Sure ain't Beijing.
Summer vacation is wrapping up. I'm currently one-finger pecking this from the butt of a United airplane. Okay, really? We still just do that cabin thing of awful movies (current selection: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2). In theory, you can watch one of many selections on your personal device, but the wifi is down so that's not a thing. And we ACTUALLY had chicken or pasta for lunch. Sigh.
I just finished two weeks in America starting with meeting my mom, sister, and youngest brother in Seattle. With no plan in mind but a van full of camping gear--they had been on the road for a couple weeks at that point--and a looming back-to-school deadline for my mom in 13 days, we went Northwest toward the areas surrounding Olympic National Park.
Most of Washington was hitting the road with us so that second night we struggled to find a place to stop and ended up going from Seattle toward Port Townsend down to Port Angeles and finally at Mora near Forks. Even Mora was booked up. Dear lord. A park ranger tipped us that there were these two biker/hippie guys who run a camp down the road...
All the siblings thought she said this place was Psyco Camp and we were still cool with it.
How on Earth do I write about this place? Basically, yeah. These two old biker dudes own a few acres of land where they let people set up shop on their lawn. If you don't have your own tent, they have actual tepees you can crash in. They built a second building with a kitchen and two bathrooms that was maintained by a Mohawked mom who cleaned in Fredrick's of Hollywood lingerie and came with a matching neon-Mohawked kid and dog. It boasted true highlights including the garden of marijuana fifteen feet away from our tent, the sunny weather that lingered below 80, and various bodies of water (lakes, rivers, and ocean) all around.
This part of Washington looks like this.
And this. (Hoh rain forest)
One night turned to five and then it was time to head toward Vegas stretching the trip into three more camp stops. I can't believe we used to do this drive in a single, insane go.
All this America was great, but mainly I was in America to see family. Didn't make it to Virginia this time so I am fairly committed to a return trip in winter. Really need to empty out that storage unit... I was very much aware that I have ties to this country for better or worse (especially worse considering it's an election year).
Over and over the fact I had a plane ticket sending me back to Beijing struck me as really odd. My sister and brother start college next week. The littlest one is in fourth grade now. My parents are both in their fifties. And, being back in Vegas, I realized I don't really have friends there any more. Saw Mika and Ralph for a few hours. Living abroad always feels like being a ghost. I'm pretty much dead as far as everyone's day-to-day goes, but every now and then the veil between the two worlds grows thin and I can return from The Beyond. Every time I leave it is easier with less tears and drama. I do, however, look at how much of my family's life I am missing. I look at my nonexistent social network. I think about my storage unit of books and Sailor Moon and my 403b with a balance a first grader instinctively knows is too low for 31 years.
It sucks that you really can't have both a life over there and still have the people back there. Soon I'll be back to work myself, maybe in two days actually--government has decided when I report back--and I won't have time to be wondering if someday I am going to regret what I am doing now. It's easy for people to romanticise life abroad, but depending on how you do it, you're very aware how artificial and superficial it is.
Oh well. Back to the grind!
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