Boston, Berlin; Tomay-to, tomah-to

I arrived in Berlin late last night, and the first things I saw when I got into the train station were:

a) An advertisement for the Blue Man Group
b) A Dunkin Donuts

So I had a moment of Boston nostalgia around these two originals my hometown-- It's easy these days, since I love New England fall dearly. But... then I forged ahead into the unbelievably complicated S-Bahn-U-Bahn metro system, which puts dear old Boston to shame (there are something like 25 lines!) and remembered what city I was in, after all.

Rain, rain go away

We interrupt the chronological flow of your regularly scheduled travel/study abroad blog so that I can moan and complain a little bit about the current state of affairs. Basically: I'm in Liuku right now and it's raining a lot. Which is pretty typical for this time of year, we're entering monsoon season, but it's gunking up the works of my plans-- I was supposed to go up Nujiang Valley today to go to the last of three sites for my research project, but about 2/3 of the people I ask say it's too dangerous (and when we went to an area elsewhere in the valley while it was raining there were, indeed, fallen rocks in the road-- yikes.) The girl that was supposed to be my translator has dropped out because her school won't let her go somewhere that dangerous. And really, the rain is just getting to me. Muddy and wet all the time makes Alissa a dull girl-- I want to see some scenery! Some sunshine! If the monsoon lasts all summer, I'm afraid I'm going to get something akin to Seasonal Affective Disorder.

This is a beautiful place with the gorgeous Nu River running through it, but it's hard to enjoy when I'm lost in a sea of Chinese food, Chinese language, endless rain, and culture shock. I'll admit it, I'm missing America right now. Every day in a country as different as China can't be a picnic, right? I just hope I can snap myself out of it, because this is such a great opportunity.

Technical difficulties

My apologies: it's been awhile since I posted, but I have a good excuse: the internet cafe I've been going to in Lanping seems not to accept Blogspot cookies, and so I can't sign in. I sent this post to my mother to take care of for me-- that's the solution I came up with. I'll be moving on (I hope) to Liuku on Monday, so I can hopefully start posting again. I have a lot to say.

But for now I'm afraid I'll have to leave it at an apology. I've been very stressed out about thesis/research topic stuff the past few days and I seem to have gotten myself into a pretty significant funk. So I think I'll go back to our hotel and eat some chocolate (if I can manage an appetite, my stomach has been acting very oddly) and go to bed early. Tomorrow is a new day...right?