Back in New York
The 7 hour layover passed by pretty quickly with an impromptu nap while hugging my violin and turning my backpack into a makeshift ottoman, so all went well. I slept 10 hours out of the 12 hours of my flight, which was a first and may have had something to do with getting just 40 minutes of sleep the night before. Maybe. Luggage took an entire hour to come out on top of the 40 minutes they had us wait on the plane at the JFK airport for another plane to get out of the gate, which was unpleasant, but my flight was nowhere near as bad as Nick’s, who had someone vomit on his shoes 20 minutes into the Beijing-Chicago leg of the trip in addition to the airline losing his luggage (albeit just for a day). Poor Nick.
A crazy thing happened at the airport, though — I ran into Ilene Molina, a CAPS major from the Class of 2008! She’s studying international human rights law in Egypt and was coming home for the holiday season. We didn’t get to talk too much, but the coincidence of running into her was pretty awesome.
Also, my first meal back in the States? A late night dinner at 东王朝 in Flushing, New York. Yes, my first meal in the United States after spending four months in China was Chinese food. And it was delicious.
A 7 Hour Layover and Free Internet Equals
A blog post. I was originally afraid of my layover (at Narita International Airport in Japan) because I thought it was going to be 8 hours long, but Japan is a different time zone than China, so I only have to spend 7 hours at the airport! Oh happiness. I am being 50% sincere when I say that because spending 7 hours in the airport seems significantly more manageable than spending 8. I do have the option of getting out and chilling around Narita (Tokyo is 2 hours away by bus and given the additional time to go through customs twice if I do go, it doesn’t make any logistical sense to trek out there), but I have two carry-ons, one of which is my violin and the other a backpack with 30 lbs plus of stuff (mostly my laptop, sheet music, a couple of books, and miscellaneous papers I didn’t have the heart to toss). The backpack’s a huge deterrent from moving around much — not just because it’s so heavy (I’m weak and out of shape, especially from gluttonizing the past 4 months; don’t make fun of me), but because it’s more or less an awkwardly humongous turtle shell and I don’t want to traipse around Narita with it. If anyone does find himself or herself on a layover here though, I do recommend checking the surroundings out — there is a very nice temple nearby called Narita-san (成田山新勝寺） with an adorable pond filled with turtles people painted names on as prayers for the well-being of their friends or family.
I’m sitting in the Yahoo Internet Cafe facing the window looking down upon bright yellow trains shuttling to and from the extension terminal. I can’t believe I’ve left Beijing and am on my way back to New York. It feels foreign, going to New York, as strange as that sounds. Walking across Terminal 3 of the Beijing International Airport as the sun rose, bright pink-hued orange light flooding across cold white walls while the airport speakers streamed the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, was a surreal experience. Beijing has really grown onto me — on the taxi ride back from the Immaculate Machine show at Yugong Yishan, while passing by the Shichahai neighborhood, I realized that I’m really, really fond of the city. There are plenty of unpleasant things, like blowing your nose and finding that your snot is dark gray (apologies, tmi) and dealing with unresponsive waiters at restaurants (and while we’re on the topic, this and this), but there’re so many just plain nice things about the city. As a college student, I’m going to miss cheap, delicious, and plentiful Chinese food, but I’m also going to miss the friendly impromptu conversations with complete strangers. I’m going to miss wandering around like a clueless laowai (or rather, LOLwai), and I’m going to miss feeling accomplished when I get something done by talking in Chinese, even it is as simple as reserving a taxi to get to the airport at 5:30 am. I’m excited to see my family, I’m excited to eat meat that doesn’t have bones or isn’t diced into tiny pieces, I’m excited to play piano and work on a Chopin romance I fell in love with last week and can’t stop thinking about. I’m excited to go home, but I miss Beijing and I want to go back.
T-80 左右小时s
Apologies, round 2. We all just handed in our final research papers to Professor Zhang’s mailbox two evenings ago, and up until then, things were exceptionally hectic. Heck, I’m inclined to say today was hectic as well — we hit up the Dirt Market (潘家园, located near Jinsong Station at the very end of the 10 line) and the Silk Market (秀水市场, located near the Yonganli Station on the 1 line) for some souvenir hunting; I came back to the dorms 350 kuai poorer (but hopefully making x number of people happier?). The blog and blogging have both been on my mind and I’ve taken pictures thinking, “This is SO going on the blog,” but I haven’t quite gotten to step 4: upload pictures and step 5: write blog. What does this mean? This means that I will still write the posts I meant to write, but I will fiddle with the timestamp so it’ll look like I wrote it back when I meant to write it. But you’re not supposed to know that.
At this point, I’d like to mention that the blog has an RSS feed and that Google Reader is fantastic. Seeing a decrease in the number of visitors to this website will make me sad, but I’m willing to sacrifice that in favor of Sergey and Larry’s inevitable world conquest.
Sifting through the library catalog
Search terms: “Australia” AND “China”
Search Return #41:
K835.6156/G293
How Mao died : Chinese love-story
…What?
2012 and 2013 Brunch
A few members from CAPS 2012 and 2013 were able to get together for brunch at Hai Hong. Yay for dim sum!
New TIME article worth reading
www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1938671,00.html
Snow：2nd Edition
Sunny September Morning (outside my bedroom window)
Snowy November Morning
Haiyan’s Birthday!
I just wanted to make a somewhat-belated note that Haiyan Wang’s birthday was November 2nd, and if you haven’t yet wished her a happy birthday, you can send her a quick note at hw365.
We recently had a CAPS information session for the freshmen and sophomores on campus (which drew a good 20-25 people, and NOT just because Professor Chen offered extra credit to his students!) and Haiyan did a great job of putting together a very helpful presentation for all of us. So this post is a shout-out to her!
All the CAPS students in Ithaca would also like to express their jealousy of CAPS students who are currently in D.C. and Beijing (the former being warmer, and the latter being, well…in China!). We can’t wait to hear more about your adventures in January! Just think about how warm it’ll be in Ithaca then…
The Internet at Beida
Why yes, how on earth did you guess? There are few things more temperamental than a fussy newborn, and one of those things is the Internet connection at Beida. You want to run a Google Image Search pandas? Why don’t I just reset your connection? Oh, and throw GMail off kilter for a good measure? I may be just a little bitter.
Couldn’t hide a smile when I saw this, though. Oh, Fox Broadcasting Company, why did you have to be so cruel?
First snowfall!
Okay, so it involved silver iodide missiles (which I didn’t find out about until three-four days later), but it snowed in Beijing! We weren’t here for it because we were out in Shandong Province (where it also snowed ridiculously, albeit quickly) for the weekend but there was still some left for me to enthusiastically take pictures as I remained blissfully aware of the previous days’ weather intervention.
Below: (Last remnants of) Snow! (and the Beijing University Library)
A Close-up on Some Snow (and slightly sorry-looking flowers)
Snow on the Library’s Hedges (and the Boya Tower)
I had a short paragraph all planned out to talk about how strange the snowfall was because it was only two weeks ago when the leaves, still firmly attached to the branches, started changing colors. I snapped the picture below, amused by the wrestle between seasons, nature’s order, and the passage of time. I like to think that M.C. Escher would’ve thought the composition of Gingko leaves and snow at least a little cool.
