26 Hour Movie Marathon

The trip back from Guangzhou to Hong Kong was quick and relatively uneventful. Gupo was very paranoid that I might lose my passport since I only brought a backpack. She suggested that I sew a secret pocket on the inside of my shorts. After I rejected that idea, I jokingly told her I would just put it under my shirt in my sports bra. Gupo seemed satisfied with that suggestion, but not until I demonstrated for her that it would not fall out even if I jumped up and down. So of course Gupo insisted that would be my plan to protect my US passport. See, it is around 97-99 degrees during the day, and one cannot possibly step outside without getting a little sweaty. So of course I am dying of thirst and of course, I run into one of the 7 million people there and spill some water. The combination of these factors results in a slightly damp passport. Not a problem, right? But I pass over into immigration, and the lady tries to scan it and since wet water warps, it could not scan properly. She then looks at me suspiciously and asks her supervisor to come over. I awkwardly try to explain the situation, and after about 8 minutes of scrutiny, she decides to let me through.

Each time I come to Hong Kong, I start feeling more like a “local” after about a week and a half. I have changed into their clothing, caught a few words of new slang and starting to worm my way through the crowd like a pro. Someone even asked me for directions on the street! But by the time I start to get acquainted again, it is time to leave.

We left my grandmother’s apartment around 7:10AM on 6/23 and arrived home at 9PM on 6/23.   I managed to watch the most random assortment of movies on the plane: Sweet Home Alabama, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Thelma & Louise, Beijing Bicycle, Pride & Prejudice and Finding Neverland.  I tried to make myself watch Casablanca but I really can’t bring myself to and lose interest about 5 minutes in.  I felt normal-sized again once I entered the Newark airport.  Taking into consideration the time difference, it was about 27 hours of travel from door to door.  Katherine is still in China staying with Gupo – today Gupo is construing an elaborate cover story in which Katherine is a 17 year old high school student from Qing Yun.  This is in effort to make Katherine seem like a local student from China instead of from the US so the doctor does not overcharge her.

But now, I’m home and I’m booking tickets for my July travels!   Better enjoy traveling while I can…

3…2…1… Blastoff. I Am Dressed for Mars

The past few days, Gupo and her husband have been taking Kat, mom and I out to all these different local destinations. All the places that we have been are accessible by bus. In Guangzhou, the elderly don’t need to pay bus fair nor entrance fees to most parks. When they are here by themselves, they can come and go as they please without having to worry about carrying anything other than their ID cards. I didn’t know that when my mother was a toddler, Gupo (then a teenager) would take her out to friend’s place for meals and around town. Now that my mother is back with Kat and me, Gupo is still taking her around.

Gugong, Gupo’s husband, is the cutest 75-year old caricature of a cartoon I have ever seen. Gupo says he’s normally very quiet and most of her friends think he’s a mute. She says that she’s never seen him talk this much, ever and that he’s saved up 4 months of talking for these 4 days. He gets really excited to go and take us to the park because when Gupo was in Houston with us, he would go by himself. And now that Gupo is back, they don’t go that often because Gupo doesn’t really walk much. Katherine and I are watermelon monsters (we have literally eaten about a total of 10 watermelons in my brief one and a half week stay). He knew that we liked it and carried home 1 and a half watermelons by himself from the market 10 minutes away.

It is unbelievably hot here. Temperature-wise it’s probably comparable to Houston but instead of going directly from a building to a car back into another building, we are spending hours outside. It’s sweaty even just standing still waiting for the bus. I take back all the times I taunted my mother and her peers for using an umbrella when it is hot. I definitely take an umbrella everywhere in addition to the space hats so many Asian women wear. It looks like I’m ready to begin my apprenticeship with the neighborhood blacksmith.

Thursday, we went to Treasure Garden. It was a large enclosure surrounded by old Asian-styled buildings. Each walkway lined with a canal that runs through the entire park. Vendors line the entrance to the park selling fish food and little fish nets for visitors to buy. The canal is filled with thousands of koi that swim up with their mouths open that come by the hundreds when there is food. I haven’t developed the sophistication or patience to appreciate the old Chinese artifacts housed in the mini-museums throughout the garden.

Friday, we hiked up BaiYun Mountain, supposedly the most scenic mountain in Guangzhou. The trail was about 12 km and I was incredibly impressed that Gupo’s husband at age 75 could still do it. The incline was not very steep, a very gradual rise to the 380 meter peak. Katherine and Gupo left for home after lunch about 1/3 of the way up. Every morning we have gone to a park or garden. The parks are not as crowded due to the intense heat but you will see flocks of people playing cards or having a picnic under the shade. There was a restaurant that allowed children to grind their own soy beans to make a dessert that is essentially.. fluffy tofu in sweet water.. I don’t know how I can 1. describe it in English and 2. make it sound appealing. It’s good, I promise.

Kat and I have been hanging out a little with Gupo’s 10-year-old granddaughter Xinyu. She thought that Katherine was 14, and I was 16, ha. She is about 50 pounds and 4’10’’. She has quite the personality, but her parents are the stereotypical Asian parents on steroids. Gupo wants to take her granddaughter out to the park on the weekends, swimming in the summer but Xinyu’s mother says Xinyu has no time, instead Xinyu must either study for her test or practice piano. There are parks that I went to this weekend that Xinyu hasn’t had the chance to visit because her mother says she is so busy. She likes to read but her father says that reading books for leisure instead of for school are a waste of time. Gupo says that even she feels bad for Xinyu and wants her to have fun instead of being pressured by her parents. I know they mean well, and I guess I am sheltered by my not-so-traditional parents, but Xinyu’s parents wouldn’t even let her have 2 friends over on her birthday. Katherine says, “Sometimes, I just want to kidnap her for a day and take her out. I would sling her over my shoulder and carry her out fireman style, I mean she can’t weigh more than a bag of rice.”

The people here are noticeably taller here than in Hong Kong – Gupo says it is from the influx of “foreigners” aka people from other (Northern) parts of China. I find it interesting that they are having a ad campaign to speak more Mandarin to make the “foreigners” feel welcome (they originally speak Cantonese here). Speaking of ads, I thought this one I saw in Hong Kong was particularly risqué given the tank image right after June 4. Hong Kong gets away with a lot more than the mainland though.

Guangzhou China Cribs: Gupo

My mother has just been looking at the different recommended tourist destinations on the map – we have been taking it one day at a time. On Tuesday, my uncle offered to guide us around and took us to Stanley Market and Shek O Beach – a beach that would have been very difficult to access if he did not drive us there.

Stanley Market was altogether unremarkable, an avenue of street vendors and a slew of European/American restaurants. If I wanted to go eat American food, why would I have traveled half way across the globe for some mediocre (and expensive) fish and chips? (I do, however, appreciate the American products that I can purchase at the grocery store, most notably peanut butter). I also appreciate how empty a typical “tourist destination” can be during the week. I would say this was probably one of the least worthwhile stops of the trip.

In contrast, Shek O Beach was a place we had not originally planned on visiting, but so very glad we did. On one side of the small town, there’s a trail leading up to an island-hill – when my uncle and my dad were kids, they would walk here from their house and the only way to the island was during low tide. From the top, you could see a small peninsula surrounded on both sides by the ocean. There is a beach on the other side of the town. While none of the beaches in Hong Kong were breathtaking by any means, this was the prettiest out of the 5 or so I have seen throughout the past week. It is more secluded with a few baby waves. The streets have not been heavily commercialized and it is still exclusively small kitchen-diners. This was definitely my favorite Hong Kong mini-excursion.

We decided that night that we would finally make the journey to Guangzhou, China. Gupo lived in Houston with us for 18+ years and I had never been to visit her. My mother was born in Guangzhou but left as a toddler to Hong Kong. Gupo speaks very fondly of her hometown – everything she could want is easily accessible to her her: delicious food, massage parlors, beautiful gardens, weekly mountain hikes with her husband. There was an entire segment of Gupo’s life that I was a stranger to – I had not even met her husband yet. I honestly had no idea what to expect. My mother calls this the countryside, as I’m sure it was back when she was born here. She had not visited Guangzhou as an adult and it does not seem like she carried many fond memories from here. My mom said the apartment Gupo lives in currently has been in the Chu family for years – dating back to her grandfather, my great-grandfather. Katherine aptly described our expectations as a grass hut. I was prepared to suck it up and tough it out for a week.

The journey from Hong Kong to Guangzhou is about 3 hours using public transit. We take the MTR to the train, cross the border and hop on another train, and finally take a taxi to Gupo’s. We are on a street with a ton of food and grocery vendors and all of a sudden we stop in front of a rusty gate. There is a group of old women huddled outside in chairs they brought from home (there’s a stool, office rolly, kitchen chair) and a group of men crowded around a game of Chinese chess. I’m thinking, oh boy, this is it. Gupo calls her husband to come downstairs and when Gupo asks if he knows who we are, he gives her an “Oh come on” look, correctly addresses us both very matter-of-factly, as if we had known each other from a long time ago.

We have to walk up four flights of dimly light stairs. The stairwell has a hint of trash smell from the tenants that leave their trash outside their door. I’m feeling prepared, and then we walk inside, and the place is nothing like I expected. The floor is all new marble, there are two living rooms divided by a glass wall, a large kitchen space, a bar area with five yellow contour stools, a bedroom a bathroom, and a balcony with a small home garden. Part of the ceiling above the bar area/kitchen is alternating grey and white tile – Katherine expected disco lights to come on. She has a projector system with surround sound speakers, a canopy on her bed, and my favorite part: a shower that has all built-in massage controls, radio, CD, a sauna setting and a telephone. Turns out her son completely redesigned and oversaw the remodeling of the apartment. This used to be a three bedroom apartment now converted into a one bedroom. I’m thinking, wow, I wish I could live in this apartment next year. Their daughter lives with her husband and her own daughter next door and have dinner together most nights. There are a few strange ornaments, like a pair of antelope horns (no skull, just horns) hanging in the main living room and another random antler hanging in the corner.

We don’t do much other than just settle in and eat (Gupo’s favorite thing to do is eat and feed us, so I’m going to come back a rolly polly) before dinner. After dinner, G and her husband took us to walk along the river, and much to my surprise, there are people everywhere. There are people of all ages – people ranging from pre-teens to 50’s playing hackysac, basketball and badminton, children with a karaoke machine and TV screen, the older taking a walk like we were. I noticed the same thing this morning as we passed a park. Everybody is out and about, even and especially the older folk. A group of about 50 women doing group exercises ranging from 18 to cute white-haired grandmas. It seems to have a better community feel here, a feeling that I definitely miss in big cities like Hong Kong. Down to the smallest things, for example, here people always give up their seats to Gupo and her husband on the subway whereas in Hong Kong that did not happen once.

Basically, Gupo’s living the life over here and I didn’t even know it.

Speaking in Tongues

Life is so much more comical with Gupo here. The four of us (Kat, mom, Gupo & I) spent 3 hours chatting over lunch, mainly about family gossip. I am confident that every family has their fair share of family politics, clashes, awkward love webs, and etc. I felt like a kid that just found out about Santa Claus, I had always had the general idea but they never discussed the juicy details in front of us.

We took a tram to the Victoria Peak, the highest peak on Hong Kong Island. The view is beautiful from the top, it’s a shame it’s so developed & commercialized with a multi-story shopping mall, four star restaurants, the works. It offers a panoramic view of Hong Kong, especially beautiful at night. We walked a trail all around a cross-section of the mountain – it would make a great running trail.

The next day, we went to the beach, Clear Water Bay. Unfortunately, the water was not as advertised (it was probably clear years ago before the pollution). The beach was in a small inlet, a pocket of sand surrounded by mountains and greenery. There are 300 steps leading down to the sand. Since it was protected, the water was completely flat, with no waves. The day was overcast, so the tan-o-phobics were all out; there were mainly families, as many of the young people are studying for end-of-June exams. The lifeguards patrolled the waters in these standing paddle boats that I have seen before in Lake Michigan. And for men, Speedos are still in.

Kat & I amuse ourselves by doing extensive people watching and trying to capture funny tourist moments. Since most people here speak English (and obviously Chinese), we have tried to find ways to talk about things/people without being understood. The first option is speaking in Spanish. I doubt most people here speak or even have any interest learning to speak Spanish. However, the second and more entertaining option is speaking in funny accents. The accent most often used is the hillbilly meets ebonics. It is not meant to offend anyone, but the annoying slang of the English language, including abbrevs (spoken in an accent, of course), have become handy in this situation. I wish that I could upload some audio clips…

Katherine has been sneaking around and doing her best to capture tourists taking funny pictures. It is my deepest regret that we did not have a camera handy when we witnessed an Asian woman ask a white woman (from her accent, I would say she was from the UK) to hold her child for a photo. The poor baby boy awkwardly dangled from her arms, confused by his new celebrity status. It is a fine line for us to have our cameras ready at all times to capture these funny moments and having full-blown creeper status. Katherine often asks me to “pose for the camera” as she pretends to be taking a picture of me while actually capturing the people in the background. I am usually captured making faces at the camera, so I do hope she is nice enough to crop them out.

I have a couple final thoughts. First, Kat stumbled on the most unfortunate and unappealing dessert and ice cream stand. I mean does this not remind you of crusty pink-eye?

Lastly, here is most popular shirt in Hong Kong. I have seen in this worn in public at least 20 times, no exaggeration. What does it mean? “DEADLINE IS OVER if you want it.”

Gupo Travels with Extra Clothes on Her Back and Two Chickens in a Tote

The past few days have been filled with sightseeing. I live in an apartment about a sixth of the size I am used to at school, and living with two (and now three) other people. Hong Kong is so much more than the hustle bustle and commercial district that I typically envision. They have a unique combination of the mountains juxtaposed to the ocean. Being here reminds me that there was a completely life my parents had before they came to the states, the family here that I really don’t know. We don’t really have much in common and I still feel like we each have our own preconceived perceptions of one another as we shuffle around small talk. The thing about Chinese is that each relative has a very specific title that depends on whether they are on your father/mother’s side and if they are older/younger than your parents. It’s all very confusing which also adds to the formalities here – I often have to double check with my mom. My grandparents mainly speak of the past, a past that I sense they live in so that they are never wholly here. They are happy to see us but know we are always in and out and always view us from afar.

We went to see Sai Kung, an area in Hong Kong that has more of a rural, fishing village feel. I found it fascinating as the fishermen came back from sea with their catches of the day. You are able to see what each fisherman specialize in – you can find everything here, from sea urchin, eel, lobster, cuttlefish to starfish. The people walk on the overpass and place money in a net that the fisherman lifts to the costumer in exchange for the fresh catch of the day.


So, the main reason I made this trek to Hong Kong: Gupo. Gupo is what I call my mother’s aunt – my grandaunt? She lived with our family from when I was born until I was 18, and essentially raised me. She lives in Guangzhou, a province of southern China (mainland), and is about 3 hours north of Hong Kong by train. We just received our visas to go to China so have not been able to make the trip up. Her brother (who I call, Bat-sook-gong) was hospitalized yesterday so she actually made the trip down to Hong Kong immediately so that she could see him. I was very excited to see her, but sad that it was under these circumstances. We didn’t know when or where to expect her, so we were just waiting for her to call.
Kat, mom and I decided to go to the beach, and out of the millions of people here, we run into Gupo at the MTR station. We cause a huge scene, how lucky we were to run into each other because she does not know how to use her phone. She is toting an enormous tote bag and suggests that we bring it back home before going out. We decide to go to a beautiful Buddhist temple/garden in the middle of the city. Kat insists that she can carry it and discovers it is quite heavy. As we are riding the MTR, Katherine finally asks, what on earth is she lugging around? Gupo nonchalantly says, “Oh, I bought two whole chickens on the way. There’s a stand that sells chicken, duck, pork at the border of mainland China and Hong Kong and it’s so delicious.” Turns out her bag has two chickens and no clothes. She wore two layers of both pants and shirts instead. Of course we cannot carry two whole chickens with us in a Buddhist temple so we have to take the bag back.

Gupo is truly a hippie of her own time and is hilarious; I wish that I could translate everything she says. But really, with a direct translation and without her little movements, it loses all of its humor.

Kat and I went to Avenue of the Stars, similar to our Hollywood Blvd’s Walk of Fame. There were only 4 people Katherine and I recognized – Jackie Chan, Chow Yung Fat, Jet Li and Bruce Lee. This district consists of a more international demographic which makes for great people-watching.

So now we have four people sleeping in a one-bedroom apartment. There are two beds and one couch. I feel like an awful daughter that my mom sleeps on the couch, but honestly, she the only one that fits (it’s actually the perfect length for her). So Gupo says we can share a bed. It’s slightly bigger than a twin and we both are pretty tranquil sleepers – there’s even room for a big gap between us. She insists that we put the guard rail up despite telling her 100 times that I will not roll off the bed. She says that she rolled off this bed once so her persistence wins and I felt like I was sleeping in a crib. Gupo likes to ham it up for the camera. After she saw this picture, she was like “Amanda, why did you smile now people know you’re not sleeping!”

Paternal Grandparents FTW

Life has been good and relatively uneventful.  Something that I forgot to mention earlier is that I am living in my maternal grandmother’s retirement community.  Living among them has been interesting to say the least.  They are not all old, jolly beings and most of the ones I have encountered are pretty snippy.  The guards all look suspiciously at my sister and I, I have been “randomly checked” for a fever 9/10 that I enter the building.  I try to power-walk past, but the always so accusingly ask, “Don’t you want to check your temperature?” even though I have been throught 3 times before that day.

Each inhabitant has their own one-bedroom apartment.  It’s a nice facility – they have a library, computer lab, restaurant, hair salon, gym, etc.  However, there are things that definitely remind me that I am in a retirement community, not a ClubMed.

1. I went to get a massage today in an area labeled “clinic” instead of your friendly neighborhood Day Spa.
2. It is silent (almost an understood lights-out hour) around 9PM
3. I haven’t eaten at the restaurant, but they have scissors readily available to cut up the more difficult to chew items on their menu.

Needless to say, the average age of the people around me has been about 65.  It’s alright though – I think that being raised by Gupo (my mother’s aunt) gives me more of an appreciation for the older generation.  I think this makes me even more appreciative of my sister’s company as we find new ways to amuse ourselves.

We went to visit my paternal grandparents, and luckily for us, they are still very amusing.  My grandfather always acts pretty oblivious, and I have to repeat every other word until he agrees to put in his hearing aide.  He mainly repeats what my grandmother says and defers to her as he calls himself forgetful and silly.  Since the last time I saw him, my grandpa started using a cane, but that only adds to his cuteness factor.   He and Katherine are sporting the same look.

My grandmother is quite the talker and keeps anything/everything she has ever owned/was given to her as a gift.  That was the explanation I was given when I questioned her about her small stuffed animal collection.  She was extremely excited to show me her very first drawing; she said she had never drawn anything before that point.  It was on the back of a restaurant flyer and looked like it could have belonged to small child, but she so proud that she had drawn it, it was too cute.  I mean sans-art classes, pretty good, right?

My mom & my gma, both itty-bitty + Kat & gpa, sporting their canes.  Aren’t they just 4 peas in a pod?

I’m already way taller and much tanner (comments re:my skin color was the first thing out of my grandparents mouth.  I have had two unsolicited “oh, do you like being this dark? you must go swimming often”) than socially normal, so I am trying to dress less conspicuously without dying of heat exhaustion (I really don’t know how they wear jeans in this weather).  Please excuse the awkward capris.

I have been collecting more pictures for proof of the miniature HK population, but I leave you with my favorite item from my grandmother’s bathroom.  Literally translated, the four characters mean “black person toothpaste.”  You tell me?

You Must be This Short to Ride

Trips to Hong Kong are more about seeing family than real sightseeing.  It is enjoyable, but in a very different way than most other vacations I take for pleasure.  Yesterday was spent taking care of “official business.”  We went to the visa office in order to obtain visas to enter mainland China.  The system here is quite efficient and I didn’t dread it as much as a regular trip to the DPS.  While we are here, we are trying to take care of other official business – getting my mother a Hong Kong passport and obtaining a residence card for both my sister and me.

We were caught in a torrential downpour during lunch so we ran to the first restaurant we came across.  Had some good Malaysian food & caught a picture of the chef tossing the Roti like a big pizza pie.  There is a 60% chance of rain for the next 10 days, so we won’t be as caught off guard for the week to come.

At night, we took advantage of the cheap massages ($12/hour!) and watched a movie with grandma.  This morning, mom and I woke up at 6AM to go to the morning market.  It was around the time many children were going to school in the morning.  I think the cutest kids in the world live here.  I am still embarrassed to take out my camera in public and act like the tourist I am – part of me still wants to fit in.  Mom and I walked to the market – one of my favorite parts of Hong Kong.  There is so much fresh produce (a vegetarian’s dream!) & you build relationships with particular vendors for whom you become regulars.

One thing that you have to know about Hong Kong is that all the people here are mini.  People don’t appreciate how small you really have to be in Hong Kong.  I have compiled a list of reasons/proof that people in Hong Kong are small

• When Kat searches for my mother in a public place, she normally just looks for a small Asian with short hair.  That does not work so well here.  Mom is 4’10’’ and does not stick out.
• I am 5’5’’ and I do not fit in a standard bed.  My feet stick over the end.
• My head hits the handle bars in the MTRs.
• They use what I would consider a hair towel as a bath towel. 
• The largest size clothing I saw at many “Western Brand” boutiques was a size S and 4.
• Went to the store and saw they have special “Asian sizing” labeled on the tag of a fitted top
• The average jean size for a young Asian woman would be a 25.

Yay! No jetlag :)

I just got to Hong Kong hours ago.  The plane ride was relatively painless (as far as 23 hr travel goes) – it is a blessing that I can fall asleep upright.  The movie selections on airplanes are now over 300 titles, so I did not get to my reading as I had planned.  We are forced to sit in small spaces yet still maintain our own little cubicle with our own desks, TV screens, and remote. It was interesting (but not surprising) that 90% of the Asian people on my flight wore surgeon masks.

The started chatting with the guy behind me because noticed my Duke sweatshirt.  He went to Duke Law and wore a huge Clemson ACC Championship ring – he played tennis professionally for 4 years before going to law school.  I love these short, transient encounters on the plane, you never know who you’ll sit next to.  I always think of Fight Club in which Ed Norton says, “The people I meet on each flight — they’re single-serving friends.  Between take-off and landing, we have our time together, but that’s all we get.”

The people in HK can automatically sense that I am not a native.  Even when I wear all of their clothes, they do not speak to me in Cantonese.  Maybe it’s my height, the fact that I am twice the size of typical girls here or my unfashionably tan skin, but I’ve been told it is the manner in which I carry myself.  Kat told me that this has caused her to be unfairly singled out when they “randomly check” people’s temperature, in fear of swine flu.  This trip has been better than in the past – there have been a few people that speak to me in Cantonese unprompted.

Kat, and my mom have been here for 4 days.  They were kind to pick me up from the airport.  I arrived at night so I have not done anything here, but Kat’s observations so far (many more to come):

• Most people wear capri length denim, it is 90+ but it is still taboo to wear shorts.
• “I feel like I’m on a college campus, just with a lot of Asians.  There’s always people tabling and flyering.”
• The aroma is an intersection of a delightful and disgusting mix of food and B.O.

Take Me Home, Country Roads

I took an extended, 20-day parade on the road post-graduation.  With the absence of a real transitional period, I don’t know what to make of it.  I was a nomad, relying on people’s generosity (and pity).  It as an opportunity to wander around, taking advantage of the geographical spread Duke alum have claimed as home.

Three of the five people I stayed have been graduated for at least a year, each in a very different stage in their lives.  One had just started a new job and developed a new-found happiness with herself that absent a year before.  I witnessed her anticipation for her new furniture that would make her apartment feel hers.  She watched the men assembling the pieces together as a hovering mother would, standing guard over the additions that would complete her new life.  The second was very newly engaged and her fiance and I would catch her staring at her ring every so often.  She said that she still could not believe she was going to marry “her ‘Brad Pitt.’”  With a career-change, home ownership, and starting a business already under her belt, she has really started to nest and establish herself.  The last was living a bachelor’s life in an apartment that overlooks a street filled with bars, restaurants and boutiques.  Armed with a living room filled with couches, open bar tabs, video games, and a refrigerator stocked with only beer, eggs and sausage, he was more than content living with his roommates and dog.

—-

My eyes welled up a tad during the Baccalaureate service’s “Joyful Joyful,” but I had yet to experience that cleansing cry .  I waited a week in anticipation of the waterworks that I thought would surely ensue.  After all, most of my friends had a purgative experienced, some had even been in that state for the two weeks leading up to graduation.  Am I heartless?

Surely I will miss my friends dearly, but I figure that I will be able to keep contact with the handful of close friends just as I have with my high school friends.  As I lingered in North Carolina, I felt a strange sense of continuity.  Even after I moved out of my apartment, I could take a 30 minute drive to visit my friends who still lived there.  As my friends moved out and younger subletters came in, I became more and more of an outsider and I knew it was time to leave the Duke scene.

Without setting a hard date for my departure from North Carolina, motivating myself to make an 18 hour drive proved difficult.   I took refuge in the countryside 30 minutes from Durham playing house, burrowing in books and going on runs.  Countryside runs would start in self-created wooded trails, pass through horse pastures,  and end with checking for ticks.  After a week, I offset my reluctance to leave a simple life with the anticipation of going to the coast.

I am a child of sunshine, sand and salt water.  My resolve to stay was only strengthened after spending three days filled with sandy North Carolina beach, runs & bike rides to both ends of the island, 8AM daily water skiing, and naive youthful abandon.  I had already extended my stay one night more than I had planned.

I had planned to go back to my apartment after the beach to tie up the loose ends.  However, as I was packing my things from the beach house, it just felt like it was time to embark on the trip back to my parent’s home.  It was not until then that I felt that my hours left in North Carolina could be counted on fingers.  I don’t know what it is about the North Carolina beaches.  It could be something about the way the American Sea Grass curtains the sand that only become unveiled as you walk towards the ocean to reveal a flat, expansive beach.  It must be that the Outer Banks camping trip that was bound together with a peanut butter, hopeful wave-chasing, wax-scraper cooked eggs, and mixed company – my quintessential college journey.

I have fallen in love with North Carolina as much, if not more, than the my actual experience in school.  I think it is fitting that I started my experience in a preorientation program in the mountains of Pisgah National Park and ended on the beach in Ocean Isle.

Pre-Race Jitters

The day for my half marathon is almost here – I am so nervous!  It’s been so long since I have competed in anything physically.  I went to pick up the registration packet today!  There were so many people there – it was like I entered a new community.

I am especially nervous because my running partner just hurt her foot two days ago.  Let me preface this with the fact that prior to this semester, I never enjoyed running with a partner.  I didn’t understand how you could talk and run & I definitely always felt that one person always had to either run faster/slower than their desired pace.  That being said, Ro has been an amazing running partner and I can’t imagine getting this far without her.  If I had been running by myself for the long run days, I would have stopped short of completion and just told myself that I could do it another day.  Knowing my heat-seeking tendencies, I definitely would not have been motivated run outside on the cold days.  I’m really sad for both her and myself that she will not be able to join me after months of training.  It is going to be a much longer 2 hours without her.

But I’ve been talking about entering a race for a while now & I’m finally doing it.