China - Long Overdue

I went to China for three weeks in May. I posted once in Hong Kong, I attempted to be that travel writer sitting in front of a coffee shop finding inspiration in passing pedestrians. Then I came home and reread the post, and found so many grammatical errors that I took it down. You would think 18 years of education would teach me to at least use spell checker.

This is all beside the point. I had an amazing time in China. So amazing in fact that I am planning on moving there for five months in January. An opportunity came up when I had a meeting with a business associate of my uncle and he offered me an internship to work in the city of Wuxi an hour outside of Shanghai. I've started Chinese classes at USDA graduate school. I thought that since I can passably speak and understand three languages Chinese would be manageable. Wrong. There are tones, characters, different sentence structures, my mouth feels sore when I'm done with class. I even have podcasts I listen to and CDs in my car. Yet after two weeks of honest effort I still am only confident speaking about six words. But the trip was the perfect mix of adventure and intellectual stimulation. I also met a lot of new friends and got to spend time with old.

When I uploaded my pictures at the end of the trip I realized I had a dispropriately high amount of pictures of children, doors and food. Just an observation. Here are ten of my favorite photos and there are more here.

Old man overlooking the river at a temple in Heifei.

Taking in the beauty below moon rock in Yangshou

I noticed more women working in the fields than men in China. This was in Yangshou.

Adorable girl in a small village outside of Yangshou.

Content baby we saw on a walk through the backstreets in Shanghai.

Favorite moment of the trip was hanging out with this lady who we met on a hike. Through gestures she was able to invite us over for some fruit.

Sitting on the glass floor of The Pearl Tower hundreds of floors above the city.

Hike in Hong Kong

Hiking the Great Wall = Highlight of the trip

Ben and Court in the Yuyu gardens. My favorite place in Shanghai.