The World Unfiltered

In the journal I wrote as an eleven year old, seen in posts referring to China in 2005. Wow that was a decade ago already. I wrote a lot, but unfortunately it seems more of a “this is what I did” diary without comments on how the experience actually was for me. I also, refer to my aunt as “my aunt” instead of her name frequently because apparently im talking to someone who doesn’t know her? Also there are red pen marks everywhere in the writings as though I am proofreading or grading myself? In a different font, I wrote more about my experiences and how I felt and what I saw and my reactions towards what younger me wrote. I fill in the blanks about my experiences with what I remember. It is interesting what the memory retains. Some things I remember like they happened earlier today and other things I don’t recall at all. I have learned my lesson: record everything now and sort through it later. I believe I did that for my most recent Peru trip, and will have posts about that trip when I get to it haha.

Some things eleven-year-old me left out were the sanitation, my TIME magazine, and the tv shows. So briefly, whenever you need to relieve yourself, it appears you can do that anywhere. If your nose works, be mindful and prepared. Granted this is based on ten years ago so maybe it is different now! I did see a little boy peeing in the middl of Tieneman Square, so that was interesting. My sixth grade geography project was to pick a country and create our version of a TIME magazine. Since I knew I was going to china before the project, I picked that. I believe I attempted interviews, inserted pictures, wrote some articles, and hand painted the cover based on the cover image of a real TIME magazine. As for TV shows, I watched Chinese tv shows in the hotel room and enjoyed them more than some of the shows I was watching at home at the time. Not all of them had subtitles, but I still enjoyed the ones without them because it was fun reading expressions and understanding what was happening at least on some level that way.