That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Yuan Yuan is home!

First, I would like to talk about the weather. Now, if you’re on the program with me and reading this, you know exactly what I am referring to. The storm (dun dun duuuuunnn!)

So you remember my description of the heavy rainfall Xi’an experienced last night? Well… it was bad. Really bad. See, Xi’an doesn’t get much rain, and the city kind of dips in the middle, and has poor drainage systems… so the city floods very easily.

Basically, after a half hour of torrential downpour, the streets morphed into swimming pools.

Oh, and this was the worst rain storm Xi’an has ever had, apparently.

Water rose to hip-level, and cars were lifted. Traffic jams occurred throughout Xi’an and people were swimming through the roads to fill hotels for the night. A few fellow students were stuck in the chaos, and were left to sleep in cars after being turned away from booked inns (sorry, Grant, but now you have a great story!)

We pestered our RD to cancel school today due to the poor conditions (which he found rather hilarious). Our coup failed. Oh well. We tried.

So some students were late to class today.

But one great thing did come out of the horrible storm: great air quality. You could see the blue sky and clouds today! This evening, Yuan Yuan was astonished at the view, and we sat on a park bench for an hour just staring at the clear, blue dome overhead.

I’m going to jump backward a little bit now (but still today).

Of course, once I stepped inside the apartment and saw my mom had returned, she flopped down on my bed beside me and started yapping away. She had been cooped up in her house for the entire two weeks while watching over her baby, so she said that she was in as much need for fun as I was.

Within a matter of minutes after walking in through the door, she was tugging me out into the hallway again.

We were talking so much that she forgot to hit the “1” on the elevator once we got in, so we didn’t realize that we were stuck on our floor for a few minutes. All good fun.

She bought me this ginormous piece of fried chicken the size of my torso (and bought one for herself), so we chewed during our walk through universities. We frolicked through a mall and a huge grocery store where she pointed out the frozen chicken feet and weird, spiky fruits. She bought a few bags at H&M and then we took a stroll through the mall’s courtyard.

People dance a lot here. There are groups of old women dancing with military uniforms or traditional pink fans. Men dance, too. They proudly carry decorative umbrellas and walk around the women to the beat of the drums. More often than not, though, you can see a group of 30 women dancing in a parking lot with 30 men looking as bored as ever, smoking cigarettes with their shirt’s half up over their chests while lounging on steps nearby.

I’m sure there’s more I should write but I’m tired and it’s late and I barely got any sleep last night. Also, I’m not going to reread this post to edit it so sorry if there are errors… and sorry for the short post… I’ll talk more later.

Bye y’all!

安琪