[The perfect thing to do in Cambridge on a beautiful day: picnic by the Charles River]

With graduation now behind us, this week has been a bittersweet mixture of visits from family and friends, and saying a lot of farewells. One of the most remarkable things about my program is the diversity. But it also means that we’re all scattered to the four corners of the globe once it’s over. On one hand, I’m eager to begin working and excited to embrace everything the future holds. On the other hand, it is not without a great deal of nostalgia and even reluctance that I leave law school behind.

I am now fully immersed in the marathon that is the New York Bar Review, which already is proving to be quite a challenge. But in between the demanding schedule, I’m trying to make the time to discover Boston, and spend time with friends and family. Here’s to a busy but happy weekend frantically catching up with the bar prep, and new discoveries. Happy Friday everyone!

[Finally tried out the Barking Crab: a fun waterfront seafood restaurant in south Boston with friends visiting from out of town

[Bear-hugging one of my law school besties on graduation, before saying farewell. Good friends are so rare. Good friends that are brilliant, work for the French Supreme Court, have multiple master degrees in their 20's and can breakdance like a machine.... are impossible to find. Now that Adil has left my chocolate consumption has dropped significantly ]

[Finally checked out Bobby from Boston, one of the most swankiest and beautiful vintage store I've ever seen]

[Favorite quote this week]

[Rainy day view of my secret dorm room garden]

This week was about savoring all the little details and my last days as a law student. Nine months ago, I found myself surrounded by two hundred incredibly intimidating strangers. You know that scene in Legally Blonde where everyone introduces themselves at Harvard? … It was sort of like that. Only imagine meeting classmates like a JAG lawyer that also disarms underwater bombs, a student with already three degrees and a clerk for the French Supreme Court (yeah, you Adil!), an ICC prosecutor, or the first female law student in Saudi Arabia and women’s rights activist. These people don’t just have talents, they have super powers.

Months later I no longer just see a steady stream of walking (mind-boggling) CV’s, but the familiar faces of friends and confidantes. And my iPhone camera roll is full of pictures of ski trips, dinners and antics galore. This year has been so incredibly special. A chance to indulge in questions and curiosity, to be inspired, and ask myself how can I offer my talents to a greater purpose. As friends and family fly in for graduation, I am relishing the chance to be part of the class of 2013 for one more week, and all the tiny details that make Harvard so special. Happy Friday everyone!

[Trying Ethopian food at Asmara Restaurant in Inman Square with friends]

  [We're in Egypt!!... Or just being goofballs in the Museum of Fine Art]

[My favorite little landmark on campus: a decorated tree stump (now with a tiny, working door bell). Pooh or Piglet can occasionally be found inside]

[Langdell Hall decorated for commencement. Jump for joy!!]

Going through my iphone camera roll of the exam period. Feeling slightly masochistic and nostalgic of my last days as a law student, and the amazing friendship and camaraderie that made it all possible.

Is there anything as luxurious as lingering over high tea with a good friend?

I snapped a few shots today with my iPhone – nothing fancy. The tea and scones more than made up for my lack of SLR-ness.

This brings me back to my favorite memory of my grandmother, at high tea at the Peninsula. I remember her as a wild child disguised in pearls. She taught me that the best lived-life is finding peace with contradiction: success is managing a series of failures. Wealth is giving generously and freely. A rebel can still be a lady.

High tea is a rare reminder for me to slow down and remember the important things in life. I am so thankful for the wonderful people who encourage me and keep me grounded. And of course, girl friends to giggle with and savor the rare tranquil moment in an otherwise hectic life.

Time has flown by in a blink of an eye. Traveling in a country as massive as China can often feel like a whirlwind, particularly when you’re backpacking. Sprawling cities abruptly end and the colorful patchwork countryside of rice paddies and orchards begin without suburban transitions. From the window of trains, buses and ships, it all seems like a haphazard puzzle of modernization and agrarian culture.

Melissa and I have been on every form of transport imaginable at this point (except for a mule. But we’ve still got time, so I’m not ruling anything out.) Some days we move at mind-boggling speed, touching down in two or three cities in one day. Other times we hang around cafes and linger at a snail’s pace. However no chronicle of our travels would be complete without a faithful account of our trip to the Three Gorges.

The Three Gorges

The heart beat of China is the Yangtze river. It begins in the frigid Tibetan plateau and winds right through the Middle Kingdom and is the dividing line of northern and southern China. The Three Gorges Dam completed in 2007 and flooded a region the size of Singapore, and caused the relocation over 1.2 million. Roughly 90% of the historical sites on the famed cruise is now submerged, with relics dating back to the Tang dynasty (aprox 600 AD) and beyond.

The best way to experience the gorges is on a three day cruise from Chongqing, ending in Yichang, Hubei. From there, it’s a four hour bus to Wuhan, another mega-city in China.

The Roach Boat

Melissa and I decided to take the cruise, and whattheheck, fighting back the guilt of not sticking to our backpacking ways, we splurged and got a first class ticket. Thank God we did. At the docks, we fought off porters insisting on carrying our bags (“only 10 kuai! you foreigner! you girl! I carry!”) and stepped on board the boat.. to find ourselves in the dingiest, dreariest, barely sea-worthy ship. After aimlessly wandering around what I figured to be the engine room, we realized the docks were filled over capacity and they had lined up several ships. We eventually found ourselves in a slightly more stable looking ship. With air con, thank heavens. There’s a reason they call Chongqing and Wuhan the furnaces of China.

We settled into our bearths, and got ready for the journey. In China, “classes” are something of a misnomer. Almost every hotel you see will likely be labeled three or four starred. Usually that means unfinished lobbies, fixtures that don’t work and if you’re lucky – a working toilet. On this occasion, it meant mouldy ceilings and a shower over a squatty potty. (We were quite bewildered as to how we would be able to use it without flooding the bathroom.)

To be clear, I don’t particularly like entries like this. I’m not fond hearing stories from travelers who go to developing countries and only come back complaining of the bathrooms and local habits. Yes, there is much to adjust to, but if you can look past the bathrooms and “adventurous” foods, China is an ancient culture with so much to offer in culture and heritage.

That said… you still need to see the humor in situations ;)

So with that, we drifted into the sunset along the Yangtze, our first night as sea-faring backpackers. Sometime around 5AM or so, I heard a loud gasp and found Melissa sitting straight up in bed.

“what happened?” I mumbled

“something ran across my hand. omg. I’m afraid to look.”

In the semi-darkness, she lifts up her pillow and a tiny “eep!” escaped. We’re not sure what it was, but all bets are that it was a roach. You gotta hand it to the girl. I’d a) either have slept right through it and wound up with it in my hair or something or b) had a much more forceful reaction than just “eep!”

Suffice to say, there was a mild sense of paranoia for the next two days. I eventually managed to get the sucker with a well-timed whack with a sandal (ok, maybe several wild flails of the sandal) but we sleep with all the lights on and with one eye open.

I R Cattle.

I have a particular loathing for tours. Maybe it’s an authority issue, but I hate being hearded like cattle, following an obnoxious mega-phone and flag. Although I’m sure the sight of us in the tour must have been pretty funny. Melissa was the only caucasian on any of the cruises we saw, and with her, a rather surly-faced Chinese translator. Me. Everywhere we go, people seem to think that either I’m her translator or accompanying her as a foreign investor in China. We are quite a pair.

Now that majority of the sites along the gorges have been flooded, the government has come up with some interesting gimicks to keep the tourists happy. Our first stop, Ghost City. A temple dedicated to the Chinese god of the underworld and a depiction of the eighteen levels of hell dating back to the Tang dynasty. The site is rather small and located on a hill, and to accomodate the flood of tourists, the government built a second site on an adjoining hill. The lamest, cheeziest haunted house you can possibly imagine. What got me really puzzled however, were that tourists kept pausing in the middle of the haunted house to bow to the mechanized “ghosts”. That or the finer points of Chinese superstition is just lost on me.

The Little Three Gorges

If you can endure the Roach Boat, and the lameness of the first day of “cultural sites” on the Three Gorges tour, you will be richly rewarded once you hit the actual Gorges and the spectacular “Little Three Gorges” and “Little Little Three Gorges”. We disembarked onto a smaller ferry followed by a small bamboo boat, ferried by a singing local of the area.

The next day, we toured some of the most mind-boggling natural senery I have ever seen, walking on floating bridges of recycled plastic and climbing the narrowest gorges and the home of Qu Yuan, where the Dragon Boat Festival first originated.

In my mind, that more than made up for the half sleepless nights, the moldy walls, and heck, even the haunted house.

Oh, and in the end.. we did figure out how to work the shower without the toilet overflowing. But… I still flooded our floor. Oops :) Sorry Mel!