I'm Baaaaack

I know, I know..y'all missed me so much.I've been back in the great U.S. of A. since Monday and I'm finalllyyyy starting to get adjusted back to my real life. China was beyond amazing. I feel like there are no words to describe my experience there except that it ranks pretty high on my favorite memories list. I can't stop thinking about everything I saw, experienced, shared with others, learned and even ate. I'm constantly thinking to myself "if it was a week ago, what would I be doing?" or "okay, it's 5:30 pm here, that means it's 7:30 am tomorrow there.. that means I would be eating breakfast with people from my fabulous tour group." To be honest, I just really, really miss it there. I'm so grateful for my parents who allowed us the opportunity to go and that they share the same passion for traveling as I do. It's them who instilled a strong desire to travel the world and immerse myself in another culture, even if it's just for a short while.

Now for the kinda bad news...within the hour I got home, I immediately gathered all of my memory cards to upload every picture so I could relive those two and a half weeks over and over again. However, NONE of my 800+ pictures would upload. Monday night, I had a legit panic attack. (And when I say legit, I mean I was literally shaking uncontrallibly and even had to kneel over the toilet for awhile because I thought I was going to start throwing up). I was completely devastated. I tried everything..restarting my computer, trying on my brother's laptop, changing settings on my camera, but nothing seemed to do the trick. Even though I was heartbroken, I was coming to terms with the fact no one would ever see my pictures. I would just have to hold on to the memories made, and that was all. HOWEVER, after a couple days of being in a bad mood and constant worry about it, I tried again and they uploaded just fine!!! What the heck?? Obviously my camera was telling me to go to sleep and not worry about pictures at that moment. (Wish I would have realized that earlier instead of staying up til 5 am every night). I can't even begin to express how happy I am that they finally worked!! SO anyway, you may be wondering then what's the bad news?? Well, over the course of the two & a half weeks, I used four memory cards. Yep, that's right. Except somehow I only ended up with three..? I'm missing pictures of the Terracotta Warriors in Xian, the Summer Palace and Great Wall in Beijing and some others. I'm freaking out. But, it's not as bad as losing alllll of them. Please pray I find the card soon, as in preferably the next 10 minutes..I'm hoping my dad accidentally took that card home, but we'll have to see, I guess.

In the meantime, enjoy this iphone picture of the Great Wall. Seriously such a highlight of the trip! Ahhhh, to be back there...