For the last three weeks of my summer, I went home to China to see my family, give copious amounts of hugs to my adorable little sister, and to go sight-seeing.

Prior to that, I had been interning at a small healthcare design firm called Involution Studios (check them out here!) in Arlington, where I co-researched, designed, and wrote a manifesto about the pitfalls of American healthcare (there are a lot) and explored methods of fixing it. It was a super great experience - the people there are awesome and all wildly different and interesting, I learned and expanded on a bunch of super useful skills (D3, HTML/CSS) which I was able to immediately use on the project I worked on, while also taking advantage of my design background.

Also, we got Union Square Donuts once a week, which obviously also added to the awesomeness of Invo. If you haven't had a Union Square Donut yet, you're missing out.

Through the experience, I further solidified my want to work in and experience design fields other than architecture.

I flew back to China on the 11th of August and spent three weeks catching up with my family and getting into shenanigans with my little sister.

Meet Hera, the most adorable little 6 year old on the planet

We were in Shanghai for a few days - and we went to play the claw machine and Hera got a pikachu but then she promptly LOST IT the next day so of course we had to go again, but it was a Saturday so there were tons of people and the claws were all loosened (fun fact: if you want to catch things in the claw machines, go when no one is there. The claws are less likely to have been tampered with) and we had to wait for a half hour to an hour for this one couple (who already had a bunch of stuffies anyway!) to finish trying to get a pikachu but they FAILED and probably wasted more than 100 yuan (each try is 2 yuan) and then Hera got the pikachu on her first try because the couple that we had to wait for probably used up all the duds (woo probability!).

We were also in the countryside for a few days. I cut bangs because Hera wanted us to match (and obviously I couldn't refuse her because she's so damn cute), we baked an apple tart and cookies and banana bread, and we rode on the back of a pick up truck (because Hera wanted to) to go to the mountains (aka even more in the middle of nowhere) to eat dinner.

this is us in the back of a pick up truck in rural China

I don't know if you can tell, but behind Hera in the shop window are little panda statues doing kung fu

this is a panda shaped sweet with whipped cream inside

panda Jack Sparrow shirt that I almost couldn't resist buying

they have a legit chain store called Panda House and their store fronts look like panda heads

my dad and I in our super awesome matching kung fu panda shirts

Hera and mom in their super awesome (but less cool than ours, obviously) matching mommy and baby panda shirts

this panda needed to scratch his butt

After scratching his butt he was very hungry

tiny tiny panda

another tiny tiny panda

A few other things Chengdu is famous for: hot pot, and a performance called "Changing Faces" or 变脸 (bian lian). We did both, but I didn't get pictures of the performance because of my scumbag iPhone that decided its storage was full.

Me and Hera at the West Lake!

I got this really interesting grapefruit tea that was sweet and supposedly had a lot of beauty benefits but more importantly it was very tasty

We went on a little boat ride on the West Lake the next day before we left

Ready for hiking! Also, the color matching was totally unintentional

I SWEAR THE COLOR MATCHING WAS UNINTENTIONAL

Welcome to Paradise where the view is incredible and no one is around except the mosquitoes

If you can see the little boardwalk-like area at the top of the waterfall - yep, we went all the way up there

All in all, it was a super great summer. I spent time with my roommates, did really cool things at work, and had great fun with my family. I'm not completely ready for the semester to start quite yet - let me bask in the fun for a little while longer, please?