November into December: Ful on Life • 從11月到12月：Ful on Life

Hello, my name is Halden Levin, and you are listening to Little Dragon’s Journey. 你好！我叫李靜辰，你正在聽小龍的旅程。

Transition Music（音樂）

Dear Reader,

“Ful on Life” means to be drunk on life. Ful in Swedish means drunk. It’s one of the few Swedish words I know because my grandma, Grandma Glo, told us that one time, when she was eating with some of our Swedish relatives, after eating for a while, she said that she was full. They laughed because ful, pronounced full, means drunk in Swedish. By “Ful on Life,” I mean that throughout November, I felt as though I was living and yet also in a sort of trance. Being present and productive in this physical reality and virtual reality creates this sort of dissonance and exhaustion. Don’t worry though, I don’t drink, so I’m not actually drunk; in that regard, I’m quite sober.

November was quite an eventful month. For starters, November 16th to November 20th was International Education Week. What exactly is International Education Week? International Education Week (IEW) was established in partnership between the US Department of State and the US Department of Education to share the importance of international education and promote such opportunities. As an NSLI-Y Alumni Ambassador, I decided to host a Study Abroad Trivia event in collaboration with YES Abroad Alumna Emma Holmes, who also attended NCSSM. I also spoke to a group of Virtual Chinese NSLI-Y students. In addition to the summer and academic year programs, NSLI-Y also has a virtual program that lasts one semester long; this program was established within the past few years.

To end a peaceful and productive week, I watched Secret《不能說的·秘密》with my NSLI-Y cohort; it’s a Taiwanese romance/sci-fi movie. I had actually watched half of it on my own a year or two ago, but I never finished it; I don’t really know why. It was quite an interesting movie; I would say I recommend it. I feel like the movies that confuse you in the end or aren’t fully satisfying in a way are good movies.

Two weeks or so into November, actually during IEW, Nyoze asked me about helping out with an office project. As a reminder, Nyoze is the vice abbot of the Sonoma Mountain Zen Center and is the individual who helped me begin my Zen practice with SMZC. I happily agreed to help out. I’m not a computer science major, but their website operates on Wix, which happens to be the same platform I use for my website. Apparently, the problem they were facing is that the tool they were using to display their calendar was going out of commission, so they had to find a different method to display their calendar. After transferring all the events from the old calendar to an Excel sheet, I worked on figuring out what sort of widget I could use to display their calendar in a user-friendly manner. After much trial and error, and emailing back and forth, I figured out how to create a dataset of calendar events to link to different list elements.

Now that they’ve already got me helping out, I’m continuing to help update the calendar, as well as help out with a few other small projects. I truly wish I could volunteer in person and help out with taking care of their garden and the grounds, sewing zafus, and what not. Living online is okay, but my eyes are not happy, and my mind is tired.

On November 22, I had the opportunity to meet part of my GGYF cohort in person. Since March, when everything became virtual, I have pretty much remained at home, besides exercising outdoors and going to the grocery store/essential trips, so meeting with people in person was truly an out of body experience for me. All the people I saw were people I have only known through Zoom and other virtual platforms. The first thing I thought when I arrived at the little gathering in Chapel Hill was, I have never seen their legs before. Weird thought, I know. Since most everyone is on Zoom most of the time, it’s hard to know what a person’s bottom half looks like or how tall they are. One day in my Chinese class, I remember my classmates said what their heights were, and finding out that they were both taller than me kind of surprised me because I had honestly never thought about how tall they are. I also felt kind of short even though I am 5 foot 7, which is not short, but not especially tall either.

Anyway, at this little gathering, I met Sarah and Friederike, the two wonderful individuals coordinating our GGYF program, as well as Ander, Val, and a few others. We sat outside of Friederike's house, eating cake and drinking tea; her daughter even drew us all pictures. I carefully stowed the picture away in my box full of gap year memories. I left honestly a little too late, as I had ridden my bike there with my brother. I rode back a ways with Ander, and then proceeded to pedal as quickly as possible to make it back home before it got too dark outside. A few weeks later, I went for a bike ride with Ander, and he showed me a number of interesting nature paths and locations around town I had never explored before.

After the GGYF gathering, there was a sudden turn of events. On November 24, my NSLI-Y cohort was informed that we would be able to travel to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, for the remainder of the academic year. This was bittersweet news because this meant that my cohort, and the NSLI-Y cohort learning Chinese in Taipei, Taiwan, would be able to travel abroad, but individuals learning Russian, Arabic, Korean, or Chinese in China would be unable to travel. I felt a sober sort of excitement because I knew what a privilege this opportunity was. We will likely be traveling to Taiwan at the beginning or middle of January. Of course, that’s if everything goes according to plan. Since we’re in a middle of a pandemic, there are even more preparations that need to occur, including many COVID-19 tests. Wish us best of luck and careful preparation!

Finally, to end a month of plenty was Thanksgiving. To celebrate, my family invited my aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandma who live nearby. Due to the pandemic, we all gathered and ate outdoors and wore masks whenever inside. This year, I prepared pineapple buns, as I discussed last week, but as a brief reminder, pineapple buns are a type of bun popular in Hong Kong with a milk bread base and a cookie topping. No pineapple is actually in the bun; the name comes from the appearance of the bun (the cookie cracked on top looks like the outside of a pineapple). Of course, there were many other delicious dishes, including turkey, mashed potatoes, my mom’s stuffing, which was made with vegetarian sausage this year, green beans, cranberry sauce, crème brûlée (my dad was being adventurous), chocolate pie, apple pie, and even more.

Unfortunately, due to how long the pineapple buns took to prepare, and also the volume of food already made, I decided to hold off on making the Hong Kong egg tarts. However, Hong Kong egg tarts are still on my to-do list and will be made when there are not a multitude of pies and other sweet treats to be consumed.

Besides our little pie/dessert baking competition, one of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions is our name tag swap. Every year, each person who will be attending Thanksgiving dinner chooses a name at random of the person that they will make a name card for. This year, I chose Uncle Craig. When it comes to making a good name tag, I think it’s important to incorporate elements of what that person likes or is special to them in the name tag. The first thing I thought of when I thought of Uncle Craig was hockey, so I decided to create a name tag with this element, as well as Snoopy. Why Snoopy? Because whenever I think of Thanksgiving, I always think of the Peanuts, and Snoopy is a pretty well-known and well-liked character. Just for fun, I also created a dry-erase board to add on the side. My name card was from Aunt Sarah, and she created a bookmark with Chinese characters expressing gratitude. Surprisingly, Google Translate did not fail her.

Quite Full,

Halden

Transition Music（音樂）

Please visit haldenlevin.wixsite.com/littledragonjourney to access the transcript of this episode, and know you are always welcome to contact me through my website, email, or social media. Thank you for joining Little Dragon’s Journey. 謝謝你們參加小龍的旅程。拜拜！