Here safe!

Hello all!

I am safe in Korea-- I flew into Seoul (the Incheon airport) this afternoon, where I met TaLK program folks and was painlessly placed on a bus to Jochiwon, our orientation site. We'll be busing back up to Seoul tomorrow for the opening ceremony, which is apparently going to be on national Korean television.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

:P

in transit announcement, hope of actually catching up.

I am in the Detroit airport with a couple more hours to wait before I can check in for the next leg of my journey. I am far less stressed than I was moving to China last year; I have a much better idea of what I'm getting myself into in Korea. This is a foolishly long layover, but changing it would have changed the ticket price from Awesomely Cheap, so here I am anyway.

I had a lovely whirlwind of visits in my 3.5 weeks in the USA, and am looking forward to living here again, eventually.

After Commencement: Yangtze part 1

So, Saturday June 19th (the day after my graduation ceremony at the HNC) I went to the Nanjing Train Station (南京站）and boarded a 28-hour train bound for Chongqing. I bought tickets for a sleeper bunk, so it was a very comfortable journey of napping and reading and chatting to the very friendly woman in the bunk opposite me (in the morning, she fed me roasted peanuts and lychee, and I helped her wind a skein of yarn into a ball).

Chongqing has been one of the cities to most benefit from the building of the Three Gorges Dam, which has made a long stretch of the Yangtze river navigable for large ships and made Chongqing a major port. A friend, Melody, met me in Chongqing on Monday, after my train ride and a stay in a hostel, and before boarding our Three Gorges cruise ship in the evening, we walked along the river.

I liked the traditional-style roof in the same shot as the middle-of-river construction

here are ships like the one that we rode, and big buildings and bridge of downtown Chongqing (...actually, I'm not sure there is one 'downtown' or that this is it, but saying so makes cities in Iowa seem less tiny)

Our cruise lasted from Monday evening through Thursday morning (when we de-boarded the ship straight onto a Three Gorges Dam tour bus, and, y'know, toured the Three Gorges Dam). The first morning we toured the "Ghost City of Fengdu," a 'city' of temples built for ghosts' use after departing this life. One temple was actually in use by monks, but I think most of the buildings were built more with tourists in mind than anything.

a map of the "Ghost City"- the central of three sections is being built in the shape of a King into the Mountain.

here's his head.

this is the gate to the top temple on the right-hand side of the City.

That evening we toured Zhangfei temple, which was full of calligraphy and very fun, though by that point I was nursing a sunburn from falling asleep on the sun deck (I was in the shade when I sat down! The ship turned after I fell asleep!) and a little cranky. Um, though I don't seem to have and pictures of the calligraphy. I think my camera had died... I will see what I can find later.

Many of my favorite pictures were just of the river.

boats next to us as we left the ship the first time

view of the rising sun over the Yangtze

River!

The first and most dramatic of the Three Gorges- it looks like the river slices through the middle of a mountain.

I'll post this now and put the rest of the cruise in a separate entry. Stay tuned!

Home Safe!

I am in Ames and feeling good. I think I will mostly be hanging out quietly at home for the next couple of days- resetting my sleep schedule and fulfilling a month-old date to stay up all night watching movies with my brother. But I will start to make phone calls and lunch dates to catch up with anyone else in the area soon. Also try to catch up my blogging on all the travel in the last few weeks.

1am, and I am in transit again

Not a complaint, though the thought of finding a place to live in for more than a year at a time makes me ache a bit. I'm getting pretty good at packing, getting pretty good at not being attached to belongings and being ready to let things go, and I love always having new things to discover and new people to meet. But I would love to make some friends and know they will be around, that I will be around. That we might celebrate each others' birthdays more than once together.

That's a pretty angsty thought, given that before this year I lived in Iowa City for five years, and that before that I had lived my whole life in Iowa. But living around college students is a constant transition of relationships. Everyone is still deciding who they are and where they are going, and holding on to any one person too tight risks losing yourself.

We had our HNC commencement ceremony this afternoon. It was really nice. I have been so caught up in disappointment in myself, frustrated that I have been struggling so much with my own things (I am full of FEELINGS and sometimes it's a problem) and not taking full advantage of where I am that I have often lost sight of what a unique program I am in this year. I received (in an unashamedly fusia cover) a joint certificate in Chinese Studies from Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University. Stephen Roach, the Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and Zhang Yibin, Nanjing U's liberal arts vice president, were our commencement speakers. My classmates are truly warmhearted and have a lot of vision and commitment. I know that I personally really need a break to figure out how I want to use this experience, as well as my undergrad degrees, but this has been an incredible place to be. I am qualified to call myself a China expert, of sorts anyway.

I am looking forward to traveling and being around people I love in the next month and a half, and very much looking forward to the reflection and clarity of mind that both of those things bring me. Next year is going to be a more personally focused one. I am hoping to write a lot (knock on wood; if I set myself up with expectations now I'll drown in them by august) and clear my mind out a bit. Hopefully one of my next entries will begin to outline possible writing for the next year. I'm looking forward to it.

Love!

This post gets lots of hits too. Why, I ask you?

Previous title:  More of a pledge than a post

Hello, all! I have been sitting in our student lounge at the HNC for about nine hours. Not consistently, obviously, as I have been doing homework and thus taking every possible excuse to go somewhere else and do something else, but I have been here a long time. I have mostly solidified plans for a cruise on the Yangtze river in a couple of weeks. I will be finalizing them in a couple of days. I am hoping that it takes less time to upload photos here when I'm in the States. I am hoping to do posts on the World Expo, the Nanjing Massacre Museum (which I can promise will be aptly summed up with the word INTENSE), the Yangtze cruise, my time in Hebei with Xiaoxuan's family, and maybe the four days I'll be spending in Seoul before I head back to the States. Hopefully, hopefully.

I am really excited about the cruise (er, obviously) and about going to Langfang in Hebei province. Xiaoxuan told me on Friday when we ate out (at a Muslim restaurant on the Nanda campus-- no pork) that I will be the first foreigner any of her grandparents has met, except possibly her one grandfather who was a soldier in the Korean war. But, in her words, "that was maybe not so favorable." To give you some more of her words on a completely unrelated matter, one evening after a very long day of classes and lectures I kind of hyperventilated at her in mock-freak out that I couldn't decide what book to read in the few minutes I had before falling asleep.
"The Center is so cruel to you," she said calmly.
"Yes, you phrased that well," I replied, "it's not that I am crazy, it's that the Center is cruel."
"Actually, my meaning is that the Center is cruel and so you became crazy," she explained.
"Oh," said I.
"So it's still the Center's fault, but your situation is not so good."

I seem to attract this kind of lovingly mocking friendship. It works for me.

She's generally more encouraging than mocking. Today I was muttering at our Center T-shirt, trying to find where my Chinese name was written.
"Sorry," I said, "I'll go back and talk to myself in the lounge soon."
"And I will go to the library and talk to myself there," replied Xiaoxuan, "and we will leave a quiet dorm room"

I have been well, overall. I spent another weekend in Shanghai, commemorating the ascension of Baha'u'llah by saying prayers at 3am with five friends on the 29th of May. That was lovely, and together with other awesome friend-time made it a very recharging weekend for me. Since then I have been a lot better about waking up early enough in the morning that I have time to pray and meditate a little, and start my days with clarity rather than rushing and feelings of guilt.

I think that my Yangtze-Hebei adventures are going to involve two more day-long train rides. I am very excited. I love sitting on trains and looking out the window, knowing that I won't be arriving soon enough to worry about and all I need to think about is the meaning in the scenery, more than pretty much anything else I have done in China. I love trains.

Quick Update

Among my methods of schoolwork procrastination has been changing my mind repeatedly about my summer plans, and obsessively looking up plane tickets on vayama.com. These culminated tonight in the purchase of a round-trip ticket from Seoul to Des Moines and back- putting me in Iowa or thereabouts from Tuesday, July 6th until Sunday, August 1st.

Hope I'll be seeing you soon!