Because every blog needs a first post.

I should have realized it was only a matter of time before I created another blog.

     My consciousness of a world greater than Austin, Texas, came with my ten-month immersion in an all-girl's high school in Japan. Selected by my high school faculty to represent the school abroad at our Japanese sister school, I learned enough Japanese to ask the time and took off for Japan in September 2007 with newly-purchased knee socks, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and little idea of what to expect. From the moment I arrived, I was plunged into Japan, living with two host families over the course of the exchange and taking all of my classes in Japanese. Through battling rogue robotic toilets and learning the hard way the custom of eating everything on my plate, I became fluent in Japanese, discovered the differences (and samenesses) of Japanese and American culture, and began to realize the magnitude of opportunities awaiting those willing to take a chance. 

     I recorded my time in Japan through The Tokyo Blog. The Tokyo Blog was originally intended to inform my family and friends; as my posts and pictures became more extensive, though, my readership expanded to friends of friends, peers, my school, my community, and beyond. At the time, I thought I was simply chronicling the experience to entertain and update my readers. Now, I realize that writing about my successes and mishaps was just as much for my own benefit--to process, debrief, and remember. Rather than dreading my next language- or custom-related shortcoming, I began to eagerly try new things, knowing that the worst mistakes make for the best stories.

     After I returned to the States for my junior year of high school, I abandoned my years of studying Spanish for Chinese. Japanese characters come from the Chinese writing system, and after learning about 400 or 500 characters in Japan (and recalling the labors of conjugating the subjunctive tense in Spanish) it seemed like an obvious choice. Whether it was it was the recent experience of picking up language quickly, the writing system overlap with Japanese, or the lack of verb conjugation in Chinese, I found Chinese coming naturally to me. 

     I got a taste of China in the summer of 2009 when I spent a month going from city to city taking language classes and seeing the sights. While I remember vividly sweating buckets on Great Wall, bartering furiously at the Silk Market, and dressing up in Beijing opera costume and makeup, just as striking was the pollution that reduced the line of vision to about half a mile and my host sister's complaints about the cruelty of her peers in their pursuit to attend a good university. That summer, ethnic riots in Xinjiang (a northeastern region of China) incited the Chinese government's nation-wide shutdown of Facebook. That smog, cut-throat competition, and censorship are realities for millions is distressing; however, understanding the historical, political, social, and cultural elements that have made China what it is today is also incredibly fascinating to me. 

     Now, I am a rising junior at Wellesley College double-majoring in East Asian Linguistics and Music. (East Asian Linguistics is an individual major, i.e. one I am creating myself that combines Japanese and Chinese languages and cultures with pure linguistics, as well as classes that address the two.) This summer I will be spending 10 weeks as an intern at the Beijing Bureau of ABC News and living with a host family. My hope is that this blog will be informative, meaningful, and entertaining for the reader--and at the very least, that it will document what is certain to be a unique experience for me.

     (13 days until departure!)


Audrey


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