It was amazing how easy it was. How they welcomed us, and we suddenly found a common language in smiles and friendly gestures, laughes, and food. Haha the food!! If there's one metaphore for China, its the diversity of the food, the subtle different tastes, things you might not notice at first-cant even tell the difference from- but stay there a week, and suddenly you recognize all the sublte differences. Its not just all one people, one culture, one history and it hits you all of a sudden. Like those ridiculously hot peppers you sometimes got a hit of, the ones that made the side of your mouth go numb. Haha
Those were the best though. Those peppers. They always made everyone else laugh and suddenly it was dinner and entertainment for the group. And a new awareness to look a little harder in the dish you were eating. That's what China did though. It made you LOOK. You became aware of everything and everyone. Hyper sensitive. I'm now hyper sensitive, even back in the US, you come back just a little more focused on the little details, on everything.
Its still a little scary, how attached I am to the country, how much I feel it still. We all still do-in the jet lag-haha- in the endless stories we keep telling, explaining, remembering, and in the phone calls and texts we make to one another, day in a day out. Who knows how long it will take for us to fully get back to California time, or Jersey time, or Wisconsin time-we are all still on our own clocks. That's okay with me though, I like my mind still being half in China :)
The country will always be my first outside the US, and I wouldn't change it for the world.
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1 comments:
What a wonderful post! I felt as if I were reading what I have been saying ever seen I got back from South Africa. How could I miss someone I only knew for two weeks? If seems as if a lifetime has gone by since I returned, and I am so ready to go back.
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