Finally visiting the Great Wall

'Why walls great til the gotta be great?' and other stupid puns I thought up when captioning my Instagram pictures from the Great Wall.

Return Ticket

Going back to a book is like returning to the cities we believe to be our own, but which, in reality, we've forgotten and been forgotten by.

Making Mooncakes on the Grand Canal

Visiting Tangqi for Mid-Autumn Festival

Who is that girl I see (living in Hangzhou for a year)?

I am forever halfway somewhere, not quite settled and not sure if I even want to stay.

That which we call a mountain by any other word would be just as steep

Some lessons on enjoying nature in China

By night in China

It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground.

Trying not to be That Foreigner in China

You know THAT foreigner. The one you don't want to be, right? Getting real honest with myself about who I want to be versus who I am.

To all the places I’ve lived before

Some love letters as novelty wears off and culture shock sets in. (Inspired by that very good Netflix movie that you should definitely watch.)

Make sure your phone is charged

Unlike Poland, where you can easily install your Polish SIM card on a drug dealer cell phone and get on with your life just fine, in China you're gonna want a top-of-the-line smart phone with a long battery life because if there's one thing you need to adjust to life in China, it's your phone.

So I moved to China!!

I didn't really know what to expect coming into China. People will tell you so many different contradictory things--half of them vague observations, half of them lazy racist stereotypes. I've been here for almost a month now, and I'm still not quite sure what to make of it.