day, so we weren't surrounded by hundreds of other tourists the entire time. The ascent up to the mountain is next to a river, then climbing up the mountain itself are series of increasingly steeper stairs, in some places handholds carved into the rock going straight up (with complimentary chains hanging down as a means of additional handholds if you need them).

One really wouldn't expect after climbing a mountain to be met with farmable land. If I hadn't just spent 6 hours climbing the darned thing I would have easily thought we were on ground level. In between each of the peaks is land suitable for farming, with a forest growing all around. The sense of seclusion and peacefulness was a nice break from life in Beijing, and if I ever do decide to become a Daoist, you'll probably be able to find me there. There are temples on all the peaks, the highest one being 天门 or "Gate of Heaven". The view was astounding, and since not many people were around, I could just stand there and take in the quiet, a sensation that is hard to come by in this country.

Honestly, this place was so beautiful that words will never do it justice. I was awestruck the entire time I was climbing. Both by how quiet it was and the overwhelming sense of peace I got from the experience. The latter is probably wholly to do with a good dose of sunshine and exercise, something I severely lack in my day to day life here in Beijing. As we were ascending, I couldn't help but stop every so often just to look. Being surrounded by mountains, rivers, and trees is much more preferable in my opinion to being surrounded by people on most occasions. I wish we would have camped the night on top and gone down in the morning, it would have been amazing to actually be able to see the stars in China, let alone from a mountain top. Alas we we were all exhausted and ended up taking the cable cars down the mountain and heading back home the same day.

Now for more things that I forgot to write about before (bear with me, the experience was a lot to take in, and there is still a lot of stuff I'm still mulling over in my mind).

-Apparently girls don't just go off and do things by themselves. Granted they probably could. But in Chinese culture guys stick with guys and girls stick with girls, and one is very rarely by ones' self. While there is this aspect to it, there was also the whole "You're the only foreigner in the city" angle to be considered, which meant every time I needed to go to, let's say the bathroom, I was accompanied by another female in our party for both cultural and safety reasons. Now I'm toilet shy to begin with, but using a "Chinese style Socialist toilet" with a well meaning companion squatting next to me (and attempting to chat with me all the while) made it next to impossible for me to complete normal bodily functions without some frustration and embarrassment on my end. To make matters worse, each time I asked if they could just step outside and wait instead of standing right there after they finished their own business, I was always asked "哦你要大的吗" (I'm pretty sure that doesn't need translation). To which I could only shamefully respond "No, I'm just shy and I can't go with you standing right there". Though it was embarrassing at the time, now it's pretty darned funny. It's one of those things that has to be put into perspective after the fact I guess. Us girls are pretty lucky, no matter when we go to the bathroom we get relative privacy. This is just another example of how the last shreds of my concept of "personal space and privacy" have been shattered while abroad.

-Picture the worst toilet you have ever deigned to use in your life (those of you who have lived in China are exempt from this). Now picture if you will, a head height cement wall. Behind that wall is a cement slab on the ground with two holes in it, the dirt ground underneath the hole is slightly angled down and channelling down into the Yellow River. This is a "Chinese Style Socialist Toilet" in case you were wondering.

-In an attempt to assuage any of the bigger elements of culture shock she thought I may have been feeling, my friend took to describing everything as "New Chinese Socialist" "this" and "that". Though I wasn't really experiencing any sort of negative reactions from being away from urbanized Beijing, her jokes were more than welcome. A child walking barefoot in the fields was a "New Chinese Socialist Child". People threshing hay and drying it in the middle of 4 lane highway were "New Chinese Socialist Farmers". And the crowning glory, while we were eating in a restaurant with no electricity (save for in the kitchen...I hope?), was the "New Chinese Socialist Cola". Off brand cola is nothing surprising in and of itself, especially not in China, however it was just so bad and trying so hard to be real Coke that the name fit very well (by the way, it was called "非常可乐", which they mistranslated to "Futuristic Cola" instead of something like "Great Cola" or "Uncommon Cola"...that's socialism for you).

-Traffic. If you think traffic where you live is bad think again. I thought traffic in Beijing was a nightmare, but this was a completely new experience. Sharing the road with stray dogs and children, farmers herding animals and carting produce through the streets on barely legal vehicles of varying sizes, and that's besides the normal amount of pedestrians, bikes, motor bikes, and other obstacles (cars parked in the middle of the street for example). The first time I rode in a taxi in Beijing I thought I saw my life flash before my eyes. Oh how naive I was. Traffic laws are merely a suggestion in China to begin with. Add in a fair amount of chaos and complete disregard for any sort of motorized vehicle and you get what being in a rural city is like. You know that yellow line down the middle of the road that usually means you are legally not allowed to cross into the other lane, you know, the oncoming traffic lane? Well when farmers are threshing hay in the middle of the highway and you want to get around someone who thought it would be a good idea to ride dutch on a motorbike (think less powerful vespa, or a pedal bike with a motor attached), your only choice is to go into oncoming traffic. And then proceed to travel down the wrong side of the road for the next 5 minutes because hey, it doesn't matter! Don't get me started on traffic lights. If there aren't actually policemen in the middle of the intersection directing traffic then no one knows what they are supposed to be doing and actually listening to the traffic signals will in fact probably get you killed. I actually had more driving experience than most of the people my age that I hung around while in Yuncheng, but every time they asked me if I wanted to drive when we went out, I replied with a firm "Hell no". I am far too ADD to deal with all the things one has to pay attention to while driving in China. It's like a 3D version of frogger with more obstacles and instead of crossing the road you are driving down it. It's as exhilarating as it is frightening, and I should have worn a hole in the floor from all the pressing I did on my imaginary brake. Another thing that puts modernization into perspective. When you just give a whole bunch of cars to people who have no idea how to use them or without instilling in them that following traffic laws are essential for the safety of society, you get chaos. And not even nice pretty controlled chaos. Just unfettered chaos playing out in the streets of countless Chinese towns and cities every day. And it's not just in China either, all developing countries with motorized transportation have met with this sort of problem. It's interesting to watch to an extent (though the constant fear of head on collisions is a bit sobering and outweighs the interest at most points), but there are deeper societal implications that should be analyzed and addressed.

-I've now seen the parts of China I thought today only existed in pictures. Winding, weaving rice fields on the banks of the Yellow river that stretch further than the eye can see. Old men bent down in those fields with their bike parked a few rows over. Huddled one room shacks built right in the middle of those fields with laundry fluttering on lines outside. A village tucked away in the shadow of a mountain, no cars in sight, old men and women shouldering bales of hay on the walk down the dirt road back home. Barefoot children pulling buckets up the side of a stone embankment with rope. Looking up the mountain and seeing a monastery sleepily watching over the village. A farmer herding sheep down the road, stopping all traffic (which only consisted of our one car). Unfortunately the day we went to the Yellow River my camera was out of batteries, something I did not realize until we were on the banks of the river itself. While not being able to capture and share this experience will be something I regret for the rest of my life, I will not forget soon what I saw that day. I saw the part of China that outwardly has not been touched by the rapid modernization the rest of the country has experienced, and it was a humbling experience to say the least. Honestly if I had my camera I'm not sure it would have felt right to take pictures. I feel a little like that would have reduced these people's lives to somewhat of a spectacle, something else in the country for foreigners to come and gawk at, not even attempting to understand or appreciate the history and culture that lay beneath. These memories will be safely guarded treasures for me, and if I never have a chance to take pictures of something like that again, I'm fine with it.

So that was my adventure in a nutshell. Much more interesting than any trip I took with CET for many reasons. One of them being I wasn't surrounded by other laowai the entire time, the other one being I feel like through this experience I got to know and understand a lot more of the "daily" Chinese culture if you will. There's things about the culture in general I may have understood, but actually living through it and seeing it in context is something else entirely. Though no matter how long I'm in China or where I go, I will always be treated like a guest just because I am not Chinese, I can at least take away the knowledge at the end of the day, the more I understand of their real culture, the more I will be respected in this society and in my own.

Where to even begin.

I moved out of my dorm one day (Sunday), and my new roommate mentioned to me that her grandmother was turning 90, which really doesn't happen every day in China you see, so she really wanted me to come along. I didn't realize that the next day, Monday, we would be getting on a train and heading to ShanXi. I honestly really didn't have much of a problem with this for a couple of reasons. I really wanted to get out of Beijing first of all. Second of all my friend's family paid for the train tickets. So I didn't protest. 17 hours later her family picked us up from the train station and took us to the biggest and nicest house I have seen thus far in China. Instead of going point by point of what we did (which would be long and boring) I'm just going to go over categorically what I learned by spending two weeks in rural China, seeing China's 贫富差距 (disparity between rich and poor) first hand, and being surrounded by people speaking an actual foreign language.

By the way, Language is a GREAT place to start.
Everyone in this suburb of Yuncheng spoke the local 土话 (local dialect), which by the way is a bastardization of the Shanxi Dialect and Cantonese. It had more in common with Cantonese than Mandarin, and upon first listen it sounded completely foreign to me, in fact I wasn't even sure they were speaking Chinese. After I got over the language shock, I was fairly proud of myself for picking up the relation to Cantonese though, and my friend was surprised I even picked up on the relation. I told her I would have been a failure if I hadn't, being a linguist and all. When they first started speaking to me (because my friend told them I spoke Chinese), I had absolutely. no. freaking. idea. what. they. were. saying. None. Then when they switched to Mandarin I still didn't know what they were saying half the time because their Mandarin wasn't particularly standard and was flavoured with a heavy accent. Talk about an experience that made me feel like the last year of my life in particular was a monumental waste of time. Upon returning to Beijing, I was so happy to find out I do understand people when they talk. I DO IN FACT speak Chinese.

I talked with my boss about my experience and she told me that when she goes anywhere in the south (she is from Hebei), she can't understand anything that is being said either and feels like a foreigner in a different country as well. This made me feel slightly better. At the same time, I also feel more like I will never ever be able to master this language. Not that it's ever really possible to master a foreign language, but reaching those upper levels seems even further to me than it did before I left. I did take something positive away from the experience though. By the end of my time there, I was able to understand more and more of what was being said. The reason a lot of foreigners don't even try to learn Chinese is it is not a language you can passively learn. You can spend a few months in Mexico, France, Italy etc. and pick up enough of the language to communicate fairly well. You could live in China years and years and never learn more than how to take a cab home and order food. After about a week I was able to understand at least what they were talking about, if not exactly what they were saying. So if my friends parents told her to ask me or tell me something using their dialect, I would just respond directly without having my friend translate. I count this as one small victory in the ever present language obstacle.

接下来…
中国传统的习俗与一位迷茫的美国女孩儿
Or
Continuing: Traditional Chinese Customs and One Lost American Girl
No it really wasn't that bad. Luckily her family was very 开放 (liberal/open), so when it was just all of us in her house (which was most of the time luckily), I didn't have any problems. But when we went out and met with other people and her family, I was at a lost of what to do. Most of this can be accounted for by the fact that somehow I have turned into this shy introverted person. In my head, I know how to formally address people in Chinese, and I also know when eating a formal meal who should be served when, how to 打酒 (well that one I had no problems with), how to wish other people well....but it was like I turned into a mute. Luckily my friend not only directed me and whispered into my ear what I should say when, but also explained to her family before hand that I was very shy. Really the fact that I was even there was enough for everyone. I was like a small child, there to be seen and not heard. Which to be honest I was fine with. I wanted to just keep my mouth shut and not make a fool of myself. You know that whole face thing is a pretty big thing in Chinese culture and I wanted to keep a hold of mine if at all possible.

Like I said, this was not exactly a problem of me not knowing what to do in these situations, but more of a problem of "Oh my god, there are 30 Chinese people, each different ages, here that I have never met in my life, all speaking a dialect of Chinese I don't understand, and I should be acting in a very particular way towards each and every one of them (different toward each of them, depending on age, rank, sex, etc.), in order to show respect". Logically I knew what to do. It was more that when I was actually put in that situation...well It's pretty stressful. In the end I don't think I made too big a fool of myself, more due to the fact that my friend helped me through the more important stuff than anything else. This was also my first time acting as a guest with a Chinese family, so in the future I'll have a better idea of how to address people and how to act overall. And hopefully I won't be so stupidly shy (when did that happen, by the way?).

On Being the Only Foreigner in a Rural Chinese Town
When we went anywhere I got stared at. When we stopped the car at red lights people would stop by the side of the car and stare at me through the window. When we went to the supermarket (because her family insisted it on being a family outing, including me) we got followed, and the people working at the supermarket whispered not so quietly "看看，有一个外国人。看，她的皮肤有那么白。她那么漂亮！“ (Look look, there's a foreigner. Look, she's so white. She's so pretty! It's important to note that I was in southern Shanxi which can pretty much be counted as southern China roughly, so though my skin can be considered midtone in the states and still fairly dark in comparison to most Chinese, where we were I was pretty much lily white. And we all know the importance of skin color and Chinese beauty perceptions).

Now I've gotten used to being stared at in Beijing, and had some pretty funny situations arise just because I'm a foreigner. It's become a minor annoyance mostly because it's not that bad. It's a few people on the subway. One or two people as I'm walking down the street, nothing that bad. I have never had nearly an entire supermarket follow me around just because I look different. Talk about 别扭 (uncomfortable/awkward).

Even if You Think You're Full, You Haven't Eaten Enough Until You're Near to Tears
No really. Food customs are just different. I love Chinese food. Her family didn't realize that. No matter how many times I told them "I've been living in China nearly a year now, I'm used to Chinese food now, I've lost my taste for western food, PLEASE LISTEN TO ME", any time I got full and stopped eating they asked me if it was because I didn't like the food and if I wanted to go to a McDonald's or something to eat western food. They were extremely accommodating, and wanted to make me as comfortable as possible. They wanted to make me feel like I was in my own home. This (unfortunately) translated into me eating more than should be physically possible 3 meals a day for two weeks. As a result of living in China and eating chinese food, my stomach has shrunk. I can eat a little bit and be full. This was unacceptable to her family, who upon seeing me remarked upon how they thought I was too skinny, doubly so since they thought as an American I would be a little bit, well bigger (see that America? See what we do to ourselves?). They also thought it was not possible (for some strange reason) that I had gotten accustomed to only eating Chinese food. As a result, if I stopped eating during a meal it wasn't because I was full, it had to be because I didn't like the food. This put me in the position that no matter how full I was, I had to continue to eat until everyone else was done. There were several time that I was literally near tears. Also, I ate vegetarian most of this semester, and have been slowly introducing meat back into my diet. After this trip I am back on a no meat fast temporarily. The last day they were urging me to eat more beef and I just looked at the plate and wanted to hurl...it was not going to happen.

I've mentioned this before, but I've found that in the Chinese culture meal times are times for every one in the family to gather around and just be happy together. Where there is food there is good conversation and a feeling of the family being a whole cohesive unit. This was one of the things that made me feel comfortable and at ease in LeiLei's home. Also one of the things that made me homesick. My next point actually.

After a year on the other side of the world, it takes being with another family to make me homesick
I've been sicker than sick several times. As in lost my voice for a week twice, been bedridden for several days at least twice. I've travelled several places. Been buried under god knows how much work. Lost god only knows how many material possessions and had to deal with the surrounding crises. None of this made me particularly homesick. I think another reason I never got really homesick was that I never had any of the "normal" culture shock. I never really reacted negatively to Chinese culture. Maybe it's because I'm an army brat and was brought up able to adapt pretty quickly and efficiently to new surroundings, compartmentalizing and eliminating/ignoring any problems I have with my new living conditions. However, spending time with another family and being reminded of what it's like to be in a family environment for an extended amount of time instead of being surrounded by other teenagers kind of sent me into a temporary shock.

I hadn't really thought about that aspect of the trip, of course. But after the first day or so I didn't really know how to handle myself. The fact that especially LeiLei's mother wanted to make me feel as much at home as possible, since she viewed me as a displaced child more or less (she was the sweetest lady ever, if sometimes her intentions were a little misplaced, only due to cultural differences). This warmth only made me feel more and more upset though as time went on, because it made me more and more homesick. I kept feeling "this is great and all, but I want my own family!". I won't lie, I did cry. Before leaving I was still at the point where I didn't want to come home, and still feeling restless, not knowing what "point" I was at in my journey. Now I know beyond all doubt that I am ready to come home. This chapter is at it's end and I'm ready to come home and see everyone, sleep in my own bed, and stay a at least a little while. I'm tired of being on the move. As I was moving out of my dorm I realized that I haven't been stable for a year now. I've been living out of a suitcase more or less for a year. At first it was exciting. Now it's annoying, and it's starting to fray on my nerves. I'll never be the sort of person who stays in one place long, but I do need some sort of stability for a little while now, especially since I'm so burnt out at this point.

In my next Post: My Adventure Climbing Hua Mountain （华山）, also known as the mountain that Dre and Mr. Miyagi climb in the Next Karate Kid. And there are actually more stairs than they climb in the movie. (It took us 9+ hours to climb, and yes it's all stairs).