It's Been a While...

Well now. It's been a while since I wrote on my blog. The semester is over (save for a pending essay I must write for my internship), and people in my program have already left. I'm staying here. I don't have an internship yet but I'm waiting on one possible one. Either way, I'm staying here until June 20th, or thereabouts, at which point the return journey for my original flight to Hong Kong in December expires.

I don't know how to explain the way in which my program came together, and how I've enjoyed my time here. The times were good, the people were good--even when they weren't good they weren't bad. Since my last post we had the trip in the Pearl River Delta. We all traveled Shenzhen, Hong Kong (where I met up with Gary, Chris, Josh, and Eric), Macao (where I bungeed off the Macao tower and frittered away $80 on gambling the roulette wheel), and Zhuhai, where we chilled in a luxury hotel with local hot springs. Colin, Jake, Justin, and Dan all became good smoker buddies of mine. I remember at the beginning of the semester Kai Wang warning us against smoking weed, and I told him how I loved weed, but for his sake would refrain. By the end of the semester I was smoking every day, as usual, and even came to my graduation ceremony baked. The people we met, and the stories I have to tell, are too good to disclose through blog.

Brett, Brenden, and Joker are still my best buds here. Brenden leaves for home tomorrow, only to return to Beijing in a month, when I will still be here. Brett has a job and is staying here with me and Joker in our dorms for a combined 40 kuai per day, split between us. This Tuesday, once almost all our program has left, me and Brett will go to Beijing with a close friend of Joker's, who I christened Lisa, and who studies there. We'll probably tour around, because Brett hasn't seen Beijing, and I want to do some Beijing-cheap shopping, buy my Mom some pearls, and hang out.

After a week I'll come back and hang out in Shanghai for another week, when Colin and Jake return from Japan for several days. Assuming I still don't have an internship, I'll then head out to Guiyang with Joker, leaving Brett behind here, and then go to Chengdu and Qinghai, returning around June 10th, after which I will have 10 days more in Shanghai to hang out, go clubbing, shopping, play video games, and all the rest. Brenden will return on June 15th to visit us here.

So that is my tentative plan for the foreseeable future. The Alliance summer semester will start while I am here, so I'm planning on dropping by, meeting some new summer students, and talking to the teachers and coordinators that made this trip so awesome.

For the time being though, there is a feeling in the air of loss, of time gone by, like there is whenever something awesome, that absorbs you and affects you and changes you, is over. At my graduation ceremony I was handed an envelope with a sheet of paper I filled out at the beginning of the semester. It explained my goals and hopes for my time in China. There were three major goals:

"I hope I can become proficient in interactive Chinese, as well as reading and writing. I also hope to make some awesome new friends, and get some work experience with an internship.
I am excited about the amount of learning, both in the classroom and outside, that is possible. I'm excited to get to know this city, and China at large, and Asia, and the world. I'm excited to see changes in my self, my perspectives, and my apptitude.
I am nervous about not living up to all the things I'm excited about"

I lived up to all these things. And now the change continues...