My Semester Abroad

My roommate, Rob, and I woke this morning to a city covered in fine red dust. We had heard that in the spring, strong winds hurl the sand so fast that at times it's painful to go outside unprotected but we hadn't seen it in our two weeks in the city. Luckily for us, the storm struck at night while we were safe in our seventh-floor dorm room.

But Beijing's annual sandstorms have been getting worse, according to my acquaintances who have lived here for a while. They're caused by the desertification that resulted from the heavy logging and pollution of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s.

Although China's ecological future seems bleak, my friends and I were able to take advantage of the present situation and had lots of fun drawing pictures with our feet in the dust on the university's outdoor basketball court. This scenario is par for the course of my nine months in Asia as part of the Pacific Rim Travel Study Program: a balance of changes, contradictions, and possibilities that I have learned about during my time in Asia. I have one more month, in China, so I'm hoping to make the most of it.