Nanjing 2018-2019, Blog Post 7

A Dedication to My Cat, Tootsie Roll

Change is real, and change is happening. Every single minute of the day, something on this planet changes. Whether it’s an event that resonates with us for every moment of our lives following it, or a minuscule change in another person’s life across the globe, it occurs. And it’s real.

Something I admit I have yet to embrace is change. My transition from a small, private middle school to high school was hard, and the transition from a North Carolina public high school, with 2,400 students in it, to my gap year in Nanjing was not easy either. So as move in day at my in-state, American university approaches, I feel hesitant to express my feelings.

February, my half-way mark of being abroad in China, really embodied these thoughts– change was in the winds, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. My month began with another trip to Guilin, Guangxi Province. I had been twice already that year, for both a holiday break in October, and in January with some friends, but I wanted to spend Chinese New Year (also known as the Spring Festival) with some family there. So, again, I hopped on a plane and traveled back to my birthplace.

During the eight or nine days of Spring Festival that I was there, I had the opportunity to meet lots of Guangxi Province locals that stopped in to pay a visit to my foster parents. I was staying with my foster parents and their daughter, so as tradition is pretty strictly still followed, almost all of their extended family members that lived fairly near came to 拜访 (visit and pay their respects). In summary, we ate so much delicious food, I had lots of people tell me their last memories of me as a baby, and then I fell really sick.

While my foster sister, her husband and I were in his old hometown in southern, rural Guangxi Province, I started throwing up. I didn’t know why I was so sick; the only reason I could think of was that eating this delicacy that was a fried mix of sandworms with cashews made me sick. I think I also had a pretty high fever because I felt really light-headed and could hardly walk. The photo below is of the house where we stayed.

Upon return to Nanjing, I still didn’t really recover. I was staying at my mom’s house, about an hour from my campus, so I had all my meals provided for and didn’t have to worry about laundry (shout out to Mom, thanks!). However, I slept a lot and still continued having a lot of stomach problems. I did do a couple of things around the house, though. Below is a photo of me making 汤圆 (tāng yuán), a sticky rice dessert eaten for the Lantern Festival, which lands on the 15th day of the Spring festival; it marks the end of the holiday.

During this month of my holiday break, I also celebrated my 18th birthday. It was strange being away from my dad, my cats, my dog, and my friends, but I had my mom, so that was great! Here’s a picture of me and my cake.

Something that I experienced that was especially hard were changes back home in North Carolina. My beloved cat, Tootsie Roll, passed away at the old age of 13. My dad had gone to pet her and apparently she was cold. I felt such sadness and knew I had lost my life-long best friend when the news was broken to me, because through every stage of my life, my cat had been there for me. Well, cats can only be there so much for a human, but Tootsie was always lounging around looking for a pet, so if I ever needed an instant pillow, she was an easy first option. Tootsie also was always my warm blanket at night, my fluffy buddy, and my least favorite morning alarm. Being away from home for so long, already experiencing my family cat Tuffy’s death, and then changes in my dad’s life, my kitty cat’s death really was a wake-up call that change is inevitable. It’s always happening, it affects us all, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.

So my month ended with lots of changes. Not actually a lot happened in Nanjing, because I wasn’t in school, but I found out three things: I caught a bacterial intestinal infection, I began feeling very old after becoming ‘legal’, and things at home in the US were changing.