Ni Hao everyone!

So I'm officially back from my Chinese adventure. It certainly was an adventure at times and, yet, at other times was just like living anywhere else.
Even though I arrived in Beijing with no Chinese language experience and left a mere two months later, I think I learned a lot about Chinese culture, I picked up a couple words of Chinese, gained a couple pounds from all the Chinese food that I ate, and have so many little, odd, "only in China [roll eyes]" stories that I don't even know where to begin.

Some highlights:
    -Definitely the notes that my students wrote me at the end of class. My students all wrote me messages on the last day of school and they are simply priceless- some of them are really sweet, and some are just hilarious because of interesting/awkward Chinese to English translations.
   - A students from one of my two-week sessions wrote me this amazing email. She asked on the second to last day of class if I wanted any suggestions for souvenirs.  The next evening I received a 6-page email!! with a little note and 6 pages worth of souvenir ideas, each of them written in Chinese characters, pinyin, and English with several picture examples of each one!!
    -Another thing that I couldn't possibly forget about was the bestowing of my Chinese name. (Though I can't believe I'm sharing this- its probably one of the things that should just stay in China) Bai LaoShi gave me the name Ding AiLin. (Insert your laugh here). We'll just say it made my name pretty easy for all the other Westerners to remember. . .
   - Now that I'm back in the US, I'm not gonna lie- I really miss Chinese food. I've become one of those food snobs that I used to hate because I'd go out to dinner with them and they'd reminisce, "oh that was good, of course not at as good as that jao zi that I had when I was in (fill in cool place here)." But, honestly, what I wouldn't give some days for some pineapple rice served in a pineapple from my favorite Dai restaurant.

Writing this brings back so many random thoughts, yet, as I sit here in the midst of D.C.'s bizarre, humid, October heat wave it's remarkably similar to a Beijing summer. I find myself awaiting one of the furious, awe-inspiring lightning storms that often occurred on early evenings in August.  As a foreigner, China has this exaggerated ability to simultaneously make you feel like "kinda a big deal" while at the same time making you feel so inconsequential.  Never for me was this feeling more pronounced than during a late afternoon torrential downpour. It's an awesome feeling (as cliche as it is) to be sitting out on your apartment balcony looking out into the acid rain in the midst of a terrific storm, in the middle of a huge, crowded city in the most populated country on Earth, and to know that tomorrow morning the streets will be a little less grimy, the sky slightly less polluted, and to remind yourself - this is where I LIVE- I live in China!