New Videos! AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!

Finally, I can upload some videos!!! So excited!!

First: watch the video, then I'll tell you about it:



On one Friday afternoon, (this is from early March) I went my friend Rayna's house to eat lunch and just generally hang out. It was , like I said, a great lunch, but the real value that I found in the experience was being humbly invited into a stranger's house to be treated to a great meal. We watched some footage of the Japan earthquake and talked about it (in Chinese, her parents don't speak English) and I realized that although there are a lot of differences in our cultures, people are just people - they laugh, they cry, they are silly, they are serious, they have hopes, dreams, fears, and hates.

I really enjoyed seeing new parts of the city - the city square, new streets, etc. On Sunday, I made my first trip to the West Campus to meet some friends. I couldn't imagine a better first time to be on the West Campus - I met a lot of my friends that I met online and some strangers invited me to their room to cook lunch for everyone. Although we, on occasion, had some communication problems, it was a great time and I could see from the start that these were friends that I would have for the rest of my time in China, and hopefully my life - it's hard to imagine going back home and not seeing these guys all the time. It's like I've known them forever.



Xi'an was a really great experience, although I got homesick for the first time because there were so many foreigners. That pang of familiarity and hearing people speak American English really made me miss home for the first time. I've missed a few things from back home, but that was the first time that I really had a longing to be back home - I gotta say, I didn't enjoy the feeling.

I'm not sure what my favorite place in Xi'an was, but I was really blown away by how much I learned about Xi'an's history and how integral the city was in the history of China. It was the capital of many dynasties, was the beginning of the Silk Road, and was the central distribution point for the imports that came in via the Silk Road. At the Shaanxi History Museum, there was a map of the Silk Road, and it went to a million freaking places - Rome, the Mediterranean, Europe, the Middle East, the east coast of Africa, Singapore, Indonesia, Russia, and even more places! I was blown away by the vastness of the scale of Chinese exports during those times - in school, you only really hear about the Silk Road going to Europe and you never think about just how many places there are to trade between China and Europe. Just amazing.

I could go on and on and on about Xi'an and China stuff in general - so if you have any questions or whatnot about the video, leave a comment!