Home at Last

Well, everyone, i'm home.
And i'm up at 2:30am writing this blog, because even though i've been in north america for going on 4 days, my body is still something of 15 hours ahead... still in Beijing time.

I've been trying to think of what to put in a blog... so much happened, that i could write for days and you still wouldn't get everything.

I guess the best way to sum up China would be "unexpected". I basically went with no idea of what i was going to be doing... except taking photos... and ended up having the time of my life. God really knows what he's doing!

In June, if you had asked me what I was looking forward to the most about this summer, I would have said just being back in England -- which is like my second home. But looking back now, I sort of ask myself "did I GO to england?" China was such a different world, and I was there for so long, that everything before it... including the last 19 years of my life.. seems to blurr. Hah! It's true though. My friend Evy, who joined me for the last 2 weeks of the trip, and I had this thing we would say when something was taking a really long time... as things often do in China. It was "Natalie (or Evy) doesnt remember a time before [insert situation]." Some of the great times we used this were after our 43-hour-turned-55-hour train ride across northern china, our stay in Bishkek - the capitol city of Kyrgyzstan (which, you know, is the world's #1 tourist destination..), and the time we were assigned to go outside and 'beat the carpets'... us being the most qualified to do that, obviously. And it's like that when I think about China. I dont really seem to remember a time before it..!


It was... incredible. Insanely impacting moments... whether it was standing on the Great Wall of China our first day in Beijing, thinking about how many milleniums it had stood, guarding the chinese people from foreign invaders.. or taking photos of laughing kids in the Sichuan earthquake zone... or just sitting along the hutong (chinese name for the ancient alleys near Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City) we stayed on, watching the people and eating the amazingly good bread rolls you could buy for 2 quai... 30 cents.


I've realized... God knows you better than you know yourself.
Before going to china, i just thought of it as the cliche missionary spot. I loved Europe.
Now, I still love Europe... its still the best place in the world, after Ptown, of course... but China -- its amazing, too. The people, the culture.. they're SO cool! Their obsession with beauty.. their genuine hospitality.. the way they run up next to you when you're standing around Tian'anmen Square chatting with your friends and pose really quick, take a photo, and run off (we call it walk-by photo shooting)... its just all amazing, and so insanely funny, and beautiful... all at the same time.
God knew I would like China, when it wasn't even on my list of 'have to go places'. I never really seem to go to those... haha! England wasn't one of those. And yet, I love it. China wasn't, either, and now i'm ready to tell everyone to go on vacation to Beijing. Who needs the bahamas? seriously.

Well lets see... what did I do? Short overview might be in order, huh?
Well, the first week in Asia I was in Hong Kong. We went to Gateway Camp, a massive camp for equiping missionary teams from all over the world to go into asia. There were 1500 people there, the majority of them connected somehow with YWAM, since Gateway was started by Dale Kauffman -- the founder also of King's Kids International. Lots of KKI teams. It was pretty sweet... and i found myself really missing my old KK people. :)
It was really awesome, to hang out with Scandanavians, Dutch people (we called them the orange people... because they always wore orange, their national color. and they were awesome.), Colmbians, Chinese, Swedes.... you name it. We had this massive "festival of the nations", and the south americans danced, the africans danced, the americans danced (line dancing... to my mortification), the belgians made waffles, the chinese passed out fans, and there was a huge 'parade of nations', with the flags and everything. it was seriously awesome. hanging out with the nations... its one of the most amazing things in the world.

From Hong Kong we went to Beijing... which is just... rad. so cool. such an awesome place. and it was such a great time to be there. We were there for a week, and we got there just 3 weeks before the oly's started. So everywhere, people were painting their shopfronts, landscaping, cleaning, the military was getting ready, people were so excited, everywhere... but all the tourists weren't there yet. There were westerners, but they were travelers. Backpackers. People that go places because they want to get to know the culture. Because they want to see the things that tourists dont care about. Because they love to sit in the hutongs and get to know the people, and the beauty of a place. Tourists just go, walk the great wall, take photos of mao's mausoleum, dont care about adapting to the culture, demand forks in restaurants, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief when they leave. Americans are notorious for doing that. Dont do that if you go somewhere... this is a side note: if you travel, try to adapt to that culture. it's really honoring of them, and it shows that you respect them as a foreigner in their country. they'll be nicer to you, and you'll have a better time, as well. PLEASE dont be like the westerners i see.. americans in europe and all westerners in asia... who just walk around, not aware of the cultural differences, talking exceptionally loud on english trains, putting their feet on things in china, making bad faces at food they're not used to... all those things are just horrible. stay home if you're gonna do that. dont give travelers a bad name.
okay back to the story..
beijing i cant even say everything about, so i'll stop before i write a novel.
[photo: forbidden city]


After Beijing we went to Chengdu, which is in Southwestern China, just a few hours' drive from the Tibetan area. For 3 days, we took a little bus up more into the mountains (which eventually turn into the Himalayas... not that we were anywhere close to those, though. it's a HUGE mountainous area), and taught english classes to kids up in the Earthquake Zone. (This is all in Sichuan province... you may recognize that name more than Chengdu)
It was really mind-blowing. Seeing the devastation... well, at first you just feel like you're looking at another 3rd-world country, but then the kids pull out cell phones, and you see a nice jacket hanging over the drying line, and people are wearing good clothes and shoes, and you realize... these people weren't poor. they were normal, middle-class chinese people who ran touristy hotels and inns for all the chinese city folk who come up during the summer to get away from the city smog, heat, and humidity. And now, their inns are piles of rubble on the ground, parts of their families are dead, their livlihoods are ruined for years to come... they're living in government-built housing, they've lost most of their posessions... and there are still aftershocks happening all the time. Not really enough to make more fall down, but enough to remind them what happened, and to put fear in them again. One aftershock happened the first night we were up there. it was just a 4.0, but it was a bit nerve-wracking, and i wasn't from there. i've been in many californian earthquakes, but there's just a different mentality you have about it after seeing all the devastation around you.
Probably the most mindblowing thing, though, was that the people, despite ALL that, could still smile. They could still laugh. The kids loved to play, and they were typical elementary-school-aged kids. The 'too cool for school' group of boys sitting in the corner not paying attention, the intellectual top-of-the-class girl who answers all your questions, the groups of shy middleschoolers who just stick together and look embarressed but pleased when you ask them a question... its the same as american schools. all kids, everywhere, are basically the same. i knew that before , but now... i KNOW it. does that make sense? hah
And the adults... the little old ladies of the town would stand outside the classrooms, peering in the windows, laughing - making fun of us, i'm sure of it - and hollaring things in to the kids every once in a while, making them laugh as well. I know people were laughing at us all the time, but it didn't make us feel bad. It was kinda funny, i thought, as well :) Its not like we could speak Chinese at all well... our meager attempts at "ni hao" (hello) probably had atrocious pronunciation... and our sign-language-meets-interpretive-dance style of communications we tried to use instead probably didn't make us any less an object of ridicule!


From Chengdu, I went back to Beijing for about 2 days. The group I was with for the first 3 weeks went back to the states, and in Beijing I joined up with a different group of people -- from all over: Egypt, the states, South Africa, France, & China -- and it was us who went to Kyrgyzstan.
The train ride was rediculous... there's no question about that.
Urumqi, i didnt see any of, except for the ride to the airport in the morning.
Bishkek... well lets just say that you are strangely aware of the fact that you are probably in THE most random place on planet earth... but that it is also very cool at the same time! They spoke russian, which makes sense, but which i didnt expect. And i found that I actually am very good at pronouncing Russian... unlike my Chinese skills. "Prevet" means hello, and next time I see the little russian ladies in Fred Meyer, I can greet them in my semi-good russian language skills. i'm excited for that moment.
The Silk Road Worship Art Festival was the reason we were in Bishkek... and it turned out to be pretty sweet. It was tight to hang out with all these Central Asian people... again, God knew I would enjoy the experience a lot more than I anticipated! I now have awesome friends in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Mongolia, & South Korea. Pretty amazing. And they're seriously rad.
Probably the funniest moment was "National Art" presentationd day... everyone was supposed to present a 'national art', like some national dance or song or something. Evy and I had a really hard time figuring out what to do... everything in America is originally from some other culture!! Eventually we decided on three things: First, we did an amazing performance, lipsyncing to the Beach Boys' Surfin USA. In probably the single most amazing moment of my life, all the awesome people from Uzbekistan ran up to the area in front of the stage and pretended to be our adoring crowd... trying to touch our hands, taking photos with their cameraphones... it was absolutely brilliant. Then, we taught them all "West Coast Slang". Ev is from Cali, and i'm obviously.. from Washington.. and enjoy saying words like 'awesome' and 'dude'. So, we taught about 80 central asians and koreans how to say, with feeling, "Totally awesome, dude!" It was great. And they actually were pretty good! Then for our grand finale, we taught them all the Macarena. Aaaand did it wrong. But oh well -- it was fun. And everyone LOVED it. I had people come up and shake my hand afterwards! Crazy.[photo: our awesome team]

I was sad to leave all the people in Kyrgyzstan, but Evy and I had to get back to Beijing. I actually didn't enjoy Beijing as much after the Olympics started... but it was funny how many people asked ME for directions. Actually I even gave the taxi driver directions at one point... i guess I know my way pretty well around the city! Evy and I didn't go see any olympic games.. thats a story in itself.. and I think basically it just wasn't God's plan for us. Its okay, though, becuase its not really the last time we'll get the chance to. I mean, come on -- i'm 19! And the 2010 olympics are in vancouver bc... so that will be an easy trip up to see them. Anyway, though.. i did enjoy the last few days, not doing any 'missions' stuff, but just hanging out in the city. I bought an entire seperate suitcase to carry home ALL the stuff i bought... and I took a bicycle ride through the hutongs... which basically was putting my life in danger... and we walked around olympic park a bit, as well. Coincidentally, while in Olympic park on Aug 12, we were interviewed by.. CBS morning news, ABC radio news, and some random LA news channel. Oh, and the day before we were used for a shot in a BBC news special. I guess we just attract reporters! It was really funny. The BBC lady actually RAN after us... to ask us to be in their shot! Crazy times. Oh, and Evy's parents saw us on CBS news early in the morning... so yes, i was on national news. it was sick.
if you want my autograph... i'll be here for the next 2 years..
haha

[photo: Beijing hutong]

After 3 more days in Beijing, on the 13th, I flew home... across the international date line... causing August 13th to be the longest day of my life at 40 hours (who said days were only 24 hours? obviously they never crossed the international date line.)... and my parents met me in the airport in Vancouver B.C. Canada, i quickly discovered, is basically just like America... at least Vancouver is... and then on the night of the 15th, I got back to home sweet home.

People keep asking if its wierd to be home, and I dont really know what to tell them. Sometimes i have these crazy moments... like how people are going on and on about how hot and.. humid (?? yeah i heard a lady say that) it is here, but compared to beijing, this is cool for me!... and walking into walmart today i was just HIT by the craziness of american consumerism, and the simplicity of the lives of some people. its strange to walk beside people who have been here all summer, working, gardening, etc. and i've been all over the world... yet we're both buying tshirts in the line at walmart. That's strange to me. But then at the same time, Asia and America are SO different that it almost feels like i've switched universes... just passed through some time/space continum to come home... and it seems surreal that I ever WAS in china.
And then watching the olympics is the ultimate trippy experience. Today on tv the news crew passed a lady who i had waved to just 4 days ago as I walked through a hutong. They were walking down the same hutong. And then the marathon is running past all these places that i walked, and i have memories there... and its a bit strange, and surreal, but at the same time, completely normal. i dont really know. maybe it would be easier if you just jumped into my mind and figured it out? I dont think i can really describe it.

But anyway, i'm back. And it's good to be back.
I've traveled all over the world... and I know i'll be traveling a lot more in my lifetime... i've seen China, I love England, and yet... Portland, Oregon is still my favorite place in the world. Home is amazing.

[photo: the rug-beating brigade. getting in touch with our oregon trail roots...]