It gets to the place it belongs
Trip Start
Jun 10, 2008
1
13
21
Trip End
Jan 25, 2009
Guilin,
Guangxi Zhuang,
China
Friday, August 22, 2008
It's a Saturday night,
we're out on the town,
my new friends and me all alone.
We'll sing the old love songs,
we'll make toasts all around
to living - to loving - home.
Though my hands hold me here,
living day after day,
My heart's far away tonight.
A nice little New England folk ditty for leaving Beijing. It's sad to say goodbye to my new friends here. I've met some awesome people, with some amazing characters carrying them through China, including the fantastic teachers who call Beijing home. They will be missed. But I cannot forget one of my main goals in coming to China, seeing the south, where the grass is greener, the sky is bluer (for serious) and I'm on my own, for better or for worse. Beijing, I will return!
Step one: negotiating the new Beijing airport.
Step two: doing the teacher training bit.
Step three: freedom.
So I made it to Guilin. I quickly learned the word for shade, o wonderful shade, in the summer of subtropical Guilin. And leaving the airport, I noticed something was different. The road from the airport to the city wasn't paved! Begin to feel like home already. You wouldn't really say NYC and the Mississippi delta are the same either, right? I never really made it to Guilin, I got the passing peak on the road to Yangshuo. But I saw what mattered, the Mountains! The sights I'd dreamed of for quite a long time. The most beauitful landscape in the world. As the first ones appeared, rising out the horizon, one of those big stupid smiles that peaks for itself spread across my face. Dao le. I had arrived. There's a Chinese idiom - Getting to the place it/ you belong - De qi suo zai. That felt accurate. This is a new leg in my journey, and will require new willpower, new drive to experience and new lesson plans..
Guilin 1
