"coming back only to move out"

So to bring you guys up to speed, I’ve been spending the last few days in Jinhua, a relatively small city of 4.5 million. It’s in the same province as Hangzhou.

Gross. The bottoms of my feet are actually black. Jinhua is dirty. I’ve spent the entirety of my stay helping my grandparents move out of their apartment, and they live in the middle of the city, complete with construction sites, garbage heaps, and dust everywhere. I wash my feet when I shower, and when I step into my flip-flops in the morning, I can feel a layer of dust. Also, although it gets bright every day, I don’t think I’ve seen the sun itself—the sky is cloaked in smog.

My aunt put it really well: I’m “coming back only to move out.” I thought packing up my stuff at school was hard. My grandparents are literally packing up their entire lives—75 years’ worth of clothes, pictures, and heirlooms. My back aches. Still, I don’t mind cleaning up their mess while they sit around and do nothing—after all, I’m sure they did it countless times for me when I was a baby.

Speaking of which, while cleaning and setting up the new apartment, I organized all of my grandparents’ old photos. Looking through the pictures with my grandparents was very warm and fuzzy, and I gained a new appreciation for those shutterbugs out there who take pictures of everything. It really does help you recall old memories.

I'm having trouble uploading some of the pictures, but this one works:


I always liked to dress up.