Over and Out

Is the semester already over? Really? But, really, seriously? I demand a recount!

In the past few days I have been in Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo in Japan. I'm presently in Shanghai waiting to get on a plane that will go to Toronto and then Chicago so that tomorrow I can get in a car with my fam and my bestie and drive to Minneapolis. I might be the luckiest person on the planet. And in 48 hours, I might also be the most jet lagged person on the planet.

This semester has been unbelievable. When I got on the plane in the fall, I could say hello in Chinese. Badly. A few days ago, I was in a bar in Japan with two of my buddies speaking only in Chinese. It was Rachel (who's British), Yue who's Japanese, and me. We all go to Chinese school together so for us, it's the least common denominator language-wise. The waiter came over and asked Yue in Japanese what language we were speaking. She said Chinese. And then his head exploded.

Man. I feel like I've been so far away from home for so long. That part sucked. It's hard when you can't just pick up a phone and say hello. And 13 hours is such a weird time difference. And you can't drink the water. And you don't remember how to say "go left" or "What is this green thing in my food?". And you don't really have any reason to be China in the first place. But it also makes you feel like if you can do this, you can do anything.

Until five minutes later when you realize you're lost and you've miscalculated the bill because your brain doesn't do conversions very well and you've spent the past few months calling taxi drivers "waiter".

Being in China is the weirdest. Everyday, I oscillate between feeling totally empowered, absolutely competent and virtually pre-natal (pre-natal being the dominant state of being). But I wouldn't change it. Living here has truly been one of the most treasured experiences of my life and I'm so glad I got the chance to share it with you all. Thank you. For reading and writing emails and keeping in touch.

Over and Out.

Mr. Roboto

Ahhh! I am totally in Japan right now.

We were planning on going to Thailand after school let out in China- we bought the tickets, bought a travel guide, couldn't wait to plan it all out- until Thailand went totally batshit crazy and closed all the airports and started a coup d'etats (is that how you spell that? is that what I mean? Im currently typing on a japanese computer so Id spellcheck but I dont know that Id get anywhere).

Luckily, everything was recovered and refunded and rescheduled and we are totally in Japan right now! Ahhh!

Im travelling with my buddy Rachel. We just left Tokyo. Heavens. Tokyo. Wow. I once thought that New York was the coolest city on the planet- a city to rival all others- but I was sorely mistaken. Tokyo is lightyears beyond cool. Everything in Tokyo looks like its from the future. Its amazing. Its like Logans run with Asian people. Also pretty much anything doubles as a stuffed animal. Oh, you thought this was a just cell phone? Boom! It is also a hello kitty doll. And everything is so clean! I think Japanese people must have higher occurances of OCD than just about any other nationality on the planet becuase everything sparkles. I mean, I would gladly eat my dinner off of this hotel lobby floor right now. No question.

And the toilets! First of all, not to go into the specifics, but for all intents and purposes Chinas toilets are not much more than holes in the ground. And those are the good ones! Those ones are far better than the ones where you tinkle into a troft (is that how you spell that? Again, my condolences) Plus, in China, they dont have toilet paper in the bathrooms so you have to buy it at the supermarket and then carry it around with you wherever you go. In Japan, the toilets are like big robo potties. They play music and have seat warmers and give you a back massage. Theyre amazing.

Right now we are in Osaka. We are visiting our buddy Yue, who is from here but studies Chinese Opera with us at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Se was in the movie Battle Royale so shes pretty bigi in Japan- literally. Shes pretty much the greatest. She just took us to one of those sushi restaurants where everything goes around on a little conveyeur belt. Great fun. And soon we are going to Kyoto. Ill write again when I can!!

Chinese Opera

Last night was our big Chinese Opera performance. It occurs to me that I haven't written much- or anything- about Chinese Opera even though it's the primary focus of my studies in China. I guess I haven't written about it mostly because it's very strange to describe. As I'm sure you can observe, it's not much like the western theater we know.

The singing is often high-pitched, nasal, shrill- frankly, difficult to listen to. The movement- all of it from your eye balls to your toes- is highly controlled and calculated. It's choreographed to the second in time with music.

But the most interesting thing, i think, is the design. Everything is extremely ornate. The make-up takes an hour at least to apply and each piece of hair is applied individually to your head. There's a photograph of it above, I think. Anyhow, they take chunks of hair and soak them in sap and then glue them down to your head. After that, they put on a face tightener. Those are the white straps in the picture. They're excruciatingly tight pieces of tape that are meant to stretch your face. They pain is incredible. Our teacher told us that when she trained as a little girl, the first time they tried on the face tighteners, all of the students began to vomit. It's really, really awful. But it looks pretty cool.

I'm fairly certain that I have no future in Chinese Opera but at the end of the semester, I have a lot to take away from studying it. Telling a simple story can be incredibly complicated, it's often nice to have a right and wrong answer, if you have to, you can assimilate to almost anything, and everywhere you go, people are mostly the same but the subtle differences of mannerisms and language and perspective are the most interesting parts.