So, I have been thinking and coloring and have come to a mental image. The places that we live color in our insides, like an intricately doodled adult coloring book. I have lived in 4 places (that i can reminder) and each one has left a different pattern ans color scheme behind.

Now everyone knows that the Chinese love lucky red, but they have symbolism for many other colors as well. Unfortunately, trying to nail down exactly what these mean is rather difficult. So I made my own.

Home for me, is the Puget Sound area. I spent years letting this place paint me in greens, and greys, and blues. Which actually matches pretty well with the Chinese meanings for nature, peace, and my own addition: that cozy comfortable safe feeling of home.

Southern MD college life added earthy tones, like brown. The Chinese don't seem to have an element to go with brown though, since yellow is associated with earth instead. But the closest I got to chinese culture in college was ordering absurdly large quanities of cheap and greasy, innauthentic chinese.

Gambia is bright, riotious colors. According to some sources on Chinese color symboloism orange can symbolize spontinaity, change, and adaptability - all things I gained from my time in Africa. (Believe it or not :-p those traits are in me somewhere). So, lets say Gambia painted me orange.

Lastly we have China. To the rest of the world red may mean China and communism, but here it symbolizes luck, good fortune, and joy. I don't know that those are all things I can say we have in spades here, but nonetheless, China would have to have some red. And maybe white and black as well, for the yin-yang.

And now, some unrelated pictures :-)