Happy senior year HUSTers! Did everyone have a good summer? It's bittersweet but I am sure everyone is ready to get back into the swing of things.
I did not keep a blog while I was in China because I had super-limited computer access. The most I was able to do was update Facebook statuses (stati?) occasionally. According to my good friend Val, she said it was like reading a travel guide, and I was happy to hear this. However, in order to receive class credit (3 hours) for the course, one thing I was required to do was turn in the three best of my journal entries. I turned them into Alice (whom, if you have never had the pleasure of meeting, you MUST... Alice Siqin Yang works in CWIL and is Chinese herself, and went with us on the trip; she is a lovely and very knowledgeable lady and was constantly helping me haggle with the natives, and she is actually a hard-driving bargainer so it was great fun to observe), who in turn put them on Blackboard. I went a little overboard on some of them because I was really excited about what I saw, but in any case, if you would like to read any of the three journals just for fun (I put pictures in them too), then let me know and I can email you a copy! I guess this is pretty presumptuous to assume that you're all TERRIBLY fascinated about what I saw in China, so you certainly do not have to read them if you don't want.
Maybe you would like to see some pictures! If we are Facebook friends, then I have several albums from each Chinese city posted already. But there is still plenty more where that came from! I think I took about 1200 pictures total. If you're into people-watching and local lives, then China is the place for you; it is truly a photographer's dream. There are so many people and SO MUCH constant activity going on around you at all times that it's hard to decide where to take a picture first. I think I am going to put them all on my Picasa (the link is to the left under "Clickables") for my family to see, too.
Chinese babies, for example, are adorable (and I do mean adorable, they look like little dolls), so I have a small plethora of pictures of them. Usually I would gesture to their mothers if I could take a picture of their child, and the mothers were always very flattered. I have a hunch that they were so flattered because it was a novelty to have a young Westerner want to have a picture of your child.
I could go on and on about this, but in short, they believe that Westerners have tons of money and guns and can do what they want, when they want. They watch Gossip Girl there and believe we young people lead lives like Blair Waldorf (HA). Chinese people will truly believe what they see on TV, which is completely skewed anyway because the government controls everything they watch, and they have limited channels called CCTV. They cannot even access all the YouTube videos that we can, because they are all censored. They believe whatever their government tells them. Johnny Depp is among one of the censored topics, for example. Weird, but it's true.
In addition to my China experience, I did an independent study with a professor of Sociology at Benedictine University in Lisle, IL. I never realized how much I love sociology, and unfortunately only have time to minor in it. Every class I have taken I have loved, and the professors were good too (one of whom I took in Spain). Cheesy, I know, but I have learned a lot from them. The independent study I did was about the Sociology of Sports. Before you point and laugh, I learned more about the relationship between humans and the sports we do for apparent fun than I ever had before.
It was funny because the first book I read was on bullfighting (literally the book was called "On Bullfighting"). Given my background in Spanish studies (but still as an American), it was an interesting perspective to have when approaching the book. Can bullfighting be considered a sport? What about drag racing or bass fishing? What about the fact that bullfighting is a matter of life and death? Does baseball have a similar deeply rooted character in this country (with its own rituals, uniforms, legendary players who redefined the game, fans who dislike bad games and unfair competition)? And so on and so forth. So it turned out that I could take an interest in sports after all. [:
So, that is the extent of my studies this summer. It was also filled with slaving away at Walgreens, going to Clinton, IA to visit some SMC friends, and then going to downtown Chicago when they came to visit me. It was a productive summer. But I am looking forward to making senior year really great.
