Before and After

So while I was in China I didn't cut my hair; which, in fact, was a big deal for me since I usually get my hair cut every two or three weeks (thanks Mom!). So I was going on five months without cutting the top of my hair and after looking at Carol's post about Brandon's haircut, I decided it was about time to cut it again. Here is the before and after:

Before:

After:

(don't pay attention to the ugliness of the person, just the change in the hair)

Back Home!!!!

After four months of doing a semester abroad in Mainland China, I am finally back in the US of A!! Let me just tell you how much I absolutely loved my experience in China. As you have seen in previous posts, I went all over and saw a bunch of crazy different things. I enjoyed all of it: the trips, the schooling, the everyday life, the friends, the teachers, the culture, the prices (it's so cheap!!!!), the modes of traveling (now that I am home I can confess that I bought an electric bike while I was there; it was the awesome (I couldn't tell you earlier because my mom would have freaked out)), the purchases... It was perfect; the timing, the experience, everything, just perfect. Tricia and Elizabeth's sister-in-law, Amy, came and picked me up at the end and we traveled through mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (all very different places) for a little under three weeks. For being together for 24 hours a day for three weeks, we got along exceptionally well and I would travel with them again in a heart beat. While going about, we heard a lot about Tricia and Jon (she's so in love and it's fun to see her so happy). We got home on New Year's Eve and have been enjoying the comforts it entails ever since (dryers, mattresses, central heating, cars, homemade cooking, etc). I'm not going to paste many pictures of our trip. If you want to see them go look on Amy Hall's blog on my blog list.

One of my favorite parts of our trip was going back to the Great Wall. We went to a different part of it. We hiked it for 5 miles and zip lined off it at the end of the hike. I also loved Hong Kong. It was so different the mainland. It is modern, mostly clean, and full of parks.

We spent Christmas at Disneyland Hong Kong; it was great. They had Christmas carols throughout the streets all day long. It actually felt like Christmas. I also enjoyed going back to my mission in Taiwan. It was great to see people and just be back.