That's all for now folks

Wow, it’s been a long time since I updated you all and this will be the last blog post of Ellie’s Escapades, as I go home in just 2 days time! Although I am very excited to be going home, and leaving the ridiculous heat here – it’s between 31° and 36° here every day and super humid – I am definitely not used to the idea that I will actually be leaving, I don’t think my brain will quite understand until I’ve been back in the UK for at least a few weeks!

   This second half of term was pretty busy it seems – it involved the mid-term exams that apparently were coming up when I wrote the last blog post; a solo trip to Chongqing for a few days; a super super amazing trip out West, still in Sichuan, but in Tibetan areas, which involved living in tents and scrabbling around on a mountainside searching for chongcao, which is this caterpillar fungus thing which is a popular type of Chinese medicine, and can sell for crazy amounts of money, and then staying in the nearest big town and dirt biking around; my end of term exams;end of term celebrations; many goodbyes to classmates and then to almost all the Newcastle lot; a visit from my friend Beth which was not only a wonderful reunion, but also an opportunity to see lots of Chengdu sights for the last (and sometimes the first) time!

   Last Friday I returned from just short of 5 days in Xiamen, which was super relaxing although still sweat central. I stayed with the family that I stayed with during Chinese New Year, but also had the chance to meet up with my other friends in the city to hang out, and say goodbye. During the week we not only went to a circus –which had some great acrobats and trapeze artists, but also very iffy animal performances, like monkeys in suits, brown bears walking on their hind legs,and a hippo… - and a performance/ exhibition about Fujian’s history and culture(Fun Fact: They used to build houses out of oyster shells and mud!), but we also spent an evening on the beach in front of the house, paddling, drawing in the sand, getting flipflops and feet stuck in huge chunks of clay that made up parts of the beach, and also searching for tiny crabs by the light of our phone flashlights.

Now I’m back in Chengdu, and bit by bit, sorting out what I need to before I go home. Since my mind is tending in that direction, and I’ve been thinking and talking a lot recently about Reverse Culture Shock (which is an experience most people experience on returning home after having been abroad for a significant amount of time) I thought I’d let you in on some of my thoughts, and the lists I have made to process them! (Because really, who doesn’t love making lists?)

Things I will not miss about China:

·        Current humidity and high temperatures

·        Spitting and hucking up phlegm on the street and everywhere

·        Kids and babies peeing on the street and everywhere

·        The split trousers that small kids wear to facilitate this

·        Dodgy/ iffy animal performances

·        Air pollution and having to wear pollution masks

·        Being stared at in most places I go for being a foreigner

·        Being called  ‘foreigner’ by people walking past in the street or taxi drivers

·        Being a target for English practice all around, particularly being told that it was nice to meet me when we haven’t actually met yet…

·        The slow pace of life, on the occasions when I want to get things done

Things I will miss about China:

·        The FOOD!

·        The hospitality I have experienced on so many occasions – whether being treated in a restaurant, cooked for, or allowed to live in someone’s home and have every need catered for, for as long as you are there for, and longer if you had decided to stay

·        Hearing Chinese spoken everywhere – if I understand it makes me feel great, if I don’t it reminds me how crazy it is that I am living in a foreign country

·        The cheapness of eating out – which I do everyday – and getting taxis – which I do on the reg

·        Offo bikes – they are like Boris bikes but better because you can park them anywhere, and they seem to be on promotion all the time so you often don’t pay anything

·        Baidu maps and QQ music – China’s greatest apps

·        The opportunities that I have had to travel this year

·        Tea houses/ tea drinking culture here – not only the actual tea, but also the atmosphere; they have to be the most chill place I have ever sat for a few hours

·        The slow pace of life – but only when you don’t want to get something done

·        My friends from Sichuan that I have made here

·        My friends from Xiamen that I have made there

·        My friends from all over the world that I have met here!

 

I am very excited to be returning home and seeing family and friends again, but the closer I get the more things I think of that I will miss here. It will be an adjustment for sure.

I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog posts I have written this year – I certainly enjoyed writing them (forever the long-winded story-teller), and I hope they maybe gave you a flavour of some of the things I got up to this year.

Before I go, a quick plea – when I see you, please don’t ask the question every Year Abroad student dreads…..

‘So how was your Year Abroad?’

It is truly the hardest question to answer! I’m looking forward instead to some stellar, imaginative questions, which no one but you would think of asking! 

Be seeing you soon!