Nikki's Visit to China!

This month I was so blessed to have my sister, Nikki, and three of her most adventurous friends come visit me in China!

Weeks of anticipation had worked me up into an emotional frenzy before this trip. I was excited, nervous, worried, euphoric- having someone that knows me so well come into my life here in China was a completely  surreal concept and I just had no idea how to handle it.  But I've been missing home a lot the last two months and I just kept telling myself to, "Hold on, Nikki will be here soon."

 

 

 I took a train up to Shanghai to meet Nikki and her friends at their hotel. Probably one of the greatest memories of my life will be seeing my sister from across the lobby of this fancy Chinese hotel and not caring what kind of spectacle we made as we ran across the room gave each other a giant hug.  I love my sister so much!

 

And is it no wonder I love her? Look what she brought me!! Nikki and her friends loaded down and filled extra duffel bags with pounds and pounds of "can only be purchased in America" stuff for me and my friends.  This includes but is not limited to makeup, hairspray, moisturizer, self-tanning spray, Airborne, Vick's Vapor Rub, 3 lbs. of coffee, spices, tampons, a million kinds of candy, English books and magazines, Bath and Body Works stuff, tons of prepackages soup and dip mixes, popcorn, black tea, snacks,Vanilla, 14 ARTICLES OF CLOTHING, and an adorable handmade canvas and card made my sweet nieces.

This is truly amazing and every time I look at these pictures I'm filled with awe.  Nikki and her friends are fantastic and no one can ever tell me otherwise.

The girls had a amazing trip, experiencing some of the most beautiful...and the most challenging elements of China.  Our first stop was Suzhou, my home city.  I love it here and I was proud that it was one of the girls' highlights of their trip.  I really wanted to show them what my life is like here and to let them see
So Suzhou started with coming and taking a tour of Disney English then getting lost in a taxi with a driver that didn't understand them.  You take your life in your hands every time you get into a taxi so of course they almost got hit by a bus and got screamed at in Chinese. Typical.

The girls tried lots of Chinese food but I make them eat anything weird or make them eat street food.  I adore Chinese food and have loved almost everything I've had here.  It's absolutely nothing like the stuff we have back home, in fact I feel like American Chinese food will seem like a joke to me when I return.  I'm not sure that my friends left China as enthusiastic about the cuisine as I am but they did have some stuff that they enjoyed.  One night we went to a super fancy and expensive Cantonese restaurant that they really liked.  I think the girls definitely learned a lot about the passionate relationship that the Chinese have with food...and just how much they can eat at one meal ;)

Below are some more photos of Suzhou!

The quintessential old man's hobby, all over China you can see retired guys practicing the ancient art of water calligraphy. They use water and a brush to write these beautiful traditional characters onto the sidewalk and then they disappear in a few minutes. Poetic, I think.

Man on the street playing an Erhu (Chinese violin).

Suzhou is a city filled with beautiful canals and gardens.  We took the girls to the historic Pingjiang Lu, which is an ancient street that runs along a canal.  It has lots of local color and a cool atmosphere.  This is a photo of some fish a man was catching out of the canal.

The girls look so cute next these characters on the wall! They decided that the sign said, "Four hot babes." (It's really some kind of advertisement for a fish restaurant, but tell them ;)

One of Suzhou's must-see sights is Tiger Hill, a gorgeous and massive garden with classical architecture and beautiful grounds.  My brilliant, hilarious friend Ben met us there and was our tour guide.  Ben knows a dozen fantastic legends about all of the different parts of Tiger Hill and definitely understands the value of epic storytelling.  The amazing folklore is one of the greatest things about China, I was glad Ben was there to share it with the girls.  Note: the above photo does not capture the teeny tiny rock that the three of us had to balance on capture this pic!

Pretty girls at pretty Tiger Hill.

There are no dryers in China, everyone line dries.  The girls thought it was pretty funny that people hang their underwear out for everyone to see!  The next day they did some laundry at my house and I hung it up while the girls went to get coffee.  Nikki came home and was horrified that I'd hung her underwear up outside, I'm so used to it I didn't really think about it.  Amber was even more horrified when we got home later that night and she found her sweatshirt on the floor of parking garage below my balcony. It had blown off and been run over by a car. Yikes! Welcome to life in China.

Nikki and I at a bar with my darling friends James and Nicole.

I was so relieved when James took half the day to help me lead the girls around and play tour guide.  It was nice to have some of the pressure off and just to be able to spend time with them.  And I have to say that when we left him to go to our dinner plans I felt a little like something small was slipping away from me.
My sister and her friends are wonderful women who were so good to me the entire trip and whom I like and enjoy hanging out with.  However, some of the trip was hard for me for a lot of reasons.
A hundred things happened that made me realize how much I've changed by being in China.  I don't know yet how to reconcile the new me with the familar parts of my old life and that makes me feel a little isolated.

 For months I've been fixated on the idea that here in China I am who I am right now. None of my friends know anything about me that I haven't told them. My relationships are all new, no one has seen me grow or change, or has seen me a my worst. This is a liberating fact but it also makes me miss my friends and family desperately. However, with my sister's visit I  felt an increasing anxiety that I had changed more than I'd realized, and troubled that this might drive an emotional separation between me and the people I love. 

 I always think of my life back home as my reality and my China life as a temporary condition.  But that's not the case.  The time I spend in China is not a hiatus, it's my life and it's shaping me as a person.
When James came down later to meet us at a bar, I remember seeing him and being overwhelmed with a flood of relief.  It was then that I realized that my friends here know and accept a somewhat different Ashlee than my friends back home. I've become accustomed to the familiarity of these relationships, and it's my previous life that is starting to seem alien.  While James, Ben, Nicole and others were with us I felt a little more like myself.
This has nothing to do with my sister and her friends but more with me trying to reconcile the character reformation that comes from living abroad.  It's one of the many reasons that I'm so thankful that my sister came to China.  Knowing that I have someone on the other side of the ocean that has seen my life and can understand what I'm talking about makes me feel incredibly lucky. I have a sister who loves me so much  she'd come all the way to Asia and try to relate to me.  She's an incredible person.  It assures me that no matter where I go, or how we change, my relationship with her will always be constant.  There is no friend like my sister.                

The girls' first illegal taxi ride!  Haha, they didn't know until after they got out of the car that Ben had negotiated with this guy to give us a ride in his van...he wasn't a licensed taxi.  They were a little horrified but then they had to do it again when we got stranded at the Suzhou train station in the middle of the night.  I'm sure that none of them pictured themselves getting into some strange Chinese guy's car. 
I didn't either before I came here.   

Lunch at Beijiang with friends! Nikki got to meet Karen, Jesse, and Karen's sweet little girl.  I made Nikki sit next to Karen because I was determined that two of my favorite people in the world get to know each other!

Beautiful PingJiang Lu!

We took a small boat to along one of the Suzhou canals.  We rode past some local women that got super excited to see so many foreigners in one place!  They started yelling at our gondolier that he should start singing to us.  Which he promptly did in a gravelly, off key voice.  Loved it! 

Relaxing at a tea house along PingJiang Lu.

In Shanghai we mostly did a TON of shopping! The girls loaded up on fake purses and tchotchkes (which Lara called Joanie Love Chachis).  We also ate crappy Western Food, went to another beautiful garden, and over course took in the sparkling skyline of The Bund.

Chelsea and I! My awesome friends Chelsea and Krit came down to meet us and, because they live in Shanghai and know it so much better than I do, helped me with navigation and market haggling.
 My first friends in China, love these girls so much!

On to the wondrous Beijing! Above is a panoramic shot of The Forbidden City.  I love Beijing and wouldn't recommend coming to China without visiting it.  It's about 5.5 hours away from me by fast train, definitely worth the trip.  We had a great time here! The girls hired a handsome local guide, Jason, to take us around and they booked a swanky hotel.  It was a fantastic, stress free vacation traveled in luxury style!  I'm not used to things being so easy in China! 

Most of the sites that we went to I'd already done, but it was nice to see them again and appreciate them in greater detail. The coolest thing is that we went to a section of The  Great Wall I hadn't been to yet! I'd previously been to Badaling, but this time we went to Mutianyu.  An awesome site, at the top of a mountain. And you get to take a toboggan on the way down! So fun!

Nikki and I at the Beijing Zoo.  Look closely, you can see a tiny Panda in the background.

Outside "The Legend of Kung Fu" at The Red Theater where we saw a kung fu show performed by real Buddhist monks!

The trip to Beijing reminded me how majestic and fascinating, not to mention enduring, Chinese culture really is.  We climbed to the top of a high bell tower to watch a drum ceremony, the performance was so powerful that I left thinking, "My god, I LOVE China."

Climb to the drum tower, terrifyingly steep!

In front of the drum tower!  Seriously, I can't believe my sister is with me in China. So I actually have a written Bucket List (more on this later) and during this trip I was able to cross off two items! 

1. Travel internationally with my sister.

And....

Order room service at a fancy hotel!

(Eaten in bed none the less!)

Saying goodbye to my sister was incredibly hard.  I had to make a million farewells in preparation to come to China but I was able to do it without tears or emotional scenes. Before she left, Nikki and I even made a pact not to cry because we didn't want our parting memory to be a sad one.  So much for that!
I walked the girls down to the front of the hotel lobby and just as Nikki was about to get into the taxi, she threw her arms around me one last time.  I don't know what came over me, but I involuntarily burst into tears!  The trip had been a whirl wind and I was suddenly in a panic that it hadn't been enough time! I didn't want to let her go, God knows when I'll see her again!  I cried my eyes out when I got back to my room.  I already feel like I know far too much about goodbyes, especially the indefinite kind.  But I'm thankful for my ties to my sister.  I'm thankful for the opportunity to miss her and to be missed by her because now I truly know just how precious she is. 
How do people make it through life without a sister?  Mine is my hero, my confident, my mirror, and my best friend! I love you, Nikki!  Thank you for journeying to China!