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| Tower of London and Tower Bridge, from Sky Garden |
Well, well – hello from Colorado!
I suppose that this will be my last blog post – not a
huge need to carry on with it, now that the majority of people I’ve needed to
update are in the same country as me, and now that my life (I fear) will become
significantly more ordinary, being back in America.
So, the last few weeks? A quality summary: insane! The
remaining time in London flew by – I went to Oxford for a day, which was
pleasant, and I had a wonderful time hanging around the city and exploring, and
meeting up going to art galleries and fancy skyscraper bars (Sky Garden for the
win!). It was bittersweet, knowing that it was the last time I’d be there for a
while, but I have a pretty solid record of finding my way back to London so I’d
like to think that I’ll get back there soon enough.
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| Haifa Bay from Bat Galim; Haifa, Israel |
The return to Israel was quick and fairly action-packed.
I arrived back and had several days of very rapid studying for my physio exam,
which was complemented by my final assay in the lab, so it was a lot of science
in a few short days, but I managed to wrap up my project, and survived the
killer exam, and suddenly, the semester in Israel was done! I had a last evening
out at Aroma (classic) with my Israeli flatmate and his sister, which was
really cool actually – we were both always so busy, it was a shame that we
didn’t hang more. But it was a cool last night, and then it was (once again)
off with all of the wall hanging, donating all the pots and pans, giving away
the paintings I couldn’t take with me, and bequeathing a large variety of
random things I’d bought for the flat that I couldn’t take – but cheers to the
fact that med students for years will use my laundry bin.
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| Pudong from the Bund; Shanghai, China |
And now, the story gets a little more interesting: I left
for the airport with all of my things, including my 26-kilo bag and all of my
belongings, and arrived at the airport ready for the grand flight out to China.
Problem: the flight I had chosen transited through Beijing (with a final
destination of Shanghai), and my visa would only accommodate landing and
staying in Shanghai. Options? Stay in Beijing (abandon my Airbnb, my friends,
my plans, and everything) – this wasn’t possible because my flight out of China
was from Shanghai, and a Beijing visa would prohibit intercity travel, so I’d
miss my connection out of China. Option two was also unpalatable: cancel the
travel with my current ticket and try to find a new flight that lands in
Shanghai – but, since Shanghai was pretty necessary to me and the flight path,
I had very limited options. So, for the first time ever, I went up to the
airline counters at the airport and said brusquely, “I need the first ticket
anyone can get me for Shanghai.” So on the spot, I bought a flight leaving in
two hours from Tel Aviv to Moscow, and a second leg from Moscow to Shanghai,
which would allow me to enter China and stay in the proper city. So, I felt to
Moscow on Aeroflot (not actually as bad as people say), had a mad dash across
the Moscow airport, at which everything was listed only in Russian (praise that
I learned to read the Cyrillic alphabet), and successfully made my flight to Шанхай
(though the Russians lost my bag in Moscow and it took days to get it back!).
Sorry friends, no Trump sightings, can’t contribute to the collusion hearings,
sorry :/
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| East Nanjing Road, from People's Square; Shanghai, China |
And now, the China adventures! I think going to Shanghai
was possibly the easiest place I ever could have chosen in China, so I feel a
little bad going on about how cool it was, because it’s realistically the most
international city, significantly English-speaking, and strongly influenced by
the British and French, so it’s about the most diluted Chinese experience to
have. But it was still fascinating to me – I found the most striking thing
about the place to be the sheer number of people that were there. It’s
overwhelming, you are completely surrounded and buried by the oceans and
mountains of people, everywhere. Aside from that, I found the city to be what
I’ve described as the 21st century in the extreme: hyper-modern,
hyper-precise, and at the cutting edge of development. I rode the famous
Mag-lev train that floats on the rails and casually achieves 300kph on the path
from the airport. The buildings of Pudong are remarkable, and so new – it’s
unbelievable. The historical sites have largely been completely touristified
and commercialized, in lieu of being preserved, and the allure of the city is
its abandonment of its messy past and its total embrace of the future. It was a
really cool experience for me, especially after traveling in Europe and in
Israel, where the highest premiums are placed on protecting the past and the
ancient sites. Shanghai is a unique place in the world, the picture of the
modern world. My challenges certainly existed though: being vegetarian was very
hard, especially in the part where I lived (定西路) where literally no one
spoke English, and I had to rapidly learn the basic niceties in Mandarin which
was significantly harder than in any other country because obviously it took a
lot of practice to recognize and become familiar with the characters I needed
and to pronounce them. Plus, Google is censored (au revoir Google Translate),
and I had no internet most of the time anyway, so lots of screenshotting
pronunciations and Chinese characters to get around. I suck terribly at even
attempting to speak Mandarin, but I was decent enough to get 豆腐 and 蔬菜 so I survived the
experience! And blessings upon Chinese friends helping to teach me characters
and how to pronounce things, definitely helped my case a little.
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| Jalan Raja, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia |
Anyway, after my hoppings across Shanghai, I headed off
to Malaysia for my insane little day-long layover. It was a night-flight to
Kuala Lumpur, which is much further than I’d really known from China (my sense
of distance was a little off on how big Asia actually is). I got to spend pretty
much the entire day in KL because my flight out was at midnight, so I got a
fancy Airbnb in the city center next to the Petronas towers and spent the day
roaming! It’s a really cool culture, from the snippets I got walking around. It
was really cool for me to see such a heavily Muslim nation outside of the
Middle East – obviously I knew that they were prominent but it was strange to
see the familiar Arabic script and the same practices modified for the East
Asian culture. I went to Masjid Negara (the National Mosque) which was cool for
me, especially because it’s so touchy to be entering mosques in Jerusalem where
things are so polarized – they were very welcoming in Kuala Lumpur, and it was
a pleasant experience, beautiful modern architecture. Other than that I
explored the Malaysian markets, wandered around Jalan Ampang, and talked
probably for too long with my charming hosts, who it turned out were from
Shanghai where I had just been! Anyway, by a series of unfortunate
miscalculations, I nearly missed my flight to Australia and raced across the
airport (again), could not check my bag, but managed to convince the staff to
make an exception and let me gate-check it at the last minute, so score, caught
a 7000km intercontinental flight arriving at the airport only 55 minutes in
advance. Ten points to Ravenclaw?
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| Auckland, New Zealand, from Mt. Eden Domain |
So, the story continues: I made it to Gold Coast,
Australia, where I sadly did not have time to stay and explore – I had to run
(again lol) to catch my flight to New Zealand, which I made, and essentially
lost the entire day in travel but succeeded at the end in arriving in one piece
(with my bags!) in Auckland, New Zealand! So news flash, NZ is pretty far
south, so in Auckland it’s mid-winter and fairly chilly actually, in contrast
to the southeast-Asian summer. Exploring New Zealand was an enormous pleasure –
it is indeed beautiful, although it is a shame that I didn’t have enough time
to see the South Island or to do the fancy tours of Hobbiton and see the
glow-worm caves. I stayed mostly around Auckland, and got a wonderful feel for
the city, and got to hang out with a wonderful friend from London (go Jasmin!).
I spent my time wandering Queen Street and hanging out on ferries, climbing
volcanoes, and extensively photographing the scenery. Three days was not
enough, I could have stayed there for so much longer. It’s a charming and
laid-back place, I have no doubt I’ll find my way back with some proper hiking
shoes and a solid hiking buddy and I’ll have at a few more volcanoes :)
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| Auckland, New Zealand, from One Tree Hill. |
Words to describe the experience? I don’t think I have
any yet that are quite so coherent – the last year and half has been an
experience beyond my wildest expectations. My life has never been so
interesting and so full, and my eyes (I would like to think) are much more open
to the world and to the beautiful humans that make it up. The past months have
not been a “little adventure” nor a “trip abroad” – it’s been my life and being
for a good long time, and the places I’ve seen, the cultures I’ve been a part
of, the friends and family I’ve met are a part of me, forever. I think I’ll
always have the fortune and privilege of balancing between two worlds, and I’d
like to think that my experiences of the last fifteen months have been the
opening act, and that the best is yet to come.
Cheers friends -- it’ll be good to see you all again on
this side of the ocean. And to everyone abroad, have no fear, I’ll be hopping off
a plane to see you in no time at all :)
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| Boulder, Colorado, USA |
Boulder, Colorado, USA; 10 August, 2017.
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