Merry Christmas!

I woke up to sunshine this Christmas eve, looked out my bedroom window at a diamond ocean glittering in the sun.  After more than a week at home, I've succeeded in studying a bit of Arabic, reading a few pages of a few books, running a few miles, and absorbing some sun.  Which is fine, really.  I'm on break.

I spent the weekend before Finals Week huddled like a recluse in a darkened room, drinking pots of coffee and tea and frantically scribbling notes, organizing papers, and flipping through books for hours upon hours.

I had a test a day Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, each represented by a colored balloon taped to the door frame.  The greatest satisfaction of Finals Week was coming back to the room after each test and violently popping each balloon with whatever sharp object happened to be lying around.  Calculus was the most difficult of them all.  Three solid hours of the most tedious math problems organized on eye-watering colored paper in a stuffy basement room with ancient lecture hall chairs whose fold out desks were almost smaller than the paper itself.  But it was all worth it when Thursday evening I got to come home to my stately room, my wall of bookshelves, my soft brown queen-sized bed, and my ecstatic cat.  And my family.  It was so good to be home, and the weather has been gorgeous.  Sunny and warm, with a few days of wind and clouds, Florida is putting on quite a show for my time back.  It's so nice to be celebrating a warm, sunny Christmas with family.

Christmas [Cookies] in the Air

December first and the air smells like Christmas cookies.  At least, I smelled Christmas cookies, shuffling off to class through the frozen air, breathe billowing from me as smoke from a dragon's nostrils.  Call me unobservant, but I'd never noticed the evergreens along the path by the Timmer apartments are Christmas trees.  I don't mean they're shaped like Christmas tress, I mean they literally are the same trees that one finds under the big white tents this time of year, lopped off at the base and impaled in a bucket of water, waiting to be shoved into plastic netting and tied with twine atop the family minivan in anticipation of a few weeks of standing sentinel in some corner, stalwartly guarding a pile of gaudily wrapped packages and adorned with heavy porcelain balls and light little crafts made by kids in preschool covered in macaroni and glitter, to await the end of the season when the packages will be torn to shreds and the tree divested of its ornaments to sit ignominiously on the curb for the garbage man.  I wanted to hug it, but decided to be on time to class instead.  Also, people were watching me.

It's been getting steadily colder lately.  It used to be, a few weeks ago, a day this cold would come around, and I would shiver half-heartedly and check the forecast, where I would experience a moment of hope and happiness as the numbers increased back up again throughout the week.  No more.  While there is still no snow on the horizon, it is becoming apparent that this cruel weather is here to stay.

This post has been waiting to come out for a few days now, ever since Tuesday afternoon when I lay once again prone on the ground clutching my weapon in cold, gloved hands, spending a solid twenty minutes in reflective silence.  It occurred to me that those 20 or so minutes on Tuesday afternoons are some of the calmest, quietest moments of my week.  By no means are they the most comfortable.  For them to be comfortable, I would have needed the weather around 20 degrees warmer to begin with.  I would have wanted to spend a moment clearing all the sticks and twigs from beneath me, particularly the one digging relentlessly into the base of my breastbone.  I would have situated myself so my feet were slightly lower than my head, rather than the other way around, which had me feeling slightly vertiginous and also made it that much more difficult to deal with my helmet, the major bane of a STX lane.  I can never see wearing it, as it sits so far down my forehead to accommodate my bun that I spend every STX lane feeling like I have an acute case of tunnel vision.  It is heavy, so heavy, so that the muscles in my neck and shoulders burn trying to keep my head up, at a level that I can partially see beneath, so that on my otherwise cold body there is a lump of completely unwanted, scalding muscular heat that I can't ignore.  And my blood throbs in my temples and my head aches with the pressure of all the bobby pins in my hair being pressed into my scalp by the tight leather headband that holds the cursed thing in place.  Even gloved, my fingers feel numb against the mock trigger, like my toes, unable to wiggle confined in the tight boots.  No, it is not at all comfortable.  But it is quiet.  For those few moments, I have no other purpose than to lie there in silence, awake and motionless and alert.  I can't do homework or play games or plug in my iPod.  So I think.  I think about the naked trees rocking in the strong wind and how sentient they look, like lethargic dancers or swaying dryads of myth and legend, their thin, supple bodies bending far more than seems possible, their spiny fingers extended towards one another like amorous lovers or demented fiends.  I think about the years' and years' worth of leaf accumulation below me, fertilizing in death the very trees that produced and nurtured them in a system that could go on endlessly, completely irrelevant of human behavior.  I thought about the chipmunks I know longer saw running through the undergrowth, now firmly established in their hibernation, content to let the season pass without being involved in it, confident that the natural cycle will continue without their presence or aide.  I had just started thinking about what Army camouflage would look like, were the war zone ever to move to the tundra, where green is unnatural and irregular and brown and white the predominant color tones, when operations began.

We ran a successful lane, ignoring a few snags and hitches along the way.  Predominant among these was the irate civilian and her fluffy snow dog, disgruntled and annoyed to find college students playing soldier laying quietly in the woods of what, apparently, was her property.  How dare you come into my part of the woods, the woman asked us, when the college's land so clearly ends a few trees back the other way?  I just want to walk my dog without having to deal with you people creeping in silence through the brambles.  Oops.  Our bad.  Silly us for thinking woods were woods and that we had any right to crawl through them when they were so obviously yours and not the college's, leaving out the fact that the only reason we're even out here in the cold woods in the first place is to practice serving our country, and ipso facto you, by defending America against all enemies both foreign and domestic.  Forgive us for thinking that you wouldn't mind us spending an hour or so a week walking though, if we'd even known this was your land, which for the record we didn't.  Ah well, no blood no foul.  I was sick of high crawling over sticks anyway.

And that's it.  One semester's worth of Army training and STX lanes over with.  Now that wasn't so bad, was it?  And now it's almost Christmas, when I have weeks of no responsibility, no pressure, no worries until January.  Ready for some Florida sunshine :D

Treading Water

I'm keeping my head above the water.  Not so easy in the metaphoric sense than the physical.  In school, I have to work.  I have to remember to study for the Calculus test on Friday that I need to do well on.  I have to remember to buy new laundry detergent, since the first bottle ran out.  I have to remember to clean my room, do my homework, not let the milk go rotten.  Not like swimming.  Treading water is peaceful, relaxing.  It's so effortless, when you know and understand the water.  When you understand how each kick, each twist of the arm will contribute to your buoyancy, it is easy to float, to keep your head up.  Familiarity makes it easy.  So perhaps the same is true for life.  As college life becomes a routine, it will become easier and easier, until it's finally time to move from "big world" to "real world," to a job and a house and adult responsibilities.  I did so well at our Combat Water Survival Training lab because I knew and understood water.  Going from swimming circles around the diving well, treading water with friends to jumping blindfolded from a diving board three meters up holding a rubber duck M-4 and wearing a uniform, swimming fully clothed 25 yards with the duck above your head, falling in and removing a vest underwater, is not so very difficult if you understand the basics of navigating water.  It's even fun, swimming with friends, jumping off the high dive, getting to lap the guys time after time instead of watching them run by me day after day, lap after lap; walking fully clothed into a shower and just standing as the hot water poured down my dry ACUs and soaked in to the bathing suit underneath; getting out of the water and watching it pour from my sleeves like a hose, squirt from my shoes as I walked; taking it all off to change into soft, warm yoga pants for class, tying my hair in a sloppy wet bun behind my head.  And in the end, I get to throw it all straight into a washing machine and press the button.  Voila.  All done.

It's been nice to have some time off.  I celebrated Thanksgiving in Chicago with a friend of mine and her family.  I got some homework done, ate some turkey, laughed a lot.  It's Saturday morning and I'm going downtown.  I've never seen downtown Chicago.  But I'm dreading Monday morning.  Having to haul out of bed at six and do pushups and run circles and stand at attention does not appeal to me, stuffed with food and well-slept as I am now. Staring down the barrel of a scary Calc test doesn't make matters better.  Stop.  Don't think about it.  Think about Thursday and going downtown to see Les Miserables, think about going from there to the airport to bring your brother to Calvin.  Think about the Calvin-Hope hockey game Friday night, and the low key weekend to follow.  Low key...  Nothing will be low key again until after Finals are over, in three weeks.  Stop.  Don't think about it.  Think about December 15 and flying home for Christmas and seeing family and friends and the beautiful beach.

Raindrops Keep Falling...

Laying prone on my stomach in wet leaves, rain dripping relentlessly, soaking me through to the bone, holding a heavy fake rifle in sodden, gloved hands, trying to keep my head up as my heavy helmet wants nothing more than to push it down, I realized I wasn't miserable.  I would have thought, lying there, cold and wet, with my assault pack pressing into my back, water dribbling off my helmet brim to pool relentlessly on a woodchip just below my nose, muscles shaking frantically to keep warm, while my legs are determinedly staying still so I can forget, for just a little while, how very wet they truly are, that I would be miserable, unhappy, and ruing my decision to join the Army.  But I wasn't.

Truth is, I like that once a week, I get to do something very few other college students ever have opportunities to do.  Truth is, I like having something to talk about in this blog, unique from what anyone else would write.  Truth is, I enjoy the challenge of running a STX lane- a situational training exercise lane, where soldiers practice combat exercises and techniques in a serious but low-risk environment.  Truth is, I think it's exciting to use acronyms like it's normal, to carry a "gun" like I'm used to it, to wear a uniform like I belong, to be trusted with a duty like I'm responsible.  So today, while lying prone in the wet leaves and rain dripped down my neck, pooled in my sleeves, soaked through my gloves, I miserable or upset, but calm and merely annoyed.

This afternoon, we celebrated Veteran's Day with a lunch at a local nursing home for the veterans living there.  Old and frail and deaf, some barely strong enough to lift their cups, yet all that could stand did so for the presenting of the colors.  They stood straight as the national anthem was played on the piano and all sang the words together, their voices deep and wizened and off-key, but powerful and proud.  Members of "the Greatest Generation," they didn't "thank us for our service."  Rather, they took it for granted that we would want to serve.  One man told us he was so "grateful for the ROTC program," grateful that there was a way for young people to easily learn to become officers.  They asked us about our age, our desires for our military careers.  Most had enlisted right out of high school themselves.  The man beside me joined the Air Force 3 days after his high school graduation, and found himself on a plane (he remembered the plane ride had been over 18 hours) over Japan in 1945, dropping the last bombs on Tokyo before the war was declared over.  Strange to picture the frail old man as young, strong, full of life and duty, ready to serve his country wherever he was needed.  The man beside him commented, "the uniforms looked different when we wore them."  These are uniforms for a desert country, digitalized and tan; uniforms for a new kind of warfare, on a new battlefield, with a new enemy.  And someday, when I am old, there will be another uniform for another generation to wear.  Strange to imagine.

Which brings me back to lying in the rain during the STX lane.  Planning a route, marking distance with our footsteps, keeping alert, heads on a swivel, guns at the ready.  Avoiding IEDs, mortars, enemy forces.  Watching all directions from our rally point while a team goes out to recon the enemy.  Walking silently, crouched down, unsure where the "enemy" even is.  Every unnatural item in the woods is an item of suspicion.  Covering your buddy, staying behind cover, aware of who might be able to see you.  Being congratulated at the end for a lane well run.  Perhaps not the most comfortable way to spend the afternoon.  Not the warmest, nor the most enjoyable.  But all the same, it was unique, exciting, and had a purpose.  So when all's said and done, I rather enjoyed myself.  Truth is, I'm glad I'm a cadet. Truth is, I'm proud of my uniform and of my country, and truth is, I'm glad to be serving it, in whatever small way I can.

I am a Soldier.

"I may never march in the infantry,

Ride in the cavalry,

Shoot the artillery.

I may never fly o'er the enemy

But I'm in the Lord's Army (Yes Sir!)"

I remember singing it as a child.  Marching, galloping, clapping my gunshot and holding my arms out like an airplane in the sky.  Saluting with wild enthusiasm and a wide smile.  Yes Sir!  I'm in the Lord's Army.  A sweet concept, half-understood with childlike simplicity, imbued with insubstantial images of David and Goliath and Joshua and the Battle of Jerhico and the Armor of God.  As I grew older and learned more about the "spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms," the concept of the Lord's Army solidified.  The Armor of God was an apt analogy for the battles that rage around us all the time, in which we are all active participants.  I'm starting to realize just how apt.

I am an American soldier.

I am a Warrior and a member of a team.  I serve the people of the United States and live the Army Values.

I will always place the mission first.

I will never accept defeat.

I will never quit.

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my Warrior tasks and drills.

I will always maintain my arms, my equipment, and myself.

I am an expert and I am a professional.

I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States in close combat.

I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.

I am an American soldier.

It strikes me every week how all-encompasing our Army training is.  From financial responsibility to stress management to character, the Army expects great things from its officers.  We must be disciplined not only physically but mentally.  We must be leaders not just on the field but in our daily lives.  Each lesson we learn reminds me strongly of similar lessons I've received in sermons, Bible studies, and other Christian places of learning, like Calvin.  The Army equips its soldiers to deal with death and dying, pain and bloodshed, stress and fatigue, success and failure, fear and courage, love and hate, brotherhood and honor.  Using such tongue-in-cheek terms as "character development" and "warrior ethos," the Army teaches morality and spiritual development.  The 7 Core Values are such that might be championed in any church: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, personal courage.

Truly the Christian life is being at war.  I'm learning how interrelated these things are.  War brings out the best and worst in man.  In the face of death, man is the closest to God.  Likewise, peace is meaningless without war.  Good and evil must struggle, and one must fall.  There will be casualties.  There will be pain.  There will be times when you don't want to get up, when going on seems to take more effort than you have to give.  There will be suffering and misery and, yes, anger and hatred as well.  There will be valor and cowardice.  In the face of death, one finds the extremes of life.  Christians are not in a world of peace.  Christ did not come to bring peace but the sword.  We live in a world given over to the vices of the Enemy, and we are placed here to oppose him, to steal back from him the souls he has stolen and return them to their proper sovereign.  We have an enemy, an objective.  We have teammates and allies, we have weapons and armor.  God equips us to join in the fight.  He trains us and He leads us.  God is the greatest general we could ever hope for, personally leading even the lowliest soldier with care and wisdom.  He is patient but demanding.  Because he knows that on a battlefield, fear, indecision, incompetence, can be fatal.  Seeking to protect His sheep, He gives us rules and standards to keep us safe.  I may never march in the infantry, but I'm being equipped to do so.  But I am in the Lord's Army, and I was born onto the frontline.  Deep in enemy territory, the discipline and rules of the Christian life will be the difference between success and failure.  Life and death.  I'm in the Lord's Army.

Agony of Success

I am so busy.  I don't know how it happens, but everything gets done.  Or it has so far.  My papers get written, my tests get taken, my homework is done...  I even do my laundry.  There are papers to grade, beds to make, clothes to pick up off the floor.  There are classes to attend, notes to organize, supplies to collect, and things to buy.  There are letters to send and water bottles to fill and pushups to do.  There are dorm meetings and floor meetings and club meetings and floor dates.  There are friends to visit and projects to finish and chapels to attend.  I never have any trouble falling to sleep at night.  It's the waking up that troubles me.

0600 my alarm buzzes three mornings a week.  Gotta get out of bed, put on my swishy PT uniform, fill up my water bottle, get to the track.  One hour of formations and stretching and running and sit ups and pushups and more formations and cadences and HOOAHS that come from deep inside your chest.

Every time I put my uniform on it becomes more natural.  Awkward at first, I now walk proudly in my digital tan-green camo, shoulders back, chin up.  Hat on outside, of course.

Last weekend I got really familiar with my gear.  Although my heels have not decided to make friends with my boots yet.  The boots usually win.  We left after class on Friday afternoon and drove to WMU in Kalamazoo.  Awkward and out of place, Charlie Company huddled together away from our fellow Bronco cadets until we marched out to the repel tower and tied our Swiss-seat harnesses.  Then it was confusion as we all got into lines to repel 30, 60 ft down the smooth wooden tower sides held on by our own rope knots around our hips.  It was very secure, as my bruised waist will attest.  Before loading, gear in our laps, onto the navy blue ROTC school bus for the drive to Ft Custer, we were issued our "rubber duck" M-16 fake rifles.  Never point the muzzle at anyone.  Never leave your weapon unattended.  Never drop your weapon or put the muzzle in the dirt.  Cuddle the thing like a teddy bear in your bunk.  Pretend it's a matter of life or death.  Maybe it is.  I aced my written land navigation tests.  I guess I'm just a test-taking pro.  Turns out I can actually read a map, if I try.  Slept in my uniform long underwear in my Army-issued sleeping bag at the end of a barrack full of cadets, mostly male.  Woke up, raced to formation, stood at attention.  Marched my ruck in formation to the FLRC.  Field Leadership Recreation Course.  I had to look that up.  I have no idea what all these letters mean.  Ever.  FLRC- mission scenarios with props and a setup and a goal to complete.  Get across the river with your ammo box.  Escape a POW camp.  Work together like a true squad.  Strong mind, strong body.  Hua.  MRE breakfast sitting on my ruck.  MRE lunch sitting on my ruck.  Freezing fingers, but the MRE heaters kept them warmer.  MRE-meal ready to eat.  Army rations.  I knew that one.  Bus ride to the land navigation course.  We call it land nav.  The one thing the Army doesn't shorten to an acronym.  LN doesn't sound cool enough, I guess.  Mathematicians are fine with it, even though it means the "natural log" and should therefore logically be an NL.  But I digress.  5 hours of hiking down trails, pushing through brambles, thorns, and dead trees, and getting lost.  My feet are waging constant war with my leather boots.  Guess who suffered the most damage.  That's right.  Night land nav.  3 more hours of hiking down trails, pushing through brambles, thorns, and dead trees, and getting lost.  This time at night with nothing but a dim red flashlight to help out.  Red doesn't mess up night vision.  I didn't know that.  It's true though.  A glowstick war passed the time while we waited in formation for the bus to take us back to barracks.  I don't think anybody made it out unscathed.  Some were worse than others.  We looked like the night sky, glowing with speckled stars on a deep, dark field of black.  Only our stars were dangerous glowing chemicals.  So much fun.  Slept in my long underwear again.  There're called poly pro.  What does that even mean?  Had to skip out on the second ruck march as my feet were convalescing from their hours-long suicide mission fighting back against my boots.  Just accept it; they're not going anywhere.  Which means I missed the GAC.  Grenade Assault Course.  They didn't give us any grenades.  They gave us rocks.  Because that's just how gung-ho the ROTC program is.  Boom.  Made it home.  Ate lunch in the dining hall and it tasted incredible.  Took a hot shower and shaved every single hair off my legs.  I needed to feel feminine somehow.  Hobbled around campus all Monday with calves as tight as coiled steel.  But my Engineering bottle rocket flew 122 yards, so I was pretty pleased all the same.  Wednesday morning I passed my APFT.  That's out of the way.  Now I'm just 3 short forms away from contracting and getting my full ride and my stipend.  And applying for a summer culture and language program on the Army dime.  If I can make it through the application process.  But that's a story for another day.  Today I took a test and kicked it's butt, I have a lab write up to assemble and a squad meeting tonight.  Plus a meeting with my advisor to discuss my academic schedule for the next four years.  Does it tell you something about me that I have been looking forward to this for weeks and have already planned out all of my 7 remaining semesters and developed a schedule for this spring?  I know my course catalog like the back of my hand.  Looking forward to course registration.  And seeing my parents!!
HUA!
CDT Wood

Was that just one week?

One week of classes is now officially over.  We started on a Tuesday and I have come back to Tuesday.  One week ago, after days of Questing and orientation and having fun with newfound friends, we all assembled in the gymnasium of the fieldhouse for Convocation and were welcomed to Calvin as the class of 2015.  The ceremony was short and sweet, and there was a barbecue on the Commons lawn.  But not for me, not right away.  I had class.

History class.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday.  10:30.  My professor is a small man who opened class the first day by showing us pictures of airports and, after about 20 pictures of "What do you see here?" finally explained that the purpose was to show us how much information is involved in every instant of time, and how impossible it would be to go back and recreate any one event.  His teaching style sometimes feels like he makes it up as he goes along, like he is less teaching than musing, and asking us to share in his ponderings.  I like him.

Calculus 2.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday.  11:30.  My most challenging class, the homework assignments take upward of three to four hours a day to complete.  The professor is a good teacher, passionate about the subject and careful to show every step of his examples.  But the class itself is hard.  Very hard.  As I sit in his lectures, I follow ever step of every problem he demonstrates.  But when I sit in my room with my homework open, I stare at problems that I don't know how to solve, or spend twenty minutes or more working through integrals that take me sometimes five or six steps and ten or so lines on my paper to solve.  I'm so glad I bought a whiteboard.  It helps me organize my thoughts to see the problems laid out coherently on a plain white board in black ink, with no lines to work around and no eraser marks to deal with when I inevitably mess up.

Engineering 101.  Monday, Wednesday, Friday.  8:00 The easiest class in my schedule.  I am convinced that Calvin's first semester of engineering is designed to give students a false sense of confidence about the subject and their ability to master it.  The textbook so far has given us study tips, told us how to take good notes, told us to be confident and goal-oreiented, and to be realistic about time management.  We haven't yet learned engineering.  We've been learning how to learn engineering, or any subject for that matter.  Most of the textbook would apply to any subject (and in fact I've been utilizing some of its suggestions in my history and philosophy classes).  Professor Hoeksema (my one Dutch professor) is competent and funny and engaging.  The workload is light, the studying easy, and the class enjoyable.  We've been assigned a project to make bottle rockets! :D

Philosophy.  Monday, Wednesday, Friday.  9:00.  Professor Mellema walks in at precisely nine o'clock, walks to the blackboard, writes PHIL-153F, PROFESSOR MELLEMA without once glancing towards the room full of students, slowly turns towards us and says, "I am Professor Mellema and this is Philosophy 153" as though he had not just written it on the chalkboard.  He then proceeded to take attendance using only our last names.  I could not get over the fact that balding Professor Mellema, with is round belly and thinning gray hair, was exactly what I had pictured when I had pictured a stereotypical college professor.  It made me want to laugh, which I would have been far too intimidated to actually do.  Since the first day he's begun to exhibit signs of possessing a sense of humor, which is encouraging.  The class itself is not difficult and rather interesting.  I believe I'll end up liking it.

Engineering 181.  Thursdays.  8:30.  Our three hour engineering lab is going to be fun!  We get to play with computers for three hours a week and get credit for it.  Professor Brauer is a quiet, competent professor who opened with a Bible reading and a word of prayer, and seems interested in learning our names (actually, both of my engineering profs opened with a word of prayer and gave us cardstock nametags to place on our tables so we could begin learning one another's names).  He taught us a bit about the program AutoCAD and then gave us three drafting assignments to finish before the next class in a week.  I stayed a bit after class was over and got them all done that day.

ROTC.  PT: Monday, Wednesday, Friday. 6:00, now 6:30.  Lab and class: Tuesday. 2:00-5:00PM.  What to say?  Thirty pounds of gear in my closet.  Trip to Kalamazoo to pick up uniforms today.  Three mornings of PT so far.  Sore, tired, out of shape.  Piles of daunting paperwork that makes me feel like I'm signing away my life and freedoms.  A chain of command full of terms I only half understand.  Identity crisis.  Who am I?  How do I address my fellow cadets?  How do they address me?  What am I?  A civilian, a cadet, a uniformed soldier?  A support group.  Someone to turn to.  Older guys who treat me like a younger sister.  Respect.  Feeling ridiculous marching and chanting in cadence.  Trying to keep up.  Falling down.  Arms giving out.  So tired.  Showering in a hurry to make it to class.  Arms shaking too much to put on mascara.  Missing breakfast three mornings a week.  Sharing in mutual misery.  Laughing together.  Sweating.  Shivering.  Blistered hands.  Blistered feet.  Army strong.

One week down.  One week of one semester of one year at Calvin College.  I can't believe one week is over.  But it doesn't feel like only a week.  Time for class.

Quest 2011 and GO NVW!

My first few days at Calvin have been fantastic.  Before classes start we have a week of summer-camp-remnicient orientation and introduction activities called Quest.  We are all divided into Quest groups, who we will continue to spend time with for the next seven weeks in our required class called Prelude, which is apparently about Calvin, Reformed tradition, and being in college.  My Quest group rocks.

On Monday, I flew into Grand Rapids and was picked up by my roommate Gwen Fuller and her family.  We got my car and I stayed with them Monday and Tuesday night.  On Tuesday we were able to get onto campus and into our dorm early to set up and move in stuff.  Our dorm room looks fabulous; I'm so proud of us.  Wednesday was officially move-in day, when I became an official resident of Noordewier Vander Werp, my residence hall for the year.  Our hall theme is Pirates of the Caribbean, so it's a good thing I took the time to pack my pirate boots.  (By the way, these were taken during the organization process.  The room is much cleaner and less chaotic now, I promise :)  I'll put new pictures up soon.)

Today was our StreetFest day, when all the Quest groups descended upon the unsuspecting city of Grand Rapids and volunteered in various organizations and services around the city.  Our Quest group split, and I was sent to the local Salvation Army, where I and three others helped organize the pantry and clean the refrigerators out for teenage mothers with nowhere else to go but the Salvation Army.  This evening, to have fun and get to know each other better, our Quest group went to Aerials, a gymnastics gym that lets paying customers play with all the gym equipment.  Super bouncy trampolines, foam pits you jump into from a platform, spring mats, balance beams, uneven bars, and protective pads everywhere for tricks and stunts.  Afterwards, we made the obligatory journey to Yesterdogs and enjoyed their classic hotdogs on the Calvin dime.

Basically, it's been awesome.  I've met numerous people from all different groups and places who are friendly and fun and eager to meet people.  I've done a stellar job at fooling everyone to believe me outgoing and social, including myself.  I'm loving my newfound, long-desired social life!  I've moved in and settled, and already feel at home.  I've learned my way around campus enough to walk with a fair amount of confidence wherever I need to go.  My car is parked five minutes from my dorm, instead of most other people's fifteen.  And I did a stellar job driving a full car to and from Aerials.  I'm learning south-east Grand Rapids pretty well too.  The Barnes and Nobel just south of campus is almost a fair trade for a beach in the backyard, and I'm already planning to take a gaggle of car-less girls to Target on Sunday for some overlooked necessities.  Or maybe I'll try out Meijers like a real Michigander.  Basically, I'm obsessed with college and can't wait to start classes.  (Also, I have more bookshelves than I'd been afraid.  Guess that means I'll need a few more books :D)

One Last Day in Paradise

It’s the strangest feeling in the world, that feeling of being on the cusp of a new life and new adventures but without yet having taken that all-important plunge.  Like a little kid sitting on the edge of a swimming pool, unsure whether the safety and security of a solid footing and ready oxygen are worth sacrificing for the free and weightless joys of the deep end, I can only hope that my parents’ loving guidance, my happy situation at home, is a fair trade for my own college experience with all its opportunities for both freedom and failure.

This is moving that somehow manages to be both more and less difficult than my norm.  I sometimes catch myself treating this packing exercise as a trip to summer camp, a weeks-long vacation I’ll be returning from before too long brimming with stories to tell and experiences to cherish.  But unlike summer camp, I’ll never be coming home to the same house I’m leaving.  I’ll always be my parents’ daughter, my brothers’ sister, but I’ll never really live with them again.  But at the same time, I’m leaving most of my things here to await my return.

I’ve become something of an expert in goodbyes.  But in moving, I’ve never farewelled my family.  No matter who or what we left behind, no matter what new situation we found ourselves in, moving for me has heretofore been a group effort.  We as a family all moved together.  Monday morning I move alone.  How does one farewell family?  With the same resigned equanimity I have employed leaving behind best friends in the past?  Or ought the egress from the “nest” be heralded with a more emotional sort of adieu?  In my experience, goodbyes are most easily born when terse and matter-of-fact.  “Well, that’s it then.  I’ll miss you.  Take care.”  Add an “I love you” to a close friendship.  Done.  Goodbye Mom, Dad, Galen, Jared, Ryan.  I’ll miss you all.  Take care.  I love you very much.”

Just as every cloud is said to have a silver lining, I’ve found it also tends to be true that every piece of silver has that one spot that polish can never quite free from tarnish.  There’s a dark, shadowy corner in every light-lit landscape, and that’s where there be dragons.  Beginnings must be built from the wreckage of something else’s ending.  Becoming Monica the adult means Monica the child must make way.  Destruction is always painful.  Monday morning, the most compromising blow is dealt to my childhood: moving away from home.  Wednesday morning the foundation is laid for my future as an adult: I move in to college.  Let the construction ensue.

Countdown

There’s a countdown on my whiteboard marking eleven more days.  Is it a countdown of excitement, or one of dread?  Ask me now, ask me later, who knows y if I’ll answer the same way twice.  I’m sitting on a soft, queen-sized bed in a huge room painted the colors I chose.  To my right, all my beloved books are displayed on a ceiling high bookshelf with various accoutrements I’ve acquired over time.  My dorm room will be small, bare, cramped, filled with the essentials and shared with another.  I spent this afternoon floating in neck-deep sea water, eyes closed against the sun, warm waves lapping gently across my face.  I somersaulted in the ocean and brushed against the smooth sand.  I sang at the top of my lungs with a smile on my face, and danced in the waves in a bikini, unashamed in the knowledge that I was alone and unobserved.  My face is red and my body brown.  I showered in a private bathroom redone not six months ago.  I have my family around me, my brothers, my mother, my dad will be home soon.  Pretty much perfect.

But however perfect it might seem, the truth is that it doesn’t feel right anymore.  After eighteen years, the natural instinct to leave the nest, that age-old urge to leave home and strike out on one’s own is now fully developed and finally attainable.  I have a life sprawling ahead of me, a path at my feet that will carry me away from my family toward a future of my own.  As much as I love Florida summer, I find myself almost wistful for Michigan winter, because it already feels like my life.  That’s me, the pale college student in fluffy pants, rather than the bronze high schooler in shorts.

I want to start my classes.  I want to wake up early, stay up late, work on homework.  I want to meet my professors and get to know my classmates.  I want to go out to eat and I want to skip meals.  I’m ready to move on to the next great adventure before me.

Of course, I’ve got a lot of room cleaning before that can happen.  That’s what this week is for!

Tips for Incoming Freshman

My younger brother is starting high school this year.  He got a letter from the high school headed "Tips for Navigating High School."  Reading through the list, I almost laughed.  It was all so simple, so common sense.  "I know you're feeling overwhelmed," the principal wrote.  I thought about how easy high school had been, how little those kids had to be afraid of.

My college orientation was last week.  For two days we went to workshops, lectures, informing us how to best navigate college, quelling some rumors and verifying others.  College is different from high school, they said.  Don't be so complacent that you don't work.  I have to admit, I started feeling concerned.  Maybe college will be harder than I thought it would be.

But just like the transition from middle to high school, the transition into college will take some work, but will soon be as natural as high school became.  There's no need for anxiety; it will all become familiar.

To be honest, I loved the orientation.  I loved meeting my classmates and knowing we were all strangers to one another.  Everyone was friendly, everyone wanted to make friends.  We all sought something in one another that we held in common.  Major, hometown, books, movies. Everyone wanted to fit in with everyone else.

I loved the campus, small and cozy and isolated, with plush green lawns and picturesque trees and flowers.  Old brick buildings that all looked the same, all with Dutch names I still can't quite keep straight.  Fireflies glittering everywhere when the sun went down, like a fairy story.  Even winter is beginning to hold less fear, as I consider snuggling beneath blankets with steaming mugs of tea or hot chocolate, surrounded by friends in the snug little dorm rooms, wearing my softest, fluffiest pants and socks.  The more I look forward to college, the more I find to look forward to.  Classes, friends, camaraderie, coats and hot chocolate, comforters, weeping willows, study abroad...

I leave for Michigan in 25 days.  It feels interminable.  But then I remember that going to Michigan means leaving home.  Leaving my parents, my brothers.  Leaving my devoted cat.  Leaving my huge room with its view of the Intercostal.  Leaving the south where the summers are sweltering and the winters mild.  Leaving the beach I love so much.  Leaving sweet tea and grits and buttermilk biscuits in creamy gravy.  Bittersweet.  But worth it.

To the class of 2015, whether entering high school or college, we have a lot to look forward to, these next four years!

High School No More

I remember when I became a high schooler.  More or less.  Being the precocious homeschooler that I was, I decided I wanted to finish eighth grade early.  So I did.  The day I finished my last eighth grade homework assignment I bounced around the house declaring "I'm a high schooler now" in a loud, sing-song voice to my mom.  I was at a new school in New Jersey sophomore year, and was very keen to have people realize that I was NOT a freshman, but merely new to the school.  I decided I didn't want to be a new student my senior year, and almost didn't even look into Fort Walton Beach High School.  But through a phenomenal series of God-driven circumstances, I have for the last year been taking two classes at FWBHS.  And tonight, I graduated with them.  I may not have graduated "with honors" or worn the fancy summa cum laude stole with the snazzy gold tassel, but what would that really have changed?  I took every opportunity offered to me to be the best I could be, to take the hardest classes and earn the most college credit.  I did my very best in everything, and completed high school (actually all 12 years of grade school) with "all As," in "honors classes" when possible.  I have been accepted to a great college, which I will attend at no cost to me.  I have a guaranteed job in the US Army when I graduate.  My future could not be brighter, my past could not have been done better.  During high school I have spent more than three months overseas in seven different countries.  I flew alone to China and back, went on a mission trip to Ecuador at the age of fourteen without my parents.  I took three AP tests, have earned more than thirty college credits, and will have many of my introductory level classes completed before I arrive at college.  I have moved twice and thus attended high school in three different states.   I have learned when to bow to bureaucracy  and when to refuse to jump through meaningless hoops to check pointless boxes.  I have learned to appreciate friendships and learned how to say goodbye.  I have very few regrets for these past four years, and look to the future with only anticipation.  High school was not the best years of my life, but it has certainly prepared me to meet my best years head-on, whenever they happen to be.  So tonight I farewell grade school.  I look back with no hard feelings, no regrets, and no longings or desires.  I look forward with excitement and anticipation on a future ripe with possibility and opportunity.  Tonight, I am a high school graduate.

Routines Are Hard to Break, Easy to Establish

It took about a week for me to rediscover the patter of my daily life here at home.  School every morning, homework, running, enjoying the sunshine outside.  Church on Sunday.  I've decided that time passes far too quickly.  Each day ends before I've done everything I'd wanted to, every day something gets moved to the back burner because I simply don't have enough hours of daylight to get them all done.  The month of April has come and gone.  I've visited with a grandmother, welcomed a good friend to share my southern paradise for a week, gotten caught up on schoolwork (more or less), helped the family run smoothly while my mom took a week off with a few of her own friends.  Just yesterday I turned eighteen years old, just two days after getting my first speeding ticket.  Yes, time passes indifferently, steadily, inexorably.  I still haven't posted any pictures to facebook.  I don't know why.  It just seems... well, too late now.  I suppose I still ought to, but it just hasn't happened yet.  Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow.  Maybe not.  Ah, but the future.  Now that is exciting.  Graduation, summer, college.  I can't wait to finally be off for Calvin!  But before I get ahead of myself, it is important that I stop to remember that today can be just as much as an adventure as last month, as next month, as next year.  I live in the present; it's time I enjoyed it!  Just two more weeks and two AP tests between me and summer!  Ah, the sweet smell of freedom...

The Briefest of Images of My Trip

Pictures take a long time to upload to the blog, so I'll be brief.  But I felt the need to share a few of the pictures I took during my trip to China.  So, for your viewing pleasure, here is a small sampling of what I've been up to:

 A panoramic view of the village we stayed at

Sitting with our host in front of the fire

Visiting the market

 Sunset in Dali Old Town

 Visiting the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xi'an

 Xi'an Downtown

 The Forbidden City

 Standing on the Great Wall

 Shopping in downtown Beijing

 The Temple of Heaven

We went to a lot of places, saw a lot of things, had a lot of new experiences.  I'd love to tell you all all about them, and show you all the rest of my pictures.  It has been a wonderful trip, and I was sad to leave.  But it's time to go home.  I have a redecorated house, my own wonderful bedroom, the beach, and family and friends all waiting for me.  It's time to be home.

And My Trip To China Ends...

Well, it's over.  After almost two whole months, I have official bid the People's Republic of China goodbye.  On the plus side, this means I am now completely free to go to any website my little heart desires, including facebook and my blog.  But I had to say goodbye to my aunt, uncle, and cousins, and I won't be learning any more Chinese for a while.  Shoot, just when I was starting to get good, haha.  This morning my uncle was teaching me the general idea behind character reading, which is a ridiculously complicated system.  Thank God written English is phonetic (even if it does break every rule it lays out for itself).  My last few days in China were pretty laid back.  After all, once you've visited the great wall, what else is there to do, right?  We visited a place called the Temple of Heaven, where emperors used to offer their yearly sacrifices, and we did a lot of shopping.  The other night we even went to go see Chinese acrobats do various strength, skill, and flexibility tricks that are pretty unfathomable to me.  We walked around the Olympic village and the Bird's Nest, and ate shish kabobs from a street vendor.  This morning my aunt escorted my aunt and uncle to the airport for their early morning flight to Anshon, in northern China.  My uncle, cousins, and I watched TV and ate noodles till it was time to join her for my flight and theirs.  They saw me safely  past customs and immigration, then I was on my own.  The flight to Seoul was pretty short, less than two hours.  The plane was pretty full, but by some stroke of luck I managed to not have anyone sitting next to me.  The man in the aisle spoke Korean so we didn't talk much.  I went through customs and immigration here in Korea without a hitch and got my official Korean entry stamp.  I'm actually allowed to be in Korea 3 months without a visa, but I think I'll stick to my original plans and fly home tomorrow.  I got to my hotel easily, where I have a very cute, very well set-up room with far too many beds, free sodas, and a huge jacuzzi tub.  I think I know what I'll be doing here!  But first I'm gonna check out the restaurant and see about some dinner.  You know I have a lot of pictures, and before I go to bed tonight I'll post another update with some of my best.  As for the rest, I can't wait to show everyone!
~Monica

When Someone Says "China" what Comes To Mind?

I avoided updating my blog in Kunming because there really wasn't anything to say.  I got up each morning and taught Chemistry and Geometry until 5:30, when we took the bus home for dinner at the dorm house.  While busy, my days just weren't all that interesting.  On Friday, my aunt, uncle and grandparents arrived from Xiaguan and we met them for dinner at a Japanese restaurant with some friends of theirs who had spent time in Beijing.  They told us some good places to eat and gave us some guide books to help us on our trip.  After dinner, my cousins wanted to go to youth group, but I had a lot of repacking to do before the next morning.  So I opted to go back to the dorm.  Which meant I had to go alone.  It may not seem like such a big thing, but it was momentous to me to be traveling alone by public bus in a Chinese city of more than 3 million.  I was alone, the sole caucasian on the bus, unable to communicate with anyone else.  But I felt comfortable.  It was the same bus route I took home every day after MSG and I had been the only caucasian before.  It went just fine.

The next morning we left for the airport with all of our bags.  It was a fairly short flight to Xi'an- we arrived late in the afternoon.  After a mix-up involving our driver, we ended up taking taxis to the youth hostel we were staying at.  The hostel was a quaint, cute little place.  When we checked in, they warned us Saturday nights at the bar were pretty loud and that we might want earplugs.  We nodded and laughed to ourselves as we went out for dinner.  We ate Xi'an style noodles- wheat noodles with soggy bread crumbs.  I was about the only one who liked them.  Mostly my family thought the bread didn't go so well with the noodles.  The hostel gave vouchers for a free beer for everyone each night, so after dinner we all sat in the bar and drank our free beers.  It was pretty quite, and so we figured the women at the counter had been exaggerating about the noise.  But when we were showered and getting in bed, all of a sudden the music got louder, someone started beating on bongo drums, and the karaoke began.  Since we had first floor rooms directly over the bar, the music was incessant and impossible to ignore until nearly 12:30.  We had to wake up on time in spite of that, because we had made plans with a driver to visit the Terra Cotta Warriors.  It was a couple hours from Xi'an to the Warriors.  The driver obligingly agreed to wait for us in the van, and we went out to buy our tickets.  We ended up hiring a tour guide at the ticket counter, who took us around the three different pits and telling us a bit of the history.  The site was the tomb of the first emperor of the Qing dynasty- the man also responsible for the Great Wall.  Shortly after his death his tomb was burned and partially destroyed by a peasant revolt.  Thus most of the warriors were found in disrepair and had to be pieced back together.  They were found by farmers digging a well in 1974, and since them a huge amount of tourism has grown up around them.  After visiting the warriors, our driver took us to the factory where the replicas were made, from the actually clay found inside the pits.  They showed us how they molded them, touched up the details, and baked them in a huge kiln for a week.  The shop there also had lacquered tables and screens, silk embroidery artwork, carved wood, and silk carpets.  The next day we were able to take it easy (fortunately the bar had been much quieter the next night) and get a late start to our morning.  We rented bicycles and rode them the full circle around the ancient Xi'an walls.  The ride would have been quite enjoyable if not for the rain.  We also walked through downtown to the Muslim quarter, which had a myriad of roadside snack stalls and restaurants.  We were looking for a mosque, but it took us until nightfall to locate it.  The next day we had to get up even earlier, as we had a plane to catch.  But on the way to the airport we stopped at a newly discovered tomb called the Yangling Mausoleum.  On the site were two burial mounds: one for the emperor, one for the empress.  Radiating from the emperor's tomb were long pits of varying length.  Each contained various different items depending on the government official buried there- clay animals and now-carbonized grains for the emperor's dietician, clay men, women, and eunuchs for the man in charge of the harem, and so on.  The mausoleum had been made into quite a nice museum.  We enjoyed walking through it.
The flight to Beijing was even shorter than that to Xi'an, but it took almost an hour to make it to our hotel from the airport because of the city traffic.  Beijing is a phenomenally huge city, I discovered immediately.  One taxi driver told us 8 million inhabitants, another 13 million.  Either way, the city is enormous.  We're staying in apartment-style rooms at a hotel called Lido Place.  It was too late to do much on Tuesday when we got here besides get dinner.  We ended up sleeping in Wednesday morning, so it was after 11 by the time we made it to Tiananmen Square.  For such a huge area, Tiananmen is surprisingly barren.  Mao Zedong's tomb is in the center, and there are huge television screens showing patriotic Red propaganda, but for the most part, the Square is just empty pavement, filled only by the large number of tourists milling around almost purposelessly.  Directly across from the Square is the Forbidden City, with it's huge portrait of Mao hanging in the center.  After a quick walk around the square, we went and explored the once-forbidden home of the Emperor of China.  While in many ways grand and majestic, in a lot of ways the place seemed sparse and lonely.  For the safety of the Emperor, as well as to preserve is god-given divine right, many places even inside the already restricted fortress were off-limits even to the princes.  Only the Emperor and those he expressly called could enter some of the courtyards.  Even in the common areas, things were so lonely.  Each building was surrounded by its own wall like layers of an onion, and separated from every other building by long, empty courtyards of paved stone.  I wouldn't like to live there, not for all the riches, power, and prestige of the Emperor.  We went back to the apartment after seeing the Forbidden City, and went out for dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant down the road that a friend of the Blackburns recommended.  The food was superb.  This morning we hired a driver to take us to the Great Wall.  The drive took us way up into the mountains.  At the base of the wall, in the parking areas, wait shop after shop of men and women all hoping to sell their souvenirs to you.  "Hello.  I have hats and gloves."  "Hello.  Cold water."  "Hello, souvenirs $1."  "Hello.  Do you like?"  Each time you shake your head, smile, keep walking.  "Hello, hello, hello."  Grandma and Grandpa took a gondola to the top, but the rest of us wanted to say we walked up.  It was a lot of stairs up, but the view was worth it.  In about 2 or 3 weeks, I hear the trees will start to bloom, and I can imagine the view from the top must be marvelous then.  But it was marvelous now, even dry and mostly brown.  The wall is pretty impressive in its sheer size and location.  Imagining carrying those bricks up that entire mountain, building mile after mile of wall...  Incredible.  After the Great Wall we visited the Emperor's Summer Palace, a lovely Asian castle beside a man-made lake, with trees and pagodas and covered pathways and buildings with lovely sounding names like "Pavilion of Birdsong" or something similar.  The number of tour groups here was incredible, and we all expressed our wholehearted thanks that we were not part of such a group.  Traveling by tour group would be no way to travel!  Now that the Great Wall and the Forbidden City are over, we have two days here to see anything else we're curious about.  We've talked about a place called the Temple of Heaven, talked about seeing the supposed embalmed body of Mao in his tomb in Tiananmen, talked about seeing the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium.  Who knows what else is in store in my last few days in China, but I'm sure I'll love them.

Final days in Xiaguan

My grandparents were going to join us here in Xiaguan just a few days before I left the Blackburns' house for the first time.  My grandparents arrived yesterday; I have only three days left in Dali.  They're going to have to be rather busy days if I'm to get done everything I want to do here.  Tonight, we're going out for a hotpot dinner (at my request).  I understand it's a concept similar to fondue- everyone gets their own hot pot to cook whatever raw foods in that they order.  Tomorrow afternoon we're going into Old Dali a final time (I have a few more present to buy).  Grace, the Blackburns' house helper, invited us Saturday to her village for their meal.  It's a holiday for them during which they spend the entire night singing and dancing.  I'm not sure whether we're going to go.  Apparently Grace's village is a very traditional one, and all of the songs they sing, while having very complex lyrics, all are sung to the same tune.  They have only one dance as well, a slow shuffling dance apparently.  I think it would be interesting, but my cousins assure me I'll be bored.  I guess I'll find out later if we're gonna go or not...

Last weekend my cousins and I were in Lijiang (I apologize, but I've been spelling it wrong in my blogs, I found out recently).  We traveled by train- a new experience for me.  I've heard that day-style trains (with rows of seats) are horribly crowded, with no space for luggage and far too many people.  Night-style trains (with bunk beds three high), which we took, are supposed to be better, because you sit on the lower bed and store your bags on the upper ones.  It was very hard to find our seat due to a ticket misprint (our ticket said car 6 but the seat number was in car 8), but afterwards it went well.  The trip was much faster by train.  We stayed at the Pinson's house.  Their daughters met us at the train station and we took a half-hour bus ride to their house on the other side of the Lijiang Old Town.  We arrived in time for a lunch of noodles made by their house helper, and then the girls took Maggie and me to Lijiang Old Town for shopping.  It was similar to Dali's Old Town, except bigger.  The minority people group in the Lijiang area is different than Dali, so the minority costumes people wore were a bit different.  Also, Aden explained to me, Lijiang Old Town was a bit nicer and cleaner because it was new.  In Dali, the buildings look a hundred years old because they are a hundred years old.  In Lijiang, the buildings were built to look a hundred years old, but all the real ones had been torn down.  Lijiang, I was told, is known in China for it's waterways.  The streets were lined with little brooks set deep under the road level.  It was quite pretty.  Lijiang is a very large tourist city and nearly all of the stores and signs had English.  Or more realistically, "Chinglish."  I saw the "celebrity underwear soft" store, the "meat by naxi boy" yak meat shop, and a sign telling me "not to step on a head."  The Pinsons and we spent a long time playing card games, board games, and Sardines at night in their compound.  Sunday afternoon we took their dog on a walk through a nearby village to a large man-made lake to give him a bath.  We saw men fishing, women working in the fields, and even babies using split pants.  Rather than spend money on paper diapers or spend time washing cloth diapers, Chinese mothers put their children in split pants.  As the name would suggest, they're basically just pants with a huge split inside.  Every hour or so, mothers hold their children up and tell them to pee.  In the grass, on the sidewalk, wherever.  There's a reason no one in China wears shoes in the house. 

Meanwhile, I've still been talking my Chinese classes.  My uncle tells me that I'm learning incredibly quickly, and that my tones are already better than some people's he knows who have been here for years.  He said that if I were here for six months I would likely be able to speak to locals quite easily and pretty fluently.  But unfortunately, I only have one more day, as I won't be able to get lessons over the weekend.  Although, Uncle Pete said at some point he might spend a half hour or so with me learning the underlying basics behind character writing.  I spent two hours with him today practicing pronunciation and tones.  They are so hard for me to hear and repeat, and there are certain sounds that I have a very hard time pronouncing quickly.  Chinese has two forms of "sh" and "ch" sounds.  One is a lot like English sound, a bit back in the mouth.  The other requires you to stick your tongue against the back of your teeth while you make the sounds.  I feel like I'm lisping, because my tongue keeps getting in the way and making an unintentional "th" sound. But I'm getting the hang of it.  Days of the week are really hard, because they have both of those sounds, one right after another.  But after Sunday I'll have to be a teacher again, as we're going back to the MSG.  I've kinda enjoyed it, but I always feel like I'm not really explaining myself very well.  My cousins say I did alright, but they're my cousins so they have to say that anyway...  And after MSG, it's off to the north, where we get to be real tourists!

hello! nihao!

Of the six trips I had planned between Dali and Kunming I have now completed 5.  When I next go back to Kunming for my second MSG, I won't be coming back to Dali.  This week and next are my last weeks here at the Blackburn's house.  It's hard to believe my time here is already half over.  I've really been enjoying my Chinese senior trip, and I'll miss the food, the culture, and the people I've met here.  Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my day-to-day schedule here in Dali.  I go running every morning, sometimes with my cousin, sometimes alone.  The weather here is beautiful for running, for being outside.  It's already much warmer than when I got here.  The Blackburn's house helper, Grace, makes us Chinese lunch everyday, and after lunch I have been studying Chinese with my uncle and his colleague Molly, whose village I visited a month ago.  I've learned a lot, in light of the fact that I've only had 5 lessons.  I believe I'm up to like 40 or 50 words and comprehension of quite a few more.  I try to do homework too, but it's pretty hard to focus on schoolwork.  I'm keeping mostly caught up though, which I'd say is an accomplishment.  My adversaries are strong- senioritis and the excitement of being in a foreign country.

Interspersed with the daily schedule I've been able to do some pretty fun things.  Last weekend I went with Aden and Maggie to Permeate, a youth retreat for the Kunming youth group.  I spent a lot of time with the kids I'd met at the MSG, and got to know them a lot better.  It was a really fun trip.  The weather was beautiful- hot and sunny- and we stayed in an Asian hotel by a man-made lake with a sandy beach and luscious green grass.  I had my first experience with buffet-style noodles for breakfast.  The first time I tried to get a bowl of noodles, I wound up putting far too much soy sauce, but it still tasted pretty good.  I did much better after that.  Noodles are apparently a typical Chinese breakfast fare, but several of the foreign kids at Permeate weren't too fond of the custom.  I thought it was delicious!  We weren't the only group staying at the hotel, and the beach was one of the only ones nearby, so the hotel (Fascinating Nature Garden, it was called) was pretty crowded.  A lot of local Chinese would make day-trips to the lake, setting up tents, going swimming, and using umbrellas to keep the sun off.  In China, it is the height of fashion to be pale; no one would dream of tanning or laying out in the sun.  In fact, most lotions, shampoos, etc. come with "skin whitening agents" to try to lighten Asian skin.  There were also a huge number of brides having their wedding photos taken by the lake.  It would have been a very picturesque location, were it not so windy.  The poor brides were trying to keep their dresses smooth and their hair pretty while the photographers ran around snapping pictures and the wind blew everything around.  The wind was also annoying for those of us trying to play poker in our free time.  We had to find locations sheltered from the wind before the cards would stay where we put them.

Another thing I did last week was go out to dinner with a large group of foreigners in Dali.  We had those Chinese dumplings whose name escapes me.  They're a lot like potstickers, except filled with all sorts of different meats and vegetables.  Everyone makes up their own dipping sauce out of soy sauce, dark vinegar, ginger, spicy dried pepper, oil, and whatnot.  I really like those things!  I also have found that I really like eggplant.  I don't know that I'd ever had eggplant before coming here.  It's not really something we eat too often in America, besides in eggplant parmesan from Italian restaurants.  But man is it delicious!  I would love, before I leave, to learn at least one way to cook it, so that when I come home I can have it there.  It has a slimy texture, but a fantastic taste.  Really though, all vegetables taste good here.  Something about the way they're cooked, vegetables are delectable in China.  I saw Grace, the Blackburn's house helper, in the kitchen yesterday, preparing a chicken.  It was strange to see a dead chicken, with it's head and feet and all, being prepared in a normal kitchen.  I mean, it was weird in the village but I just sorta accepted it because it was a village and that's different than a normal house, right?  So it was just strange watching her washing this plucked dead chicken in my aunt and uncle's kitchen sink.  Of course, it was also weird seeing plucked dead chickens lying in the meat area of Wal-Mart too.  My aunt took me to Wal-Mart last week, and in some ways it was familiar, but in others it was totally different.  Like the dead chicken, and the huge pig thighs, complete with hooves.  And the abundance of vegetables that I've never seen or heard of before.  And all the t-shirts with English phrases that make no sense at all (apparently, this phenomenon of poor English translation is called "Chinglish").  Another difference about shopping here is that you only can buy what you can carry at one time.  Because people don't own cars but take taxis or buses, you can't just bring a cart out to your trunk and fill it with groceries and drive it home.  You have to carry it all back home.  Plus, most people live several floors up, and there are almost never elevators here.  So if you're on the seventh floor (like our dorm at the MSG) and you have groceries, you have to carry it all the way up.  If you had two trips, you'd have to carry it all up seven flights, walk back down seven flights, then come all the way back up.  So people pretty much only buy a few things at a time.

This weekend Maggie, Aden and I are going to visit some friends of theirs in Leijiong, a city north of here.   The area is supposed to be very beautiful, and, as it is something of a tourist area, will have a lot of opportunity for shopping and gawking and the like.  Although, last night I heard there is currently an uncontrolled forest fire in the area.  I wonder how that will affect our trip...  So far, it's still on.  Today, I believe Aunt Laura is taking us out shopping.  I'm hoping to buy some DVDs and boots.  Everyone here wears such cute boots, I want a pair of my own!  Next week my grandparents are coming in from California.  They'll be traveling with us to Xi'an and Beijing after MSG at the end of March.  That will be the end of my time here in China, and as excited as I am to see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, it will be sad to have to say goodbye.  Or, in proper Putonghua (Mandarine), to say "zaijian."

Fireworks, Buses, and Really Long School Days

Dali Old Town pretty much looked like I remembered: elaborately carved Asian architecture covered in a layer of grime and full of vendors selling everything from upscale clothes to stone vases to hand-dyed tablecloths.  It's really a beautiful tourist set-up.  Narrow cobbled streets intersecting each other, lined with legitimate shops and hopeful, roadside tables spread with everything from antique coins to silver costume jewelry.  As the center of the area's tourist district, the culture is a blend of Asian, Indian, European, and American.  To me, it was exhilarating.  The babble of languages, the colorful array of merchandise, the lovely arched roofs and ornately carved doors darkened by years of smoke, dirt, and smog.  But to my cousins, I'm afraid being a tourist is a pretty miserable experience.  The locals see a white face and assume "stupid foreigner, I can really scam these ones."  My cousins have to display an impressive array of bargaining ability, Chinese language skills, and local credentials before the shopkeepers are willing to take them seriously enough to give them a fair price on their wares.  We attract a lot of stares, especially outside of the tourist areas, in their hometown of Xiaguan.  It's a bit strange to be the object of so much curiosity and attention, but I've found in general that if I smile at them, they smile cheerfully right back and then go about their business as usual.

Sunday after church Aden, Maggie, and I got on the bus for Kunming, where there Modular Study Group (MSG) meets once a month.  Because the MSG meets only one week out of four, they meet each day for nine and a half hours.  The out-of-towners (comprising of me, the Blackburns, and a Singaporean girl named Jessica) stay with a British family called the Mathers.  We eat breakfast with them at 7 and leave for the MSG.  We get back to the Mathers' between 6:15 and 6:30, after a long, crowded, and incredibly jerky journey on public bus 181, just in time to join them for dinner.  In the evenings I Skype in to my physics class as usual.  It makes for a pretty long day.  I wasn't sure how useful I could be here, or what it would even be like.  There are about 15 or 20 high schoolers that meet here.  The school is in an apartment on the 7th floor of a complex here in Kunming.  The first day their teacher, Mr. DeMoss, told me what some of his classes were doing and asked if I'd be willing to help teach a chapter in both Geometry and Chemistry.  I like to think I've been helpful.  In any case, this week Mr. DeMoss hasn't had to spend nearly as much time running back and forth between his two math classes and two science classes, both which meet simultaneously.  Today's their test on the chapters I taught, so I suppose the grades will show how effective I've been at communicating the information. Today is the last day of MSG for the month, which means tomorrow morning we can take the bus back to Xiaguan.  Tonight, we're going to a youth group of a bunch of kids from the Kunming area.  Most kids who live in Kunming attend the Kunming International School, so there will be a lot of kids I haven't met before.  But that's nothing new, haha.  Last night the city of Kunming was lit by the lights of a hundred fireworks.  As the last night of Spring Festival, the two weeks after Chinese New Year, last night marked the last night it was legal to light fireworks in the cities.  The holidays are officially over for the Chinese, which means schools and work all start back up again after their New Year's breaks.  All the business that have been closed since I've been here will open back up, and hopefully I can get some of my shopping done.  The week after next we're spending some time in Leijiong (I have no idea how to spell that properly...), a tourist city north of Dali.  I hear there's some great shopping there too!  Can't wait!
~Monica

Living in China

I know it's only been a few days, but it turned out I had another convenient opportunity to use the VPN at the neighbor's house.  So, I suppose it's time for a short update.  All the rules still apply- pictures take too long, this whole thing took forever to load in the first place, I can't promise when I'll next be on... You get the idea.

Over the past few days, I've been establishing the schedule that I will hold for most of my time here.  Wake up and work out in the morning with my aunt, breakfast, shower, do schoolwork.  Go out for lunch, or eat leftovers.  Do schoolwork.  Have dinner.  Watch a movie or hang out with my cousins.  Get on Skype and go to Physics class.  Go to bed.  Not a bad schedule.  It's full-time school at the Blackburn's house now- my cousins have even more schoolwork than me to keep them busy.  But we still have time to do fun things.  We've gone out to lunch several times this week to small restaurants around their complex.  Noodles, fried rice, Chinese raviolis (as they were described to me.  I can't remember what they're called).  So good.  Yesterday, Maggie, Aden and I went to the Bird and Flower Market.  Basically, the markets around here are content-specific.  So the Bird and Flower Market sells pots, plants, dogs, fish, fishing supplies, birds, gerbils...  Anything alive or having to do with living things.  I've also been to the fruits and vegetables market and the hardware market.  I hope to find the clothes market soon.  Everyone here wears such adorable high heeled boots, I can't wait to get a pair!  Today, we rode our bikes up the hill to a really fabulous piece of construction- a glass tower, Space Age looking.  It was built by the government to serve some unspecified purpose, but I think it would have made a fabulous viewing area.  Sorta like going to the top of the Empire State Building or Rockefeller Center, just to look around.  It had a great panoramic view of the city.  But it was decreed "bad luck" when it disobeyed some rule of fung shue and several construction workers had accidents, so the building was never used or even completed.  Such a waste of money, space, and construction.  It was really a gorgeous building.  But that's the power of superstition at work.  Too bad, really.  Tomorrow, we're taking the afternoon off to go to Old Dali and visit a friend of the Blackburn's who has a personal library we can use.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to do a bit of tourist shopping in Dali, and go out for dinner.  Exciting!  That's pretty much what's going on so far.  I understand we leave Sunday for Kunming to go to the co-op.  I'll try to keep you posted- thanks for keeping up with me.  Can't wait to show some pictures!
~Monica

A Week in a Village

You don't even want to KNOW how long it's taken me to get this posted.  It's been 45 minutes thus far, and it's not even uploaded yet.  I apologize for the time gap between entries- China blocks a large quantity of websites, blogger being one of them.  Facebook is another.  So, to update this blog I have to visit a friend's house with a VPN and suffer through the slow loading process.  So I'll have to make this a good one.  Oh, and it would take too long to put in pictures, so you'll have to wait till I get home for those.

Well, to begin, I arrived in Kunming safely on the night of the 28th (China time) and my aunt met me at the airport and took me to a friend's house for the night.  The next day we took a bus to Dali and arrived at my aunt's house.  My cousins and I took a short trip out to buy a plunger, so I got a small opportunity to see some of the city before we left for the village. We left on the afternoon of the 30th and took a bus to a city where we met Molly and her family.  Molly is a Lalo woman who speaks Lalo (her minority language), English, and Mandarine, and who works for my aunt and uncle.  We then took a second bus to her village.  From the bus stop to Molly's house we had to walk about an hour.  Typical Chinese village houses are built around a central courtyard.  There is usually a barn or stable on one side, a kitchen on another, rooms on another, and a fence making the fourth.  Meals are served on low square tables, everyone sitting on low benches.  Everyone gets a bowl of rice and the dishes are placed in the center of the table, within reach of everyone.  Everyone helps themselves to what they want with their chopsticks.  Guests, however, are usually offered more food than they can eat, all the best dishes.  Everything is fried in fatty oil and tastes delicious, although the meat is very fatty and bony, and is very different than carefully cut meats in America.  Anything you don't want gets dropped on the floor for the dogs to eat.  On the 31st, they killed a big black pig for the New Year.  They wrestled it to the table, tied it down, stuck a knife into it's neck, and let it bleed into a basin until it died.  Immediately, they shaved it, beheaded it, and began to cut it into pieces to be sorted and cooked.  I've never seen anything like it.  We were not allowed to do any work- the Lalo are hospitable to a fault.  So instead we sat on low stools before the charcoal brazier and ate seeds- sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and marijuana seeds (no, they don't get you high).  I got to try a lot of interesting pig parts, including liver, brain, and tongue.  I don't recommend them.  We visited the market, where were sold pig meats, bean curds, sugar cane, noodles, and so much more.  There was even an outdoor dentist who fitted the willing with dentures to replace their rotten teeth.  We also went walking to pick Chinese olives, which were so sour they tasted sweet after you'd swallowed.  The illusory sweetness was even greater when you dipped the olives in salt.  I almost couldn't stand the flavor, but when it was gone, my mouth tasted sweeter than honey.  Maggie and I taught several of our hosts how to play Crazy 8s and Egyptian Rat, which helped pass a lot of time.  For New Year's, we ate lit firecrackers and ate tangyuen- sticky rice balls swimming in brown sugar soup.

It was the most incredible experience, being in the village.  But knowing that we could come back and shower and change clothes was what got me through it.  We used the bathroom in an outhouse with a hole in the floor, washed our feet, faces, and occasionally hair, in basins in the courtyard, and didn't change clothes in the 6 days we were there.  In the mornings and at night the air was frigid, but during the day we burned in the sun.
It was a different experience than any I had before had, and one that I was glad to have had.  But I really enjoyed my shower after the walk (uphill at 5:30 in the morning) and two bus rides back.  We have a lot to be grateful for, we Americans.  We just don't even know how much.

I can't guarantee when next I'll be able to post.  I'm back and my aunt and uncle's house in Dali.  Next week, on the 15th, my cousins and I leave for their co-op in Kunming.  So far, I'm enjoying the food, the culture, and the people immensely.  I'd love to say more, but I don't know how long this will take to upload, so I'd better stop.  I have so much more I'd like to say and share, but it will have to wait for a faster internet or a face-to-face encounter.  Love you all!
~Monica