Well. Here I am.
It’s been a week since I came home, tear-stained and snotty, dragging my borderline overweight luggage through Orlando International Airport. One whole, surreal-as-fuck week since I sat at my small town’s Denny’s at 12 AM, eating real American food for the first time in over a month, and feeling something off about eating with a knife and a fork. What can I say – even now, I miss the home I’d come to love in another country, in another culture, surrounded by friends who are now so far away. I feel as though I still haven’t fully acclimated to being home; often, I feel myself yearning to go out into the city or to call up friends to meet up at the café across from my apartment. Yet, that reality exists only in the evanescent memories I longingly cling to.
In any case, I’m back in America and thus have no excuse to postpone this update any further.
So first off, dear reader, here’s an apology (or several).
I’m sorry that this entire post is going to be terribly sentimental and unbearably sappy. Honestly, I care very deeply about my experience on this program and am thankful for all the change it has created in me. I am especially grateful for the opportunities NSLI-Y has provided, most of all for placing me with such wonderful people who engendered said change. For me, no matter if we’d known each other for just those short seven weeks, I’d already grown to love my host family, language partner, and classmates, in the full sense of the word. To be frank, it’s painful to get attached so quickly to people who I may never see again, or for a very long time. Moreover, it feels worse to realize that likely nobody on the program feels as attached as I do to everyone else. Guess that’s what I get for having feelings.
Anyhow, I’m sorry that I was unable to write on this blog during the program. This blog has been everything (mainly a fish bucket for my rants) but its intended purpose (an actual travel blog). With all the expectations I’d come into this program with, perhaps the most disappointing was that I’d never had enough time or motivation to write a single blog post. Of course, there were periods on long train rides and lazy Sunday afternoons when I could have – but I didn’t. Nothing I write now can make up for not recording my raw, in-the-moment feelings throughout the trip. Regarding the program, this is my greatest regret. (But to add: this entire summer was chock-full of things to experience and while I wish I’d put a little bit of time aside to write, I feel as though it was worthwhile to stow away my laptop and live away from my keyboard for once.)
Further, I’m sorry for all the things I’ve left unsaid. While I did spill my heart out quite a few times to several close friends, there was definitely more I could have shared. I wish I’d tried harder to break down the barrier keeping me from truly being myself around others. Also, I feel like there remained a great deal to learn about from my friends, but there just wasn’t enough time, or I hadn’t effectively used the time given to me. Above all, I regret the limited moments we had to say farewell at the airport. I could have written a speech for all those who mattered to me, mushily proclaimed my love for them, heartily embraced, and maybe then I would have been satisfied. Unfortunately, that’s not how it happened. All it came to was a rushed goodbye with a thousand words on the tip of my tongue. The ordeal of having to say farewell was unbearable, and as I disgustingly sobbed, I turned and walked away too quickly to the terminal where I stayed by myself for four hours. Sudden, brief, overwhelming – those were not the final moments I’d wanted, and I’m sorry it had to be that way.
Lastly, I’m sorry for all the times I’ve said sorry. Especially on the trip, I had a penchant for apologizing profusely, which in retrospect was actually a way for me to stay guarded. I wish I could have been more of my forthright and rather obnoxious natural self rather than keeping up my falsely mellow facade. Somehow, I think I fooled people into thinking I’m not an awful person. Haha.
Nevertheless, what’s done is done. The summer I was sixteen was more than just another few months in between school. Forgive me for being cliché, but NSLI-Y was a life-changing experience. Now that my apologies are over, there’s only the future to look forward to and memories to look back upon fondly.
All my memories are so beautiful, no matter if they were
As mundane as singing in the shower, walking through the city streets, taking the 70 & the 46, riding the bus everywhere, playing piano at home, playing ping pong at the club house, hanging up my wet clothes on the balcony, falling asleep during class, using chopsticks every day, drinking yogurt, consuming my host mom’s breakfast as fast as possible so I don’t miss the bus, exchanging RMB for Fan Piao (lunch chips) in the cafeteria, talking with the TAs, watching The Voice with my host family, dinner at my host grandparents’ apartment, swiping my bus card for friends, car rides with my neighbors, passing out on my bed, using an umbrella while it’s sunny, constantly buying Zhijing (tissues), spitting out all the random bones in the meat, using the squat toilet;
As surprising as burning myself on hotpot, making unexpected friends, the RD’s aversion to bananas, finding out another person on the trip is asexual, meeting my neighbors at Maan Coffee, finding a dead rat in an alley in Shenzhen, all the leash-less dogs and children wandering around the apartment complex, opening my bedroom door and finding my host sister’s little cousins inside the apartment, buying what I thought was chocolate ice cream from the cafeteria (it was mint), having my earphones still work even after I dropped them in the squat toilet and washed them vigorously, meeting my neighbor at the same elevator, finding a music store next to the noodle shop we ate dinner at, almost eating a chicken head, leaving my fan at the foot massage place and getting it back from the RD two weeks later, my mother and a classmate’s mother having the same first name, my host mom gifting me a ukulele the day I left Zhuhai, noticing my classmates’ endearing quirks, all of the drama that happened (there was so much drama), seeing a crammed itinerary and realizing how much one can truly accomplish in 24 hours, breaking one of my carry-on bags and still lugging it from China to the U.S., managing to get my luggage down to 50 lbs. at the Hong Kong airport, finding Nick’s favorite book (The Goldfinch) at the Newark bookstore, realizing I’d left my USB mouse and purple Muji pen in Zhuhai;
Or as special as our few days in New York, running with Malena through that sketchy park in Morningside Heights, visiting a deserted Barnard with Alisa, secrets in hotel rooms and cafés, nights on the rooftop, eating with friends, drinking that really good malt smoothie on campus, the first time I went to Maan Coffee, telling my host family about life in America, eating free samples at Zhuhai’s gigantic Sam’s, going to Yu Nu (the fisher girl statue), getting my first 100% on a Ting Xie, Shamrock Hotel in Hong Kong, sitting on the window ledge of the weirdly European-themed Vienna Hotel in Foshan, buying Communist propaganda, WeChatting my sister while we were both in China, political discourse on bus rides, listening to others’ music on bus rides, being sick and taking traditional Chinese medicine, Tuesday meetings in the beginner classroom with the RD, making people laugh, running back to the classroom building and barely making it to culture class on time, drinking way too many cups of Qiaomai Cha (barley tea) during culture class, Mafia on the bus, Deep Throat by Cupcakke being the ironic theme song of the trip, whenever the beginner class sang Tian Mi Mi, playing Paranoia with everyone, buying tea at the Comebuy, singing at KTV, learning how to pronounce “Appalachia”, “Colorado”, and “Hawaii” correctly, dinner with Kaleb and Charlie, talking to strangers in my apartment complex when I got lost, getting lost in Gongbei, riding the elevator up and down at Young Mix, ranking people by thirst on a tier list with Kola, being called “daddy”, missing curfew and walking home in the dark, Starbucks, confessing to the first person I’d ever liked (and getting over it), taking a taxi for the first time by myself, the third floor balcony, going to school an hour late and walking around campus alone, Paige’s Little Sheep Mongolian Hotpot, riding a high-speed train, eating street food, walking through the streets of Guilin, walking through a cave, sleeping on the boat ride through Guilin, the lowkey terrifying bus ride up and down a mountain path, climbing a mountain and staying at a wooden hotel, that café in Guilin, eating dumplings in a cup, getting a foot massage for the first time, learning Cantonese from my host mom and language partner, taking a taxi to Maan Coffee to eat lunch with my language partner and somehow making it back to campus on time, listening to my host sister sing and play guitar, learning ukulele and guitar from Logan and James, attempting to freestyle rap, buying back-to-school clothes at Huafa’s H&M with Alisa and Henry, impulse buying a bunch of face masks, dancing the dreaded peacock dance, playing Typhoon, the actual typhoon, screaming out of my window in English because nobody would understand, “pressing the YOLO button”, the Maan Coffee Bear Escapade, blasting fun.’s We Are Young on the street and singing along, crying at the foot of my bed because I’d had the best day of my life, talking with James on WeChat for six hours and falling asleep during the call, roasting someone while eating breakfast with a friend, walking through flooded water with Alisa and Colin on the school roof, having people fill out my Record Book, taking selfies with everyone at the closing ceremony, drawing hearts on my friends’ hands, all our inside jokes (lactose lactose lactose), holding hands, having a friend’s head rest on my shoulder, riding the boat between Zhuhai and Hong Kong, that night in Hong Kong at the harbor, riding an airplane over the Arctic, rushed goodbyes, stupidly sobbing in the TSA line, and sleeping the whole flight from Newark to Orlando.
Everything is unforgettable.
This is it. Life just keeps going on. One week after I returned to the U.S., I decided to get my shit together and here I am doing just that. I’ve consumed the last of my temporary keepsakes from Newark – a Smart Water and a Lindt bar of 60% dark chocolate (I swore I wouldn’t finish them until I’d written a blog update). All that’s left is to upload my pictures and to reply to WeChat messages.
It’s weird. I’ve definitely changed from this trip, and that’s probably why it’s taking me a while to recover. Besides Mandarin, I’ve learned a lot from others, especially about the things that are really important. Honesty, inspiration, trust, acceptance, and friendship. Hoo boy, that was sappy…but absolutely genuine. It’s strange to return to the U.S. where most everything’s the same from when I left, except now there are summer assignments and college applications to deal with. When I’ve climbed a mountain and crossed continents in the past month, with not a day gone to waste, it’s a bit of a shocker to return to my milky eat-sleep-repeat lifestyle. Well, at the very least, I can keep busy by writing and doing homework.
As a final point, I’d say this experience is indescribable. I couldn’t manage to do daily posts, but I will share my pictures, which can only showcase snapshots of how incredible this summer was. It’s something you’d have to be there for to understand. With that in mind, I wholeheartedly recommend you to participate in NSLI-Y, reader, if you haven’t already.
To group mates reading this, if any: Thank you for everything. Let’s meet again someday. hmu.
NSLI-Y Zhuhai 2016, wahoo!