Week 2: June 6-June 12

So this week is going to be a little different mood than last week. For the first time I’m getting a little homesick. Strangely this is never something I’ve experienced before. I moved from Oregon to Montana for college completely by myself and when everyone (or almost everyone) around me was getting homesick no matter how far they were from home, whereas I was perfectly fine. Maybe it’s the international thing. I’ve traveled a lot before but it’s always been with family or for much shorter time lengths. Whatever it is, homesickness is a new, weird experience for me. The funny thing too is that I’m homesick for Montana, and not for Oregon. Who knows, if I learned anything from growing up with two sisters, it’s that emotions are weird. I’ve been having a lot of health difficulties lately, whether it be my digestive system (my body’s standby for being screwed up), fever, or muscle pains, it seems like I’ve been in some sort of discomfort for most of the trip so far. Up to this point in my life I’ve learned to just kinda work around it. Don’t get me wrong—you have to be respectful to your body, but you can only let it control you so much. What I wouldn’t do right now for one night of a massive non-oily feast of whatever food I want, and a solid night of fun with my friends from home…anyways, I’ll stop complaining.

The other areas of my life have been really good! Lab is actually starting to be productive which is incredibly nice. I’ve learned my lab moves at a very leisurely pace and so if I want to do something I need to be a little pushy.

Next up is our trip! We just returned from a long holiday trip to Shanghai and Suzhou, both of which are close together and about 6 hours south of Beijing by bullet train. We spent a day and a half in Shanghai, which I absolutely loved. It’s a beautiful city and, contrary to what almost everyone had told me about it, it has some phenomenal character! Many areas of the city have been controlled by different Western powers at some point or another, and they all bear the style of the country. There’s an incredible mix of architecture and atmospheres that I found enchanting. We were also incredibly luck in that we found a wonderfully sweet woman named Evelyn who was staying in our hostel. She works in hospitality and lived Shanghai for a number of years. She offered (and we gladly accepted) to take us around the city on our full day, which was way more productive and planned out than anything we would’ve put together. I really enjoyed our adventure to Shanghai.

Suzhou. Now Suzhou was much different. We had a very short time in Suzhou so we decided to go to Tongli, an ancient river town that has the name of “China’s Venice”. It was a very bizarre experience for me. Maybe it was the fact that we went to a pretty scary Communist Museum that had a not so subtle indoctrination agenda. Whatever it was, the whole time I was there I felt like I was in a very weird place and it felt unsettling. It was a beautiful place, but the ugly side of tourism had taken a pretty strong hold of the city. It was good to go to, but I’m still not sure if I liked it or not.

Week 3: June 13-June 19

Well this week should be a shorter blurb. I don’t have too much to report. My homesickness has been fading, as either my stomach is getting better or I’m just getting used to it…I’m not sure yet which is the case. I think a big help has been reading. I have been burning through the first book of the Game of Thrones series, reading over 600 pages in a couple of days. It’s been so nice to immerse myself in a world where everyone communicates clearly in English! I’ve also been watching the show, so I know the events of the first few books, but I’m still enthralled. It reminds of home when I’m reading and get to parts I remember from the show. It takes me back to my cold, weirdly off-white colored Montana bedroom and it reminds me of home, even though it’s not anywhere near cold here. Tonight I took a little adventure to a massive bookstore in the center of the city, which has the entire basement floor dedicated to English books (well, with the exception of a pitiful French and German self). I felt so fantastically at home, even though I haven’t read or even heard of most of the books, and I haven’t done much serious reading in a long time. It’s hard to keep up pleasure reading when you’re in college. Everything is so taxing that when I have free time I just want to veg out and collapse on the couch in front of the TV.

Anyways, enough about books. My lab has been going great as well. I had the chance to finally do a significant amount of work on my own, which was fantastic. My grad student was hilarious the first time I did spin coating by myself. It was like he was handing over his child and he was running around like a nervous, fretful mother. He kept popping up and handing me this or that in the few minutes he had to watch me before he had to leave. He was hilariously ecstatic when he came back in the afternoon and saw that all of the samples were turning out well. He kept repeating how great they looked over and over. At first I interpreted it as a little bit of an insult, but I soon realized it was just his joy. He had handed over his baby and it was doing well!

We are nearing up on the halfway mark here, which I’m pretty sure is this weekend. I can’t really tell how I feel about that fact. I have a weird dichotomy going on in my head where one half of me is loving every minute of this, while the other half is moaning and repeating how it just wants to go home. I think the former is slowing winning out as my homesickness fades, but it’s taking some time. I think it is a good thing that this program has a definite end date that isn’t too far away. I can tell pretty easily that I don’t fit in to this society and I will never really feel settled in it. It has been great to experience this culture for a decently long period of time (relatively speaking I guess), but I know I could never call it my home.

Week 4: June 20-June 26

So this post is going to be centered on our adventure last weekend: the Great Wall. We set out Saturday night and via subway, bus, taxi, and a lot of help from Qira, we made it to a small homestay out in the forest. We got in after it was dark and wanted to get an early start the next morning, so we had a little bit of food and then went to bed quite early. We woke up around 3:30 and were on the hiking path by 4:00 am. We got up to the wall and I was completely blown away. I knew we were going to an area that was not very touristy and that we were going to be doing a lot of hiking, but we were out in the middle of nowhere. There was the small town in the valley below but that was it. Otherwise we were surrounded by Chinese jungle. I had also always had the image of the Wall from things like Mulan or other popular culture references, which showed it as this great, majestic thing. However, the section we were on was the original wall as it had been built in the 1400’s, so it was definitely broken and beaten by time and weather. But it was absolutely incredible. We started hiking and the more we hiked the more the wonder of the Wall set in. I think we all found ourselves thinking “How in the world did they build this?” However, it was not the massive scale or huge towers that amazed me at least. It was the landscape they built it on. There were many times when there was solid rock jutting into the path that gave an idea of what the workers were dealing with. There were also sections that were built nearly straight up and had, essentially, a 700 year-old staircase.

The opportunity was incredible to hike this untouched section of the wall and experience it as what it originally was. We hiked for eight hours, and the entire time I felt like an awestruck kid walking through the Disneyland castle. At the end of our hike we rounded over a hill and down into a section of the Wall that had been completely renovated. I felt like I was no longer on the Great Wall. In comparison to what we’d seen for the past 7 hours, this (read that with as much disdain as possible) couldn’t be the same thing. We entered a land of sweaty tourists in high heels and incredibly aggressive salespeople. I’m glad we reached this last section, as it made me value the majority of our hike even more. As we descended the wall into a mile long stretch of cheap souvenir stalls, I felt as if I was descending back into the modern time, after taking a small hiatus in the 1400’s. I’ve told Grace multiple times that there are moments in my life where I just stop, take a look at the situation I’m in, and tell myself that whatever life decisions I made that got me to this point were good ones. This trip was definitely one of those moments and undoubtedly something that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Week 5: June 27-July 3

Ok so you know how sometimes the slightest difference in time can make the biggest difference in perception? You know, Wednesday you’re only halfway through the week, but Thursday there’s only one more day? So that’s how it’s been for me between this week and last week. Last week we were just barely past halfway, we still had a lot of program left. But this week there’s only two weeks left! Only a week has passed but my mind has had a huge shift in perception. There are definitely a lot of contributing factors though. I’m finally not sick anymore, which helps a lot. I’m no longer yearning for a thick mattress and a sit down toilet most evenings, which has made me a lot happier. In addition, I’ve also been making some more new friends, but it seems like it’s just before the program is going to end. Where were these people three weeks ago!? And lastly, we’re busy. Like, really really busy now, which for me has been a big shift. Most of the program has been pretty lax for me, and that has definitely changed. I’ve got a 10 page final report, a paper to edit, a couple of journal entries, a biography, and three presentations before we leave. Where has all of this come from?!?! I mean it’s not like I’m not used to it during the school year, but I’ve been lazy and getting off easy for the summer, so it’s a bit of a shock.

Speaking of out of the ordinary, let’s talk about that 4th of July party! On July 3rd we went to the US Embassy’s 4th of July celebration, thanks to an invite through Dr. Ashworth, the head of the NSF’s China branch. It was definitely a new experience, with a lot of very important, and very interesting, people. It was extremely interesting to talk to some of the people there, and gave me a glimpse into the life of a diplomat, which I’d never seen before. I did find the juxtaposition between the people and the food kind of hilarious though. So many incredibly well dressed, fancy people were lined up to get pieces of pepperoni pizza and grilled cheese from a silver catering dish. The food was definitely classic American, not classy American. And the theme of the party was Route 66, so there were all of these highway style signs directing you where to go. My favorite part was the photo op with a motor bike against a cloth background, and a massive tent and “camping” display set up. I found it hilarious to watch the Chinese men in very nice suits straddle the Harley or sit in the fold up camping chair to enjoy their food. All in all, it was a very cool experience that I am very glad I was able to take part in.

Week 6: July 4-July 10

Hmm… So here I am, writing the second-to-last blog post. Yep, this is weird. On one hand I feel like it has been an incredibly long time since we arrived in China, but at the same time when I look back and think about the experience as a whole, it feels like it has happened in the blink of an eye. I guess I’ll stop listing off the clichés and write.

There hasn’t been much eventful in the past week or so. Well, I’ll be honest, I’m writing this a week late so really it’s the last two weeks. It has mostly just been a rush trying to finish up the final report and everything that needs to get done. But it’s all done, with the exception of the final presentations to everyone first at Tsinghua and then at Corning. But that stuff’s easy! Public speaking and presentations have never really freaked me out. Yep, I was the weird kid in elementary school who liked giving presentations. I’ll gladly do five presentations rather than a paper. Writing takes me so much longer and I actually have to put a lot of work into it. Growing up I was always a talkative person so it was never hard for me to improvise and fill in the blanks in a presentation. Granted, I’ve grown significantly more introverted, but that still isn’t difficult for me to do.

So now I can just relax! I’ve got two more days to be able to explore the city and enjoy my time here! I still have a few classic tourist spots to hit up (the Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven) but otherwise I just want to relax and cherish the remaining time here. I remember talking with my sister about how there are a few main ways to enjoy a city while traveling: (1) Run from tourist attraction to tourist attraction taking as many photos as your pointer finger can physically click, (2) Wander the side streets and go places you probably shouldn’t be going in search of stories that will always be entertaining to tell to friends, and (3) Hit up all of the coffee shops, hopping from cappuccino to cappuccino (or glass of wine in the evening) and just sit, relax, and people watch. The third is how I want to spend most of my remaining time here. I want to relish each remaining moment and sip of espresso. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have a cappuccino to go buy in a cute little coffee shop somewhere…. Ok fine it’s a glass of wine and a bar… Bye!

Week 7: July 4-July 10

Well this is it huh? It’s strange with everything having been so busy and glamorous to now be sitting in a plain hotel room in tiny Painted Post, NY. It’s a very calm and quiet conclusion that doesn’t seem to match the grand scale of the rest of the program. The last week in Beijing was very relaxed for me and seemed like it went by so slowly, and yet looking back it feels like the program ended very abruptly. I’m still processing my final thoughts on it, but this post will be good to help put words to the emotions swimming around in my head.

Looking back on the program it is so much different than I expected it to be when it first began. I had this huge, glamorous picture in my head of “traveling” and “experiencing the world”. I’ve made it so much of a priority to include international living and experience into my plans for a career. God knows how many times I’ve talked about it in applications for this scholarship or that internship. But yet prior to this summer I hadn’t actually had that much international experience. I mean I’ve done a decent amount of traveling but nothing like this where I’m actually living abroad. The idea of doing so was still portrayed very idealistic in my head. I think that’s where this program has been most valuable to me. It gave me a very real example of what both living and working abroad is like. It’s just like life everywhere else. It has its ups, but at the same time it has its downs. It’s difficult some times, and it’s not all adventurous exploration. I really experienced intense home sickness for the first time on this trip. I was lonely, and I was really down at one time or another. However the last two weeks or so in Beijing were really important for me. It seemed like I made a ton of new friends right before I was leaving. I found myself sitting there thinking “where were these people three weeks ago?” But I really began to feel like I was settling in and beginning to establish a group of friends and the comforts that I was feeling homesick for. The last two weeks showed the positive side of living abroad and what happens once you get past the initial loneliness and instability. I found the actual aspects of living abroad that I’ve since fallen in love with. This program gave me an experience in what I’ve always talked about wanting to do, but hadn’t really done yet, which was so incredibly important. I now feel like I have a much more different concept about how to incorporate an international component into my future career, and what to expect from it. It’s so much different than what I originally expected, and yet I still have a passion for it and want to make it a key part of my life in the future.

All in all, I am very sad that the program is ending. Like I said I feel like I was finally setting up a solid social base, and was really beginning to get along well with the people in my lab. It is unfortunate to leave that just I as I was beginning to feel settled, but I am also glad to be coming home. I have a lot to both look forward to and do in preparation for school starting in about a month, and will definitely be busy. I feel reenergized to go back to my research at MSU, and am excited to apply new ideas and perspectives that I gained from the research at Tsinghua. I do feel incredibly lucky and grateful to have been given this opportunity, and have begun to realize how much work is required from Dr. Shen and everyone else who has worked to make it possible. Thank you to everyone involved, words can’t say enough but it’s at least a start. 再见 (zài jiàn: goodbye).