Big Changes...I'm moving to Old Nanjing!

Today was a big day for three main reasons.

First, this morning I said goodbye to a very dear friend, Gennady, who returned to the States. As I was riding the bus home from the airport, I thought about all the goodbyes I've had to say to various people throughout my life: saying goodbye to the ten coolest girls Oakland Catholic High School will ever know the night before we all left Pittsburgh for our freshman year of college; saying goodbye to Megan on her front porch the night before she left for NYU; saying goodbye to Adam before I left for study abroad in China; saying goodbye to CIEE 同学们 when we all left China to go our separate ways; and saying goodbye to my very, very close friends and roommates (you know who you are) when I graduated from college. "It's the end of an era!" I always think to myself.

My goodbye this morning was similar in many ways to all of these other goodbyes I've experienced in the sense that the anxiety of saying goodbye is always worse than the reality. The week leading up to the goodbye is usually packed with emotions, stress, and anxiety, and usually a lot of "OMG, this is the last time we're ever going to walk down this street [or fill in the blank with a random moment]!"

Then you say goodbye, and you continue on with your life, the person slowly fading out of your life and into your past with all the rest of your memories and experiences. These people may fade into memory, and perhaps a blurry memory at best, but they still have made a deep impression on my life and who I am as a person.  It makes me think about the Buddhist principle that you are made up of a sum of all your experiences; that is, your life and self is built out of a series of interconnected memories.




Some of the most difficult goodbyes were with the friends I met in China, both Americans and Chinese alike. When you say goodbye to someone returning to an old life or starting a new life in a country halfway across the world, you legitimately have to look each other in the eye, and, whether you say it aloud or not, mutually acknowledge the fact that you will (most likely) never see each other again. Although I was actually lucky enough to come back to Nanjing and see many of my Chinese friends again (I never thought that it would be possible), the chances are slim that I will ever see most of my study abroad friends again- even if I did, the friendships you form in China are never the same after you return to your natural habitat in the US. My CIEE friends Sean, Nathan, and John are the big exceptions since they are back in China this year too... which does prove that life circumstances brings people back together again in mysterious ways.

Nonetheless, the people I met in China all touched my life in a very special way (foreigners bonding over shared China experiences is a type of unbreakable friendship). The bond you form over a profound experience like living in a completely foreign country for the first time is one that is quite unique. China is a CRAZY experience you'll remember for the rest of your life, and you bond in China in ways that are incomparable to friendships with your high school or college friends.

Gennady definitely left a mark on my life and self in a number of ways, such as introducing me to martial arts, especially jiujitsu and qi gong (future posts on those are in the works). I'm linking one of his blog posts on Being Good People here because it's so emblematic of the person he is, the friend he was, and the way he touched my life. 

Now China is a crazy experience, but so is the pain of adolescence, the excitement of your first love, the trauma of freshman year of college, the thrill of tackling, and the intense pressure of senior year of college. The people who have been with me through these intense experiences know who you are. I miss you and I think about you often. I carry all my friendships, and all my life experiences with me everywhere I go, and hope to do so for the rest of my life. Thank you to everyone out there, both inside and outside of China, who has influenced my life and made me a better person because of it. I hope to see you again, but even if I don't, you are a part of me now and I take you with me everywhere I go.

Second, I ate dog meat for the first time. Although I saw a lot of dog meat restaurants when I visited Kevin in Guilin last year, I never had it before. This time I ate with a family in Old Nanjing, who invited me over for some dog meat because it warms your insides during the wintertime.

The dog meat is the closest dish on the left. It tasted like beef.

Third, I locked down a new house. I will officially be moving into a laofangzi (old house) on December 31st of this year. After the dog meat dinner, I met with the owner of the house, the mother of the 18-year-old nursing student. The 18-year-old daughter lives there on her own on the weekends and holidays, and everyone in the neighborhood, including her mother, is glad that I'll be her roommate during the Chinese New Year, and on the weekends for the next 6 months. I don't know what the story is because it's very unusual for an 18-year-old single female to live on her own, but she is a very sweet girl and it seems like the perfect situation. Perhaps too good to be true, but you'll have to follow my blog next month for updates on my new living situation. I'll be sure to post regularly, and some of my followers (*cough*megan*cough*) might be glad to hear that I'll try to wrap up more of my theoretical musings this month, cover my daily living situation in January (it's going to be interesting celebrating Chinese New Year and living in a house without a toliet...), and then a hopefully more interesting ethnography as the semester progresses.

I will post more about the details of life in a laofangzi after I move in, but for now let's just say that I'm moving in January for two very specific reasons. First, because I want to be sure to be completely immersed in the community and living there during the Chinese New Year. Second, because it's really, really cold, and the laofangzi doesn't have heat. I will be bringing my space heater and my electric blanket, but for all of those that know how much I struggle with mental and physical health during the winter-time, you know this is a big step for me to expose myself to the winter elements via the laofangzi. We're talking cold room 24/7, cold late-night trips to the public toilet, and showering in the public shower houses (because the laofangzi doesn't have heat, they advised I not shower in the house during winter time, lest I literally freeze to death. The shower houses have heat lamps apparently). I'm doing this on purpose, partially just my own personal character building exercise, and partially so that I can genuinely experience what the locals are experiencing on a day-to-day basis. If they can do it year after year, I can do it for two months.

Chinese word of the day:

暂时 － zan4 shi2 － literally, "brief time," aka temporary

Sentence example:

一切都是暂时的 - yi qie dou shi zan shi de- everything is temporary