It's been one month!

I have an hour before the group dinner, which in true Chinese fashion I only found out this morning, so I figured I try to get some stuff updated :)



Today (Friday when I started writing this) marks my one-month "anniversary" in China; it has been one of the craziest months of my life. I have gone through homesickness, death and loneliness only to be countered with exploration, contentment, and friendship. I have dealt with days of emotional extremes and days where everything feels routine. I still find myself wanting to be home, but unlike my Italian nannying job, I am counting weeks here, not days. This is good. My Chinese is only marginally better than when I first came, but I did notice I'm starting to think in Italian. Not that that will help me much, but my language center is starting to work again. I'm hoping that I will finally be able to get into a routine now that the holidays are over, and maybe start to focus on learning Chinese while I'm here. It would be a waste not to.



As with any experience I try to take from it as much as possible, including learning more about myself. I have found myself gravitating towards Yoga, Meditation, 'The Secret', as well as wanting to attend a (English or even Latin) Mass. I don't practice while at home but I have had a huge sense of spiritual unrest while being here. I can't say I've ever experienced anything like this before. I think that is part of the reason why I have been so homesick at times.

My room is plastered with sticky notes reminding me to think positively and be grateful at all times. This, along with Yoga, Meditation and reading if I can stay awake for it seems to help quite a bit. I also had a bowl of cereal last night, which I didn't need to help elevate my emotional state, but it didn't have a very profound calming effect. Maybe I just need to eat more cereal before bed?

In any situation, I think and feel like I have crossed a threshold of some kind. I believe that my time will pass more quickly than I realize and I won't need to have any type of formal count down. I am very grateful now that I've awknowledged this!


All this week at work I have been collecting and subsequently summerizing information about exterior wall depth, building material, "standard" window sizes, and presence of AC in homes across the U.S. Thank you U.S. Census Buerau! (and Mom for telling me to look there!). I think/ hope what I have come up with will be useful and is what they are looking for. It's really nice to be busy at work, but all this week I've had to fight with a computer that would crash multiple times a day. Today alone (this morning while I was hurring to finish the summary) it crashed three times in three hours. Needless to say I didn't get the summary in on time. It's not a too big of a deal. I will email it first thing on Monday, then start on summerizing the Dehumidifer Survey and collecting information on Regional climates in the U.S. Fascinating, right? Not quite my cup of tea, considering I don't like surfing the web, but I am learning a lot!

For my Advanced class I had a request to watch 'Stomp the Yard'. For those of you who don't know it, it is based in Georgia and focuses on the protaginists (a young African-American male) growth through college and his involvement in an intense dance competetion. I love the movie which is why it's here, but it isn't the easiest to understand, even for some Americans. Mostly this was more for a cultural experience than anything else.