Back to the East

Welcome back to Silk Road East, my personal blog about all thing's Xi'an, China, and Me. I hope that you enjoy the new selections and don't forget to browse through the old if you haven't had a chance to read them all. My first two weeks back in Xi'an have been full of spontaneous and wonderful experience and I would like to share some of them with you. So with out further ado the newest entry in Silk Road East....

Travel for many is a passion. Changing places and faces brings the color and vibrancy to life that pushes us to discover and explore what is just beyond the horizon. For me, traveling to China provides a sense of newness that is reminiscent of a child's perception of the world. Everything is outside the realm of prior experience, thus allowing you to through out all previous assumption and soak up simply what "is."

Now that I have returned to Xi'an, I still feel this sense of wonder but I am now in a place that I am familiar with. I have a life here complete with friends, an apartment, a long list of great restaurants and markets that I frequent. But perhaps, the most thrilling feeling is knowing enough of the language to feel comfortable going to new places by myself. Without a basic knowledge of the language it is easy to feel separate from your surroundings and that isolation can be one of the toughest parts of being here. But now, the gateway has been opened into the lives of Chinese people. This trip, I arrived in Xi'an greeted by a snow storm and it turned what can be a drab city into a place of subtle beauty. I decided to spent the day walking around to the place I spend my free time and see them in this new way.

In my first few days here, I was lucky enough to see Xi'an in the snow and my day out walking the snow dusted streets and parks is very much emblematic of how I've become comfortable with life here. As, I strolled on the banks of the central lake at Lian Hu park snapping pictures of the snow topped pagodas when a snow ball landed behind me. I turned to find three little girls laughing and hiding behind some tables. I told them I was a baseball player who can throw very fast and that they might not want to take me on. Their response, a volley of snowballs. I put my camera in my backpack made a few snowballs a begun the fight. Upon seeing this a whole field of kids on a snow day decided to join in the fight again the foreigner. I retreated to the top of a big rock, dodging the snowballs from about 15 kids. I took up my post and rained down snowballs on them all the while using my umbrella as a shield. After about 5 minutes or so they realized what I meant when I said I was a baseball player and gradually retreated out of my throwing range. I truly was the king of the mountain.

Life is unexpected and going to a new place makes that fact all the more obvious. This is one of the greatest gifts that my experiences in China have given me because it has allowed me to see the world again as a child does- to take a chance, step out into the unknown, and find out what is on the other side of the horizon.