On the Road with Julie

Time to Read:

I miss China!

I don’t know that I ever expected to say those three words together in one sentence.

But, boy do I mean it.

This is the first country on my trip that it has taken me many days after leaving to succeed in gathering all of my thoughts and memories into a post – there are just so many. And my time was so full right up to the moment I boarded my plane that it’s taken me days to find the time and the clarity of mind to pull them all together.

There is not a single stop on this trip that I’ve wanted to leave when the time has come. Some moments of departure loomed larger and weighed heavier (I’m looking at you, Vienna!) because I just didn’t want it to end, but regardless of my affection for a place, a language or the people I met, every time I got to that airport, I felt this cleansing flush as the pool of my experiences in that country and language emptied its waters and settled into the fabric of my very fond memories, enriching my whole being, now in the background, as I carried them forward with a clean slate into the new experience. With a few new friends in tow and a lot of new grammar and vocabulary tucked into the nooks of my neurons, each time, I have left a country and moved 100% right on ahead!

But the flavors of China have lingered.

There is a chicken or the egg experience. Writing blog posts is a huge part of my process of saying goodbye to one place and readying myself to begin the next adventure. Have I not yet written my China posts because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet, or am I not ready to say goodbye because I haven’t written my posts. The answer is somewhere under the tree that fell somewhere in the woods where no one was there to hear it. Either way, it’s time to force myself into that closure process.

My 2 weeks in China was just such an absolute blast from start to finish. I took an obscene amount of pictures that I am still sorting through before I can piece them together in a full report. I am writing this from the plane between Kyoto and Hokkaido, Japan (now on the train from the airport to En Con Field Hokkaido where we are making our first Hokkaido stop at a baseball game!) with one week’s worth of new experiences and new memories to report on. So much life lived and observations made in my first week in Japan that I can’t wait to put into words. But, there are memories still in the queue to record, so I’m moving as fast as I can to catch up.

Being in this position has caused me to reflect a bit about the blog and its role on this trip. Yes, I am now going to spend time writing about writing in order to ready myself to continue writing.

This blog does not have a huge readership. I have done approximately zero to try and get eyes on these words. I love having readers to travel along with me, but, that’s not what it’s about – not now anyways. In truth, I am really writing it for myself with the added bonus of sharing with people at home and that I meet along the way that are interested to follow along. 

Writing this blog is a huge part of both being able to get the most out of this trip and my actual ability to pull this trip off at all. There is so much experience in every place that, until I find a way to corral it all into a manageable amount of paragraphs, all of the sights, sounds, smells, words, people and magical moments run roughshod through my senses, like a herd of wild bison storming down the plains with thunderous momentum kicking up a stormcloud of mental and emotional and sensory dust overtaking everything in their path. When I write, the herd settles down to grazing. The dust falls to rest at their hooves and I feel ready to face the next horizon. 

I love that some folks are reading and following along and messaging me about what they are reading or their own experiences in different places or commenting on the blog itself (please keep all of that coming – I LOVE hearing from you!). It’s really fun to share the journey with those of you out there traveling along with me.

And, at the same time, I just need this. Of course, it takes time to write – time that I often find myself wanting to cram full with one more tourist visit, one more hang with a new friend, one more study session to try to shove a few new vocabulary words into my somehow-not-yet-saturated brain. But, it is important to find the discipline to stop stuffing my metaphorical face with more delicious treats of travel long enough to wrap words around as much of it as I can.  It is not just for recording the memories for my own posterity, not just for processing all of the life lived and lessons learned, but also, somehow, writing about the trip seems to be some kind of mental zip drive, a brain hack that is helping me tackle the language challenge of hopping from one linguistic universe to the next. Every word I write, I can feel all of my memories compressing down into a smaller packets, taking up less mental RAM without losing any of the quality, content or resolution and making room for a new set of rules and rhymes and rhythms to move into the neighborhood. And, when I do that, I can actually physically feel my brain make room for the next language. It’s kinda wild.

At this point, there are a lot of languages bouncing around between my neurons in various degrees of lucidity all with a momentum for forward motion and all coated with the insane reality of how much I yet have in front of me to learn as an enticing and inviting challenge ahead. When I finish writing out my memories from a country, each language, with all of its resident rules and rhythms, like an audience milling around before a show, quietly make their way to their seats, the aisles clearing and making room for the next bunch to come in. So, writing all of this is not just for you to read, its not just for me to remember, I have found it to be a necessary ingredient for me to get through the trip it all.

So here I am, a week outside of China with all of my Kyoto memories bouncing around, piling up and eager to find a place on the page. It is so tempting to just skip China and move on…but I can feel that I would lose more than just a few memories recorded if I do that, not to mention some AMAZING pictures of stunning views unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Now that I’m on my way to Hokkaido, with one extra week behind me to keep one foot over there on Chinese soil, I’m ready. Ready to write, ready to let my China memories fold up neatly into the spot in my brain and my heart to make room for Japan (which has already been so wonderful) to take center stage. All of those China memories will be stored snuggly under “treasured”, “fond”, “amazing” and “can’t wait to go back for more”.

So, here I go. I know I only had a single-entry visit Chinese visa in my passport, but it’s time to travel back to China for one more quick trip, one post at time.