Some things that have been happening

I've given up bothering to post things in chronological order, so I'll write about things in my life that have been significant to me in the past few weeks, or months, whatever comes to mind.

For the past three weeks, SYA China has finished normal classes and started the Integrated Learning Project. ILP is basically a chance for us to do research on any topic that has to do with China. We are required to write a 15-20 page paper on said topic, conduct six interviews with Chinese people, write a daily journal in Chinese, and have a presentation. This project is done in groups that are assigned to us. My group, the smallest group, consisting of Ben, Star, and Kai, got assigned art. We narrowed our topic down to contemporary political art. So far, this project has been interesting. Since classes are cancelled, we are expected to work in our assigned room for the eight hours that we would otherwise be sitting through lessons. None of the four of us have been known to be among the hardest of workers in SYA, yet we've managed to do a somewhat substantial amount of work. Ben has chosen to write the entire paper himself, while Star, Kai and I are putting together the presentation and looking for interviews. It's been kind of a challenge looking for interviews because Chinese people do not like talking about politics. We went up to someone in the 798 Art District asking if she knew any political artists, and she pointed us in a vague direction down the street and said, "Don't get caught." It was one of the less helpful things a person did for us. We ended up finding people to interview by telling them we were interested in contemporary art, leaving out the political, and we are scheduled to interview them next week. Our plan is to ask them a ton of questions having nothing to do with our topic, and then slowly asking them more questions about politics. Hopefully none of us get deported. Our eight hour sessions in Room 600 have been rather exciting. I have to say, Room 600 is probably the most sedating room in the whole sixth floor of Erfuzhong. I had Chinese and APES class in there, and I never had much trouble wanting to fall asleep. During ILP, however, it's been something else. Outside of doing work, we give each other relationship advice, look at online catalogs, and play with the whiteboard magnets. We're really productive both topic-wise and life-wise. I'll let you know the final result of the Art group after May 23rd, the day of the ILP exhibition.

On April 30th, my Uncle Sean passed away. It was the first time in my life someone I was close to passed away. I'm not sure I've quite come to terms with it yet as it's been quite surreal, and I only wish it was a dream from which I could wake up. It's been a difficult for my family, and I wish I could be at home with my relatives during this time. He was a truly wonderful person with a genuine heart and he was one of those people who everyone instantly liked once they met him. I feel that it's important for me to say something about this in my post because he was an important figure in my and many others' lives, and he deserves to be remembered.

Several weeks ago I was introduced to an English guy named Jack through some international friends. Jack and I somehow hit it off and we've been dating for a couple months now. Being with him has been good for me, as we usually spend our time going out on weekends exploring places that I'd been meaning to see this whole year, like the 798 Art District and the Summer Palace. Jack, like myself, has lived in several different countries. I've never really known anyone else who's never really had a place to call home, and it's kind of nice having met someone else like me in that way. Perhaps that's where we clicked. He took me to his school's prom, which was nothing like Salinas High's. There was a dinner there, instead of us going out beforehand. There was also virtually no one on the dance floor the entire time. Prom king and queen were voted on by the teachers. The music selection was G-rated, which was the most foreign part of it all. One thing that it had in common with US proms, though, was that everyone dressed quite well. Even though it didn't turn out to be the most traditional prom, I ended up being able to go this year with a lovely date, which was good enough.

There are seventeen days until I leave Beijing. Wow, even as I type that, my heart pounds. I'm not too sure what to think about the thought of leaving my life here and going to Indiana, or if I can even grasp it. Living here has become so normal that I just don't think about anything otherwise. Lately, the trees on my walk to and from the bus stop to school have been completely filled in with green leaves, just as they were when I arrived. Walking home nowadays is becoming a bittersweet daily journey. I'm wearing the SYA t-shirt and xiaofu shorts instead of pants now that it's almost summer, and my back is once again drenched with sweat against my backpack. Eight months ago, when I was in the same position, I was frankly miserable. I was battling the challenge of school, culture shock, and homesickness. Now, I feel more at home than I ever have in the states...maybe. I now get off at the huahugou bus stop and know that the stray dogs are never going to want to be pet, I smile at the kids running around the restaurants, and I wave at the store owners selling summer fruits. I now do this with a feeling of sadness, knowing that I'll never come back to this life in just a few weeks. I'm going home to yet another new start in Carmel, Indiana. I've got a job at a Chinese restaurant called Asian Cuisine, I'm going to travel down the West Coast, seeing my family in Portland and San Francisco, friends in Salinas, mom in SLO, and Emily in Santa Barbara, I've signed up for online summer classes, I'm meeting with my high school councilor the week I get back to schedule my classes, and I'm attending a college seminar at my high school which will help me with the application process. I've got all these plans, yet I still don't know what to expect. I should be used to leaving and starting over by now, but I don't think it's gotten any easier, but harder. I do know that I can't focus too much on the future. In this circumstance, the most important thing to do is live in the moment, and that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to sign off on this post, which frankly has gotten way too emotional, and work on my ILP presentation, on which I will kick ass as well as get an A+.

Yunnan

Immediately proceeding the trip to Taiwan was our second school trip of the year, our two and a half week long trip to the Yunnan Province, located in the tropical south of China. We got to get on the train, escaping freezing Beijing weather and get off to a temperature of 70 degrees. Again, I wore flip flops. Life was good. Almost every night of that trip was spent in a clean hotel with decent wifi, which was a surprise to us all. We expected to spend many of those nights in a hut with dirt floors, for some reason. We did, however, spend two nights in rural villages with populated with minority groups, but even then, their houses were very clean and bathrooms sanitary. Our tour guide was an adorable former monk named Xiaoai, and it was his first time being a tour guide. The first few nights of that trip was spent in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan. Kunming was just as, if not more, developed than Beijing. We visited a school for autistic children and, for APES, tested the water of the famous Green Lake, which was absolutely rampant with seagulls in a really pretty way, if you can imagine that. Xiaoai accidentally got us lost on the way to the lake and was very distraught and embarrassed, even though none of us minded. Ms. Turner got our her GPS and we found our way pretty quickly. 

The next city we visited was Jianshui, a smaller, livelier town several hours away from Kunming. There, we lounged around, drinking milkshakes and milk tea and tanned in the hotel's courtyard. It felt a bit like Hawaii but without the beaches, which was still incredibly relaxing. One day, Jing, Lily, and I were drinking smoothies outside when a white man walked past us and did a double take. "Oh my god. Foreigners!!" Turns out this guy had been living in an rural village a half hour away from Jianshui for the past two years and had only seen one other foreigner, his boss. He worked for Driscoll and was from Santa Cruz! It was pretty bizarre meeting the only foreigner within hundreds of miles and finding out he lived less than an hour away from Salinas and worked in the produce industry. The saying "small world" has never been more accurate. The next trip was to the rural villages. We had to hike for three hours in order to get to the villages, and it was nothing short of miserable. Curse the nine injured/sick people who didn't have to make the grueling trip up the mountain. The torture was worth it, as we all had an experience like never before. We spent two nights with a family of farmers, where we slept on mattresses on top of wooden floors and ate dinner in stools one foot above the ground. The villages threw us a party, where the women performed traditional dances as we rather unsuccessfully tried to learn the moves. 

After the villages, we went to Xishuangbanna, Banna for short, a small, lively city an hour away. The hotel there was our favorite hotel, as there were tons of amazing restaurants around the area and even a swimming pool. In Banna, we went to a local school where the students were completely different from Erfuzhong students. We sat through their classes, and they told us that if it weren’t for us coming, they would have been asleep through their lessons. They treated us to lunch and invited us to parties that they were having after school, on a weekday. Tons of the girls flirted with SYA guys, and several of the guys got proposed to. Upon adding several of these students on WeChat, I noticed that many of them had posted pictures of us, both ones that we took with them, and ones that they took from our own profiles. It was a bizarre and entertaining experience, and I don’t think I will ever meet students like them anywhere else in the world. 

Following our lovely stay in Banna, it was time to go home. We tearfully had our last Dicos (basically a knockoff KFC chain that is everywhere in China but Beijing. We fueled ourselves on this restaurant throughout the whole trip), and bought instant noodles for the plane ride, much to Li Laoshi’s protests. Apparently Chinese people don’t like it if you eat instant noodles in public places because of the odor, so the good 30 or so of us probably didn’t exactly make a good impression on the people on the plane ride home. Overall, it was a trip to remember. We got on each other’s nerves, made memories with one another and with those that we met, and were able to take two and a half weeks off of school in the tropics. Still, nothing beat the feeling of home Beijing gave us when we got off that plane and smelled the pollution.