Well, 2005 was a heck of a year. I was in China for about half of it doing study abroad and that research thing. In 2005 I went to Kunshan and nearly froze to death in my Chinese friend's home for Chinese New Year; flew to Chengdu and ate hot pot and saw the world's largest Buddha, Western Sichuan (Tibet) and rode some rickety busses on scary really high mountain roads, saw some really tall Himilayan mountains, and enjoyed the lack of oxygen; passed through Beijing a few times; went to frigid Harbin for the Ice Sculpture Festival and saw some Russian architecture; climed Yellow Mountain (Huang Shan) for the second time, wasn't nearly as spectacular as the first time; took the train to Shanghai to catch my flight back to the states; spent a few days in Xi'an and did some prep work for our research project; went to northern Shaanxi province and did research; rode a bus to Yinchuan and ate a fried silkworm (only after I stuck it up my nose for comedy); and I spent 4 weeks in Ellensburg, WA where in addition to working on the research project, I also managed to go rafting, see a wiener dog festival, and spend a day or two in awesome Seattle. Then in August I finally came back to Colorado after being gone for almost a whole year. After getting back to CO, I moved into my first apartment with my friend Grant and got the best grades of my college career (except for my study abroad grades which were better but don't really count).
So it was pretty much a good year. As for 2006, I don't have any travel plans in the works, so it probably won't be as cool as 2005 was, but it should still be a good one. I am planning to graduate in December. After that, who knows. Hopefully I'll find a cool job or something. I'm thinking I might like to take my little sister's lead and go be a ski instructor for a little while after I graduate. The summer will be my only real chance to do something cool this year. One idea that I have been considering is trying to get some money to go somewhere and do some sort of linguistics research project that I can then maybe write an honors thesis paper about, but I really don't know what I'll do.
Here are some resolutions/goals that I have for 2006:
- Learn some Arabic.
- Graduate with at least a 3.5 GPA.
- Bike more.
- Waste less time on the internet.
- Work harder to be more financially independent.
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