Summer Schedule

6/5 Graduate, tour Boston w/ family
6/7 Drive to NYC
6/10 Drive to DC
6/12 Fly to Seattle
6/13 Fly to Korea (via Japan)
6/20 Fly to Hangzhou, China
6/26 Train, meet up with CETI group at Guiling/Yangshuo (straight mountains sticking out of the ground, rock climbing)
6/29 Train to Kumming
6/30 Fly to Lijiang
7/2 Bus to Shangri-la
7/3 Taxi to Deqin (wake up and see beautiful mountains and glaciers outside my window!)
7/6 Fly to Xishuangbanna (tropical rainforest)
7/8 Fly to Sechuan
7/19 Fly to Qinghai
8/1 Train to Xi'an (Terra Cotta Soldiers)
8/2 Bus to Shaanxi
8/7 Fly to Beijing
8/8 Fly to Seattle (via San Francisco)
8/9 Fly to St. Louis
8/11 Med school orientation! Phew!

10 planes, 3 overnight trains, 1 hitch hike

If you want a postcard, leave your address!

Graduation

Wow, graduation went by way too fast. It seemed like I didn't have any time to process the idea that I was graduating, and now, I'm already out of Boston. Wonder when I'll ever be back there...

Graduation kind of felt like...a play. I felt like I was directed here and there, and then all of a sudden, it was all over. It all started out with seeing random people in the hallways and hearing them say "congratulations." It was so strange. I kept on forgetting I had anything for people to congratulate me with because it's not like I had a really difficult exam so I felt some kind of cathartic relief from finishing it or I just won some amazing tennis match where I was pushed to my physical limit. I just felt like I was going on with my daily life and people came up to me to say "congratulations!" Everytime somebody said that I probably had this horribly astonished look on my face.

Anyhow, it was all good. I cheered for people who couldn't hear me while the people in front of me became deaf or annoyed. In the meanwhile, I probably managed to be only person in the 2,000 graduates to have an odd colored graduation gown. Mine was a tad...gray or blue compared to everyone else's. I guess that's what I got for being cheap. Oops! In the end, they still let me walk, get my diplomas (ooo...mine had rubberbands around them because I got two!), and eat food from the awesome two receptions I got to attend!

Got to say a last goodbye to some friends and show off my insanely cute brother :) Also realized I managed to go a whole semester in a group project with somebody without realizing that one of my teammates has the same life story as me: born in Hangzhou, lived with grandparents in China while parents lived in US for a few years, and now planning to go to Washington University in St. Louis Medical School. Oblivious...

Best accomplishment this week: packing all my things into suitcases! - packing is such a hassle!

6 Flags

Went to 6 Flags for Senior week! So much fun!
Went on a bunch of rollercoasters:
Flashback: kind of sketchy to find them testing it out right before we went on it. But it was cool how it went backwards (blue and orange in picture)
Cyclone: wooden rollercoasters are insanely rickety! It was like constant backlash (wooden on in picture)
Bizarro: HUGE 221 ft drop in the beginning - loads of fun!