Nevertheless, Cornell has had a its own changes: I was shocked to see the massive new life sciences building, , the new café and renovations in Mann Library, and cars driving across the new bridge to North campus. My first class was Nutrition and the Life Cycle, an introductory nutrition class that I am TAing this semester. During class, I couldn’t help but notice how much younger everyone seemed. There were rows of freshman girls proudly wearing their bid shirts declaring which sorority they had been matched up with the night before. Many students were anxiously talking about what classes they were taking, which ones they heard were difficult, which ones had the best professors… It was an odd feeling because I could see myself playing their roles just three years ago.

The atmosphere was tense all throughout the day. People all around me were talking about MCATs, job interviews, graduate school applications. Once the lecture started, the room immediately settled down as people frantically took notes. I sat there in awe of it all. I remember being just as intense, if not more throughout my freshman and sophomore years at Cornell. It is so easy to get caught up in the overachieving environment that often pervades the undergraduate student body here. It was sometime in the beginning of my junior year that I began to see that all this stress was not necessary. I needed to learn how to relax, spend more time with my friends, and take a walk through the gorge once in a while.

One of my reasons for studying abroad was to get a break from Cornell and Ithaca. “But how will you ever find a job if you go abroad your senior year?!” Everyone loves to ask me that. There’s an odd belief among the people here that if you do not have your post-graduation plans arranged before winter break of your senior year, your life is essentially doomed. Leaving the Cornell bubble (and even the US bubble) for a semester has allowed me to appreciate the absurdity of this theory. I am currently actively job hunting, but I know that if I don’t find my dream job by graduation, I will still have plenty of other options.

While in China, I did not keep a day planner. This was a first in my historically over-planned life. However, now that I am back at Cornell (and in a sense, back to reality), I bought a new planner for the semester. I’m proud to say that so far it does not have anything past tomorrow’s agenda written in it. This semester I’m not getting too caught up in planning the next stage. I’m enjoying being here, and take full advantage of my last four months of college life.

After my Asian tour to South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, I returned to Beijing for a couple of days before going back to the States. I stayed at my homestay during the week, and realized how much they have become a second-family to me. When I entered the door, my grandma and aunt rushed over to greet me. That evening, I showed them pictures from my trip. In the morning, we woke up at the break of dawn to send my little sister off to school. On our way back, we bought some groceries, and made lunch together. Now that I was completely free from school and any other obligations, I was enjoying family time as much as possible.

I also went to visit the Temple of Heaven (天坛), as I had not gotten a chance to see it during the semester. I took a bus to connect to the subway, and used my trusty Beijing map to navigate by foot to the site. On the bus, I thought back to orientation week back in August when IES organized a “Discover Beijing” activity. We were paired up and given a slip of paper with the name of a place in the city written in Chinese. Our goal was to figure out how to get there by public transportation (no taxis), and only asking locals for help in Chinese. Our mysterious slip of paper read “沃尔玛.” We asked several people on the street if they knew of the place. They all looked confused as they read “Wo-er-ma,” and said they had no idea that there was such a place. Finally, after asking dozens of people, we figured out that we were to take bus 323 north to get to Wal-Mart. Since it was the first time we had taken the bus, it was quite the fiasco trying to figure out the system. What seemed like hours later, we arrived at our destination. It was probably the happiest I have ever been to go to Wal-Mart. We did some shopping, and then prepared ourselves to try to figure out how to get back to Bei Wai. In all, the whole trip took us about three hours, and I was so relieved to return safely to campus. I was sure I would never resort to taking the bus again. Four months later, I have become rather fond of taking the bus. I even enjoy pushing and shoving my way on, falling over this way and that with the sudden stops, and having my arm fall asleep while holding on to the handle-bar for the two-hour ride. It makes me feel like a true Beijinger.

I came in August knowing nearly nothing about China. Experiences such as my Wal-Mart story not only make for great stories to tell people at home. They have given me a keen, local perspective on Chinese culture and history. It has been an incredible opportunity to live in this city, to see the Beijingers gear up for the Olympics. The games mark a pivotal turning point in the country’s history as it prepares to show the world what it is all about. Who knows where China will be in ten years? It will surely be a completely different place from the one I know.

Goodbye for now, China. I could not have asked for more during this crazy ride around the Middle Kingdom.

I don’t know if I really understood what was happening because I’d never felt nostalgia before. I knew we were leaving Brooklyn because my sister had just been born and our apartment was too small for the five of us. I knew I wouldn’t return to my school the next year, and I knew we were about to have a whole house for ourselves for the first time. But I must have been too young to have a psychological attachment to what I was leaving behind.

Since then I’ve developed a place for nostalgia, which I feel regularly when I leave and return to Cornell after long breaks. Revisiting my old high school building also has a “good old days” effect, as does standing on bare stages where I’ve past performed in choirs and shows. Like anyone, I associate certain places with certain people and sentiments. But in order to feel nostalgia you have to understand that there’s a distance between the place you’re feeling nostalgic for and the place you are at the moment. The problem with studying abroad for one semester in a city you’ve fallen in love with is that it’s too short to feel nostalgic. I feel like I’m being torn away from Paris, sort of like a teething child from a good rubber toy he’s barely started in on.

In the past month I’ve realized how much I’ve learned and seen this semester, and it pains me to know that I’m going to leave on Wednesday with so much left undiscovered. When you live in a place and truly absorb it like I’ve tried hard to do, you start to see things you could never notice as a tourist or even a three-week visitor. Looking up at the tops of buildings instead of eye-level at the people on the street, I see old signage from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Paris. I can imagine what life must have been like when the local cell-phone store was the bakery, or when the underground mall at the Forum des Halles was a huge outdoor market.

In a larger sense, I have also been able to see that France has serious national problems manifesting themselves from day to day in its capital city. Poverty and unemployment are major issues here, as are attitudes towards the immigrant population. You walk the streets and constantly face demands from beggars, and you come out of the metro and see people with deformities crouched in sleeping bags. People who have jobs are often working until eight or nine in the evening and still having trouble paying their sky-high apartment rent. And of course there are always the students, who it happens are planning more strikes for next semester.

I wish there was a solution for all of this, some sort of magical administration that could feed the hungry, pay for medical operations, and erect beautiful HLMs in two days’ time without worrying about the aesthetic sanctity of the city. But all of this is a fact of the country and there’s no panacea for a people like the French. To really explain it all we’d have to go back in time and look at the history of France, its past involvement with colonization, its tendency toward revolution, its place now in Europe, and the dogmatism that’s endured from it all. All I know is that it’s what I have seen and felt in the past four months. I’m thinking along the lines of Baudelaire when I affirm that without the bad there is nothing and without the bizarre there is no beauty. When I leave I will have the impression to be leaving an acquaintance that has just started to become a friend because she can confide in me. I will be abandoning a place that may need me, and forsaking a country that I may need myself.

So I’ve decided to come back. I don’t know when, but I know I will, and soon. Because I’m sorry Cornell, but one semester is too short.

As for this train, there was plenty of space and it’s very pleasant inside. Looking out the window, we’re moving from the southern Bavarian countryside to the central metropolis. Rolling fields dotted with clumps of gangly, bare trees will turn into hubs of productivity and skyscrapers. (The Germans nickname Frankfurt “Mein-hattan” because it’s that corporate.) I think the thin blanket of snow on the ground will disappear as we go along.

The most obvious hemispheric division of Germany ended in 1990 with the destruction of the Berlin Wall. It was a literal division and a decidedly political one (East Germany vs. West Germany, communism vs. democracy, Soviet control vs. relative German stability…basically the turbulence that Germany saw after the dark years of the Second World War). But apparently there’s another division, a north-south one, between Bavaria and the rest of Germany. Bavaria is its own state in the southeast of the country with its own dialect and capital (Munich). Bavarians are known to be relaxed, less formal than the Germans in the north. They enjoy food and drink (wurst and Oktoberfest mean anything?) They are predominately Catholic versus the rest of Protestant Germany.

In my three days of German experience Bavaria has been a land of efficiency and honesty. People are smart and industrious but friendly, and virtually everyone can speak English because they start studying it at school as early as age 7. We had great success with our “couch-surfing” host in Munich. Two nights in a cozy flat with a wonderful woman who works at a winter festival on the grounds where Oktoberfest is held in the fall. She’s the manager for a huge dinner theatre production where hundreds of guests come every night to be wined, dined, and entertained with a “Bavarian” musical revue. Lucky “surfers” we were, she offered us spots for the show and we did our best to follow the plotline. The dialogue was in Bavarian and the songs were all renditions of popular English-language tunes. It was funny to oscillate between understanding nothing (i.e. slap-stick humor in fast-moving Bavarian German) and instant recognition (flamboyant dancing to the Proclaimer’s classic “500 Miles”).

In Frankfurt I will stay with a good friend from Cornell and celebrate the New Year (Silvester in German) with her. At her apartment it will be good to get informed on what’s going on in the world. I’ve been horrible about finding English newspapers, though I was able to decipher from the German headlines that Benazir Bhutto was killed. How is this being perceived in the American press? Trusty nytimes.com will surely bring answers.

Here we’re stopping at the main station in Nuremburg and it’s starting to rain. The droplets look like little swimming fish as the wind against the moving train whisks them across the window.

In Taiwanese culture, the prime loyalty is to one’s family. This is easily exemplified by the complicated naming system. Relatives are distinguished by their generation, the order they are born, and which side of the family they are on. As an example, my grandfather’s family consists of 4 sons: My grandfather is the first born, my second great-uncle is the second born, third great-uncle is the third born, and fourth great-uncle is the fourth born. I call my second great uncle li jek gong. “Li” is Taiwanese for the number 2, and “jek gong” means “great-uncle on the mother’s side.” I call my fourth-great uncle si jek gong. “Si” is Taiwanese for the number 4. Likewise, there is a separate name to call one’s great-uncle on their father’s side.

The Taiwanese’ family mindset is further seen by extended families living together. On my dad’s side of the family, four generations all live under one roof. My grandmother, second-uncle, cousin, and nephew live in a five-story house and run the family restaurant together. On my mom’s side, my grandmother, second-great uncle, and fourth-great uncle all live in the same apartment building with their immediate families.

I was staying in my grandmother’s (on my mom’s side) apartment in Taipei, and so I got to spend lots of time with all my relatives in the building. When I arrived, they immediately sat me down and started planning an itinerary for my time there:

“Where do you want to go this week? Do you want to go to the southern part of the island? How about let’s go to the East coast?” They asked me in mixtures of Mandarin and Taiwanese.

“Well, I haven’t been to Taroko Gorge…” I replied.

“Taroko! That’s the most beautiful area in Taiwan! You haven’t been there? We must go then! It’s decided: we’ll all go with you!” my second-great uncle exclaimed.

The rest of my relatives agreed wholeheartedly. And so it was set. I was headed on a 2-day trip to Taroko Gorge with my second-great uncle, his wife, my fourth-great uncle, and his wife.

Since I rarely get a chance to visit my relatives, I was excited to spend some quality time with them on the trip. The last time I came to Taiwan was 3 summers ago. At that time, my Chinese speaking skills were nearly non-existent; I could barely hold a conversation with them. This time, however, I found it a lot easier to talk with them. My fourth-great uncle enjoyed discussing the geography, history, and current events in Taiwan. My fourth-great aunt was curious about my study abroad experience. My grandmother loved to reminisce with me about my previous visits to Taiwan. It was an incredible feeling for me to finally be able to verbally communicate with them. I could finally express my experiences and opinions with them.

Seven days in Taiwan was really too short. As my relatives saw me off to the airport, we shared an emotional goodbye. They kept asking me when I would come back. “Soon, soon!” I told them. The truth is though, I have no idea when is the next time I can return. My life is in the States, but so much of my family is in Taiwan. Although I have only gotten a chance to see my relatives a couple of times throughout my life, and sometimes still get their familial relationships mixed up, I feel a natural intimacy toward them. I suppose it’s the Taiwanese in me.

For Senegal’s 4 or 5% Christian population, this means it’s time for Christmas. For Senegal’s 95% Muslim population, it’s time to buy a sheep in preparation for Eid al-Adha.

Eid al-Adha, or Tabaski, as it is known locally, is a feast which is celebrated two months and 10 days after Korité, which I celebrated here in October. Like Korité the exact date of Tabaski is unknown until the very last minute; Imans (religious community leaders) carefully watch the movements of the moon and wait to announce the start of the celebration. Unfortunately, I am scheduled to leave Dakar the day before my family believes that the feast is to take place.

At this same time, able Moslems all over the world make their pilgrimage to Mecca to coincide with this feast. Many of my neighbors have already departed, and it’s hard to accept that I won’t be able to say au revoir to these friends before I leave.

Back to the sheep. Tabaski commemorates the prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son for Allah, who instead provides a ram in the son’s place; Muslim families are therefore required to sacrifice a sheep for the New Year. Sheep herders come from Mali, Mauritania and Gambia and camp out for weeks in the streets of Dakar. Their sheep line the streets, fill up parking lots and, to the dismay of young boys everywhere, clutter neighborhood soccer fields. They have become a part of the city’s landscape, their ankles tied to trees and front doors, bleating at anyone who will listen. In the next few weeks, these sheep will all be sold for the price of anywhere from 40,000 to 200,000 CFA (or about $80 to $400). For the average citizen, this is over a month’s salary and many cannot afford it. My family tells me that the mouton will be taken home, sacrificed, cooked and shared by family, friends and neighbors.

I cannot believe I am going to miss it.

This has been a week of wrap-ups, studying, and reading, but it’s been packed because it’s also a week of visitors. Paris for me at this moment seems to be a whirlwind of friends finishing their European semesters abroad. En route to the U.S., they’ve stopped off in Paris to pay a visit to the bright city. Sometimes showing a city around makes you feel like you’re seeing it all over again for the first time. I felt that way in front of the Sacré-Coeur on Montmartre this evening as the sun set, pinkish, over Paris.

Aside from friends visiting, I’ve been working furiously on a composition on Napoleon which I just sent in by email moments ago. It’s the last of the assignments required for an EDUCO-sponsored course I took on the French Revolution. Now that it’s turned in, I’m free to start packing my bags for my little European “holiday.” I’ll fly tomorrow afternoon out of Orly airport to land in Vienna, where two friends and I will be Christmas-time tourists. After a few days of art and music (Allison is a huge Egon Schiele fan and I’ve sung quite a bit of Mozart; how easy will it be to snag student-rush tickets to the opera?) we’ll move on to Germany to see Munich. We’ll visit a friend in Frankfurt and then check out the north-France city of Lille to finish things off.

For lodging we’re going to try a bit of “couch-surfing.” We have a couple of people lined up in Munich and Lille who have, literally, a couch in their living room or spare bedroom that they’re willing to open up free to tourists in exchange for conversation and the same favor somewhere down the road. This is an extensive and successful network of travel-lovers and do-gooders; it works on the basis of short profiles and email correspondences. How could we resist trying it out? We figure the type of people who are willing to share a spare couch will also be eager to give sight-seeing advice. These must be men and women who know something about their city and want to encourage its guests.

So, yes, bon voyage to us. I will update when I can, but definitely when I return.

And so begins my post-China culture shock experience. Although my IES Beijing program is over, my friend, Jiah, and I are traveling together before heading back to the US. Our first stop is Seoul, South Korea where her family resides. Korea is the first place I’ve been where I have absolutely no understanding of the language. Most of the people here cannot speak English, and so I am very lucky to have Jiah as my personal translater. Although I must say that it is one of the most frustrating feelings to not be able to communicate with the people here. I have had her teach me some essential phrases and the Korean alphabet so I have been practicing reading street signs and TV subtitles.

Compared to Beijing, Seoul is much more advanced and Westernized. I was amazed by luxuries such as western toilets and heating everywhere! The sky has been a beautiful bright blue everyday here. The the overall city looks as if it is all newly built. Jiah told me that it has been advancing like rapid-fire. Fifteen years ago, Seoul’s economy was similar to present day Beijing. This is the first time she has been here in 3 years, and the city is barely recognizable to her now.

They say that Seoul is the beauty-capital of Asia. This was immediately noticeable when I got on the bus on our way to Pheonix Park ski resort. It was 5:30 AM and I looked like I literally rolled out of bed in my glasses, sweats, and my ski jacket. The other girls on the bus were all decked out with cute winter hats, scarves, and high-heal boots. On the slopes, most of the girls were all made-up, wearing trendy ski parkas and snowpants. At Starbucks, we literally watched 2 girls apply their eye make-up for an hour while sipping their frappaccinos and reading beauty magazines.

Meanwhile, I was feeling exceptionally unattractive in my simple ponytail, no make-up, Cornell sweatshirt, and bulky snowpants. Although I soon realized the consequences of wearing Cornell gear here. One mother saw my sweatshirt and asked me if I went to Cornell. Slightly embarrassed, I told her I did. She became excessively intrigued by me. She wanted to know how I got accepted and all about the Cornell experience. Later on, Jiah told me that it is pretty common that people are obsessed with sending their kids to ivy league schools. There is a high school that was made on the mission of preparing their students to get into ivy league schools. Students can also go to the US before they apply to colleges to get a tour of all the top universities.

I’ve got 4 more days to explore Korea before heading to Taiwan. My time here seems so short compared to China. I am sad that I only get to experience a superficial, touristy perspective of what seems to be fascinating country. I want to learn the language, get to know the people, its history, and culture. There are too many places in the world, and not enough time for one person to absorb it all!

The French friend I’m accompanying erupts in an impressive string of curses. I shout after the thief in a horrible mix of English and French, trying in vain to get the people on the platform to help stop the rogue bunch. But it seems they’ve planned their ruse to the tee: suddenly the platform is filled with the stench of burning plastic. One of the kids has thrown a lit cigarette in the garbage can next to the platform exit. Smoke is billowing everywhere and people are starting to panic. I’m torn between going after my wallet and saving Chatelet from going down in flames. Thankfully, one man manages to find a fire extinguisher and the disaster is averted.

My friend calls the police and explains to them what’s happened. Admittedly, I’m not yet quite calm enough to furnish a detailed description in French of what my voleur looks like. My friend leaves and two policemen come to pick me up to take me to the nearest commissariat to file my reports. They’re plainclothes cops, rather blasé to tell the truth, who tell me right off the bat that Paris is home to the most and the best pickpockets in the world and that unfortunately my wallet is gone forever. I’ll have to contact my bank and replace my identity cards, they say. Huh. And maybe wash dishes at the nearest crêperie to make up for the stolen cash.

Turns out the commissariat of the first arrondissement is a pretty lively place on Friday at 1 AM. I half-expect to see my own voleur there, arrested perhaps on some other train platform for some other petty crime. But no, this one got loose. I’m not angry, just disappointed. I feel bad for this boy because somewhere along the line something went wrong with his education. His parents missed something, or his teachers did. Mais bon. I can only hope he’ll pass just as easily through this particular phase of his life as he passed behind me through that turnstile.

(1) 798 Art District - an avant-garde, hip area in Beijing that hosts art and cultural exhibits ranging from Chinese propaganda to Tibetan jewelry. This used to be a large military warehouse and complex, and was converted to a space for young artists to display their work.

(2) The Bird’s Nest and Water Cube- The Bird’s Nest is the 2008 Beijing Olympic stadium. This will be the site of the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as many of the sporting events. The Water Cube is the National Aquatics Center for the 2008 Olympics. It will be the site for the swimming and diving competitions.

(3) Chairman Mao - I took one last trip to Tiananmen Square to the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall to see the Chairman himself. He lies in the mausoleum and is open for public viewing.

Aside from major sites, there were many smaller things-to-do, such as one last visit to my favorite jiaozi (dumpling) restaurant, shopping for souvenirs and gifts, and a final game of cards with my homestay sister. Today we had our final luncheon, and tomorrow there will be a mass scatter of 96 IES study abroad students at the Peking International Airport flying their separate ways.

Although many people are going home for the holidays, I’m extending my time in Asia for a few more weeks to do some traveling with a friend. Our first destination a ten-day visit to Seoul, South Korea. We will be visiting the DMZ line separating North and South Korea, taking a train to see the famous JungDongJin sunrise, and hitting up the slopes for some downhill skiing. From there, we head South to the sub-tropics of Taiwan to have a week-long reunion with my family. Last time I visited Taiwan was 3 summers ago when I could barely communicate with my relatives in Chinese. I am excited to see how much my interactions with them improve this time around. From Taiwan, we head to Hong Kong to bring in the New Year. Finally, I head back to Beijing for a week to say my final goodbye to the city.

During my trip, I will have limited access to update on this blog, but I will be sure to update on my return with stories about each site. Until then, I hope everyone has a happy holiday season!