Val

My third couch surfing host Val.  I loved staying with her.  She reminded me so much of my own culture back home.  She is a hippie form Portland.  I had been deeply missing talking with people fully in my native tongue and having them easily understand me, and I think she felt similarly.  We had a great time talking and sharing China stories.  She was kind enough to take me to a traditional Chinese painting class which she had been getting from a professorial painter in exchange for teaching his grandson English.  We spent the afternoon learning how to hold the brush right and apply the proper amount of pressure in order to leave the proper amount of ink on the page.
That night I thought back to all of the traditional Chinese paintings that I had seen.  None of which I had liked, they all seemed simple and lacked beauty to my eyes.  I began talking to Val about this and immediately she pulled a video off her self which she popped into the TV and invited me to sit down with her and watch.  It was an hour documentary about traditional Chinese painting.  To my amazement after watching for one hour my perceptions of beauty had completely changed.  I looked at the paintings and saw how beautiful they were.  The documentary had explained the experience which Chinese painters convey.   How they will walk around a mt. all day, go home and then paint from memories with  the hopes that the viewer will feel what they felt up in those mt.