Changdo. Chingpao. Chungo. Chingdu. Chengdon't. All acceptable pronunciations in my book. The place I will soon enough call home for three months of my life I didn’t even know how to pronounce until about six months ago. It seems as if I've dived head first into this adventure and really don't know what I've gotten myself into. So far there hasn't been one person that hasn't raised their eyebrows when I told them what I am doing this summer. I should be graduating in less than a month, but (thank God) that has been pushed back until December so I can go explore a country that nobody can tell me a single thing about, in a city nobody has heard of.
Having understanding parents was crucial in my plan to delay the inevitable graduation date. My parents have raised me to be a traveler. I'm only 22 and I've already gone on Safari in Kenya, ran with the bulls in Spain, gone bungee jumping in the Swiss Alps, and climbed part of the Great Wall. To be honest, I didn't think it was going to be a very tough sell. But mom had a different outlook on me heading back to China without the family, especially in a city she had never heard of. After way too many phone calls and reminding her that its extremely improbable that another earthquake will strike Chengdu this summer, I got the okay. I'm finally heading off to China.
Let me preface all of this, I know zero Chinese and very little about what living in this massive country will be like. After being fascinated with everything that China has to offer for nearly a year now, I have still yet to begin to comprehend what this experience might have in store for me. Somehow the books I’ve read and the class I’ve taken did not seem to prepare me as well as I had hoped.
Things I do know will happen: I will break being a vegetarian (whether I'm aware of it at the time or not), I will absolutely be a minority (being a white male, I'm not exactly used to this), and I will be without Wikipedia for three entire months (stupid censorship laws, how am I supposed to write a paper??).
If you ask me, that's not too bad. At least I'm not going into this completely blind.
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Awesome blog Ricky- I'm super impressed- but let's get down to what really matters.... how does Adam get his pic up on your blog and not me?!!
ReplyDeleteLove your blog. Your mom sent the link. What an awesome experience to immerse yourself in another culture for a few months. Herald said he would have liked to have gone too, but you can only go to one country at a time.
ReplyDeleteTalked to your mom tonight at the viewing for your grandmother and met your mom's mom. You know you are where you are supposed to be and your grandmother wasn't there either. She was not only out of the country, she was out of this world in a fun place of her own visiting with her parents and others who went before. So you both missed the viewing and you will both miss the funeral and you are both having the time of your lives, only hers is more real and exciting!