Vanessa's Journal

Jan. 24

Today I hiked down the mountain (finally!).  It was actually good to go down and interact with friends in town.  I was dreading going down just because it was out of my “comfort zone”, but once I went, I enjoyed myself.  People were happy to see me and asked how things were going up at Wuyipeng.  They worried that we must be cold up on the mountain and I assured them that we were doing fine.  It was good to get a bunch of errands done and cross things off of the “to do list” (e.g. bank, food store, cage fee, phone bill, etc). 

I also was excited to see my good friend Mingjiang.  She is a local girl only a few years younger than me who is currently attending college to become an English teacher.  Her English is amazing and her passion for meeting people from diverse places all over the world is inspiring.  She is one of the most open-minded people I’ve met. Anyway, she’s been friends with people from our research group for a while now and also works for my colleague Wei Liu on some tourism surveys.  I hadn’t seen her since July but heard she was back home in Wolong for the upcoming Chinese New Year Festival. I went to visit her new house and was met with warm, open arms by her whole family. I chatted and ate dinner with her mother, father, brother, and her brother’s girlfriend.  They are a really great family to be around. They are constantly laughing and you just get the feeling that they would rather be around each other than anyone else in the world. Mingjiang cooked dinner for me herself (with help from her dad) and it was really delicious.  We got caught up on what’s been going on in each of our lives and did the usual “girl talk”.  It was great. She is set to graduate with an undergraduate degree in June and will be job hunting. She is nervous about it, but I think she will be fine.