So much for daily updates! It's been 3 years... I've decided I will no longer make such a promise for fear of not going through with it again. I wrote daily updates, once a upon a time. As for the reason of my negligence, life just got in the way. From now on updates will come when they come.
To make up for my negligence, I present to you a picture of my lab looking hipster with shades on.
To make up for some of the lost time, I'll start with an excerpt of my life from a few years back...just stuff I wrote a long time ago that was collecting dust in my draft folder.
-2011-
After graduating from my overcrowded longhorn alma mater, I took a one and a half month vacation to China before starting my work life. I visited estranged relatives and celebrated the end of my exhausting 17-year long career as a student. At the time it felt as if a daunting weight had been lifted off my shoulders and I had finally managed to step out of the assembly line-like system that guided me throughout my adolescence. Basking in my new found freedom, I sought reprieve in the intriguing food and culture of my home country. It was a welcomed change from my usual Chinese-American lifestyle.
During my short stay in China, good and bad experiences came to pass, more good than bad. The bad experiences were the usual when you visit China from a Westerner's point of view: the toilets that are sometimes no more than a hole in the ground (literally), the lack of air conditioning in some places, the lack of actual cold water in restaurants (cold = lukewarm in China), sanitary concerns, fear of bag snatchers, etc.
Now for the good experiences:
Having grown up in a very flat city for a good chunk of my life, I welcomed the sight of mountains and greenery in abundance. I traveled through Central China where mountains ran through much of the land so I got an eyeful wherever I went. Scaling the mountains proved rather challenging, especially if no established trails exist for people to travel on. Around the city my grandparents resided, four mountains loomed along the border on all sides. They were so significant to the city people that locals even gave them names...which I have conveniently forgotten. I had the opportunity to climb some of the mountains with more established trails and lost count of how many pagodas I sat in to rest during my climbs. Each painted and carved into unique oriental designs, the wooden pagodas were decorated with calligraphy at the entrance which designated an auspicious name to the structure.
Temples resided on some of the mountains as well. However, they were not as easy to reach as the pagodas, which were considered resting spots rather than destinations of a long, challenging trek. I remember one of the temples I treked to was reachable only after climbing 3000 steps up a crisscrossing stairwell with no safety rail on the sides. The trek was only supposed to last 3 hours but because the original stairwell proved too steep for descending, my aunt decided to take an alternative route. This extended our journey to an unexpected 6 hours...we were very famished by the end of it. During another trek, we reached a temple built on the edge of a cliff that was only reachable after hiking through a forested area and climbing up a 45 degree slope with only the roots of an ancient tree to use as footholds. Again, the descent proved more daunting than the ascent. Each time we reached a temple, we were greeted by the intense smell of burning incense and colorful images of reverent figures like Buddha or the Kirin on the walls. The locals believed taking pictures of the reverent figures was a show of disrespect so I was not allowed to take photos in the open. In one of the temples, I had my fortune told by inscribed wooden sticks that fell out of a cup I was instructed to shake with all my might.
Back in my hometown, my grandparents were very inquisitive about my life as much as I was about theirs', so we had insightful conversations about the things of the past, current state of affairs and future plans. "Ah so much has changed," was a commonly uttered phrase throughout our discussions. Unlike in America, where I can count the number of relatives with just two hands, the number of relatives I had in China was immeasurable - cousins however many times removed, great aunts, great great uncles, etc. And unlike the simple family hierarchy titles of the English culture, Chinese culture designates more complicated titles to different types of family relations. Because of the complicated nature of these designations and my infrequent need to use these titles since I don't visit China often, I tend to forget or miscall my extended family members. These occurrences are usually followed by an awkward silence or laugh, and then me being corrected.
END
I admit, this is not a very complete sounding post, but I will end it here. I only wrote this much back then and unfortunately my current memory of 3 years ago is not very detailed ^^
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