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Published: March 7th 2011
As some of you know, Alicia and I share a birthday- down the day and year. Apart from the 12 hours between our births and 4 state lines between us, we could be twins! (okay, maybe having different sets of parents affects that in some way too). By the Chinese zodiac, we are Rabbits.
We both came to China for our own reasons; I will leave her to tell hers but mine is personal growth. I needed a change of pace. Something to get me out of my element, away from distractions and influences. My goal for this trip is to find out who I am. I want to make decisions that are my own. I want to do the things that make me happy. I want to learn about other cultures and people and what makes them tick. This is time for myself and a time to grow.
The Chinese just celebrated their New Years and Alicia and I found ourselves in the midst of it all. According to the zodiac, it is the year of the Rabbit again. Ahhh, how appropriate!
This amazing coincidence got us brainstorming. Why not do something together that will always remind us of the
time we spent together, both learning, both growing. A novel idea, but what? Alicia suggested we should get matching tattoos. Ones that read "Year of the Rabbit" in Chinese characters. Pin yin- basically a language of phonetics- uses the English alphabet to describe the sounds of the Chinese characters. In pin yin, the words are written as "Tu nian" and is pronounced "too nee-IN". But, of course if you don't use the right tone, no one will understand you haha
So, as you have probably already noticed from the pictures, we got the tattoos! Today, actually. (I think this is the quickest I have ever gotten a blog posted! I hope you are all proud of me.)
This was my first tattoo. It took a while for me to decide to go through with it. I have never thought of myself with a tattoo. Not that I was ever against it but I never wanted to brand myself with something that didn't have a special meaning to me. This obviously does so I am very excited about it!
I have always had a high tolerance to pain so the inking process was not bad at all for me. Of course
it hurt a little but it just felt like a but of pricks with a needle (essentially what it is) then a light scrape.
I am glad to have a permanent symbol of this trip and I hope that it will always help me to remember the things that I have and will still learn while I am here.
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