Back in America

I am officially back in the United States once again. I have been home about 5 days now, and I haven’t slowed down one bit. I left Beijing at 10pm local time Wednesday evening (10am east coast time), landed in L.A. at roughly 7pm Wednesday evening (10pm east coast time), and then took the redeye into Atlanta, landing at 5.07am Thursday morning. That was a long day! As soon as I got home, I had to start unpacking. I unpacked everything, did five loads of laundry, and had a stream of visitors stopping in to see me. I did all of that because I had to spend Friday packing everything back into my car to move to my new apartment in Atlanta on Saturday morning. I’ve now unpacked most everything there and am leaving for Wyoming in a few days. My boyfriend has to drive his car cross-country to have it back in Atlanta for school, so I am going to help him out with that. We’re turning it into a mini-road trip with stops at (potentially) Devil’s Tower, Independence Rock, Mount Rushmore, and Chicago, along with experiencing the Sturgis Rally, one of the largest motorcycle rallies in America. As soon as I get back, I am busy with sorority recruitment, and then school starts again for the fall term!

My life is so busy here now that I haven’t even had time to realize that I am not in Asia any more. I tried exceptionally hard to not be jet-lagged (and succeeded for the most part), so even my body doesn’t exactly know what is going on. I have been able to come up with some things that I do (and don’t) miss about Asia now that I have a bit of free time, though. Most of this list refers to being in China because we spent the second half of the program there.

What I miss about Asia:

• Good cheap shopping


• Hand-made noodles


• Easily traveling to different countries


• Ancient temples


• Being a tomb-raiding Power Ranger in Cambodia


• Riding a bicycle around campus


• Shanghai in general

What I don’t miss about Asia:

• Not understanding anything anyone says


• Having cab drivers laugh at us while taking advantage of us (driving us the long way)


• Only having one cuisine available


• Not being able to drink the tap water


• The severe amount of pollution and smog


• Not having any exercise facilities


• Wearing the same two weeks’ worth of clothes all summer

• Censored internet access
  

That’s about all I can think of right now. Once I really get settled in here again and have time to realize that I am no longer traveling around the world, I think I will come up with many more things that I do and don’t miss. Right now all I can think about is what I have to do each day!

Chinese acrobat pictures (and some other randoms)

The following are the Chinese acrobat pictures. The last acrobat picture was part of the finale, and it was what we were most looking forward to seeing. That's about 15 Chinese on one bike!

This one is from the Lama Temple. This temple was once a place where a count-who-would-be-emperor lived, and when he became emperor and moved into the Forbidden City the temple was turned into a lamastery, or the place where the Dalai Lama would live, worship, and study while traveling.

This is an example of a traditional hutong. Hutongs are how Beijing used to be; narrow streets lined with low gray buildings. Traditionally, the streets are lined with the gates and walls, behind which are courtyards and finally the houses. There's not many of them left.

These are the girls in my group for the 3103 (Logistics) project. Susan (in the black; her Chinese name is Shenshen) had the best english, so what would happen would be Susan and I would talk, and then she would talk to the other two girls, and then Susan would come back to me with their ideas and we would talk, etc. It was an interesting way to do a project!