Week 8: Kunming

Boy, nothing much to report this week, except that it was pretty wild. I'm totally burnt out, and I've reached the part of the semester where my work ethic is just shot to hell. I've checked out of everything this week, and I'm really hoping that this coming vacation will recharge me or I'm really done for. I've been feeling lately like I'm doing a lot of work which I am not interested in and which will not benefit me in the long run, and so that's kind of an exhausting and depressing feeling. Really, I just need a break. I'm starting to really miss home. People ask me what I miss about home (my mom asked me what foods I miss) and it's not one thing or another. It's more the whole package, being immersed in my culture, both culture with a capital C and culture just in the sense of the way we live our lives. I miss walking down streets that make sense, doing transactions in english, watching cable TV, all this very abstract stuff that just isn't here.

My parents came this weekend. Serving as their tour guide really pretty much knocked me out. It was great Chinese practice, since I had to handle a million little transactions for my family and order all the food. I took them to the Bamboo Temple, the Stone Forest, and old Kunming. I missed out on a lot of sleep, and of course, family is family, and that meant a fair share of bickering and fighting. Having my parents come reminded me what a pain in the butt China can be sometimes. For example, to get to the Bamboo Temple, you basically have to wait for a dollar van to come. When does it come? When it comes - there's no schedule. My grandmother asked me only about a dozen times when the bus would come, and on one hand, that was kind of irritating, but on the other hand, she has a point. Why can't things be just a little bit easier here? It's crazy to go to even big tourist sites here and see how unfriendly they are for foreigners. I felt good, however, being able to serve somewhat effectively as a guide and translator (if they only knew how bad my Chinese was, they'd be terrified...) and most of all, being able to take them to decent restaurants here. At the tourist restaurants, you pay way too much for terrible food, but of course, if you don't know Chinese, you don't know any better. I was also surprised to see what my family really liked. My dad was amazed by the Stone Forest, and my grandmother liked dancing with the Sani in the dancing stage in Stone Forest. Anyhow, it was nice to see them, and only with the help of chocolate coffee beans that my family brought am I powering through the week.

With that in mind, the main goal of this week is preparing for my spring break. I'm hitting the road again. First, I'm spending a week with my program going to Dali and Lijiang, beautiful towns in the north of Yunnan. After that, I trek out on my own. First, I'm spending a weekend (my birthday weekend, actually) in a Tibetan area of Yunnan renamed Shangri-La, to sample some Tibetan culture and see some beautiful scenery. Then, I'm flying out to Xi'an, to see the Terracotta Soldiers, Big Goose Pagoda and maybe trek out to Hua Shan. Afterwards, I'm heading to Luoyang to see the Buddhist sculptures of the Longmen Caves and Shaolin Temple, then back to Xi'an to fly back to Kunming.

I'm feeling good about the upcoming trip. Helping my parents get around here served as a good dry run for me making my way around, and my Chinese has certainly improved. I've also learned my lesson (at least a little bit) and am not pushing myself to go everywhere, taking my time, and letting myself enjoy stuff. I'm starting to feel the wanderlust again, but mostly, I just have to travel around and not do work.

Well, I really don't have much to say this week. I'll try to post pictures. As action picks up, the frequency of the posts might increase. See y'all later.