The Stinky Girl Travels

 After seven years since my last visit, I decided to come back to Hong Kong, the skyscraper city perched upon islands along the southern coast of China, where I used to live when I was about three years old before I moved to California. Throughout my childhood, I spent several summers flying back to Hong Kong to visit family, enduring the stifling hot and humid weather while relishing in the opportunity of having so much good food to eat (a sushi lover's paradise) and so many interesting places to see. Skyscraper apartment buildings with homes on the 50th floor, noisy chaotic "wet markets" selling live seafood and fresh vegetables, crowds of people shuffling along the street like schools of fish -   Hong Kong was always a fascinating contrast to the relatively quiet, humble city of Modesto, whose name in Spanish aptly translates to "modest".  So there I was, back in the city I spent part of my childhood in. Even after 7 years of being away, Hong Kong still h...

I've been avoiding writing this post for a very long time, because the thought of trying to express everything into one conclusive blog post...it is a truly formidable task.  The incredible, unforgettable people I met and was lucky enough to call my friends and family....the challenges, many times difficult but sometimes humorous, of being a Chinese-American girl in Nicaragua...how I arrived, excited to experience the adventure of living in a foreign country, and left with tears streaming down my cheeks because it felt like I was leaving home.. For this, I am afraid that in my attempt to express this entire experience in writing, I will not only fail to capture the essence of something so life-changing and beautiful, but also could never fully fit it all into words. I fear that the words could never completely say what I want them to say, could never make you feel or understand what I would like you to feel and understand. It is an attempt at describing the indescribable....

Here is my very belated post about the excursion we took back in December to Esteli and Somoto, up in the northern mountainous part of Nicaragua. Our trip started out with an unexpected twist. Early in the morning, we all met el terminal to catch a microbus to Esteli, but ran into a problem when the bus driver told us that the next microbus to Esteli would be coming around 11:00am, even though Vanessa was certain that there was supposed to be a bus arriving before that. However, after waiting for another half hour, we decided not to take our chances and wait for a bus that may never come. So instead of a nice, comfortable journey in a microbus where we would each have our own seat, the four of us squished into the back of a taxi and sat there crammed together for the next few hours. Four people in the back of a taxi does not sound that bad, but when the journey is a few hours long and when two of those four people happen to be very tall, you are in for a very uncomfortable ride! W...

On Sunday, the whole family and I took a bus trip to Managua!  The bus ride was probably the most fun part of the trip. I got to goof around with their cousins and had fun taking photos with everyone.  Doña Chilo la Monga (nun)   We spend time in Puerto Salvador Allende, a port filled with random restaurants and eateries, overlooking a fairly well-polluted lake. It had the appearance of an amusement park at the entrance, but then you enter and realize there are no rollercoasters, just a lot of food.  It's like an amusement park, but without rollercoasters and with a lake instead!  All those tiny specks are pieces of garbage.... Yes, the park is named after the Chilean president who was assassinated during the revolution! Why is that exciting? Because I did my history term paper on the Chilean Revolution!  (My family didn't quite understand why I was so excited about the name of the park. IB friends, you get what I mean.)  I took some nice photos o...

We spent all morning painting posters and preparing flyers for the march at la casa de Doña Nancy.  At 3:00pm, we met in Parque Sutiaba,  gathered under the shade of a large, leafy mango tree. The stilt walkers in their fluorescent outfits and capes, a boy juggling pins, the dance group dressed in flowy traditional skirts of blue and white,  all the kids and their families from our project, everyone standing around and waiting in anticipation for the march to begin.  Then Felix arrives and begins to lead the group in a few exercises to kickstart our energy and excitement. We formed a circle and twirled strips of colorful crêpe paper like the ribbons that circus performers use, dancing to the beat of drums. Everyone was shy at first, giggling and half-heartedly twirling the ribbon.  Then all of a sudden, a drunk man stumbles into the center of the circle, dancing with such gusto that everyone begins to laugh hysterically.  We passed out the posters that were...