Not Dead

Hello friends and family!  First of all, I want to take a moment and assure you,

I AM NOT DEAD.

Secondly, I apologize for the gigantic pause I took between posts.  There are a few reasons.  Wait wait - here, lists are more impressive:

• I took a vacation.  For a month.  Worth every second.
• We started a new term of school, and working legitimately eats up a fair amount of time.
• God and I had a couple things to talk through.
• I had to decide whether or not to return to China, and my thoughts were all over the board.  It was consuming a lot of my thinking, and I decided that it was a private process.
• I still haven't settled on what my plan for next year is.  I feel like a high school senior who hasn't picked a college or made a plan yet - in that awkward phase when every friendly person asks you what you're going to do next year, and you struggle to come up with something more eloquent than, "Uhhh...."
• During my vacation, I met a friend who loves writing as much as I do.  Correspondence became my primary writing outlet.  Basically I've been cheating on my blog with my pen-pal. I apologize.  It's nothing personal.
• I felt guilty about my failure to blog, so I avoided it even more.  Then my mom told me that my Papa put in a personal request that I start writing again.  (Sorry Papa!!)
• Expressing 'in-the-moment' feelings of culture shock isn't always constructive.
• I've been lazy.

If you were to flip through a lifetime of my journals (please don't) you'd see that every time I stop writing for a few months, I have to explain why.  This is the first time that OTHER people have cared! I have to admit, the fact that people read this still feels a little unreal.  If you bother to follow my life and times,* send me a comment every once in a while so I know you're real!  It's so encouraging when I hear from you.

I have so many stories to tell, stories about my vacation, about students, pollution storms, acupuncture, haggling wars...  I'm sorry for being a lame blogger lately.  More to come soon!

*I was typing fast when I wrote this sentence, and my typos read 'lies and ties,' which is really funny!!  ...and not at all reflective of a secret agenda. =)

Just like Riding a bike

Hello all,

So I FINALLY began posting - hooray!  Sorry it took me so long to get up and running.  Sometimes life here feels like one endless meeting.  As you can see by my sudden blast of posts, I've been writing, but my computer doesn't want to upload pictures.  My perfectionist complex set in, but as a friend reminded me, there is this little 'edit' button that I can use later to add pictures. =)

There is so much to see and do here.  I rented bikes with the guy down the hall the other day, and we rode all over our little city, exploring back alleys, climbing on abandoned trains, and taking pictures of the light falling just so through the branches of unfamiliar trees.

Ironically, the phrase "just like riding a bike" usually refers to picking up an old skill as easily as you pick up riding a bike again. I was awkwardly made aware that it has been years since I've ridden a bike.  On one hand, I forgot how much I enjoy bike riding.  On the other hand I yelled a couple of impolite things as I ducked and swerved unsteadily through traffic on a two-wheeled contraption that was no longer familiar.  In my defense, the kickstand kept falling down and half of the brake lines were cut.  I will be much more particular about the bike I select next time.  There was something so liberating and wonderful about spending 15 cents and two hours wandering around a strange city.  It felt exotic and ridiculously normal at the same time.  It was fabulous.