Guess where I'm going?

This time? I've learned.

I visited two candy stores (read: my mom's bookshelf and the SDSU library) for a delicious feast four whole months before heading off to China. Which isn't exactly the one year I was aiming for, but it's certainly better than the two weeks and threefourfive days I gave myself to devour every tidbit of information I could find on Australia and New Zealand last year.

This trip will be rather different because I'll living in one location (studying Chinese) for one year rather than traipsing all over two countries for two months.

After that year? I don't know. Ambiguity seems to be a common theme in life. More language studies? (Scholarships please!) Job searching in the U.S.? Job searching in China? I'm open to anything.

Two and a half months ago, I wrote about goals and said that I'd wander the paths towards 3D animation, graphic design and learning Chinese in China.

3D animation? Reality check. I have a very, very, very long way to go. I'm not giving you up. But you are now in much further realms of possible futures.

Graphic design? Reality check. There is so much more to learn. But you're alive and kicking.

(Learning the above, plus some real-world design projects.)

Studying Chinese in China? Reality check. All the wandering keeps leading back to this path even when I resisted. It hasn't sunk it yet. But that's okay. I'm going to China.

I'm going to China!

On Socks

I'm sitting in LAX, waiting for my flight to Auckland, and all I can think about is a pair of socks. A pair of fluffy, warm socks.

Flights can be chilly. And since my feet have mimicked my personality in liking freedom and wiggle room, I kindly outfitted them with a pair of flip flops. A nice pair of cool, breezy flip flops.

And now my toes are chilly and have nowhere to hide.

I feel a bit like Arthur Dent without a towel. Samwise Gamgee without his rope. Maybe we'll visit Lothlorien (whose river scenes were filmed in Fernside, New Zealand) and Galadriel will give me a pair of socks. Magic elven socks!

Come to think of it, I don't even have real rope or a real towel. My towel is a tiny speck of quick dry REI goodness. Not a fluffy wrap yourself like a burrito towel. My rope- well, I have a twisted clothesline, sewing thread and floss.

And my socks? Stuck with my speck of a towel and rope excuses in my check-in luggage.

Oh, how I miss thee fluffy warm socks! How it won't be the same when we are reunited 13 whole hours from now! For I will have closed toed shoes then and your warming properties will no longer be needed. In fact, my feet will scorn you for the extra layer of confinement you will then provide.

But for now, and for the next thirteen hours, I and my feet will miss you.

On traveling before traveling

The pure excitement on my face today would make one think I had transformed into a six year old in a feast of a candy store.

But... no.

I was in the San Diego State University library on the third floor with delectable tomes of knowledge crammed into every aisle.

The next time I decide to trot off to a foreign country, remind me to devour my local library a year in advance.

Two weeks and three days until Australia and New Zealand. (Or two weeks and five days. Oh dear, this time travel- uh, time change thing confuses me sometimes.)

Two weeks and threefourfive days til Australia and New Zealand and somehow I've ended up with

• 2 movies
• 4 guidebooks
• 2 traveling the world guidebooks
• 1 Lord of the Rings location guide (fangirl awake and squeal!)
• 2 CultureSmart books
• 1 art book
  
• 1 travel narrative
  
• 1 compilation of New Zealand short stories

aaand

• 5 books relating to race relations, politics, and national identity

with

• more on the way, how I love thee San Diego Public (and private) Libraries!

(come, drool with me.)

The latter group of 5 (or on the left in the picture) were the books I turned into a drooling 6 year old for. Can you tell majored in physics and art and not sociology?! Hah! Apparently REJ and the KKK robe didn't burn me out on race and identity topics as much as I thought.

I must say, out of the entire library I'm amalgamating in the living room, I'm least excited to read the guidebooks. No offense to Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Frommer's and Fodor's. (I almost wrote Frodo's there. Truly, he lives!)

It's just that—as attached to guidebooks as I am—they can be awfully boring. Lists, facts, do this, do that, or this, not that. But they don't have stories in them except for tales of wacky backpackers before me whose crazy antics I'm not nearly wild nor ThrowAllHelltotheWinds enough to imitate.

The other stuff grounds me in the places I'm going to visit, reminding me that these are countries with histories, conflicts, cultures, and real people living their every day, day-to-day, daily lives that are not "exotic" in the slightest. And isn't that what's beautiful in the end?