新疆 Epilogue

This was a trip of learning to be alone, of appreciating the company of my friends whom I missed so much, and of survival in an unfamiliar place. 


On this trip, time flowed strangely. The sun goes down at around ten, and we often didn't have dinner or stop for the night until midnight so that we could cover the maximum distance during our waking hours. This means that I usually never got to sleep until long after 1 or 2 am. During the day, I was drowsy, and slept ridiculous amounts in the long car rides. Often, it felt like time passed by too quickly without me noticing. I would wake up to find that hours had passed, feeling like I had only dozed off for several minutes. Sometimes I would get back into the car after what felt like a leisurely afternoon stroll at some sightseeing destination, only to realize with a start that it was nearing 8pm, not 3 as I had imagined, with the sun swollen yellow in the sky. Then there were times in the car, in between naps, where I felt impossibly 100% awake and could not possibly sleep a second more. The dusty unfamiliar landscape would slide by alarmingly fast as the driver sped along the backcountry roads, but the minutes would tick by at a snail's pace. I felt as though I never could stay awake for more than three hours at a time, and never was allowed to sleep for more than 5. If it weren't for the photographs to remind me of the vivid realities of the sights I had seen, my memories of the trip would be only hazy at best, as I felt like I sleepwalked through the whole ordeal. 


There was an element of culture shock, of course, and I felt isolated as my uncle and cousin were in their own country, my dad was returning to it, and I was always left on the outside as the little girl who could not understand. My grasp of the language was often misunderstood, and this made for awkward spots where I could understand everything they were saying about me-- the fact that I was a foreigner, a woman, a child --but I was not able to respond at all. It did help me to feel a bit more confident in my comprehension abilities,  I suppose.  


Overall, I found this place to be unnerving and repulsive on some occasions, but immensely pure and beautiful on many others. I would come again, on my own terms though, and hopefully a little bit more awake.