I’ve been gone for almost four months now and I’m starting to miss a lot of things.  

• I miss living in a “normal,” stable place for an extended period of time.
• I miss American food, although I do not miss how expensive American food is.  
• I miss having a kitchen to cook in.
• I miss being able to pick up a phone and call people without worrying about a 13 hour time difference.
• I miss having a library to study in.
• I miss having internet where I live, so I have to go to cafes to get internet.
• I miss not having to peel an apple in order to eat it.
• I miss drinking tap water.
• I miss my grandma’s cooking.
• I miss seeing friends and family.
• I miss eating salads.
• I miss being able to flush toilet paper.
• I miss an actual shower.
• I miss feeling “American clean.”
• I miss having smoke-free and pollution-free air to breathe.

Lately, in Kunming, while I’m doing language class, I study Chinese for about four hours a night. I have one-on-one classes with the same two teachers as before.  Other than class, everything is extremely relaxing.  I have found a lot of really delicious and cheap places to eat near the Yunnan Mingzu Daxue campus.  During classes, I cover a chapter a day, which is about 50 to 60 words a day, which means a little over 100 characters a day.  It’s not the easiest thing to memorize characters in one night so I can do well on the dictations I have in class.  I have been finding lots of cheap DVDs, and I have been getting some shopping out of the way before my mom arrives in Kunming six days from now.  

I have less than a month left in China, and I just want to experience as much as I can after I finish my intensive language class in one week.

Time goes so quickly…