Monthly Recap: February 2017

I haven't written much on this blog lately, and to be honest I probably won't be updating very much in the next few weeks. As I said in my last monthly recap, it's been a crazy time for me. February was no exception. But this time it was crazy in an almost exclusively good way. I spent the whole month backpacking in China, and here's what I got up to.

Places I Went

Chengdu, Jiuzhaigou, and Leshan, Sichuan Province, China

Kunming, Dali, and Lijiang, Yunnan Province, China

Changsha and Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, China

Guilin and Yangshuo, Guangxi Province, China

Best on the Blog

2016 in Review - this was still my most viewed post this month, which is not surprising since I only wrote one post this month.

Best on Instagram

This picture from Zhangjiajie was my most popular on Instagram this month. I love this picture, because it captures how other-worldly the landscape there is. It looks like it's straight out of the movie Avatar! I posted a picture nearly every day this month, so if you want to see my best pictures from my trip, go to my Instagram: @catherinearnett.

Books I Read

Last month I mentioned I got my Kindle working again, which means I can read English books! I missed reading so much! I felt guilty for a while reading English books, because I wanted to use that time for studying Chinese, but I've decided reading is important for me to use as my relaxing time, sometime. I'm trying to cut out some screen time and read more books. I also am preparing for the Foreign Service Officer test, so I am reading a lot of books from a recommended reading list. And since I was traveling all month, I got to read a lot.

Outlander #3 (Voyager) by Diana Gabaldon - this is the third book in the series and I really enjoyed it. I think I like it more than the second one. I read this in preparation for the TV show, whose third season will come out in a month. I am reading the books to be just ahead of the show. It was such a fun thing to read while on holiday and I am really excited about seeing the show!

Realities of Foreign Service Life by Patricia Linderman - this is a book of essays written by Foreign Service Officers and their families. I read it to get a feel for whether the foreign service is a career I might consider. So many people have told me it would be a good job for me. I am really interested and am doing lots of research now. I hope to take the exam and see if it will be an option for me. I was a bit disappointed in the book, though. I found a lot of it was not relevant to my life (though it did give me a look into the issues with being a FSO as an older adult). I think I will read Inside a U.S. Embassy - it looks like it covers the topics I was expecting to be covered in this book.

The Morning They Came for Us by Janine di Giovanni - this is a fantastic book. I would highly recommend this book to anyone. It gave a great introduction to the history in Syria, wonderfully written accounts of the author's experiences there, and also very moving stories of how the civil war has affected the lives of the people there. This is a book a friend recommended to me, but I am roping it in with my FSOT preparation, since it taught me a lot about the conflict there. I am hoping to do a lot more reading and research about history, culture, art, etc. in the Middle East, because it's a huge gap in my knowledge.

I am currently reading India Becoming: a Portrait of Modern Life in India, which I can't say I'm loving. I will have more conclusive and cohesive thoughts when I finish it.

Inspiration

Travel was a huge inspiration for me. I had 6 weeks between my semesters here in China, and I spent 4 weeks traveling to 4 different provinces in China. It has hugely motivated me in my language studies. I feel like my spoken Chinese is way better than at the end of last semester. While I wasn't practicing my characters over the holiday, I still feel like I learned many characters and words in my travels. Traveling also got me excited to be in China again. I realized some of my interest in learning about Chinese culture and history. I learned a lot about the minority nationalities living in China, I tried lots of different foods (because each province has a practically unique cuisine), and I left feeling like China is a truly diverse and beautiful place - which is not the feeling I get from living in Hangzhou. I am already planning some exciting trips in China for this semester!

Reading was also a huge inspiration, if you couldn't tell from above. I really felt excited about learning, especially about things which I'm not studying in my classes. That was such a refreshing feeling after a long semester.

I'm feeling quite excited in general - about my studies, travel, future plans, etc. We have just started classes again, so some of the excitement is wearing off, but hopefully once I get in the swing of things I can try to maintain the level of inspiration and motivation I had by the end of my trip.

Highlights

Learning I can travel for 5+ weeks out of a backpack. The longest trip I've ever taken is probably around a week. Growing up, we never really took family holidays, and if we did it would only be for a few days. I have taken a few trips since starting university that were 7-10 days each. I have never taken an extended trip like this. Between my time in Thailand and the month in China, I spent over five weeks living out of my backpacks - washing socks and underwear in the sink, smelling things to decide if I could get away with wearing something for the fifth day in a row, moving to a new city every few days, etc. I was worried I would get tired and burned out, but it was alright. I planned rest days (which ended up being laundry/planning days), travel days, and in general tried not to do too much in one day. I found a balance and I had a really great time. I hope I can take more long trips like this in the future.

Feeling really confident about and comfortable with my Chinese. After I came back from Thailand and not speaking Chinese for 10 days, I could already feel my Chinese becoming a little rusty. But by the end of the month, I felt like my Chinese was better than it's ever been. I feel really comfortable chatting with people (and I even find myself going out of my way to start a conversation in Chinese). I navigated some tough situations in Chinese (see below). I even had some days where I only spoke English because I called my mom. I feel really good going into this semester and I'm excited to see improvement in my last 4 months in China.

Traveling with friends. When I planned this month of travel, it was going to be a solo trip. It still was, to an extent, but I met up with 3 friends along the way at different points. I had less than a week by myself in the end. It was nice spending so much time with my friends and it made the traveling a lot less lonely. I still enjoyed the days I had on my own, but I know I was much happier with a really social holiday rather than a lonely one.

Challenges

Naturally, when traveling, you encounter a lot of challenges. Sometimes it's as simple as a confusing bus timetable that can be sorted out by asking a bus driver. Sometimes these challenges test you a lot more. While in Dali, I rented a bike. I parked the bike outside my hostel for an hour in the afternoon (and locked it!), and when I came back it was gone. I was so shocked. The woman who rented me the bike was really nasty to me and I had to spend three and a half hours in the police station to try and get her to actually listen to me. The police were nice to me, but they didn't really care about helping us after 6pm, when they were supposed to get off work. In the end, I had to pay over 1000 RMB! It was the most frustrating thing, because the woman wouldn't speak to me in Mandarin (or listen to what I was saying). She was yelling in my face in her dialect. After I left the police station, I just burst into tears. It wasn't really about the money (though that was also really upsetting). It was that she wouldn't listen to me, she was being actually pretty mean to me, and I had never really felt that limited in expressing myself before - I could really feel the language barrier.

Most of the trip went really smoothly, with only the occasional hiccup. These challenges definitely taught me a lot about China, myself, and Chinese. In fact, they taught me quite a bit...