New internship

Back in Shanghai after an amazing break at home. It went by so quickly that it doesn't even seem like I left China. It's been raining nonstop the past week and will until the next week. What's worse, 梅雨季节 or plum rain season will soon be coming up. I've been told it'll rain continuously all of June and July. Good thing I'll be out of here in July!

My apartment:


But the important news, I am now working two internships. I found an architecture one with the help of a family friend, and so far I really like it. The boss is incredibly nice, the coworkers are friendly and talkative, and the work is interesting. I've never been told to design a Suzhou garden luxury villa before, but I am doing my best... the first day I just worked on conceptual sketches. It seems like they expect a lot of me, and with my obsessive need to excel in everything, I am really nervous.

Yesterday, the boss, two coworkers and I went to Suzhou to see the site. Our luck was off the whole day. The rain didn't let up for a second and it was freezing cold. Since I lost my toenail over the break (long story), I was wearing sandals which turned out to be a terrible idea...the site is basically undeveloped farm land with dirt roads, so I was running around in muddy fields all day. We got stuck in the mud for a bit when our boss tried to drive on a dirt road...poor Xiao Xu was covered in yellow mud.


We snuck into a construction site nearby. I guess this is the style we're going for--modern-day traditional Chinese.

We didn't get many good pictures because of the weather so the trip wasn't really worth it. What really made the day terrible was the 2.5 hour drive back turned into 5 hours. Half of that time was spent on a 10 km stretch of the freeway, where there was an nasty, inexplicable traffic jam.

I have a bit of work to do for the magazine this weekend. Have to research "overseas Chinese" architects for them to interview, which doesn't really make sense to me... they don't care if the architects are third-generation and/or have never been to China. They told me because they have a Chinese ancestry we want to include them in our magazine. This is such a Chinese mentality---once Chinese, always Chinese.