The Shortest Longest Summer

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. 

My family at Northville's graduation

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! 

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.

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. 

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!