Bits of an email to Tom

I'm studying Mandarine - the official language. Supposedly, people everywhere in China speak at least some mandarine, if not fluently. Either that or their local dialect is so close to mandarine that it doesn't matter. That was all well and fine until I got separated from the group for a day and found myself in a Tibetan village where they only spoke: Tibetan. And then their dogs attacked me and I ran away. That was a good time. I'm really regretting taking Latin now. What a waste of time! Oh well, I'm making up for it with a whole year of immersion in Chinese.

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China is pretty awesome, I like it here a lot. And the food is amazing. I was expecting to starve to death here, but it's not like that at all. And when I get sick of having Chinese food every day, there is a foreigner street in Kunming where they have some western cafes that serve western food. Yesterday I had a pizza. My first one in over 2 months - it was pretty incredible. Even the street food here is great. The cababs and the boiled corn and the fried bread and the rice pancakes...mmmmm.

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I've changed oh so much since freshman year. In fact, right now I think I've changed a lot since I started my trip in China. Culture shock, I think you call it. When your world view is threatened by experiencing a different one. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to do with myself for the rest of my life, even just next semester. I think about college and how I'll do there. College seems so easy in comparison to this. Easy and boring - staying in one place for 4 years, developing routines, going to class. Bleck. I don't know how I'm going to go back to that after this year. Then again I have no idea what college is actually like.