As my family’s car sped through the countryside towards
Chicago, I continued my chicken-scratch of Chinese character practice on my
dollar store whiteboard. Taking a break
from the endless lines, curves, and boxes of a language that had consumed a
large portion of my summer; I looked out the window for a vista of my state,
which I would soon be exiting for over 10 months. Finally, my departure
prompted me to pick up blog writing again, which I had abandoned around finals. I figured that I might as well be
semi-productive on the car ride and attempt to summarize some of my life in the
past months. As much as I would like to
start my narrative with the last weeks of LPC year one, describing finals and
losing my second year friends to the corners of the world would not be a story
that I would enjoy writing or reading. Also, many of the highlights are already
summarized in my friend Arzu’s blog, arzucanaskin.com, in case you want to read about
those busy weeks. So I instead decided
to start my story with my re-entry to the US, for what would both be my longest
and shortest summer ever.
When the wheels of the plane touched down in Detroit, I was quite
jetlagged, but the excitement of return gave me enough energy to surprise some
of my friends, get ice cream, answer a barrage of my parent’s questions, before
inevitably passing out with “natural sleep supplements” aka sleeping
pills. The next day, I did some planning
for the upcoming months ahead. For the
first time ever, my summer started in May, meaning I would technically have my
longest summer ever, a fact that I debate now that those three months have
passed in a blink of an eye. Anyways,
in my summer plan, I realized I would have to balance schoolwork (thanks LPC
for assigning 4 major assignments during this time), college apps, friends,
family, graduation at Northville High, a job, travel, and other unforeseen
plans. I’m not sure if balance would be the right word, considering the issues
I’ve faced in the first two items on the list.
As I readjusted to life without three other roommates and
90% humidity, my first two concerns were finding a job and graduation at
Northville. Regarding graduation at a
school that I hadn’t attended for a year, I had completed enough credits in my
three years plus some previous summer work and a transferred English credit
from LPC to give me the same graduation status as my peers in the Northville
Class of 2014. I was really glad that I
could walk the stage with my friends that I had known for the past 12 years and
receive a diploma from the school that had taught me so much and had given me
the opportunities that led me on my path to Hong Kong and beyond.
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| My family at Northville's graduation |
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| Senior All Night Party Hypnotism |
When the actual ceremony came, my twin, a class officer,
read my name (incorrectly of course), and I picked up my diploma, shook the
hand of my principal, and later nearly lost my cap in the sea of thrown
hats. After that ended, I was pleasantly
surprised that I only had to take a handful of quality pictures, instead of the
repetitive mess of selfies and flashes that characterized the semi-formal
school events I attended in Hong Kong.
Leaving the parking lot was not nearly as pleasant; instead, I was
gridlocked in my parking spot until a middle age man gave us an opening in
traffic after 20 minutes in order to make a pervy pass at my sister. We sped away from him, ate with one of my
closest friend’s family, and then attended the Senior All Night Party, a
lock-in extravaganza allowing the Class of 2014 to be together one last
time. For the next night, the school was
transformed, with a makeshift casino, endless food, odd games like Boxer Bingo
(you win a pair of boxers if you win bingo), and performances like a hypnotist
show. The hypnotism show was quite
bizarre and ended with 20 grads zombie-walking around the auditorium, caressing
random people. I was lucky enough to end
my Senior All Night Party experience by being death-stared at by one of them
while my elbow was touched, how fun!
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| My grandma looking at the senior collages before the party |
Back to the topic of job-hunting, I decided that I needed a
source of income if I wanted to be able to afford traveling and to continue
saving for college. Within a week or
two, I was lucky enough to find a job at a nearby lighting store, Ray’s
Electric. For the rest of the summer, I
spent 25 hours a week assembling and disassembling fixtures, swinging from
chandeliers, cutting wire and stocking boxes.
Minus the swinging from chandelier part, because that probably would
have gotten me fired. Even without that
entertainment, I still enjoyed the job, because the coworkers were great and
the work was much less repetitive than other alternatives like flipping burgers
and accidentally getting fried by flying oil at 麦当劳 (McDonald’s).
During my non-work days, I tried to hang out with friends
and get a little homework done. In general,
the first took priority, but I figured out an effective new way of studying:
basic white girl Chinese. In order to do
that, I would take my Chinese vocab list, sit out in the sun in my family’s
chaise lounges or the local pool, and repeatedly scribble words. To others, it might appear like I was
tanning, but at least I learned a few more words of Chinese.
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| Driving selfie at the grocery store race |
Outside school and actual work, I spent some quality time
with friends before many of them left Northville for trips to South Korea,
Germany, camps, and even Hong Kong. In
the weeks I had with my friends here, I managed to fill the time with a mix of
activities: visiting the largest amusement park in the world in terms of rides, Cedar Point; going to a Tigers baseball game; grad party hopping, more mundane things
like FIFA and GTA; or in times of extreme boredom, electric cart racing around
the local grocery store. Other times,
when my friends in Northville were busy or gone, I would Skype at odd hours
with my LPC friends.
One day, I was lucky enough to meet up with one of my LPC
friends, without a computer screen and a thousand miles in between us. My Palestinian-American friend Deema was in
the Detroit area for an Iftar
dinner/fundraiser for her dad’s charity, the Palestinian Children Relief Fund
(PCRF). We wandered around a mall for an
hour or two, caught up on life, attempted to access the roof of a random hotel,
and then finally went to the fundraiser.
At the dinner, several speakers talked about the current situation in Gaza
and Syria, and a few children maimed by bombs who received free medical care in
the US through the PCRF were present. Since
its inception, the PCRF has flown over 1000 children to the US, and arranged
many medical supplies and doctors to travel to Palestine. Given all the media attention surrounding the
situations, it was much more eye-opening to see some of the affected children
directly, and hear about a charity that has done so much.
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| After the dinner |
While I could write much more about the summer, I’d rather
not turn my entire summer into a soap opera, or go into endless detail
regarding every event and person I’ve met in the past three months. Hopefully,
this entry has filled in some of the gaps since my last entry, and I’ll now be
encouraged to post on a slightly more regular basis. Most likely, I’ll recap my end-of-summer family
vacation to Northern Michigan in the next post, and then take a hiatus as I go
on my next adventure: a pre-second-year trip to Guatemala with my friend
Esteban. I really can’t believe how fast
these summer months have went, and within two weeks, I’ll be back to life in
Hong Kong!
