Day 1: Adam and Georgia

Adam told me he felt 7/11 should give bendy straws with their boxed wine. I laughed. I had not considered that option in the past, though it doesn't seem like a bad idea. Ha!

Truth be told, the day almost went by and I thought the 18th was tomorrow when I went on line and realized it was today. I panicked, stood up and turned in circles for a minute or two. After realizing that the day was not yet over, I put on my pants and grabbed a postcard. It was time to celebrate anyway: after a day of being in editing/writing mode, I went to the 7/11 to get some wine and to meet my first stranger.

Adam was super cool about taking a photo with me. He said sure right away. Another confession: I just got a smart phone. Yes, I went over to the dark side. I took my first photos on my smart phone. That's why I have a slightly crazed glazed look. Smart phones will do that to you. Besides, it's kinda tough to take your own portrait when you can't feel the shutter button.

BTW: I left Georgia with the chocolate. Yay!

A note from Luo Yu:

Hola! The key things I received include a three-volume encyclopedia (don't understand why one would send me such a heavy thing out of all the packages - isn't it quite costly and troublesome to send it all the way to China, lol) and a picture of a rotten wood trunk obtained from the url (sorry don't know what to do with the qrscancode). Well, I also want it to have some Chinese touch. So I decided, paper making it is! According to the Concord Desk Encyclopedia I received, paper is defined as: felted or matted sheets of cellulose fibers, formed on a wire screen from a water suspension, and used for writing and printing; wood pulp processes are sometimes involved (Vol. 3, p. 928).

In July, I happened to visit a traditional paper-making workshop run by some Hmong families in Guizhou Province, southwest China. In ancient times, this village used to provide materials for ritual scripts created by another ethnic groups in the region, and it was once a secret paper source site during the internal war period. So, Ana, this is going to be my next research project - a fascinating topic!

My 36 picture is composed of one photo in which I was tempting to suspend some bark fiber out of the water (needless to say, I failed), and the other three photos are the products this paper workshop has made - very delicate objects including dyed paper mixed with flowers/leaves, paper lamps and paper for traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy!