Reflections

There is a lot going on in my head right now, which has made it hard to sit down and write a coherent and entertaining blog that will leave my many loyal readers feeling satisfied. I have just finished my 4 months of study in Hangzhou. I have finished exams, graduated, put on a butt-kicking kungfu performance (see above), packed up my things, said goodbye to the many good friends that I have grown to love and depend on in the past few months, and then I got on a plane to embark on my next great adventure. It is truly a case example of one of those times when your head is in many places all at once.
I am someone who loves traveling, the excitement of going new places, facing new obstacles and overcoming those obstacles. Yet somehow, everytime it is time to leave a place that I have grown to love, and more importantly, to leave people that I have grown so close to, there is that inevitable tug in my stomach. Sometimes it feels so nice to be comfortable.
It is amazing to me how Hangzhou so quickly became a home to me. When I first arrived in this foreign city after way too many hours of travel, I felt displaced and unconnected. The relationships that I made with my teachers, friends, roommate, and random people in restaurants, shops, and on sidewalks all have played a part in turning this strange city into a place that it was always nice to come back to, even after only a weekend of traveling.
The start of this program was really hard for me. I came knowing no one, with a relatively low level of Chinese. I think the most difficult aspect of the whole thing was feeling like I was losing my ability to be independent. Chinese turned me into a small child, I needed to hold my roommates hand when I crossed the street, and I often asked questions like " How do you say orange?" I did not know how to eat or what to eat or what I was eating.
At first I was afraid that I might always be a child in China, that it was just too hard, that I would never be able to do this impossible task that I had so romanticized in my mind. But somehow I have come out of this semester a happy, relatively-self sufficient person who speaks Chinese pretty well, has made some life-long friends, and has also learned an important life lesson that doesn't really have anything to do with China. I have learned that it is okay to let people help you. I don't have to do everything by myself.
I am currently in Beijing staying with my good friend Yan and his family, and I am letting them help me a lot. I am not yet sure how I feel about Beijing and I have been having a lot of trouble trying to understand the Beijing accent, as I have been studying in the south all this time. Still, I am really enjoying being here and getting to know a new city.