Shanghai Noons, Shanghai Nights

There is one thing you can’t miss in Shanghai.

It’s not the fact that the only red you see are located is the belt in the displays of the new summer collection at Guess, or that the only pictures of Mao displayed are locked in a case of 20th century art at the Shanghai museum. Nor is it that the only apparent remnants of the grand socialist society lie in signs promoting ‘’One child, one family,’’ posted along the fences of side streets, largely unnoticed by a family with three children strolling past who can more than afford to pay the nominal fine while baby girls born five hours northwest are either aborted or left on the side of the road.

It’s not the Goliath high rises lit up like the Vegas strip, complete with all it’s tacky revelry like the busty Shanghai ad girls of the 20s that drew many a white boy to the Orient. Only instead of having ‘’Little Lotus’’ or ‘’Fragrant Blossom’’ [why are the always associated with flowers?] promising cigarettes and a good time, the new ladies of the Far East fantasy are dubbed ‘’nikon’’, ‘’toshiba’’ or ‘’hsbc bank’’, enticing western grandsons with the new global-economic frontier and fortunes measured in RMBs.

It’s not the number of Laowais I literally run into on the side of the road, the ones jogging past the Shanghai Pearl glistening in all their sweaty glory while the true natives look on in wonder. They are everywhere, rooting every nook and cranny of the city, like a summer sandstorm sweeping over the continent from the Gobi desert or the equivalent of Euro-trash infesting New York City streets. I thank and curse them for the fact that I can get around the city fine subsisting on English, Cantonese, with maybe a bit of Spanish in between when I want to order a churro, and for seducing me to break my language vows to Mandarin with it’s oh-so-irresistible and understandable twists of the tongue.

It’s not the number of condos or high rises undergoing mitosis everyday, a new bacteria that molest the beautiful city skyline. With price tags to beat the national GDP, they are the essential definition of ‘’gu jin bing chun’’, or old and new coexisting together. Blame it on either a sub-par contractor with a depraved sense of humor or land disputes, but every single one of these new bourgeois habitats seem perfectly ill-suited for it’s location, usually right across the trafficked street from crumbling stone ghettos that miraculously survived the tumultuous attacks in the first half of the 20th century, the level of disparity between one neighbor to the other is hard to wrap my mind around—one is chauffeured around in a benz and sips on imported wine from the Napa Valley worth 100 kuai for half a glass, possibly barely what the neighbor can pull together from a month of selling watermelon on the corner of the road.

It’s not the little voice in your head which slowly turns up the volume dial as you stumble across the revelation—‘’Is this country developing too fast for it’s citizens to keep up to?’’
What you really can’t miss are the starbucks. I’ve been volleying between china and the states since the age of nine, but it was not till stumbling upon the green mermaid at every twist and bend that I finally realized—holy god in heaven, I have found the promised motherland, and it reeks of caffeine.

And that’s just the way I like it. After a entire week on our so-called ‘’social studies’’ trip with our teachers to better understand Chinese culture, I have, instead, developed a newfound appreciation for the states and the fact that I can get a decent stake there for a fraction of what they’re trying to rip me off with here. Instead of actually pay attention as the CEOs of affluent companies around the Yangtze River Delta, I slept and pondered on my growing disgust at the way in which success in the Chinese economy is dependent solely on money and connections and how I would never be able to and never want to fit into a society of false friendships for the sake of political strategy. At night, while the rest of the HBA members left to party it up in the infamous shanghai nightlife [better get your kicks now, folks, most of you won’t be able to hit up a club for a year after eternity when we return to the states], I, not completely willfully, spent most of my time in a less-than-spectacular dorm that brought on uncanny unpleasant flashbacks to my stays in the country, watching my Sex and the City collection, with American meals at tourist central to make up for it.

Walking down the very streets I had also graced almost exactly a year ago, I began to wonder what had changed in the interval since I was last in this city. A year ago, I had found my way to shanghai for the day with my father, two little cousins, and an uncle who I reluctantly claim familial ties to. In 2008, I had believed that it would be my first and only visit to the city for a long while. Little did I realize that I would be back so soon, but I found myself realizing [yet again] that, in actuality, a millennium had passed since I was last there. A year ago, shanghai would be exotic as it would get, a city of glitz and glamour I had never laid eyes on where I was a complete stranger with no means of communication with the locals. I had no clue then that I had stumbled into the same metropolis as people that I would soon cross paths with in a little more than a month, and that I would forge ties that would have me hopping around china to catch up with my new old friends. Asking myself a derivative of the same question I asked as I moved out of the freshman dorms, I wondered how the girl a year ago would react if she saw me walking down the street.

And finally, this is what I have to show for a week of living it up and down and all around Shanghai; the thesis of my term paper which is sure to skyrocket to the topof the Shanghai Time’s must read list and give the photocopied Bernanke novel being sold on the side of the street a run for its money—

Shanghai’s new economy is a blue kitty cat.

Yep.

Try to wrap your minds around that.

A Want and a Need

Here at HBA, I constantly find myself torn between what I want to do and what I have to do. For example, at this very moment, I’m torn between aimlessly surfing the web [my want] and starting my homework for the night [my need]. Though both are strong motivation to follow through with any given project, I find that neither alone provides enough fuel to ever see something to the end. For example; there are obviously times when I am working on an essay or a problem set that I don’t want to do, but obviously need to do for a grade; I put in the effort necessary of me, but I never go above an beyond to find real meaning for my work, and this usually results in a less than ideal result. However, pure ambition without necessary reason also results in things falling by the wayside; I make a grand attempt every summer to have read every major work of Shakespeare and have failed again and again. Thus, neither the want nor the need ever suffices.
It’s one of those rare occasions when I actually stumble across something that fits into both boundaries, something that I have to do and want to do. With both reason [a need] and will [a want] at stake, I find that satisfactory results are in reach. This is what I want to find for Chinese. The needs I see are a need to satisfy my language citation and to earn some desperately necessary As to pull up my less-than-par GPA. The want is an innate desire to finally conquer some elusive part of my heritage and fill some void created when I dropped out of Chinese school to finally master it. Hopefully, if I can keep reminding myself of these two points, I can finally settle down long enough to accomplish some studying. =]

Pictures of Me

The one thing I never forget when I’m leaving campus is my camera like the stereotypical western tourist I am. I’m obsessed with keeping a visual diary of my entire time here, continuously snapping away at every trivial thing I see. Before I left the states, mom bought me a new 4gb memory card, and I do intend on filling that up in the next two months, even with the cripple of forgetting my charger. If you look on my facebook, you can see that I’ve created a good number of albums already, proof that I’m well on my way to that goal.
With chinese mtv’s novelty wearing off, I’ve taken to looking back through my old facebook pictures. Within the past year, the my photo count has more than tripled. Staring from pictures three years ago, when facebook was first taking off, I can trace the steady progression from hiding behind the camera to nothing less than camera-whoring =] not that there’s anything wrong with that; it’s an obvious sign of improving self-confidence =]
When I was nine, I was convincing for a summer that I wanted to be a professional photographer. Aimed with nothing but a cheap wind-up camera of my mother’s and the cheap generic brand film that would come with every roll my mom sent to the developer’s, I shot a complete roll only to have two-and-a half shots come back to me. Trust an nine-year-old to know that you weren’t supposed to expose film to light. However, I remember being cheered up by one of those shots; a carefully contrived profile of flowers my mother picked up from the farmer’s market. Wow, I remember thinking, to be able to capture beauty like that.
Though I’ve long embrace the fact that I will never be doing convershoots for vogue, I am still obsessed with collecting the best shots to capture a fading moment, to gift an immortal life to a moment before time claims it. It’s this drive that pushed me last weekend to climb farther on the Great Wall that I was actually capable of handling, even though it wasn’t that far. As for whether or not it was worth it…. Well, the pictures are up on facebook =]
i find myself looking at my photos and wondering—did I ever imagine at the time of my first facebook pictures that my collection would expand to include photos of me in boston, new york, and all over china [question mark]. If a picture is worth a least a thousand words, what would have happened if I could have a glimpse at any current photos a two years ago. Would I have believed two years ago that I would be out club hopping in Beijing, dressed up to go to a Harvard formal with my boyfriend, or even just a picture of my friends and I out at ihop [question mark] What would she be able to derive from the person she would become in the future, and would she be happy with where her camera took her [question mark]
I can’t help but wonder what I could learn if I had access to just one picture from five or ten years in the future. Where would I be, who would be tagged next to me, who would have access to it [question mark] If I could know what direction I was heading in, would I want to change it or would I be content [question mark] It might offer some comfort to know for certain that everything will work out, but at the same point, I wonder if it would kill the trill out trying to figure it out. What ever does happen though, I am certain that I will be ready with camera at hand, ready to record life as it happens.

Typing on a broken macbook...

A mosquito bites
Planting bud which then blossoms
burning red petals.

Okay, so maybe a Japanese haiku isn’t the most appropriate thing to put as my first post in staunch anti-japonesa China.
But I can’t stop obsessing over my mosquito bites.
For the first weeks, trapped in the rural village of my dad’s side of the family where oxen and foul run free outside my window, I had literally locked myself in the sanctuary of my parent’s marital room with the AC turned as low as it could possibly go, completely paranoid that I would be invaded by the devil’s flying, buzzing, blood-sucking minions. The few times I left the room, I would first strap on the masks my mom provided in case of an outbreak of swine flu and armor myself with insect repellent abundant in deepwoods deet. I’m almost certain there’s enough poison in my system now to kill a small pig, and certainly enough to hopefully kill any straying strands of swine flu floating about.
HBA has already been penetrated by the virus, a welcoming gift from a Yalie residing down the hall for me who had the expected fortune of sitting next to a carrier on the ride here. As a result, the Chinese government came in Haz- Mat suits to take him away and to also quarantine five of my unfortunate classmates. Needless to say, they were stone cold PISSED. However, the potential crisis of them shutting down our entire program has been adverted, though I can’t say that being sent back to the states would be a totally unwelcome consequence at the moment.
I suppose the resident tyrant and pimp of the Harvard Chinese Department had warned us, “HBA no fun. You no sleep. You no eat. You no learn culture. You learn chinese. Chinese, chinese, and only chinese.” But come on, I didn’t think that he was actually serious. Blame me for romanticizing college summers abroad, but expected a minimal amount of work and more time to create a set of Beijing adventures with my tongxuemen. Instead, I live a life of Chinese, Chinese, and more chinese, 24/7. I don’t think I’ve ever resented being chinese more in my life.
I didn’t think it would actually be that rough of a transition to a world where I could only express myself in a native and foreign language. If I can survive a summer speaking practically only Cantonese at home, how rough would it be to slightly tweak my tones for mandarin? Answer—very, very, difficult. It’s in my very nature to talk, completely deprived of my honed tool known as the English language, I’m stumbling to pull together words that get nowhere close to what I really want to say, to the point where I’m keeping my mouth shut sometimes just to avoid the hassle. And it sucks. The point had passed when the novelty of summer camp had worn off and everyone around me were walking, bitter stress cases.
I suppose the bright side to the depressing mode of living is that those that suffer together bond together. After surviving our first week, we at least emerged intact if not completely whole, and gave ourselves up to a weekend of sleep and partying and club hopping to turn memories of the bygone week into a more bearable haze. Thank god for all the freedoms that come with being 18 in China! =]
And so sets a cycle of work and of forgetting work that will likely sadly define the next eight weeks here. If I survive, I’ll be sure to bring back cheap poorly manufactured, sweatshop-produced souvenirs for everyone.

Takeoff...

It's 1:46am and the parental units are mad as hell I didn't start packing earlier. Seeing as how San Jose is maybe the farthest she's trekked from our apartment since... well, the last decade or so, it's actually a wonder she's not even more hyped up. Right now, I'm looking at two heavy pieces of luggage, one which technically isn't even mine and is currently five pounds over the limit. I am the carrier of goodwill gifts for the rest of the family, and I really don't understand why I need to be burdened with a gazillion pounds of fruit-rollups and hershey's kisses for a bunch of kids that don't even like me that much and only know how to exploit me for sugar.

So here's a rundown of my trip Itinerary:

Friday, June 5th
10am--Depart home, make it to the airport by 10:40.
10:45am-- check in
11:00am-- finish checking in, brood at airport wondering why we're this early.
12:00pm-- enter gate, say my goodbyes.
12:10pm-- take a seat, sit in boredom for the next two hours.
1:15pm-- board plane, Cathay Pacific SFO to HK
1:55pm-- Takeoff!

Saturday/Sunday? June 6th
7:55pm-- Welcome to Hong Kong!
10:00pm-- Exit Hong Kong, welcome to China! Hello Shenzhen!
1:00am-- Hello Guangdong, welcome home! Kinda... sorta... it's Dad's home... by association, my home.

June 6th to June 12th--
Sit around bored, read, sleep, constantly brought to the nearest steakhouse (I don't even like red meat that much!) because all Americans like steak, cry my eyes out when they try to kill the chicken in the yard for dinner, name said chicken Clucky, freak out when Clucky flies into the living room as we're having dinner, have a near mental breakdown when I realize the plumbing still doesn't work, act crazy paranoid over the SARS carrying mosquitoes and wear jeans wherever I am, breathe in deet from insect repellent over the week because I'm paranoid about mosquitoes and develop a nasty cough, starve to near death if it wasn't for my stash of junk food which I can only pull out late at night when the kids are all asleep less they take it from me and leave me starving, nearly die from internet and Facebook deprivation.

June 12th--
Sometime in the morning-- Goodbye Guangdong, HELLO BEIJING!!!!!!!

So if you lost the message, I'm likely going to be without internet for the next week and a half or so... updates when I'm back up and running!

Anna @ Hahvahd Chapter 2: Anna in Beijing

ACCESS GRANTED

Access to Anna @ Hahvahd has now been cleared to everyone outside my immediate high school girls in anticipation for my trip to....



中國！

That's right, bookmark this page, peeps...
Summer 2009 is going to be legendary.

Looking Back, Going Forward.. a year at Harvard

"Enter to Grow in Wisdom"
-Dexter Gate
My living room can be seen through the left window

**On a plane headed back to the Golden State**
One of the things I’ve most admired about all great writing is eloquence, a way to master and bend the English language into art, the way writers can shape and paint the scene with HD Blu-ray clarity picking the perfect verb, noun, held together with the most necessary adjective. Sometimes, the beauty of the English language can exist in the most exact and precise form, without the bells and whistles and pomp as, say, a Wilde book or play. For example, take one of my favorite quotes from my commonplace book:

“ ‘Then why you not stop it?’ my mother asks.
And it was such a simple question”

And it’s such a simple sentence, yet it conveys so much meaning to the reader that I will find myself applying the same question to a miscellaneous grab-bag of circumstances (i.e. Lamont Library at 3am finishing a Chinese worksheet that could have and should have been completed days ago if I was disciplined).
Eloquence is something I wish I had.

On my expos 50 reviews, the same essential message came through in every single comment from my fellow classmates—“You have a unique, strong, funny voice that is strong and constant. Keep it up.”

Failure. I tried so hard in Expos 50 to deviate from my artificial, habituated style of verse carefully constructed and pieced from attempts to sound like real writers I’ve admired, and I still came out with the same result. It amazes me how far I’ve progressed through the world without someone calling my bluff on this charade.
But again, I’m deviating from the main point of this post. The previous introduction was my attempt to explain and excuse my previous shoddy posts, written on the fly and absolutely overflowing with prose written on the fly without any careful cultivation or attempts to make it sound like something halfway readable.

What I meant to discuss was a reflection of my first year.

This afternoon, I was standing in the middle of my living room, looking out onto Mass Ave., the room and walls completely generic and devoid of the sig of inhabitance accumulated from a year’s attempt to make the place feel like home. Nothing had changed, but I doubt I could have recognized the girl as the same person who had walked in, welcome packet in hand, nine months before.

I came to Harvard for a change; a premature attempt to quell the what-ifs that would have haunted me if I had went anywhere else. The world was telling me that college would inevitably change the entire direction of my life, but I naively believed that I was an acceptation to the rule, that I would end up going where I wanted in life through sheer determination and stubbornness. Of course, I would inevitably come to collide with completely different people at opposite ends of the country’s coasts, but why would it essentially matter? In the end, I would still find myself inhabiting the same streets, with the same long-established group of friends I have been anchored to for so long I count them as relatives, and I would be essentially the same person I was back in high school.

If this hypothesis were a thesis, I would have been doomed to flunk graduation the moment I stepped off the plane. I have deviated so off-course from the person I person I used to be I sometimes half-expect TSA at the airport to detain me on grounds of traveling with a fake ID. If you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you must be already well acquainted with my anxiety of returning home, afraid that I would be unable to consolidate the two faces I’ve been torn between. The people I’ve crossed paths with, the relationships I’ve forced, the things I’ve done, the things I’ve been willing and half-willingly gave into doing, the things I now know I am capable of, the moments that I cannot think back to without a rush of adrenaline flooding my veins, have eroded the essential essence of the person I used to be. I’ve learned to accept that I am completely off-track to the person I want to be in ten years, but I’ve made no effort to find and follow course again.

Unless this is the person I’ve been all along, and college was the only environment where I’ve been free to express this. No longer bound to the expectations of the person I used to be, the expectations that others set for me, paired with the freedom of farsightedly little supervision and a curfew or the breaks that leaving the campus life provide, I may have been able to express the person that I am. I can’t say I am particularly fond of her, nor can I say that I am completely ready to embrace her as the person that I am now.

I remember a friend back home commenting on how much I’ve changed, and how I seem to fit in so easily on campus at Harvard. There are times when I believe that to be true; few friends back home really understood my drive and determination to succeed at the cost of everything else in my life, few of them and I shared enough of the same schema for them to completely understand random references I would throw out in conversation. However, this isn’t to say that I don’t cherish both groups of my social circle equally; there is so much history and shared experiences between those I had shared high school with that I still ache to see and talk to them everyday even though I never have the time to.

And there remains a nagging possibility that I actually don’t fit into the Harvard campus, a fear that my acquaintances are only drawn in and attracted to this confident Anna that I’ve carefully constructed to gain acceptance in my new environment. For example, during lunch the other day, someone commented on how they actually never felt like anyone in high school was worth the time to actually talk to, and that they believed they fit more into the environment here at Harvard, where they were around peers on a more-or-less equal intellectual playing field. At the same time., they would only associate with the elite here too; no, only the top tier straight A student at Harvard was good enough for them, people in high school were too scared and jealous by their intellect and ambition that they would hate and shun the future Harvardian.

Ouch. I my peers here, but to completely write off everyone they used to know as bimbos beneath them, as was the connotation of that remark. This was the type of inflated self-worth and arrogance I believed was confined to only a few students on campus; but apparently Harvardians themselves are not immune to the effects of the H-Bomb either. Yes, you are a Harvardian, but that does not make you any better of a person than the guy taking orders behind the counter of Dunkin’ Donuts. Yes, your determination and hard work are commendable, but at the same time, so much of life is dependent on the factor of sheer luck that one other town down another block may have resulted in you serving coffee behind a counter instead. It is this mentality that gives our school a negative connotation in society, and if this really is the secret mentality behind the vast majority of students here at Harvard, then I am not sure that I want to be associated with the title. If people here really do believe that they are the best and the brightest that the world has to offer, then the entire planet is more doomed than Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth will lead you to believe.

Furthermore, if they knew that the mediocre Harvard student they all condone was I, I doubt they would even wait to associate with me. Perhaps I just associate with an outlying group of people on campus, but most everyone I associate with seem to exist way above the Harvard men, achieving practically all straight As and A-s in their courses, while I have to struggle just to attempt to make the mean. Though I know I should just be grateful that I am passing at the one of the most rigorous universities in the world, I cannot but wonder if those that have a hint at how mediocre I really am secretly think I am beneath them. And it’s twisted that I actually still crave their approval.

As I accidentally slam the door to the room that’s substituted as my nest and sanctuary for the past year, I signal the end to my first year here. And even with a year’s worth of a Harvard education fresh in mind, I wonder if I’m any better off from the girl that walked in a year ago.

Rebound

So I doubt you girls even realize this blog and I still exist, and I'm sorry for not updating. I wonder if I'll even get a response to this! Since coming back to Harvard, life has been moving so fast that I haven't had time to stop and really analyze things, but with the start of a new semester, it's the perfect time begin again.
I was just watching a parade with Renee Zellwigger (sp? Some things will never change, including my less-than-par spelling skills) sitting between two drag queens go by right outside my dorm window. I never really appreciated how my lovely Wigglesworth dorm is actually on prime Mass. Ave. real estate; I'm actually really reluctant to leave next semester. I would have gone out to clamor and gawk at Renee in up close and personal, but it's: 1) too cold outside (somewhere like, 10 degrees with windchill or something ridiculous like that? I know I couldn't feel my ears walking back from the Science Center) and 2) I kind of feel like crap, and I'm actually writing this snug and warm under a comforter in my (temporary) bunk.
But besides the feeling crappy aspect of everything, I really don't see how life can get better. Everything is finally falling into place for me, whether it be academics (classes, concentrations) or my social life (friends, relationships, etc). I've just completed a hectic day of running to classes I'm crazy about, I'm staying awake in all my lectures without the aid of any artificial energy (that means no more Amp, Redbull, 5 hr energy... the list goes on!), and I actually can't wait to start reading up for my courses. Before I can even pick up my European history book though, I'm running to have dinner with a group of people I am positively in love with and many of whom I spent my intercession exploring the Big Apple with, whose faces across the dining hall table and the background of my desktop screen serve as a constant source of comfort and belonging everyday. After that, I'm going to try to rush to a comp (kinda like tryouts/ rush) for a publication on campus after rediscovering my love for the art of writing and the desire to get back in touch with the world of words.
Backtracking to my classes, I am absolutely in love with my new schedule. No longer bound by the obligation to Economics, I've tentatively decided on the field of Social Studies, which is actually just code for a whole smorgasbord of fields (history, gov, etc.), though I'm in love with my European History and Psychology course that might change my mind later on. I'm continuing to dabble in Chinese, and the progress and results are totally worth the effort. There is something fulfilling and satisfying about learning your mother tongue, and I definitely feel more complete now that I can actually speak (however broken and awkwardly) the language that innately runs through my veins. I remember being excited to actually get up for school once upon a time; but the more time progressed, the more I believed that was just a fabrication of my mind. However, though this semester has only just begun, that feeling is returning to me, and it feels absolutely glorious.
One reason for this change, I believe, is that I no longer feel obligated to live up to obligations set by others or myself. For the longest time, I had believed naively that the only course to success was the well defined beaten road set out by others and which I had also traveled up till now. I'm not downplaying the benefits to choosing this path; I really don't think I would be where I am today if it wasn't for it. I would have been content with the econ major to i-banking to wall street plan, but I don't think I would have been happy. Now that I've deviated to the road unknown, to define my own trail with nothing but the forever expanse of virgin frontier in front of me and the universal blue sky above, I've been filled with a sense of purpose and adventure that makes me happier than I think I've ever been in a long time. Despite what others claim, there is definitely something fulfilling about waking up not knowing what the new day has in store and simply trusting that no matter what, everything will work itself out just fine.
Another discovery I stumbled upon a revelation yesterday while purposefully walking to Littauer to tell Greg Mankiw personally (oh, alright, it was his more like his personal assistant) that I was dropping his ec course-- my parents love me more than I probably ever appreciated them for. For the past year and a half, I've been nothing but me-centered, ie. "I should go to harvard because...", " I should take Ec because", "I should drop Ec because", etc., and I've been primarily concerned about how all my choices would effect me in the long run, completely forgetting to factor in my parents to the equation. The move from the west to the east coast has been just as hard on them, if not worse. By coming to Harvard instead of staying on the west coast, not only have I deprived them of a decent translator and caretaker of essential day-to-day activities (Sorry, little sis, you really do have a lot of responsibility to live up to now that I'm gone. I'm sorry I didn't better prepare you for the transition), but I'm honestly separating them from their daughter. It's not easy sending a daughter into the unknown and just hoping that she'll get by just fine, and I've given them more to worry about by going so far away from home. It shows in the care packages and tri-daily calls I get, and I feel guilty for delaying my response because I've put adjusting to life here above all else.
It would have been so much easier for them to make all the decisions for me. They could have simply said "No, you're staying at Stanford so it'll be easier for all of us" and I probably would have complied, secretly glad that the decision was made for me, but instead, they left the decision completely up to me. Also, though I may complain that Dad wants me to major in economics, my parents essentially put up little to no struggle when I announced my desire to back out of econ. And it is essentially what they leave unsaid and undone that speaks volumes for how much they care about me. I will probably never be able to repay my mom and dad for all they have sacrificed and given up in order to give me and my sister every advantage and opportunity they never had. They left their home and established lives to move to a country where they didn't know the language, took on backbreaking, laborious jobs that barely paid minimum wage, and put up with living in a "cozy" (codeword for crappy-ass) apartment in the fifth most dangerous city in America where you won't get running hot water if you pick the wrong time to shower.
And it paid off more than they could have imagined-- they sent me to Harvard. In actually, I don't deserve the praise everyone else showers on me for getting in, it was really all the work of my parents. And they could simply tell me to go on studying ec and follow the ibank-route, graduate and earn them that big house in the Oakland Hills with the shiny Lexus parked by the front gate in order to repay them for all they've done. However, the fact that they aren't going to do this, that they're allowing me to do what I want to even if it means that there stands a chance I might never be able to provide them with this secure future, shows me that they really are concerned with me being happy above all else, including themselves. Walking out of Littauer yesterday, I think I might have cried if I wasn't too chicken to do it.
I'm sorry if this post sounded too cliche, but the thing is, I was a bit afraid of going home at the end of first semester in case everything and everyone had changed. I was half right, everyone else had stayed the same, but everyone did come to the same consensus about me-- "you've changed, anna". It wasn't till I returned to harvard that I realized why; I didn't reconcile the old anna with the one I've become here. It was only in the last month or so that the two have begun to fuse and I finally feel complete again.
And you guys were right; I have changed. I've grown up.
And you know what else? Things are finally good. Which is why I'm kind of terrified that it might fall apart and come crashing down on me.