Day 1070: Back home!
Apr. 21st, 2013 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nagi_schwarzI know, I didn't update for two weeks. When I travel, I keep an actual handwritten travel journal. I've filled up one now, and I'm started on my second. Here's to hoping I have many travels and can fill up many more journals. I suspect I won't be as much of a jet-setter over the next few years, but I reckon as we travel around to new states and what have you I can still fill out my journal. I know my old journal is filled with tales from Egypt, Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Wyoming, so my new journal can be just as fun. Writing in a leatherbound journal when I'm traveling is kind of a tradition now, really. I am sure I have other travel journals from my childhood. If I were a better human being, I'd keep them all collected in one safe place and preserve the best entries from them (because, really, my posterity doesn't need to be bored with how bored I was on a long flight).
The actual flying itself was gruesome - we had a nine-hour layover in LA on the way out. On the way back, we left Hong Kong at midnight, had an eleven-hour layover in Korea (which was a bit nerve-wracking, given the political climate), and then a seven-hour layover in San Francisco (the benches in Korea are much more comfy to sleep on).
The best part of traveling, hands down, was getting to see my parents, to talk to them and hear their voices and just be around them. I still know the sound of my father's footsteps in the morning, and I learned my way around my mother's (very tiny) kitchen quickly. Hong Kong was much like I remember it, and also not. Downtown TST was more crowded than ever, and I think, when I was a kid, the Indian guys offering copy watches and tailored suits left me alone because, well, I was a kid. Going back as an adult made them much more interested in us. (Cody got a couple of suits tailored anyway, and he looks great in them.)
Hong Kong is more crowded than I remember. The MTR system has expanded (there's a pink line, now) and the announcements are in Mandarin as well as Cantonese and English. There are also sliding glass doors protecting the tunnels, so people don't commit suicide, or Dad says (that gave me some nasty flashbacks to the opening scene of Suicide Club; thanks for that, BenTen). But I still remembered my way around the trains, if not the stations themselves, and I knew how to use my Octopus card. I was super surprised at how many more places one can use an Octopus card, but it was nice, not having to worry about cash. Now that I'm older, I get to bargain for myself on Lady's Street and the Jade Market, and I spent my time either hunting for souvenirs or sussing out scarves and shiny hair pins that will be useful for belly dancing down the line.
We had all the best food ever - went to an amazing Tibetan vegetarian restaurant in Beijing, and of course we had Peking Duck, and we went out for Dim Sum twice, which was awesome. We also wandered around Chung King and got food Indian food, too - roti prata and samosas and curry sauce. Good days. I also got all the red bean steam buns I could ever want, and Cody has now been converted to the cult of the red bean steam bun.
Hong Kong was rainy most of the time, but we had fun visiting the giant buddha on Lantau and the museums, although we never ventured over to Hong Kong Island itself; we stuck Kowloon side. We took the bus out to Sai Kung so Cody could see where we used to live, and I was surprised at how rural it looked to me, so much greener and more crowded with trees. We walked along the water front and attempted to go hiking at the country park but got rebuffed by some likely confused tourist information provider. Still, being that far out was interesting. As a kid, since I never drove, I had a poor sense of distance and location. Now that I'm older and drive and navigate for myself, wow, we really lived out in the middle of nowhere. But it was quiet and peaceful, and I liked that.
Beijing was cold and windy, and it snowed while we were hiking the Great Wall, but one cannot truly appreciate how great that wall really is without seeing it in person. It doesn't look that big in photos, but between climbing if and walking along it and seeing how far it stretched out into the distance - wow. It was even bigger than I remember from my childhood, but we went to a different section this time around. The Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven were waaaaay more crowded with tourists than I remember, but those buildings are amazing all the same, and we had a very smart tourguide with us, which was astoundingly generous of my dad's coworker (he provided for everything; Chinese hospitality is, I think, relatively unknown in this half of the world). Still, I had a great time.
But now we are back, and it's time to do frightening things like obtain a mortgage and buy our first house and get ready to move. I turned in additional paperwork to our mortgage man, and last night we stayed up late looking at houses.
Also, there was an electrical fire in our kitchen on Wednesday night, apparently caused by a water leak from the upstairs apartment, so the stress of dealing with repairmen and the landlords has been less than wonderful, but we're home and getting over jetlag, and that's what matters.
I managed to churn out 10,000 words on my new novel during all our crazy layovers, and I finished red-penning the first draft of my first (not fanfic) novel, so now I need to do actual rewrites, but first I need to edit my friend's draft of her novel, because fair is fair.
Wow. Getting away really helped clear my mind, for writing and the future and for life. Here's go hitting the ground running. Once more.
Once I'm over the jetlag.
It's been a crazy week in America. One of my friends goes to the Boston marathon every year with his dad, and as soon as I heard the news I contacted him. Was our world this scary when I was a kid, and I just didn't know?
The actual flying itself was gruesome - we had a nine-hour layover in LA on the way out. On the way back, we left Hong Kong at midnight, had an eleven-hour layover in Korea (which was a bit nerve-wracking, given the political climate), and then a seven-hour layover in San Francisco (the benches in Korea are much more comfy to sleep on).
The best part of traveling, hands down, was getting to see my parents, to talk to them and hear their voices and just be around them. I still know the sound of my father's footsteps in the morning, and I learned my way around my mother's (very tiny) kitchen quickly. Hong Kong was much like I remember it, and also not. Downtown TST was more crowded than ever, and I think, when I was a kid, the Indian guys offering copy watches and tailored suits left me alone because, well, I was a kid. Going back as an adult made them much more interested in us. (Cody got a couple of suits tailored anyway, and he looks great in them.)
Hong Kong is more crowded than I remember. The MTR system has expanded (there's a pink line, now) and the announcements are in Mandarin as well as Cantonese and English. There are also sliding glass doors protecting the tunnels, so people don't commit suicide, or Dad says (that gave me some nasty flashbacks to the opening scene of Suicide Club; thanks for that, BenTen). But I still remembered my way around the trains, if not the stations themselves, and I knew how to use my Octopus card. I was super surprised at how many more places one can use an Octopus card, but it was nice, not having to worry about cash. Now that I'm older, I get to bargain for myself on Lady's Street and the Jade Market, and I spent my time either hunting for souvenirs or sussing out scarves and shiny hair pins that will be useful for belly dancing down the line.
We had all the best food ever - went to an amazing Tibetan vegetarian restaurant in Beijing, and of course we had Peking Duck, and we went out for Dim Sum twice, which was awesome. We also wandered around Chung King and got food Indian food, too - roti prata and samosas and curry sauce. Good days. I also got all the red bean steam buns I could ever want, and Cody has now been converted to the cult of the red bean steam bun.
Hong Kong was rainy most of the time, but we had fun visiting the giant buddha on Lantau and the museums, although we never ventured over to Hong Kong Island itself; we stuck Kowloon side. We took the bus out to Sai Kung so Cody could see where we used to live, and I was surprised at how rural it looked to me, so much greener and more crowded with trees. We walked along the water front and attempted to go hiking at the country park but got rebuffed by some likely confused tourist information provider. Still, being that far out was interesting. As a kid, since I never drove, I had a poor sense of distance and location. Now that I'm older and drive and navigate for myself, wow, we really lived out in the middle of nowhere. But it was quiet and peaceful, and I liked that.
Beijing was cold and windy, and it snowed while we were hiking the Great Wall, but one cannot truly appreciate how great that wall really is without seeing it in person. It doesn't look that big in photos, but between climbing if and walking along it and seeing how far it stretched out into the distance - wow. It was even bigger than I remember from my childhood, but we went to a different section this time around. The Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven were waaaaay more crowded with tourists than I remember, but those buildings are amazing all the same, and we had a very smart tourguide with us, which was astoundingly generous of my dad's coworker (he provided for everything; Chinese hospitality is, I think, relatively unknown in this half of the world). Still, I had a great time.
But now we are back, and it's time to do frightening things like obtain a mortgage and buy our first house and get ready to move. I turned in additional paperwork to our mortgage man, and last night we stayed up late looking at houses.
Also, there was an electrical fire in our kitchen on Wednesday night, apparently caused by a water leak from the upstairs apartment, so the stress of dealing with repairmen and the landlords has been less than wonderful, but we're home and getting over jetlag, and that's what matters.
I managed to churn out 10,000 words on my new novel during all our crazy layovers, and I finished red-penning the first draft of my first (not fanfic) novel, so now I need to do actual rewrites, but first I need to edit my friend's draft of her novel, because fair is fair.
Wow. Getting away really helped clear my mind, for writing and the future and for life. Here's go hitting the ground running. Once more.
Once I'm over the jetlag.
It's been a crazy week in America. One of my friends goes to the Boston marathon every year with his dad, and as soon as I heard the news I contacted him. Was our world this scary when I was a kid, and I just didn't know?
