SIX MONTHS!

My parents keep on hinting in their e-mails to me that I need to write a new blog entry. “We miss our weekly updates.” “Your Aunt was asking about you today…” Truth be told, there really hasn’t been much to write about as of recent. For the first time in six months (and yes, this coming Monday marks the six-month point on tour…which also means, for those of you who are counting, that it’s downhill from here, we’ve passed the middle point, and it’s over halfway done!) I’ve had the opportunity to sit down, to relax, to pretend like I’m not “touring.”

My camera has sat quietly in its bag in the corner of my room, I have more than just my jacket hanging in my hotel closet, and the omelet guy at the breakfast buffet knows just how I like my eggs. It’s a relief, to be completely honest, to let the pressure slide for a few weeks, to not feel inclined, let alone obligated, to go out and explore, to visit museums and mausoleums, temples and TV towers, to take a hundred pictures a day and then fret about which strange food I want to eat for dinner.

But part of the joy of it all IS the pressure, the excitement of being somewhere fresh and new, somewhere you may never see again in your life, so you must go out, you must see that temple or try that food, walk down that alleyway and snap a photo of that woman on the street corner. We spent months fighting with our surroundings and ourselves, trying to find a substantial meal or a spot of solitude within the 24-7 monotony of the same 70 people, on and off a bus, in and out of cramped hotel rooms, disregarding discourteous stares or sickening stenches on the street.

Already, cities in China have begun to blend together, and anywhere we travel now can only be experienced as relative to what we’ve been through thus far. I may not look at Chinese food in the same way ever again (in fact, unless you’re in China or Chinatown you probably won’t see “Chinese food” ever again), but to know that I’ve been there and done that offers a kind of solace in this prolonged adventure.

Yesterday I ordered Mongolian BBQ noodles at the nearby underground food court and didn’t think twice before grabbing a pair of chopsticks out of the container to my right. Had someone offered me a fork I would have laughed at them. Eat noodles with a fork? That’s just silly. That’s when I knew I’d been for a while.