Wo Gae

Ni hao peng you! That means "Hi friends!" in Chinese. I've been speaking Chinese nonstop in North Carolina on this family reunion, mainly while playing poker. There's this one term in our card game, when you "pass" on your turn, you say wo gae or wo bu gae. Wo means I and bu means not. So I keep hearing I gay or I not gay. While all I wanna do is play cards, the fam keep making me do other stuff. My cousin's backyard is actually a huge lake so I've been fishing a bit on his boat dock, fishing with tiny worms I've dug for in the ground (it's super ghetto). And two days ago, we went white water rafting at the National White Water Rafting Center. Apparently they have national centers for everything? For part of the day, I explored the Catawba River on a kayak. There are these beautiful and random tree islets that thread through the middle of this vast river, and you can kayak through these flooded islets. When you look down you can see grass and other vegetation that used to be showing when the water level was lower. As I slowly meandered my way through low slung vines and lazy turtles, I realized that it was the first time I've been alone in a long time. While I was at Chapman, I was trying to be with whoever was around (Destry and Megan know what I'm talkin' about. I slunk around their rooms while they were trying to move out and I was mainly getting in the way, which is okay by me). Since I've been in NC, I've been with family nonstop. It was strange being so suddenly alone and it being that quiet and still. It gave me time to digest these last few months and be properly mo about graduating.

Yesterday, we went strawberry picking. It seemed kind of anachronistic, all these Asian people bending over these little strawberry plants in the hot sun. We should have been wearing Rice Hats and on paddy farms in rural China watching WWII Ally jets fly over. Then we went on a "safari", the North Carolinian version. There were rhinos from South Africa, antelopes from India, ducks from Egypt, wildebeest from Africa. This is my version of Cait's analogy. I kept thinking about Chapman and how we're similar to these thrown together animals, coming from all over, but now, going all over. And how Hannah reminded me of these spritely petite antelopes, and how Rose reminded me of the water bison that I never saw do anything but eat.

This reminds me of Hannah.

This reminds me of Jess.

And this is obviously me feeding Rose.

Missin' you like a petting zoo,