Yunnan

  

  

These have been pretty long recently, so to get you caught up on my travels in China earlier this year, I will keep details to a minimum and you can view my adventure through pictures instead.

  

From January 18-February 4, our study abroad program took us on an academic excursion to Yunnan Province in the southern part of China. We traveled to several cities including Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, and Zhongdian (on the Tibetan Plateau). Famous for the ethnic minority populations that live there, we spent three nights in homestays with different villages - eating traditional foods, watching ethnic dancing, and playing with the children. Being on the trip during Chinese New Year added an exciting aspect to the atmosphere and there were firecrackers and fireworks exploding day in and day out around the holiday.

 

              

  

Two moments of the trip stand out to me the most. The first happened on a bike ride (but no crashing this time). In our huge pack of students and tour guides, my friends and I somehow got separated from the group. The weather was warm, the sun was out, and the water in the river below was clear and blue...so we decided to go down and stick our feet in. There were only 5 of us, and the boys immediately started jumping off rocks into the freezing cold water. Not wanting to miss out on this experience ("You're only in China once"), my friend Ashley and I joined in. The whole situation was just perfect: good weather, good friends, doing something that no one else in our group was doing, having fun, and not worrying about anything. It was only later that we found out it was the Mekong River, which prompted us running around and yelling, "Guess what we just did? We just swam in the MEKONG RIVER!!"

     

The second was our visit to an orphanage in Zhongdian. We only spent 3 to 4 hours with the children at the orphanage - playing games, dancing, singing, giving them gifts - but it was an experience that I will always remember. A Swiss Chinese woman (who grew up as an orphan in Switzerland) opened 3 orphanages in China and is now Mom to over 200 kids (the Chinese Government allows her to officially adopt them despite the One Child Policy). It was just amazing to see their innocent love for life and happiness that we had come to play with them. Driving away from the group was pretty moving and as our buses pulled away, I found myself crying as I waved goodbye to the children.

     

But the biggest part about it for me was the reaffirmation that I was in the right place (China) at the right time in my life (now) and on the right path (International Studies Major with a concentration in Ethics and Social Justice) to doing what I want in life (helping other people). I have never really been certain about what I want to do in the future (and I still don't know), but the way the experience at the orphanage moved me just reassured me that I'm doing the right thing and everything else will fall into place when it needs to.