So the first week of the new school year has passed, and while I do not have anywhere near the amount of work I will end up having when the semester really begins to pick up (thank you, studio) it seems like the rush and stress is already coming back.

For those who don't know, I lived in Shanghai from 7 - 13 years old, and when I was 13 I moved to the US to go to boarding school in rural Connecticut. Most of my formative childhood years and memories are based on China, but because I left at 13, I left with the naive associations a young girl tends to have, and my stubbornness to believe in those rose-colored memories kept me from seeing what was really in front of me.