Stripes Top from Beijing; Blue and Brown bag from H&M Beijing; Soft black boots from Westlink Beijing
Hello Manila and Hello Xiamen. After 7 years of being away from my ancestral hometown….I am back and taking Xiamen by storm. Kidding! I’m sort-of back and figuring out how things will go from now on. A look into my possible future, as I have mentioned in some of my earlier posts. After having a sort-of good night’s sleep, due to my being unable to sleep well in a really big bed alone because of habit, I woke up prepared to head out with my uncle’s friend to Xiamen University.
A long time ago when I was really young, my dad told me how my angkong (paternal grandfather) was born in the Philippines but raised in China. My angkong grew up in Xiamen and eventually went to study at Xiamen University, so back in 2004 when I came to Xiamen with my dad, I was excited to go and visit the university where my grandfather went to study. Back then my Mandarin was pretty bad, and I was excited only to visit my friend who was studying there at that time (on a summer program) so I didn’t take notice of the university much. Fast forward to 7 years later, the things I do remember about Xiamen University, they are still there….almost as fresh as when I first encountered them before.
The beautiful lake, still as breathtaking as ever.
The building by which I spotted my friend, from my visit in 2004.
A lot of people have been asking me what I was doing in Xiamen. Some thought I was here for another semester or year and some thought I was here for work. I guess it’s hard to say exactly what I was doing in Xiamen. Besides helping out my dad and just bonding with my relatives whom I haven’t seen in a while, I had no exact plan as to what I wanted to do while I was in Xiamen. 4 days isn’t a lot of time so though I had wanted to go to Gulangyu Island to go around, it seemed impossible to actually go about doing that since it would take about half a day, or an entire day, to go around the island and sight-see. So a few days before our trip was finally finalized and everything was set in place, dad told me that my uncle had found a friend to take me around campus to check it out. Apparently, this friend prior to our arriving in Xiamen, had already asked about the language program at Xiamen University…