Theora fits into the slide at your park.
Theora fits into your suitcase.
Theora fits into your suitcase (I like this one better).
I am finally back in the United States after all of my adventures in China. I stopped posting on the blog in March, which was partially my decision (so little precious free time) and partially not my decision (Chinese government blanket-blocked all blogspot.com blogs). So here I am, threeish months later, with even more pictures on my computr that never made it up here. Unfortunately I don't think I'm going to take the time to write about all the adventures and post all the pictures, even though I'd love to share. I'll just do a quick summary for now, though, plus a map highlighting every province I've been to in China. Pretty cool!
In alphabetical order: I have been to Beijing, Chongqing, Guizhou, Hunan, Shaanxi, Shanghai, Sichuan, Tianjin and Zhejiang. Whew!
(terracotta warriors)
The last few weeks of the program dragged on FOREVER. The professors piled more and more work and projects and presentations on us, and meanwhile we all were literally losing our minds. The desire to speak English became a constant backdrop to every and all thought, the thought of making sounds like "fr", "th", "kl", etc, would make us drool. Everyone handled this intense stress a little differently; I surprised myself by becoming intensely angsty and angry. It was hard to let on this anger (as were many other unhappy emotions) so I don't think it affected anyone else too much, but it was really hard to stay postitive. Throughout the semester it was really difficult to remember just how much progress you'd made due to the constant criticism and increasing demands from the professors, and the last few weeks weren't any different. We finally graduated, went out for karaoke with our professors and found out just how hard it is to switch back and forth between languages with much speed and accuracy.
(a bunch of third year students at professors after graduation- Jason and I are in the front left)Then after Jason left to go back to the US, I hung out in Beijing for three weeks by myself. I ended up living with the cousins of the gallery-owner friends I worked with at the Art Expo. Living with two girls from a rural province whose admitted ages seemed to get younger and younger the longer I stayed there was difficult and eye opening. Since they couldn't speak more than a few words of English, I was entirely reliant on my Chinese skills. Even though I'd spoken Chinese for the last four months, something about only speaking Chinese with native Chinese people with whom I shared no common background experiences was incredibly exhausting. I felt like I was constantly misunderstood and feared I frequently tripped over cultural faux-pas and possibly offended them. I likewise got frustrated with them when they couldn't seem to understand where I was coming from or had different social customs. I did learn a lot from them, though; their story was very similar to many people currently living in Beijing. They moved to Beijing hoping to make a better life for themselves, but have had very little education and although their standard of living is higher now, they will encounter difficulties if they hope to get higher-level jobs. Aside from living with these girls I also hung out with my friend Julian who also attended ACC with me. He's an all-around superstar student who started Harvard this fall. When he and I were feeling overwhelmed and weary of life in China we'd get together for western food or go to a beautiful, expensive shopping mall (ha!). I'll be honest- it was hard to be alone in a foreign country and living in a stressful situation. I kept busy by planning my trip with my mom (Robin), sister (Viv) and wonderful friend (Maeve).
China's country side. The reason the train ride is so long is because we had to wind through all the mountains which allowed us to see many different climates and scenery.
Terraced hills. There were lots of yellow flowers, which I am pretty sure are safflower, which are harvested and turned into cooking oil. 
Our hotel was right in downtown Chengdu, near a big flashy pedestrian mall. There were always huge crowds of people there, no matter what time of day it was. Our head director, Zhang Laoshi (professor Zhang) teased that Chengdu people never go to work, they just spend their days shopping and going to teahouses. Sounds pretty good to me. The pace of Chengdu is definately more relaxed than Beijing, regardless.
Sichuan is also famous for "xiao chi" or, basically, snacks. As I am sure everyone will agree, snacks are great. Above is an example of the many, many sidewalk snackeries (?). Hot pot originates in Southern China and at the above establishment you can select as many skewers of vegetables (all kinds of mushrooms, lotus root, bean sprouts, etc) and meat, tofu and then cook them in a broth (usually dark red and therefore extremely spicy). On the street you can also buy Chuar (kabobs), and it's the same excellent deal- you pick which skewers of meat/ tofu/ lotus root/etc you want and they will boil and then barbeque it for you right there. Delicious. The character for chuar is : 串. Great, right? It actually looks like a kabob! You can also buy all kinds of fruit, including beautifully pre-sliced pineapple on skewers, water chestnuts, mangosteens, mangos, rambutans, pipaw and jujubees. I made sure to try the last three since I hadn't had them before. All delicious. Jujubees are in the apple family but are shaped like a little torpedo and have a very delicate flavor.
There were beautiful fruit stores everywhere- open to the air and wildly colorful. In the foreground you can see that brown spiky fruit- those are Durian, a really strange fruit that smells a little like a sweet onion. They are so smelly that they have been banned on the subway in at least one Asian country.
This picture is for Viv- a store where you can buy things to use in your store... like manikins, steamers and hangers, haha. I saw at least 3 of these, actually. 
