Crazy Summer and Closing Thoughts

(I wrote this post in word and then copied it over so all my smiley faces turned into "J's" I'm not gonna go through and change it all. Sorry bout that.)
Wow, it's been a crazy summer. I’m sorry for not updating y’all on all that’s been going on. On a few different occasions, I’ve started writing a post and I was either too tired to finish it or I was called by a friend to go somewhere. I won’t write about my whole summer but I can say that it has been amazing and I’ve had so much fun.

A few days back my family and my good friend cx went to see the pandas. They were so cute! Here are some pictures. The pictures aren’t that great quality. Actually, it's horrible quality. Anyway,it was a lot of fun seeing them especially with my friend! J Then, after seeing the panda’s we went to my cx’s house to eat with her husband and hang out. I always love hanging out with them.

One crazy thing that happened this summer was my mom sprained her ankle really bad. It’s already been three weeks and she’s just now kinda starting to walk normal.

Yesterday I went shopping by myself. I couldn’t get anyone to go with me. L I don’t like shopping by myself. I find myself laughing and there’s no one to laugh with. Then, I just look weird. Ha, anyway, I bought a USA Olympic shirt. I loveth it. J I love the olympics!!

I guess about a week ago my friend invited me to go get our toenails painted. I was just planning on getting normal blue toes or something. But when we got there my friend was looking at one of the example nails and was commenting on how the circles or bubbles looked like the Olympic rings. Well, that gave me a great idea. I thought, “Well, we could paint our toes white and paint the Olympic rings on our toes!” I could tell my friend wasn’t too excited about that idea but I decided I really wanted to do it. So, I told them to do it and my friend decided she would too. Then, I got another great idea which was too make my right foot American. Through a lot of thought between my friend and I we finally decided on a design which you can see in the picture. Then, I decided to go all out and do my hands too. J My friend decided she’d just stay satisfied with the toes. J It was loads of fun!

I have a feeling that I won’t be able to write a lot this summer. We’re going to be busy packing up so much. In a week, our family will be leaving cheng du and going to where we used to leave for one week to say good-bye to our friends and pack up our old house. Then, we’ll fly to the states and arrive September 5th. So, this all means a lot of tears and a lot of packing. Lately, it’s been really hard. I can’t really comprehend the fact that we’re really leaving. It’s so weird. When I was leaving the states three years ago, I was scared/sad. You can look at my first post on this blog. Then, my mind changed and I started to fall in love with this country. You can see through all of my posts how my heart really changed and changed pretty fast. I had some rough times but overall it’s been the best experience of my life. If I wasn’t put here, I don’t know what I’d be like right now.

I think it’s interesting how I titled one of my beginning posts as, “Last day on Planet Earth.” That’s how I feel now as I’m going back to the US. I guess the US is mars.. I dunno. Haha. I wish I could write all the reasons why I love this country, but I would definitely fail to include everything. When we first moved here, I just kept the mindset that we would be leaving soon and that I would just get through two years and I’d be fine. But, soon enough I found out that it’s hard to keep up with people back in the states and I couldn’t help but love the people I was surrounded with. I couldn’t help but learn the beautiful language and enjoy speaking every word I could and learning it. I couldn’t help but love my friends who taught me so much. They taught me what real friendship is like and so much more. Their lives were and are and still will be a wonderful example in my life. I love them so much and I will miss them terribly. I couldn’t help but fall in love with the beautiful country side and mountains. I couldn’t help but adore the culture and want to learn all about it. I couldn’t help it. And pretty soon, I found myself enjoying every day I’ve lived here and very soon I started dreading going back. So many nights I’ve had dreams about flying back and arriving at the airport and what all that will feel like. It’s scary to think that pretty soon I’ll find out. I’ll be living out what’s seemed so far for so long. Every time I think of shopping in HEB and walking into an American restaurant and driving down the driveway to Gram and Paw’s house and drinking a Dr. Pepper Paw got for me from the garage and just being in the US again, I get this weird feeling. It’s like a dream to me.. all fuzzy. I know I’ve only been here for not even three years but it still feels like a dream… so far away. The scariest thing is that after being in the US for a year or two, I’ll feel like this country’s a dream. I don’t want this to ever feel like a dream.. .this that’s been so real to me for so long. This that’s changed my life and has meant so much to me.

Those are just some of my feelings about everything. As you can tell, I’ve loved this country. But on the positive side, Gram and PAW will be at the airport waiting with loving arms. I can’t even express how much I’ve missed them and especially Paw. Gram’s been to see us three times which has been WONDERFUL, but I haven’t even seen Paw once. I’ve really missed him. So, it’s gonna be great. JThere are some things that I’m excited about believe it or not. J

I guess that’s all for now. I’m going to be so busy these next few weeks as we get things together and packed up and write letters to our friends and buy gifts and say good bye and everything. It’ll be emotionally hard (saying good bye) and physically stressful (packing and moving). My mom will be sooo busy.

Love all of you guys and I’m looking forward to seeing y’all soon!

Holli