Oh, how I wish! It's not in the cards as of yet, but I thought I'd update this as I've been getting questions.
Due to the ever present social media integration, I'm testing out how this would work. However, my hope is to start blogging again, (notice hope, not goal) as my adventures in Minneapolis merit it.
If anyone is interested in doing a bit of traveling to my old haunts, let me know as you never know where I may pop up these days.
Much love and safe travels to all.
Ke ShanShan
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Because there are not enough people in China...
I'm back. Safe trip that was blessedly uneventful. The only downside was my mp3 player ran out of juice, so I had to wait until Tokyo to charge it. Fine and dandy.
Courtney picked me up at the airport. She had a public transit adventure trying to get to me and the return trip was the same. I was surprised at how long it took me to see something familiar and we chose the longest bus route.
Tomorrow:
-More adventures in how my Chinese has suffered
-Having lunch with a yet undetermined number of former students
-The shopping begins.
Aren't you excited?
Courtney picked me up at the airport. She had a public transit adventure trying to get to me and the return trip was the same. I was surprised at how long it took me to see something familiar and we chose the longest bus route.
Tomorrow:
-More adventures in how my Chinese has suffered
-Having lunch with a yet undetermined number of former students
-The shopping begins.
Aren't you excited?
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Busy busy busy
Sorry for the long wait between blogs. We've been quite busy over here and it's only going to get busier!
Monday, June 11: After getting ready, Elizabeth and Carlson went off to the Pearl Market and I set out on my grand adventure to the Summer Palace. Getting there was no small feat! First, I had to try to navigate the Beijing Subway system. This involved buying a ticket with many hand gestures, making sure I was going the right way on the right line, riding a crowded subway for about 40 minutes, getting off, switching lines, and riding for another 10-20 minutes. As if that wasn't enough, then I could either take a taxi or figure out a bus system that had no English whatsoever. Knowing me, I went for the challenge. My guide book said to take bus 375, but of course didn't give me any clue about which stop to get off at. So I found the bus stop and pointed in my book at the Summer Palace to a girl who was also waiting for the bus. She didn't speak English, so that made things very interesting. She pointed at a few different things, then changed her mind and walked me to a different bus stop. She pointed at a different bus completely. Through many more gestures, she told me which stop we were at and which stop I should get off at. The bus in Beijing was different than the ones in Shanghai. Not only is there a driver, but there is another person on the bus who takes your money. And the bus is only 1 yuan (12.5 cents) as opposed to 2 yuan in Shanghai. I counted out the stops and got off at the one I assumed to be it. As soon as I got off, people were shoving bottles of water at me (hello lady...cold water...2 yuan!) so I knew I was in a touristy area. Success! I bought a map of the Summer Palace from some peddler and then got my ticket. (half price for students...score!) There were TONS of tourists around the gate and just inside. Once inside, I tagged along with some tour group that had an English speaking guide and listened in on what he had to say, then I broke away and walked around. It was a cloudy day, but I still got some great pictures. I climbed up as far as I could go in the Tower of the Fragrant Buddha. After climbing the Great Wall the day before, all I needed was more stairs! But the view from the top was really cool. Since it was quite a hike to get up there, there weren't many people so that was a plus too. I took a back way circling back to the gate and saw some very pretty scenery. I walked back to the bus stop, hopped the bus back to the subway, and then the subway back to the hotel. All in all, it was a very fun little side trip and I didn't get lost once! I met up with Carlson and Elizabeth back at the hotel. Carlson bought several pearl necklaces and earrings at the market. He said that he went to one store and asked how much a necklace was, the lady said 180 (just over $20) and Carlson opened his mouth and said, "That's all?!" before he could stop himself. After he said that, there was no bargaining. He could have gotten the stuff he did for much cheaper, but even so, it was cheaper than Shanghai. He spent quite a bit of money there. Elizabeth didn't get anything, but that's because she didn't have any money on her. She said it was probably best, otherwise she could have been in trouble pretty quickly! We set off together for Tiananmen Square. It was a bit less than a mile walk from our hotel. We got there and to my utter dismay...Mao's tomb was CLOSED for remodeling!!! It was devestating. I personally think they closed it to re-glue his left ear! :) The sun was boiling that day. Luckily, I brought my own shade....my umbrella. Otherwise I would have been as red as one of Mao's books. At one point, we tried to discretely get a picture with a PLA guard. However, he was wise to our tricks and kept turning around so we couldn't get one. Next, we tackled the Forbidden City. That place is HUGE...it's gi-normous...just to walk straight throught it, not even venture to the sides at all, took us several exhausting hours in the blazing sun. I think I drank about 4 bottles of water from beginning to end. Plus an ice cream break! From Tiananmen to the end of the Forbidden City has to be at least 2 miles, plus our walk just to get to Tiananmen, plus all the walking I did at the Summer Palace. When we got to the end, we crawled to a taxi and went back to the nice, air conditioned hotel. We sat around there for a while, then Elizabeth and I were hungry. She was craving biscuits from KFC and I decided that didn't sound half bad either. There was one a few blocks away, but when we got there...they had no biscuits! I think that's gotta be illegal. At least in my books it is. So she got some chicken, but I decided that I would have broken down and gotten biscuits, but not their chicken, so I found a little bakery that had some amazing croissants. We picked up our bags from the concierge and walked (aahh...more walking!) to the train station. Elizabeth and I played several card games. We took the wonderful, glorious night train back to Shanghai. I love the train, you get on, mess around for a couple hours, wake up, and there you are! Easiest traveling ever.
Tuesday, June 12th: We took a cab back to the hotel, unpacked, did some laundry, and other miscellaneous whatnot. Then, we walked to Lotus, took bus 33 to the Bund, and took a cab to the fabric market. This place is pretty much my idea of heaven on earth. Silk, cashmere, tailored clothes, unbeatable prices! I could have got in some serious trouble here. I went to a place to get a dress made. I showed the lady a picture of what I wanted and she led me to severeal different fabric stores to pick out one I liked. On the way there, she said, "don't ask anything about price, I'll handle that because they will give me a much better price than you." I found a really cool pattern. It was brown and blue on a cream background. Then I got a little bit of solid brown for an accent. They took some measurements and asked me a few more questions about what I wanted then told me to come back in a week. Next, we went to a place where Elizabeth got measured for a pair of black wool cashmere pants for 140 yuan. ($17.50 for tailored cashmere!!) Then she got a 2 piece suit; I got a 3 piece suit and an amazing chocolate brown pea coat with a silk lining. Suit: 500 ($62.50) Pea coat: 480 ($60) After that, we had to leave before we drained our bank accounts! We went back to campus and checked our email, ate supper, and other random things I can't remember.
Since I only have 10 more mintues before they lock me in this place, I'll give you the short version of events for the past week:
Wednesday, June 13th:
-not a whole lot in the morning
-lunch
-work on some powerpoints for class
-meet with Eric (friend of ours also from UND) in People's Park
-get dinner (yummy pasta)
-decide to go to a movie
-tried to figure out how to say 'Pirates of the Carribbean'
-finally find a poster and just point
-have 2 hours to kill until movie
-go to his hostel and look at pictures of his 3 day cruise through the 3 Gorges Dam
-go back to movie theater
-watch Pirates of the Carribbean
-take cab home
Thursday, June 14th:
-class at 8am-11:40am
-lunch
-kill time until guy came with me and my sister's tickets to Chengdu
-get tickets and do a little dance because I'm going to Chengdu
-teach class from 6-8pm
-go to my rock hard bed
Friday, June 15th:
-teach class at 8am for 2 hours. Boo.
-sit in on another 2 hours of class.
-chinese cafeteria food
-ANOTHER 4 hours of class. (don't worry, this much class isn't normal, their schedules are quite wierd, so we just had a really long day)
-supper, walk around, and other not very interesting things
I'm about to be locked in so I'd better leave!
Monday, June 11: After getting ready, Elizabeth and Carlson went off to the Pearl Market and I set out on my grand adventure to the Summer Palace. Getting there was no small feat! First, I had to try to navigate the Beijing Subway system. This involved buying a ticket with many hand gestures, making sure I was going the right way on the right line, riding a crowded subway for about 40 minutes, getting off, switching lines, and riding for another 10-20 minutes. As if that wasn't enough, then I could either take a taxi or figure out a bus system that had no English whatsoever. Knowing me, I went for the challenge. My guide book said to take bus 375, but of course didn't give me any clue about which stop to get off at. So I found the bus stop and pointed in my book at the Summer Palace to a girl who was also waiting for the bus. She didn't speak English, so that made things very interesting. She pointed at a few different things, then changed her mind and walked me to a different bus stop. She pointed at a different bus completely. Through many more gestures, she told me which stop we were at and which stop I should get off at. The bus in Beijing was different than the ones in Shanghai. Not only is there a driver, but there is another person on the bus who takes your money. And the bus is only 1 yuan (12.5 cents) as opposed to 2 yuan in Shanghai. I counted out the stops and got off at the one I assumed to be it. As soon as I got off, people were shoving bottles of water at me (hello lady...cold water...2 yuan!) so I knew I was in a touristy area. Success! I bought a map of the Summer Palace from some peddler and then got my ticket. (half price for students...score!) There were TONS of tourists around the gate and just inside. Once inside, I tagged along with some tour group that had an English speaking guide and listened in on what he had to say, then I broke away and walked around. It was a cloudy day, but I still got some great pictures. I climbed up as far as I could go in the Tower of the Fragrant Buddha. After climbing the Great Wall the day before, all I needed was more stairs! But the view from the top was really cool. Since it was quite a hike to get up there, there weren't many people so that was a plus too. I took a back way circling back to the gate and saw some very pretty scenery. I walked back to the bus stop, hopped the bus back to the subway, and then the subway back to the hotel. All in all, it was a very fun little side trip and I didn't get lost once! I met up with Carlson and Elizabeth back at the hotel. Carlson bought several pearl necklaces and earrings at the market. He said that he went to one store and asked how much a necklace was, the lady said 180 (just over $20) and Carlson opened his mouth and said, "That's all?!" before he could stop himself. After he said that, there was no bargaining. He could have gotten the stuff he did for much cheaper, but even so, it was cheaper than Shanghai. He spent quite a bit of money there. Elizabeth didn't get anything, but that's because she didn't have any money on her. She said it was probably best, otherwise she could have been in trouble pretty quickly! We set off together for Tiananmen Square. It was a bit less than a mile walk from our hotel. We got there and to my utter dismay...Mao's tomb was CLOSED for remodeling!!! It was devestating. I personally think they closed it to re-glue his left ear! :) The sun was boiling that day. Luckily, I brought my own shade....my umbrella. Otherwise I would have been as red as one of Mao's books. At one point, we tried to discretely get a picture with a PLA guard. However, he was wise to our tricks and kept turning around so we couldn't get one. Next, we tackled the Forbidden City. That place is HUGE...it's gi-normous...just to walk straight throught it, not even venture to the sides at all, took us several exhausting hours in the blazing sun. I think I drank about 4 bottles of water from beginning to end. Plus an ice cream break! From Tiananmen to the end of the Forbidden City has to be at least 2 miles, plus our walk just to get to Tiananmen, plus all the walking I did at the Summer Palace. When we got to the end, we crawled to a taxi and went back to the nice, air conditioned hotel. We sat around there for a while, then Elizabeth and I were hungry. She was craving biscuits from KFC and I decided that didn't sound half bad either. There was one a few blocks away, but when we got there...they had no biscuits! I think that's gotta be illegal. At least in my books it is. So she got some chicken, but I decided that I would have broken down and gotten biscuits, but not their chicken, so I found a little bakery that had some amazing croissants. We picked up our bags from the concierge and walked (aahh...more walking!) to the train station. Elizabeth and I played several card games. We took the wonderful, glorious night train back to Shanghai. I love the train, you get on, mess around for a couple hours, wake up, and there you are! Easiest traveling ever.
Tuesday, June 12th: We took a cab back to the hotel, unpacked, did some laundry, and other miscellaneous whatnot. Then, we walked to Lotus, took bus 33 to the Bund, and took a cab to the fabric market. This place is pretty much my idea of heaven on earth. Silk, cashmere, tailored clothes, unbeatable prices! I could have got in some serious trouble here. I went to a place to get a dress made. I showed the lady a picture of what I wanted and she led me to severeal different fabric stores to pick out one I liked. On the way there, she said, "don't ask anything about price, I'll handle that because they will give me a much better price than you." I found a really cool pattern. It was brown and blue on a cream background. Then I got a little bit of solid brown for an accent. They took some measurements and asked me a few more questions about what I wanted then told me to come back in a week. Next, we went to a place where Elizabeth got measured for a pair of black wool cashmere pants for 140 yuan. ($17.50 for tailored cashmere!!) Then she got a 2 piece suit; I got a 3 piece suit and an amazing chocolate brown pea coat with a silk lining. Suit: 500 ($62.50) Pea coat: 480 ($60) After that, we had to leave before we drained our bank accounts! We went back to campus and checked our email, ate supper, and other random things I can't remember.
Since I only have 10 more mintues before they lock me in this place, I'll give you the short version of events for the past week:
Wednesday, June 13th:
-not a whole lot in the morning
-lunch
-work on some powerpoints for class
-meet with Eric (friend of ours also from UND) in People's Park
-get dinner (yummy pasta)
-decide to go to a movie
-tried to figure out how to say 'Pirates of the Carribbean'
-finally find a poster and just point
-have 2 hours to kill until movie
-go to his hostel and look at pictures of his 3 day cruise through the 3 Gorges Dam
-go back to movie theater
-watch Pirates of the Carribbean
-take cab home
Thursday, June 14th:
-class at 8am-11:40am
-lunch
-kill time until guy came with me and my sister's tickets to Chengdu
-get tickets and do a little dance because I'm going to Chengdu
-teach class from 6-8pm
-go to my rock hard bed
Friday, June 15th:
-teach class at 8am for 2 hours. Boo.
-sit in on another 2 hours of class.
-chinese cafeteria food
-ANOTHER 4 hours of class. (don't worry, this much class isn't normal, their schedules are quite wierd, so we just had a really long day)
-supper, walk around, and other not very interesting things
I'm about to be locked in so I'd better leave!
Thursday, June 14, 2007
2/3s of Beijing
Here are our adventures for the first two days in Beijing:
Saturday, June 9: We left the train station and walked a couple blocks to our hotel. Since check-in time wasn’t until 1pm, we left our bags with the concierge and headed to Panjiayuan Market. This market only runs on Saturdays from dawn until 3pm. This place is insane! There is everything you could ever want there. There are whole aisles devoted to one item: beads for jewelry, silk scrolls, cloisonné, scarves, paintings, you name it. I found 3 absolutely beautiful paintings. The first one was of a large, white flower, (possibly magnolia?) the next was a field of yellow tulips with one red tulip, and the third is a great scene of the Great Wall. I can’t wait to get back and get them hung up! They are amazing. I also got a great matted picture of the Great Wall. Elizabeth bought a vase, a silk picture, and a gift for her parent’s anniversary. (They read this too so I can’t tell you what it is!) Carlson bought several pictures, a wood carving, and some jewelry for his nieces. After we all had spent WAY too much money, we caught a cab over to the Temple of Heaven. It would have been cool to take a rickshaw, but two people can hardly fit in one, let alone all three of us with our stuff! The Temple of Heaven is big. We walked around that place forever! It had many different halls for this and that, but one of them was the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. I said a little prayer for all the farmers back in North Dakota, so I expect when I get back for the 4th of July, the corn is going to be waaaay past knee-high! We also walked through a flower garden where we saw a guy painting some flowers. I got a really good picture of him, the painting he was working on, and the flowers. After the Temple of Heaven, we went back to the hotel to check in, buy our tickets for the Great Wall tour the next day, and all that. We took a shower and it was the best shower I’ve had since leaving the States. It had pressure!! And water that didn’t smell like it came out of the slough by my Grandma’s!! I thoroughly enjoyed it. We got ready and had a great supper of Peking Duck at a nearby restaurant. They bring out the duck and carve it right at your table. I wonder how many they typically sell in a night, because at any given time during our meal, we could look around and see five or six guys out carving ducks. It is the most tender, juicy duck I have ever had. It is served with onions, cucumbers, and some sort of sauce. They also give you small buns and something that looks like a tortilla for you to make sandwiches and wraps with. Plus, they had some really good fresh squeezed apple juice. It was a wonderful meal. When we were done, we walked back past our hotel to a main street nearby and walked around there. Many of the building along the street were under construction to renovate for the Olympics. I was surprised at the lack of people asking me to buy a ‘watchbagshoesdvdcheapocheapo’…it was nice to walk down a street and not be bothered! There were all sorts of shops along this street. We walked down a side street that had lots of little stands selling touristy stuff. I bought a lighter that looked like Mao’s red book. As we were walking, we saw this area that had three carnival-type rides. The big one was two pillars with a big ball in the middle attached with two bungee cords. It looked like a lot of fun. For 120RMB ($15) two people could ride it and you got a picture and a video. However, Elizabeth was too chicken to do it with me…jerk. So, instead, I went on one of the side rides. It looked like an astronaut training course. I sat in a seat in the middle and there were three circles around me. They spun me in every direction. I expected the ride to last for a minute and a half or so, but they kept going and going and going! Every time I thought they were about to stop me, they sped it up again. I drew quite a crowd. I was laughing and screaming and Elizabeth and Carlson were laughing so much that Elizabeth had a tough time taking a picture that wasn’t blurry. It was fun, but I had a tough time keeping my arms and feet where they were supposed to go. The next day my arms, legs, and feet all had lots of bruises on them. But it was definitely worth the 20RMB ($2.50). Surprisingly, I wasn’t that dizzy when I got off. After that, we were walking along the street and a guy came up to me and said, “I didn’t think they were ever going to let you off!” I laughed and agreed. He was from Chicago and he had just come to Beijing the day before. We all talked until we had to turn onto a different street. The next street we went to was the night market. This place had all sorts of crazy things on a stick: octopus, bugs, scorpions, eel, snake, pork, beef, unidentifiable objects, and my favorites, sea cucumbers and starfish. I asked one guy how you were supposed to eat the starfish. I was thinking you broke it open and ate the insides or something, but he motioned that you just eat the whole thing as is. That blew my mind. After the duck meal, I wasn’t hungry so I didn’t try anything, but I took pictures. I was looking at some fruit kabobs one vendor had with this glazed sugar on it. I was only half paying attention to what he was saying, but I heard him say something about ‘free’ and he was holding one out to me. So I walked over and asked him if it was free. He smiled and said, “for a kiss, it’s free!” I laughed, looked at the fruit, looked at him, but decided it just wasn’t quite worth it. All the other workers were laughing at him too. We walked along a bit more and stopped in a silk fabric store. Elizabeth bought some really pretty green silk fabric to get a shirt made. I debated about buying some, but just decided to wait until we went to the market in Shanghai. By the time we got back to the hotel we were more than ready for bed.
Sunday, June 10: We got up and had the breakfast buffet in the hotel. They had eggs, waffles, really good hash browns, croissants, fresh pineapple juice, and lots of other things. I miss American style breakfasts! Usually we just have toast with peanut butter or ‘Frosties’ which are the Frosted Flakes here in our room at the hotel. After that, we got ready to go on our grand adventure to the Great Wall!! We left the hotel lobby at 11am along with a man and a woman from the Washington, DC area who were here on business, a husband and wife from the Indonesia with their two sons were a bit older than us, then we stopped and picked up a furniture salesman from Atlanta, his son, and the tour guide and his assistant. We had a small tour bus/van type vehicle. We were working our way through the ring roads when the rear driver side tire started making this horrible knocking noise. I looked back and saw black stuff flying, so I was sure we had a blowout or a flat tire or something. The driver pulled over and was checking it out. I was able to look out the window and see that it wasn’t a flat, so we weren’t sure what it was. It was taking a while to fix it and every now and then the driver would get in and drive for a bit to see if it stopped, but it didn’t. The guy from Indonesia told the tour guide that we’d either have to get a new bus or cancel the trip. Elizabeth and I looked at each other and had the same thought. We didn’t care if we had to crawl there, we were going to the Great Wall and this guy can walk back! The guide called his company and they sent a new bus, but it ate up quite a bit of time. We didn’t get to the wall until 2pm. There are three sections of the Wall open to tourists: Badaling-which is the most popular and touristy one, Simatai- which has very few people because it’s a three hour drive from Beijing, and Mutianyu-which is the one we went to that doesn’t have many tourists and is only an hour drive. (or at least it is when your bus doesn’t break down!) There are two ways up: the wussy way where you ride a cable car up to Tower 14 and walk around or the real way…you walk up. The rest of the group took the easy way out, but Carlson, Elizabeth and I did it right. Just the walk up to get to the Wall was a hike. We were all huffing and puffing. We started at Tower 8 and walked to 14. I went through about 3 or 4 bottles of water. It was close to 100F that day with absolutely no shade. Yes mom, I did remember to put on sunscreen. Otherwise I would have been a lobster. Since there weren’t a lot of people there, I was able to get some really great pictures of some sections without any people on it. I’ll put more pictures up on Shutterfly soon. The view was spectacular. In every tower there was a guy selling cold water and postcards. A bottle of water was 2 yuan down at the start of the climb, but was 10 yuan up in the towers. I told one guy there was horrible inflation here and he just laughed. I willingly paid 10 for a bottle because it was so hot and we were all dying. I thought Elizabeth was going to pass out a couple times! We were going to climb down, but we ran out of time so we had to take the cable car down. At the top of the wall, Carlson and Elizabeth each bought a beer. So I got a couple pictures of them drinking a beer on the Wall. Elizabeth is mildly afraid of heights, so she asked to sit backwards in the car so she didn’t have to see the drop off. However, Carlson being how he is immediately said, “Holy crap, it goes straight down!” She made a horrible face and closed her eyes and drank her beer. We were laughing the whole way down. When we got off the car, there were all sorts of vendors selling Great Wall stuff. All three of us had to get an “I climbed the Great Wall” t-shirt because we truly did. We all loaded onto the tour bus and then stopped at a cloisonné factory. It was interesting to see how they made everything. First, they had to make a copper mold, (they demonstrated how a vase is made, but you can make all sorts of different objects) then they have to take tiny bits of wire and glue them on the vase to make the pattern. One 10 inch vase can take a worker 8 days to make…and they get paid per vase…but they don’t get paid at all if the quality isn’t good. Rough way to make a living! The next step is to paint in all of the little spaces made by the wire then they fire it. However, when they fire it, the stuff they paint with shrinks, so they have to repaint it…and this happens about 8 times! The guide said that only women workers put on the wire and paint because it is delicate work that requires a steady hand, but more importantly, it requires great patience. All the women in the group laughed at that. Then when we saw the room with the kiln, she said this is where the men work because it’s too hot in there. After it’s finally painted well enough, it goes to the sander to smooth everything out, and then gets glazed to protect it, and finally it is gold plated. They couldn’t show us the gold plating part because that was a guarded business secret. We looked around the store for a bit and then went back to the hotel where we showered before dinner because we were all drenched in sweat! After getting ready, we decided that the duck last night was so good we had it again. Then Carlson went back to his room while Elizabeth and I went out exploring. There were several interesting walkways with music notes and math equations on them…no idea what they were for, but I took a picture. We saw a guy out walking his dog and we made motions asking if it was okay to pet it. He nodded, so we were petting it and then out of nowhere it growled and tried to bite me. That’s when I walked away…don’t want rabies or anything. We went back to the room, watched ‘The Mask of Zorro’ on HBO, and went to bed.
Saturday, June 9: We left the train station and walked a couple blocks to our hotel. Since check-in time wasn’t until 1pm, we left our bags with the concierge and headed to Panjiayuan Market. This market only runs on Saturdays from dawn until 3pm. This place is insane! There is everything you could ever want there. There are whole aisles devoted to one item: beads for jewelry, silk scrolls, cloisonné, scarves, paintings, you name it. I found 3 absolutely beautiful paintings. The first one was of a large, white flower, (possibly magnolia?) the next was a field of yellow tulips with one red tulip, and the third is a great scene of the Great Wall. I can’t wait to get back and get them hung up! They are amazing. I also got a great matted picture of the Great Wall. Elizabeth bought a vase, a silk picture, and a gift for her parent’s anniversary. (They read this too so I can’t tell you what it is!) Carlson bought several pictures, a wood carving, and some jewelry for his nieces. After we all had spent WAY too much money, we caught a cab over to the Temple of Heaven. It would have been cool to take a rickshaw, but two people can hardly fit in one, let alone all three of us with our stuff! The Temple of Heaven is big. We walked around that place forever! It had many different halls for this and that, but one of them was the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. I said a little prayer for all the farmers back in North Dakota, so I expect when I get back for the 4th of July, the corn is going to be waaaay past knee-high! We also walked through a flower garden where we saw a guy painting some flowers. I got a really good picture of him, the painting he was working on, and the flowers. After the Temple of Heaven, we went back to the hotel to check in, buy our tickets for the Great Wall tour the next day, and all that. We took a shower and it was the best shower I’ve had since leaving the States. It had pressure!! And water that didn’t smell like it came out of the slough by my Grandma’s!! I thoroughly enjoyed it. We got ready and had a great supper of Peking Duck at a nearby restaurant. They bring out the duck and carve it right at your table. I wonder how many they typically sell in a night, because at any given time during our meal, we could look around and see five or six guys out carving ducks. It is the most tender, juicy duck I have ever had. It is served with onions, cucumbers, and some sort of sauce. They also give you small buns and something that looks like a tortilla for you to make sandwiches and wraps with. Plus, they had some really good fresh squeezed apple juice. It was a wonderful meal. When we were done, we walked back past our hotel to a main street nearby and walked around there. Many of the building along the street were under construction to renovate for the Olympics. I was surprised at the lack of people asking me to buy a ‘watchbagshoesdvdcheapocheapo’…it was nice to walk down a street and not be bothered! There were all sorts of shops along this street. We walked down a side street that had lots of little stands selling touristy stuff. I bought a lighter that looked like Mao’s red book. As we were walking, we saw this area that had three carnival-type rides. The big one was two pillars with a big ball in the middle attached with two bungee cords. It looked like a lot of fun. For 120RMB ($15) two people could ride it and you got a picture and a video. However, Elizabeth was too chicken to do it with me…jerk. So, instead, I went on one of the side rides. It looked like an astronaut training course. I sat in a seat in the middle and there were three circles around me. They spun me in every direction. I expected the ride to last for a minute and a half or so, but they kept going and going and going! Every time I thought they were about to stop me, they sped it up again. I drew quite a crowd. I was laughing and screaming and Elizabeth and Carlson were laughing so much that Elizabeth had a tough time taking a picture that wasn’t blurry. It was fun, but I had a tough time keeping my arms and feet where they were supposed to go. The next day my arms, legs, and feet all had lots of bruises on them. But it was definitely worth the 20RMB ($2.50). Surprisingly, I wasn’t that dizzy when I got off. After that, we were walking along the street and a guy came up to me and said, “I didn’t think they were ever going to let you off!” I laughed and agreed. He was from Chicago and he had just come to Beijing the day before. We all talked until we had to turn onto a different street. The next street we went to was the night market. This place had all sorts of crazy things on a stick: octopus, bugs, scorpions, eel, snake, pork, beef, unidentifiable objects, and my favorites, sea cucumbers and starfish. I asked one guy how you were supposed to eat the starfish. I was thinking you broke it open and ate the insides or something, but he motioned that you just eat the whole thing as is. That blew my mind. After the duck meal, I wasn’t hungry so I didn’t try anything, but I took pictures. I was looking at some fruit kabobs one vendor had with this glazed sugar on it. I was only half paying attention to what he was saying, but I heard him say something about ‘free’ and he was holding one out to me. So I walked over and asked him if it was free. He smiled and said, “for a kiss, it’s free!” I laughed, looked at the fruit, looked at him, but decided it just wasn’t quite worth it. All the other workers were laughing at him too. We walked along a bit more and stopped in a silk fabric store. Elizabeth bought some really pretty green silk fabric to get a shirt made. I debated about buying some, but just decided to wait until we went to the market in Shanghai. By the time we got back to the hotel we were more than ready for bed.
Sunday, June 10: We got up and had the breakfast buffet in the hotel. They had eggs, waffles, really good hash browns, croissants, fresh pineapple juice, and lots of other things. I miss American style breakfasts! Usually we just have toast with peanut butter or ‘Frosties’ which are the Frosted Flakes here in our room at the hotel. After that, we got ready to go on our grand adventure to the Great Wall!! We left the hotel lobby at 11am along with a man and a woman from the Washington, DC area who were here on business, a husband and wife from the Indonesia with their two sons were a bit older than us, then we stopped and picked up a furniture salesman from Atlanta, his son, and the tour guide and his assistant. We had a small tour bus/van type vehicle. We were working our way through the ring roads when the rear driver side tire started making this horrible knocking noise. I looked back and saw black stuff flying, so I was sure we had a blowout or a flat tire or something. The driver pulled over and was checking it out. I was able to look out the window and see that it wasn’t a flat, so we weren’t sure what it was. It was taking a while to fix it and every now and then the driver would get in and drive for a bit to see if it stopped, but it didn’t. The guy from Indonesia told the tour guide that we’d either have to get a new bus or cancel the trip. Elizabeth and I looked at each other and had the same thought. We didn’t care if we had to crawl there, we were going to the Great Wall and this guy can walk back! The guide called his company and they sent a new bus, but it ate up quite a bit of time. We didn’t get to the wall until 2pm. There are three sections of the Wall open to tourists: Badaling-which is the most popular and touristy one, Simatai- which has very few people because it’s a three hour drive from Beijing, and Mutianyu-which is the one we went to that doesn’t have many tourists and is only an hour drive. (or at least it is when your bus doesn’t break down!) There are two ways up: the wussy way where you ride a cable car up to Tower 14 and walk around or the real way…you walk up. The rest of the group took the easy way out, but Carlson, Elizabeth and I did it right. Just the walk up to get to the Wall was a hike. We were all huffing and puffing. We started at Tower 8 and walked to 14. I went through about 3 or 4 bottles of water. It was close to 100F that day with absolutely no shade. Yes mom, I did remember to put on sunscreen. Otherwise I would have been a lobster. Since there weren’t a lot of people there, I was able to get some really great pictures of some sections without any people on it. I’ll put more pictures up on Shutterfly soon. The view was spectacular. In every tower there was a guy selling cold water and postcards. A bottle of water was 2 yuan down at the start of the climb, but was 10 yuan up in the towers. I told one guy there was horrible inflation here and he just laughed. I willingly paid 10 for a bottle because it was so hot and we were all dying. I thought Elizabeth was going to pass out a couple times! We were going to climb down, but we ran out of time so we had to take the cable car down. At the top of the wall, Carlson and Elizabeth each bought a beer. So I got a couple pictures of them drinking a beer on the Wall. Elizabeth is mildly afraid of heights, so she asked to sit backwards in the car so she didn’t have to see the drop off. However, Carlson being how he is immediately said, “Holy crap, it goes straight down!” She made a horrible face and closed her eyes and drank her beer. We were laughing the whole way down. When we got off the car, there were all sorts of vendors selling Great Wall stuff. All three of us had to get an “I climbed the Great Wall” t-shirt because we truly did. We all loaded onto the tour bus and then stopped at a cloisonné factory. It was interesting to see how they made everything. First, they had to make a copper mold, (they demonstrated how a vase is made, but you can make all sorts of different objects) then they have to take tiny bits of wire and glue them on the vase to make the pattern. One 10 inch vase can take a worker 8 days to make…and they get paid per vase…but they don’t get paid at all if the quality isn’t good. Rough way to make a living! The next step is to paint in all of the little spaces made by the wire then they fire it. However, when they fire it, the stuff they paint with shrinks, so they have to repaint it…and this happens about 8 times! The guide said that only women workers put on the wire and paint because it is delicate work that requires a steady hand, but more importantly, it requires great patience. All the women in the group laughed at that. Then when we saw the room with the kiln, she said this is where the men work because it’s too hot in there. After it’s finally painted well enough, it goes to the sander to smooth everything out, and then gets glazed to protect it, and finally it is gold plated. They couldn’t show us the gold plating part because that was a guarded business secret. We looked around the store for a bit and then went back to the hotel where we showered before dinner because we were all drenched in sweat! After getting ready, we decided that the duck last night was so good we had it again. Then Carlson went back to his room while Elizabeth and I went out exploring. There were several interesting walkways with music notes and math equations on them…no idea what they were for, but I took a picture. We saw a guy out walking his dog and we made motions asking if it was okay to pet it. He nodded, so we were petting it and then out of nowhere it growled and tried to bite me. That’s when I walked away…don’t want rabies or anything. We went back to the room, watched ‘The Mask of Zorro’ on HBO, and went to bed.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
I got mugged!
Yes indeed...but you'll have to read it all to find out the details. First, more catching up....
Wednesday, June 6th: We woke up at 6am today, got ready and took a cab with Patton and Carlson to meet up with the rest of the UND group at their hotel. From there, we took a bus to Suzhou, a city about an hour/hour and a half outside of Shanghai. David, a student from USST who is now at UND to get his Master's, had his father invite us to visit his factory. Vicwood Industries is a factory that takes lumber and manufactures many different products including solid wood flooring, veniers, furniture, etc... We rode in the tour bus through the factory, that's how big it was. Then, David's dad took us to eat in this really fancy hotel...it was delicious. After lunch, we went to the Humble Administrator's Garden. That was fun because we got to hang out with the rest of the people from UND who we really haven't seen much. Pretty much everyone slept on the way back to Shanghai. When we got back to their hotel, Elizabeth and Carlson headed home and I stayed and hung out with everyone. I ended up going to supper with my teachers Victoria Beard and Mary Loyland, Victoria's husband Michael, Eric, Dave E, and Jill. I had a really good steak salad. We all sat around and talked for a while then headed back to their hotel. I took a cab back to the Bund and caught the last bus home.
Thursday, June 7th: We went to class from 8am to 11:40 and grabbed a bite to eat in the cafeteria. Then, we went to the Bund and took a cab to Xintiandi. We met with Spencer Wong, a partner with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He talked with us for a while about his career path, accounting in China versus US, and other topics. When I asked him if I would need to know Chinese to work in Shanghai, he said definitely yes. I thought this was interesting since Deloitte said no. Mr. Wong said that 10 years ago he would have said no, 5 years ago maybe, but now yes for sure. We went on a quick office tour too. PWC currently occupies the whole building (about 11 floors or so) and is looking to expand. One side of the building overlooks a pond/pool area. In China, water represents money or fortune or something like that, so he said that all the partners want offices on that side of the building! After that, we walked over to the UND people's hotel and hung out there. We all went out to supper together since it was Eric's last night with the group. We ate at a restaurant called 'Heaven on Earth.' It was really good. After that, we went back to the hotel. Everyone pretty much went to bed or started packing or whatnot. Dave E and Eric both had gotten white suits made and wanted to take some pictures. Elizabeth and I had to go back to the Bund anyway to ride the bus, so we all went together and bummed around there. We got some rather strange looks from people...I'm used to it by now. We walked by a lady selling some ornaments with jasmine in them. I bought 3 for 10 yuan ($1.25 or so). They wouldn't fit in my purse, so I just had them tied around my finger as I was walking along. I stopped to take a picture and all of a sudden I felt this tugging on my hand. I looked down and there was this 4 year old girl looking up at me and saying 'shie-shie' (thank you) over and over tugging at one of the ornaments in my hand. I tried to pull it away from her and then a whole family of beggars came over to us. I was trying to make her let go so I could reach in my pocket a pull out a few coins, but she had a death grip on it. Finally, she just pulled the string and broke it off. Before I could react, her brother (maybe 5 years old) came over and broke off another one! I was mugged I tell you! Eventually they went away. So now I have one lonely ornament. *sigh* We took a few more pics then hopped on the bus to go home.
Friday, June 8th: Class in the morning, lunch at the cafeteria, class in the afternoon. After class, we quickly packed our things and took a cab to the Railway Station to get on the night train to Beijing. A girl from USST was there to help us get on the right train. Elizabeth, Carlson, and I had a soft sleeper car. Elizabeth and I played some cards, did some Sudoku, and went to bed. We woke up the next morning and there we were in Beijing. We left at around 7:15pm Friday and arrived at 6:45 am on Saturday.
Beijing will require a long entry in itself, so that will follow shortly.
News from the homefront: I talked with mom over MSN last night and she informed me that my Grandma Ginny took a tumble while getting the mail. Luckily, she only cut her top lip and hit the back of her head. How she managed to hit both the front and back of her head is still a mystery to all. She also sent the mail flying in all directions and blew two shoes into the flowerbed. Now Grandma: I've managed to fly halfway around the world and live in one of the biggest cities with no problems, and you're the one who gets hurt?! Good grief...maybe I should be worrying about you and not the other way around! :) While she was getting stitched up at the doctor's office, she asked the doctor, "will these stitches hurt my beauty?" Now you know where Shanna and I get it from!
Wednesday, June 6th: We woke up at 6am today, got ready and took a cab with Patton and Carlson to meet up with the rest of the UND group at their hotel. From there, we took a bus to Suzhou, a city about an hour/hour and a half outside of Shanghai. David, a student from USST who is now at UND to get his Master's, had his father invite us to visit his factory. Vicwood Industries is a factory that takes lumber and manufactures many different products including solid wood flooring, veniers, furniture, etc... We rode in the tour bus through the factory, that's how big it was. Then, David's dad took us to eat in this really fancy hotel...it was delicious. After lunch, we went to the Humble Administrator's Garden. That was fun because we got to hang out with the rest of the people from UND who we really haven't seen much. Pretty much everyone slept on the way back to Shanghai. When we got back to their hotel, Elizabeth and Carlson headed home and I stayed and hung out with everyone. I ended up going to supper with my teachers Victoria Beard and Mary Loyland, Victoria's husband Michael, Eric, Dave E, and Jill. I had a really good steak salad. We all sat around and talked for a while then headed back to their hotel. I took a cab back to the Bund and caught the last bus home.
Thursday, June 7th: We went to class from 8am to 11:40 and grabbed a bite to eat in the cafeteria. Then, we went to the Bund and took a cab to Xintiandi. We met with Spencer Wong, a partner with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He talked with us for a while about his career path, accounting in China versus US, and other topics. When I asked him if I would need to know Chinese to work in Shanghai, he said definitely yes. I thought this was interesting since Deloitte said no. Mr. Wong said that 10 years ago he would have said no, 5 years ago maybe, but now yes for sure. We went on a quick office tour too. PWC currently occupies the whole building (about 11 floors or so) and is looking to expand. One side of the building overlooks a pond/pool area. In China, water represents money or fortune or something like that, so he said that all the partners want offices on that side of the building! After that, we walked over to the UND people's hotel and hung out there. We all went out to supper together since it was Eric's last night with the group. We ate at a restaurant called 'Heaven on Earth.' It was really good. After that, we went back to the hotel. Everyone pretty much went to bed or started packing or whatnot. Dave E and Eric both had gotten white suits made and wanted to take some pictures. Elizabeth and I had to go back to the Bund anyway to ride the bus, so we all went together and bummed around there. We got some rather strange looks from people...I'm used to it by now. We walked by a lady selling some ornaments with jasmine in them. I bought 3 for 10 yuan ($1.25 or so). They wouldn't fit in my purse, so I just had them tied around my finger as I was walking along. I stopped to take a picture and all of a sudden I felt this tugging on my hand. I looked down and there was this 4 year old girl looking up at me and saying 'shie-shie' (thank you) over and over tugging at one of the ornaments in my hand. I tried to pull it away from her and then a whole family of beggars came over to us. I was trying to make her let go so I could reach in my pocket a pull out a few coins, but she had a death grip on it. Finally, she just pulled the string and broke it off. Before I could react, her brother (maybe 5 years old) came over and broke off another one! I was mugged I tell you! Eventually they went away. So now I have one lonely ornament. *sigh* We took a few more pics then hopped on the bus to go home.
Friday, June 8th: Class in the morning, lunch at the cafeteria, class in the afternoon. After class, we quickly packed our things and took a cab to the Railway Station to get on the night train to Beijing. A girl from USST was there to help us get on the right train. Elizabeth, Carlson, and I had a soft sleeper car. Elizabeth and I played some cards, did some Sudoku, and went to bed. We woke up the next morning and there we were in Beijing. We left at around 7:15pm Friday and arrived at 6:45 am on Saturday.
Beijing will require a long entry in itself, so that will follow shortly.
News from the homefront: I talked with mom over MSN last night and she informed me that my Grandma Ginny took a tumble while getting the mail. Luckily, she only cut her top lip and hit the back of her head. How she managed to hit both the front and back of her head is still a mystery to all. She also sent the mail flying in all directions and blew two shoes into the flowerbed. Now Grandma: I've managed to fly halfway around the world and live in one of the biggest cities with no problems, and you're the one who gets hurt?! Good grief...maybe I should be worrying about you and not the other way around! :) While she was getting stitched up at the doctor's office, she asked the doctor, "will these stitches hurt my beauty?" Now you know where Shanna and I get it from!
I've got some catching up to do...
Sorry for the wait...get ready for a loooooooooooong one....
So, when I last left you, I was just an international bigmouth. Now, I'm an international bigmouth who has climbed the Great Wall of China!!! Ooohhh....aaaaahhhhh. But, no use getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning. If I repeat a day, I apologize...but right now the computer won't let me view the blog, just enter new ones and I can't remember if I wrote about Sunday or not. So here it is:
Sunday, June 3: We woke up after getting a total of 4 hours sleep since we were up all night singing the many songs we thought they should have had at karoke. We had a blast and thought we were pretty cool. So we woke up, reluctantly, and got ready. Now, there are pretty much only two things I will wake up at ridiculous hours to do: #1. travel to someplace that's not North Dakota and #2. shopping. And shop we did. (Yes, I am using sentence fragments....so any grammar junkie will just have to live with it...*coughVICTORIAcough* :) Carlson, Elizabeth, a student from USST, and I went to Yu Gardens to tackle gifts we had to get for people. Interesting tidbit: on most English maps, it is called Yu Yuan Gardens...however, 'yuan' in Chinese means 'garden' so really it's like saying Yu Gardens Gardens. As we were shopping, we heard music coming from the street. We looked over and there was a parade rounding the corner. They had people playing instruments and two very long dragons like you see in pictures of parades. We asked the Chinese girl who was with us what it was all about. She had no clue. So we just saw some random parade. It was interesting and I took a couple pictures. We walked to Nanjing Road. Elizabeth and I broke down...so we went to a Pizza Hut and got some stuffed crust pizza. Man...it was delicious. We were having cheese withdrawals. In my book, Pizza Hut is okay, but I refuse to go to a McDonalds here. A girl has to have SOME boundaries. We went into a KFC in Beijing, but they didn't have biscuits...so I didn't eat there either. We walked around a bit more, went to a book store where I bought some Chinese books for Shanna's friend's little boy, walked to the Bund, hung out there for a while, then caught the bus back home. I can't really remember what we did that night, but it was probably something along the lines of: hung out in the room, played cards, ate at our restaurant, watched a movie, or any variation of the above.
Monday, June 4: We woke up, got ready, and took the bus to the Bund. Then we walked around for a bit trying to find Deloitte's offices. Deloitte, Touche, and Tohmatsu is one of the "Big Four" accounting firms. I know many UND alum who work there, so I was able to get in contact with someone they knew and visited the firm over in Shanghai. Their meeting room was up in the 30th floor of a building, so it had some pretty commanding views. Elizabeth and I met with Wilfred Cheung. He is a manager at Deloitte. He was born in Hong Kong and moved back and forth from there to the US several times. He got a degree from a university in Texas (don't remember which one) and started out with Arthur Anderson in LA. We all know how that went, so a year or so later, the firm went kaput and he joined Deloitte in LA, then PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong, and finally Deloitte in Shanghai. He showed us around the office. They have about 7 floors in one prominant building and are hiring more people. I asked him about the work load in China versus US. In China, everything falls on the calendar year, so the books close every December 31 and annual reports are due on April 30th. No extensions. So their busy season is at a whole new level compared to the US. And it's no picnic in the US. Very interesting information. Also, I asked him if I were to transfer to the Shanghai office, would I have to learn Chinese? He said it was no problem, people either speak only English or only Chinese and many people can speak both, so any level was okay. He gave us both a set of chopsticks with Deloitte engraved on them as a gift for visiting. It was definitely informative and interesting. We took the bus back home and again did some variation of the above hang out, eat, play cards, explore, etc...
Tuesday, June 5: We got ready and took the bus to the Bund. As you can tell, Bus 33 is our friend. We take it almost every day. One end of the line is the Lotus Center, which is a great big market (think Chinese K-mart) which is about a 10 minute walk from our hotel and a 45 minute bus ride to reach the Bund. Then we took a cab to Xintiandi. This is the international part of town. Elizabeth and I met with Grant (one of the guys from the Central Michigan group) and his girlfriend's brother Robert to have lunch. We were going to try to meet up with the whole CMU group before they left, but it didn't work out and Grant was the only one who stayed after the program. We ate at Wagas which had really great pasta and smoothies. After lunch, they were going to pick up some glasses they had made, so we went with them. Robert's parents are actually living in Xintiandi. His dad works for GM and got sent here with his mom. They live in a high rise apartment with a great view. Their apartment is paid for, but they said it would be about $6000 USD per month to rent!! So we went with Grant, Robert, and Robert's mom to the eyeglasses place. I was very tempted to buy a pair for myself. To get "designer" frames with prescription lenses is less than $30. At these prices, you can see why I have no trouble spending money.... After that we took the subway back to their apartment. We also met Grant's girlfriend and her dad. We watched 'The Game' on an illegal DVD, then took the bus back to campus. We had office hours for 3 hours...one guy showed up and asked a few questions, but mostly we just checked email and facebook and whatnot. Why can't all work be this easy?
Well, it's almost 11pm. At 11 they will kick me out and lock the doors so I guess I will wrap this up. More to come.
So, when I last left you, I was just an international bigmouth. Now, I'm an international bigmouth who has climbed the Great Wall of China!!! Ooohhh....aaaaahhhhh. But, no use getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning. If I repeat a day, I apologize...but right now the computer won't let me view the blog, just enter new ones and I can't remember if I wrote about Sunday or not. So here it is:
Sunday, June 3: We woke up after getting a total of 4 hours sleep since we were up all night singing the many songs we thought they should have had at karoke. We had a blast and thought we were pretty cool. So we woke up, reluctantly, and got ready. Now, there are pretty much only two things I will wake up at ridiculous hours to do: #1. travel to someplace that's not North Dakota and #2. shopping. And shop we did. (Yes, I am using sentence fragments....so any grammar junkie will just have to live with it...*coughVICTORIAcough* :) Carlson, Elizabeth, a student from USST, and I went to Yu Gardens to tackle gifts we had to get for people. Interesting tidbit: on most English maps, it is called Yu Yuan Gardens...however, 'yuan' in Chinese means 'garden' so really it's like saying Yu Gardens Gardens. As we were shopping, we heard music coming from the street. We looked over and there was a parade rounding the corner. They had people playing instruments and two very long dragons like you see in pictures of parades. We asked the Chinese girl who was with us what it was all about. She had no clue. So we just saw some random parade. It was interesting and I took a couple pictures. We walked to Nanjing Road. Elizabeth and I broke down...so we went to a Pizza Hut and got some stuffed crust pizza. Man...it was delicious. We were having cheese withdrawals. In my book, Pizza Hut is okay, but I refuse to go to a McDonalds here. A girl has to have SOME boundaries. We went into a KFC in Beijing, but they didn't have biscuits...so I didn't eat there either. We walked around a bit more, went to a book store where I bought some Chinese books for Shanna's friend's little boy, walked to the Bund, hung out there for a while, then caught the bus back home. I can't really remember what we did that night, but it was probably something along the lines of: hung out in the room, played cards, ate at our restaurant, watched a movie, or any variation of the above.
Monday, June 4: We woke up, got ready, and took the bus to the Bund. Then we walked around for a bit trying to find Deloitte's offices. Deloitte, Touche, and Tohmatsu is one of the "Big Four" accounting firms. I know many UND alum who work there, so I was able to get in contact with someone they knew and visited the firm over in Shanghai. Their meeting room was up in the 30th floor of a building, so it had some pretty commanding views. Elizabeth and I met with Wilfred Cheung. He is a manager at Deloitte. He was born in Hong Kong and moved back and forth from there to the US several times. He got a degree from a university in Texas (don't remember which one) and started out with Arthur Anderson in LA. We all know how that went, so a year or so later, the firm went kaput and he joined Deloitte in LA, then PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong, and finally Deloitte in Shanghai. He showed us around the office. They have about 7 floors in one prominant building and are hiring more people. I asked him about the work load in China versus US. In China, everything falls on the calendar year, so the books close every December 31 and annual reports are due on April 30th. No extensions. So their busy season is at a whole new level compared to the US. And it's no picnic in the US. Very interesting information. Also, I asked him if I were to transfer to the Shanghai office, would I have to learn Chinese? He said it was no problem, people either speak only English or only Chinese and many people can speak both, so any level was okay. He gave us both a set of chopsticks with Deloitte engraved on them as a gift for visiting. It was definitely informative and interesting. We took the bus back home and again did some variation of the above hang out, eat, play cards, explore, etc...
Tuesday, June 5: We got ready and took the bus to the Bund. As you can tell, Bus 33 is our friend. We take it almost every day. One end of the line is the Lotus Center, which is a great big market (think Chinese K-mart) which is about a 10 minute walk from our hotel and a 45 minute bus ride to reach the Bund. Then we took a cab to Xintiandi. This is the international part of town. Elizabeth and I met with Grant (one of the guys from the Central Michigan group) and his girlfriend's brother Robert to have lunch. We were going to try to meet up with the whole CMU group before they left, but it didn't work out and Grant was the only one who stayed after the program. We ate at Wagas which had really great pasta and smoothies. After lunch, they were going to pick up some glasses they had made, so we went with them. Robert's parents are actually living in Xintiandi. His dad works for GM and got sent here with his mom. They live in a high rise apartment with a great view. Their apartment is paid for, but they said it would be about $6000 USD per month to rent!! So we went with Grant, Robert, and Robert's mom to the eyeglasses place. I was very tempted to buy a pair for myself. To get "designer" frames with prescription lenses is less than $30. At these prices, you can see why I have no trouble spending money.... After that we took the subway back to their apartment. We also met Grant's girlfriend and her dad. We watched 'The Game' on an illegal DVD, then took the bus back to campus. We had office hours for 3 hours...one guy showed up and asked a few questions, but mostly we just checked email and facebook and whatnot. Why can't all work be this easy?
Well, it's almost 11pm. At 11 they will kick me out and lock the doors so I guess I will wrap this up. More to come.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
I guess I'm just an international bigmouth...
Wow...this week has flown by! It's hard to believe my time here is almost half over. On Monday, we didn't do much of anything...at least that I can remember. Tuesday, it was a fairly cool day, so we decided we had no excuse to sit around and we made the trek to visit the Jade Buddha Temple. It was very interesting and had many large Buddha statues made from various materials. Many people were going around, praying and offering money to Buddha. There was one temple in particular where there were coins all over the place. People left them on ledges, put them on the statues themselves, and put them into the container for coins. Many coins were also balanced on their side. I wasn't able to find anyone who could explain to me what this symbolized, but I thought it was quite interesting. The entire place smelled like incense...it was very calming. You could even watch some monks worshipping. I felt very odd here. I felt bad taking pictures of some things, because I wouldn't want people coming in and taking pictures of me during church...but this is a tourist attraction, so I'm sure they are used to it. Outside of the temple, I bought a Ni-Ni ceramic magnet. For those of you that don't know...for the Beijing Olympics, they have 5 bears to represent the 5 rings and I believe the 5 elements. One of them is called Ni-Ni...which is the nickname I self-proclaimed at the age of two (nee-nee...but close enough and pronounced the same). Shanna and mom brought me back a stuffed animal Ni-Ni. And I also bought earrings with a light green jade and a purplish-black pearl. Then we headed back to campus to teach our first class. (dang...I guess we do have to do SOME work...) Carlson usually teaches the class, but he was invited to Suzhou and made us teach. It went rather well...nothing too stressful.
Wednesday: We met up with Shanna's friend, Denise for lunch and a quick tour of her office. She is the head of Asia operations for Ashland Partners. They mostly do compliance work with GIPS (Global Investment Performace Standards) for companies from all over the world. She has been in charge of everything from setting up the office space to hiring and training employees to day-to-day management of operations. The office has grown to about 40 employees and they are looking to double that. They have a pretty posh office space in the Platinum Building in Xintiandi (the international part of town). She took us out to a delicious meal of Shanghai's specialty: a small steamed bun with different fillings and hot broth inside. It was fantastic. Afterwards, she had to get back to work. We told her that we were doing pretty well with the Chinese food, but we were both craving cheese. She pointed us in the direction of an import grocery store. When we entered, it was like the gates of heaven opened before us. They had such wonderful things as a whole aisle of cereal and a spread of different cheeses. A box of Golden Grahams will set you back close to $10. We bought a brick of anchor cheddar cheese and some sort of cracker. Not quite as good as a normal Club cracker, but it fit the bill. We decided that will we be going back and buying a larger chunk of cheese soon... Wednesday evening, we held office hours for any students who had questions or needed help. Only one guy showed up, so we helped him and chatted for a while...but mostly we bummed around on the internet.
Thursday morning we had class from 8am-11:40. Afterwards, we had lunch with Tracy, her roommate Katrina (?...I think that was her name), and Harry. They took us to the newest cafeteria on campus. Elizabeth and I immediately decided it was much better than the cafeteria we had been going to...the food at this one was actually warm and appetizing. I had some sort of flour noodle dish with bean sprouts, lettuce, and mystery meat. I'm guessing pork with lots of salt on it. It was very good. The helping was about twice as much as I could eat and cost me under 50 cents. During lunch, we were chatting with the students. I asked the girls if they had boyfriends and Tracy laughed and blushed. She is dating Victor, who we talk with often during class and he was the one who bought us the tickets to the dance show last Wednesday. We thought they were a very cute couple and teased her mercilessly. After lunch, they had to go back to class, so we did some exploring until it was time for the night class. In class, Victor usually sits with Harry, but that night, he was sitting with Tracy so Harry came over and sat with us. During the first break, Victor came over and we gave him crap about holding back on us. He laughed, then called us "international bigmouths" and walked away. We all had a good laugh about that. Thursday night, we met Denise downtown for a drink. She had a friend singing in a bar. It was called 'Visus'...and let me tell you...it's not the type of bar that you will find in Grand Forks! It was very classy and elegant. We told Denise this and she just laughed. She said if we thought this was nice, we should see some of the other bars around Shanghai! Her friend had an amazing voice. She used to sing in Las Vegas and then got the chance to come to Shanghai. We stayed there for a while, then Denise took us across the street to a different bar. It had a lot more people and a lot more foreigners. She took off because she had to work the next day. Elizabeth and I hung out there for a bit then headed home.
Friday morning, we had class from 10am-noon. Half the class was taught by Carlson and the other half was taught by the graduate assistant, so it was all in Chinese. Elizabeth did her sudoku while I sat and read a book. We went to the office after class, got a quick bite to eat, then went back to class. They had their first test, so we had to proctor it and make sure no one was cheating. It was probably the most boring 2 hours ever. Oh well...at least it was easy. The students thought the test was pretty hard, so we will see how they do. Hopefully they will catch on. During the test, I counted the number of students...61. In an itty bitty classroom. I am so uncomfortable at their tables. My legs are not made to fit under them! I have to turn to the side most of the time to sit comfortably. After that, Carlson, Elizabeth, and I went downtown to meet with Carlson's friend Catherine and her dad. We also met up with Mary Loyland who is another one of my accounting teachers at UND who is here for a couple weeks. Catherine's dad collects jewelry and hopes to open a store soon. He gave us great deals on many pieces...pretty much wholesale price. I got a strand of white pearls that would normally sell for over $100 for about $25. After that, we bummed around Nanjing Road for a while and headed out.
Saturday: We had nothing to do that morning, so no alarm clock! Woohoo! I only slept in until about 10:20... We got up, went to the office for a bit, and had lunch at the restaurant outside campus that we really like. After that, we went exploring for a bit. There's not really a whole lot to do around where we live, we usually have to go downtown to do anything. I bought some cherries from a little stand and we went back home. We met Victor and Tracy at the gates at 6pm. We took a cab to a part of town we hadn't been to yet. They took us to eat at this great Japanese style restaurant where you sit on stools around the grill and watch them cook your food. It was fun to watch and the food was amazing. We had sirloin steak, a t-bone (which absolutely melted in your mouth and the seasoning was to die for!!), prawns, octopus, and some really good cabbage. Elizabeth and I both tried a piece of the octopus. It took me a while to work up the courage though...the suckers just weirded me out. I like breaded calamari where you don't have to see that. I wasn't too crazy about this though. It had a very spicy seasoning on it and was quite chewy. I don't like really chewy things. Not terrible though. I was quite surprised that Elizabeth tried it without much coaxing from me! After the meal, we saw Spiderman 3. It was in English with Chinese subtitles. The special effects were pretty cool, but the movie was pretty cheesy. There is one part where Toby Maguire is strutting down the street...Elizabeth and I were dying we were laughing so hard! After the movie, Victor said that must have been Western humor because they didn't think it was that funny...so of course we laughed even harder. Then we walked over to a KTV place. KTV is very popular over here. You can rent a room with a karoke machine in it and go nuts. It was so much fun. Elizabeth and I sang such hits as: Dancing Queen, Hopelessly Devoted to You, Save Tonight, If You Want to Be Happy (just for Dad!), Heartbreaker, Oh-Bla-Di, and many others. At about 12:50am...Victor and Tracy were tired, but Elizabeth and I had our second wind. Tracy requested we do Dancing Queen one more time then hit the road. We laughed at them and said they'd never make it in the US if they were calling it quits this early! Elizabeth and I took a taxi back, Victor headed to his uncle's and Tracy was going to her parents. On the whole cab ride back, Elizabeth and I were wound up and talking. We were still talking and singing walking back to the hotel...and kept talking and singing in our room...until about 3:30am when we decided we should probably go to bed. We are going to have to do some KTV again!
That brings us to today. We got up and met with Carlson and one of his friends and went to Yu Gardens to do a bit of shopping. After we had spent too much money, we walked over to Nanjing and decided to have lunch at Pizza Hut. We were having cheese withdrawals. I still refuse to go to a McDonalds. It was delicious! After lunch, we found a book store where I picked up a couple books for Shanna's roommate's little boy Ben. We all walked back to the Bund and hung out there for a while then went home. We had a lazy afternoon, then came to the office. I talked with Mom briefly over MSN, but it was a poor connection today.
We have a busy week ahead, so I don't know when my next post will be. We have a meeting with a Manager from Deloitte, Wednesday we are going with the other UND students to Suzhou, and Friday we will leave for Beijing, getting back on Tuesday or so. I can't wait to see the Great Wall!!!
Wednesday: We met up with Shanna's friend, Denise for lunch and a quick tour of her office. She is the head of Asia operations for Ashland Partners. They mostly do compliance work with GIPS (Global Investment Performace Standards) for companies from all over the world. She has been in charge of everything from setting up the office space to hiring and training employees to day-to-day management of operations. The office has grown to about 40 employees and they are looking to double that. They have a pretty posh office space in the Platinum Building in Xintiandi (the international part of town). She took us out to a delicious meal of Shanghai's specialty: a small steamed bun with different fillings and hot broth inside. It was fantastic. Afterwards, she had to get back to work. We told her that we were doing pretty well with the Chinese food, but we were both craving cheese. She pointed us in the direction of an import grocery store. When we entered, it was like the gates of heaven opened before us. They had such wonderful things as a whole aisle of cereal and a spread of different cheeses. A box of Golden Grahams will set you back close to $10. We bought a brick of anchor cheddar cheese and some sort of cracker. Not quite as good as a normal Club cracker, but it fit the bill. We decided that will we be going back and buying a larger chunk of cheese soon... Wednesday evening, we held office hours for any students who had questions or needed help. Only one guy showed up, so we helped him and chatted for a while...but mostly we bummed around on the internet.
Thursday morning we had class from 8am-11:40. Afterwards, we had lunch with Tracy, her roommate Katrina (?...I think that was her name), and Harry. They took us to the newest cafeteria on campus. Elizabeth and I immediately decided it was much better than the cafeteria we had been going to...the food at this one was actually warm and appetizing. I had some sort of flour noodle dish with bean sprouts, lettuce, and mystery meat. I'm guessing pork with lots of salt on it. It was very good. The helping was about twice as much as I could eat and cost me under 50 cents. During lunch, we were chatting with the students. I asked the girls if they had boyfriends and Tracy laughed and blushed. She is dating Victor, who we talk with often during class and he was the one who bought us the tickets to the dance show last Wednesday. We thought they were a very cute couple and teased her mercilessly. After lunch, they had to go back to class, so we did some exploring until it was time for the night class. In class, Victor usually sits with Harry, but that night, he was sitting with Tracy so Harry came over and sat with us. During the first break, Victor came over and we gave him crap about holding back on us. He laughed, then called us "international bigmouths" and walked away. We all had a good laugh about that. Thursday night, we met Denise downtown for a drink. She had a friend singing in a bar. It was called 'Visus'...and let me tell you...it's not the type of bar that you will find in Grand Forks! It was very classy and elegant. We told Denise this and she just laughed. She said if we thought this was nice, we should see some of the other bars around Shanghai! Her friend had an amazing voice. She used to sing in Las Vegas and then got the chance to come to Shanghai. We stayed there for a while, then Denise took us across the street to a different bar. It had a lot more people and a lot more foreigners. She took off because she had to work the next day. Elizabeth and I hung out there for a bit then headed home.
Friday morning, we had class from 10am-noon. Half the class was taught by Carlson and the other half was taught by the graduate assistant, so it was all in Chinese. Elizabeth did her sudoku while I sat and read a book. We went to the office after class, got a quick bite to eat, then went back to class. They had their first test, so we had to proctor it and make sure no one was cheating. It was probably the most boring 2 hours ever. Oh well...at least it was easy. The students thought the test was pretty hard, so we will see how they do. Hopefully they will catch on. During the test, I counted the number of students...61. In an itty bitty classroom. I am so uncomfortable at their tables. My legs are not made to fit under them! I have to turn to the side most of the time to sit comfortably. After that, Carlson, Elizabeth, and I went downtown to meet with Carlson's friend Catherine and her dad. We also met up with Mary Loyland who is another one of my accounting teachers at UND who is here for a couple weeks. Catherine's dad collects jewelry and hopes to open a store soon. He gave us great deals on many pieces...pretty much wholesale price. I got a strand of white pearls that would normally sell for over $100 for about $25. After that, we bummed around Nanjing Road for a while and headed out.
Saturday: We had nothing to do that morning, so no alarm clock! Woohoo! I only slept in until about 10:20... We got up, went to the office for a bit, and had lunch at the restaurant outside campus that we really like. After that, we went exploring for a bit. There's not really a whole lot to do around where we live, we usually have to go downtown to do anything. I bought some cherries from a little stand and we went back home. We met Victor and Tracy at the gates at 6pm. We took a cab to a part of town we hadn't been to yet. They took us to eat at this great Japanese style restaurant where you sit on stools around the grill and watch them cook your food. It was fun to watch and the food was amazing. We had sirloin steak, a t-bone (which absolutely melted in your mouth and the seasoning was to die for!!), prawns, octopus, and some really good cabbage. Elizabeth and I both tried a piece of the octopus. It took me a while to work up the courage though...the suckers just weirded me out. I like breaded calamari where you don't have to see that. I wasn't too crazy about this though. It had a very spicy seasoning on it and was quite chewy. I don't like really chewy things. Not terrible though. I was quite surprised that Elizabeth tried it without much coaxing from me! After the meal, we saw Spiderman 3. It was in English with Chinese subtitles. The special effects were pretty cool, but the movie was pretty cheesy. There is one part where Toby Maguire is strutting down the street...Elizabeth and I were dying we were laughing so hard! After the movie, Victor said that must have been Western humor because they didn't think it was that funny...so of course we laughed even harder. Then we walked over to a KTV place. KTV is very popular over here. You can rent a room with a karoke machine in it and go nuts. It was so much fun. Elizabeth and I sang such hits as: Dancing Queen, Hopelessly Devoted to You, Save Tonight, If You Want to Be Happy (just for Dad!), Heartbreaker, Oh-Bla-Di, and many others. At about 12:50am...Victor and Tracy were tired, but Elizabeth and I had our second wind. Tracy requested we do Dancing Queen one more time then hit the road. We laughed at them and said they'd never make it in the US if they were calling it quits this early! Elizabeth and I took a taxi back, Victor headed to his uncle's and Tracy was going to her parents. On the whole cab ride back, Elizabeth and I were wound up and talking. We were still talking and singing walking back to the hotel...and kept talking and singing in our room...until about 3:30am when we decided we should probably go to bed. We are going to have to do some KTV again!
That brings us to today. We got up and met with Carlson and one of his friends and went to Yu Gardens to do a bit of shopping. After we had spent too much money, we walked over to Nanjing and decided to have lunch at Pizza Hut. We were having cheese withdrawals. I still refuse to go to a McDonalds. It was delicious! After lunch, we found a book store where I picked up a couple books for Shanna's roommate's little boy Ben. We all walked back to the Bund and hung out there for a while then went home. We had a lazy afternoon, then came to the office. I talked with Mom briefly over MSN, but it was a poor connection today.
We have a busy week ahead, so I don't know when my next post will be. We have a meeting with a Manager from Deloitte, Wednesday we are going with the other UND students to Suzhou, and Friday we will leave for Beijing, getting back on Tuesday or so. I can't wait to see the Great Wall!!!
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Hooray for pictures!
I finally created a shutterfly account and put some pictures up. Here's the link: share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AZuW7Zo2ZNmLjo
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The worst meal ever....
Friday started out as a normal day. We got up, ate breakfast, checked our email, ate some cold cafeteria lunch, (no, this was not the worst meal of the day...) then went to meet the other UND students who were coming to campus for the UND/USST graduation. We met them along with some of our USST students. We all split off into groups. Elizabeth and I went off with a girl name Tracy and got a look at her dorm room. The room was about the same size as the one I had my first two years of college. The difference was, hers was meant to hold 4 girls and mine seemed crowded with 2. But actually, Tracy was quite lucky because her room only had 2 girls in it. The other two had graduated and moved out. This won't last long though...the room will be filled come August or sooner. The bathrooms were also quite different. The ones in our dorm rooms seemed like a spa compared to these. That's one thing I won't miss when I get back to the States...normal toilets and shower water that doesn't smell like it came from a pond.
Next, we all met at the new library on campus for the graduation. The ceremony was held in both Chinese and English. There was a very good translator who was actually one of the graduates. It was quite small, maybe 70 students or so, and lasted a bit over an hour. Then we walked over to the gates to take some pictures. After the pictures, Dean Wang invited us all to join the graduates for their banquet. We all said we would. I asked the Dean if it was going to be held in the same place as we had lunch the first day we arrived. He said it was. So I lead the group over to the cafeteria/restaurant. The entire way there, people kept asking me if I knew where we were going. I said yes, but in my mind I was thinking, "Of course I know where we're going...I've only been living here almost 2 weeks!" When we got there, no one was in the place. Dean Wang and our teacher, Victoria Beard, were chatting away and slowly mosied in. The Dean was quite surprised to see the place empty. Even he didn't know where this banquet was! I told Elizabeth, "Let the record show...this wasn't my fault. I took us to where he said it would be." She laughed and smiled and shared the same sentiment as me. So now I let the Dean take the lead. He finally found the place where the banquet was and thus began the worst meal ever.
To preface this: I am a fairly adventurous eater. I was very picky when I was younger and still am so some extent, but I will try almost anything once. Doesn't mean I will like it, but I will at least try it. The cold dishes that were set out in front of us looked straight out of the second round of Fear Factor. There was this cold watermelon soup with some indistinguishable white gelatinous blobs in it, cold meat with plenty of bones still in it, some sort of boiled duck egg that had been soaked in soy sauce or something like that so it turned black, a dish that looked like pickled olives, some beans, and a dish of peanuts. I tried the white gelatinous watermelon soup and the cold, bony meat. No thanks. I also tried the beans. After I ate my second or third (which took me quite a while because they were extremely hard to chew) one of the students laughed at me and said, "you don't eat the whole thing, you just eat the seeds inside." That information would have been helpful 5 minutes earlier. Needless to say, I pretty much kept to the peanuts, hoping the hot food would be more appetizing. Think again! There were these nasty deep fried cheese sticks, except picture it with an awful breading and something I don't even think was cheese, a dish that I'm pretty sure was all fat with some sort of glaze on it, a duck soup with all bones and cold broth, and several other just as unappetizing dishes.
So far, the food was awful, but that was okay. I wasn't especially hungry to begin with. So, why then, you may be wondering, was this the worst meal ever? Let me tell you...the Chinese do not hold their liquor very well. They get drunk very easily and very quickly. Plus, in their culture, if someone gives a toast, it is expected for everyone to drink their whole glass. There were three things to drink at the table: Coke, Sprite, and beer. Since I don't like beer, I opted for Sprite. Since it was their graduation and the beer was free, almost all the Chinese students opted for the beer. They were all getting a bit silly and tipsy which was actually quite entertaining. Then, one guy took it upon himself to chug a whole bottle of beer. Again, in China, things are a bit different. Their beer bottles are about 3 times the size of ours. And again, they do not hold their liquor very well. Everyone was cheering him on and taking pictures. Now, my fellow students from UND, not to be outdone, grab bottles and start challenging the Chinese to chugging contests. My friend Matt challenged a guy at his table. Everyone was kind of milling around all the tables at that point. I was at another table taking some pictures. I did not see this chugging contest going on behind me. Matt won quite easily. The Chinese student not only lost the contest, but he also lost his dinner...all over my skirt. He immediatly started apologizing profusely and I started gagging and running to the bathroom. I almost lost the handful of peanuts I had eaten from the meal, but managed to get myself under control. When I saw that the sink alone was not going to clean me up, I bolted for my room to change and Elizabeth came with me. I got some very strange looks from the people I walked past, so we power-walked the whole way there. Elizabeth threw my skirt in the wash and I headed straight to the shower. After I got all cleaned up, Elizabeth bought me some ice cream at the store downstairs and we walked back to the dinner. We were half grossed-out and half laughing.
In the words of the infinitely wise Señora Lang, "It will make a good story."
Next, we all met at the new library on campus for the graduation. The ceremony was held in both Chinese and English. There was a very good translator who was actually one of the graduates. It was quite small, maybe 70 students or so, and lasted a bit over an hour. Then we walked over to the gates to take some pictures. After the pictures, Dean Wang invited us all to join the graduates for their banquet. We all said we would. I asked the Dean if it was going to be held in the same place as we had lunch the first day we arrived. He said it was. So I lead the group over to the cafeteria/restaurant. The entire way there, people kept asking me if I knew where we were going. I said yes, but in my mind I was thinking, "Of course I know where we're going...I've only been living here almost 2 weeks!" When we got there, no one was in the place. Dean Wang and our teacher, Victoria Beard, were chatting away and slowly mosied in. The Dean was quite surprised to see the place empty. Even he didn't know where this banquet was! I told Elizabeth, "Let the record show...this wasn't my fault. I took us to where he said it would be." She laughed and smiled and shared the same sentiment as me. So now I let the Dean take the lead. He finally found the place where the banquet was and thus began the worst meal ever.
To preface this: I am a fairly adventurous eater. I was very picky when I was younger and still am so some extent, but I will try almost anything once. Doesn't mean I will like it, but I will at least try it. The cold dishes that were set out in front of us looked straight out of the second round of Fear Factor. There was this cold watermelon soup with some indistinguishable white gelatinous blobs in it, cold meat with plenty of bones still in it, some sort of boiled duck egg that had been soaked in soy sauce or something like that so it turned black, a dish that looked like pickled olives, some beans, and a dish of peanuts. I tried the white gelatinous watermelon soup and the cold, bony meat. No thanks. I also tried the beans. After I ate my second or third (which took me quite a while because they were extremely hard to chew) one of the students laughed at me and said, "you don't eat the whole thing, you just eat the seeds inside." That information would have been helpful 5 minutes earlier. Needless to say, I pretty much kept to the peanuts, hoping the hot food would be more appetizing. Think again! There were these nasty deep fried cheese sticks, except picture it with an awful breading and something I don't even think was cheese, a dish that I'm pretty sure was all fat with some sort of glaze on it, a duck soup with all bones and cold broth, and several other just as unappetizing dishes.
So far, the food was awful, but that was okay. I wasn't especially hungry to begin with. So, why then, you may be wondering, was this the worst meal ever? Let me tell you...the Chinese do not hold their liquor very well. They get drunk very easily and very quickly. Plus, in their culture, if someone gives a toast, it is expected for everyone to drink their whole glass. There were three things to drink at the table: Coke, Sprite, and beer. Since I don't like beer, I opted for Sprite. Since it was their graduation and the beer was free, almost all the Chinese students opted for the beer. They were all getting a bit silly and tipsy which was actually quite entertaining. Then, one guy took it upon himself to chug a whole bottle of beer. Again, in China, things are a bit different. Their beer bottles are about 3 times the size of ours. And again, they do not hold their liquor very well. Everyone was cheering him on and taking pictures. Now, my fellow students from UND, not to be outdone, grab bottles and start challenging the Chinese to chugging contests. My friend Matt challenged a guy at his table. Everyone was kind of milling around all the tables at that point. I was at another table taking some pictures. I did not see this chugging contest going on behind me. Matt won quite easily. The Chinese student not only lost the contest, but he also lost his dinner...all over my skirt. He immediatly started apologizing profusely and I started gagging and running to the bathroom. I almost lost the handful of peanuts I had eaten from the meal, but managed to get myself under control. When I saw that the sink alone was not going to clean me up, I bolted for my room to change and Elizabeth came with me. I got some very strange looks from the people I walked past, so we power-walked the whole way there. Elizabeth threw my skirt in the wash and I headed straight to the shower. After I got all cleaned up, Elizabeth bought me some ice cream at the store downstairs and we walked back to the dinner. We were half grossed-out and half laughing.
In the words of the infinitely wise Señora Lang, "It will make a good story."
You can take the girl out of North Dakota...
...but you sure can't take the North Dakota out of the girl! I'm beginning to have a whole new outlook on why people from out of state ask everyone, "HOW CAN YOU LIVE HERE?!?" when it's 30 below outside, because it's the same astonished face I have when it's 30 above Celcius with 99% humidity here! Born and bred in Larimore...I am not built for a warm climate! Elizabeth is from Hillsboro, so we're both suffering together. Earlier today, we were debating if it were better to be extremely hot or extremely cold...we didn't come up with a clear winner, but we decided that at least we knew how to deal with the cold. Stepping outside and immediately sweating is something new to us. It makes us want to stay in the comfort and air conditioning of our room. Which we did for most of today. We decided today could be our lazy day after everything we did yesterday. Which brings me to...
Yesterday: (where else?) We (Elizabeth, our teacher Greg Patton, and I) took a long taxi (94 yuan...about $12...which is an expensive ride) to the Shanghai Zoo. We all really wanted to see a panda. After almost getting killed three times on the way there, we made it unscathed. Relax Grandma, they were only near deaths... ;) We saw all sorts of animals at the zoo...ostriches, other birds, flamingos, they actually had a lake called 'Swan Lake' and there were tons of swans, geese, and pelicans on it, lions and tigers and bears, oh my!, giraffes, hippos, (although all we saw was his nose because he did not want to get out of the water) deer, zebras, elephants, and finally....PANDAS! We saw one giant panda who was born in 1980, so he was pretty old. I got a great video of him splashing around in his pool. He was surprisingly active while we were there, which was great! Pandas generally spend almost half their time sleeping, the other half eating, and about 2% of their time playing...so we timed it juuuuuust right! We also saw some cute red pandas which actually look like raccoons. They are small and have long bushy tails.
After the zoo, we hopped a taxi over to Jing'an temple, but didn't go in. We were starving and our teacher really wanted some American food. So we went to an Irish pub called Malone's and had a really great hamburger. Not quite the same calibur as Dad used to make, but still good. Mine had mozzerella and pineapple on it...I recommend the combination! Next, we hopped the subway to the Bund and bought tickets for a river boat cruise. When we arrived at what we thought was the place to load the boat, we weren't really sure what to do. We weren't 100% sure this was the place or what our boat looked like or anything. Our boat was supposed to leave at 8:30. At about 7:50, a boat pulled up to the dock. It looked nothing like what we were told it should look like, but we went through the line anyway. The lady taking tickets ripped ours, looked at it again, but let us go through. When we got on the boat, it was very small and fairly crowded. We also thought we were boarding awfully early. We tried to communicate this to one of the workers. Finally, we pointed at the time on our ticket and somebody realized we were on the wrong boat. So they told us to hurry and get off and then made us wait for the next one. Thank goodness we did! The next boat that pulled up was more like the one we expected. It was enormous! There were about 5 floors that I could see, and I'm sure there were more than that. It was so big you couldn't feel it rocking, unlike the other boat. We had a great time and saw some really cool views of Shanghai and Pudong at night. After that, we took the bus back home and called it a night.
Yesterday: (where else?) We (Elizabeth, our teacher Greg Patton, and I) took a long taxi (94 yuan...about $12...which is an expensive ride) to the Shanghai Zoo. We all really wanted to see a panda. After almost getting killed three times on the way there, we made it unscathed. Relax Grandma, they were only near deaths... ;) We saw all sorts of animals at the zoo...ostriches, other birds, flamingos, they actually had a lake called 'Swan Lake' and there were tons of swans, geese, and pelicans on it, lions and tigers and bears, oh my!, giraffes, hippos, (although all we saw was his nose because he did not want to get out of the water) deer, zebras, elephants, and finally....PANDAS! We saw one giant panda who was born in 1980, so he was pretty old. I got a great video of him splashing around in his pool. He was surprisingly active while we were there, which was great! Pandas generally spend almost half their time sleeping, the other half eating, and about 2% of their time playing...so we timed it juuuuuust right! We also saw some cute red pandas which actually look like raccoons. They are small and have long bushy tails.
After the zoo, we hopped a taxi over to Jing'an temple, but didn't go in. We were starving and our teacher really wanted some American food. So we went to an Irish pub called Malone's and had a really great hamburger. Not quite the same calibur as Dad used to make, but still good. Mine had mozzerella and pineapple on it...I recommend the combination! Next, we hopped the subway to the Bund and bought tickets for a river boat cruise. When we arrived at what we thought was the place to load the boat, we weren't really sure what to do. We weren't 100% sure this was the place or what our boat looked like or anything. Our boat was supposed to leave at 8:30. At about 7:50, a boat pulled up to the dock. It looked nothing like what we were told it should look like, but we went through the line anyway. The lady taking tickets ripped ours, looked at it again, but let us go through. When we got on the boat, it was very small and fairly crowded. We also thought we were boarding awfully early. We tried to communicate this to one of the workers. Finally, we pointed at the time on our ticket and somebody realized we were on the wrong boat. So they told us to hurry and get off and then made us wait for the next one. Thank goodness we did! The next boat that pulled up was more like the one we expected. It was enormous! There were about 5 floors that I could see, and I'm sure there were more than that. It was so big you couldn't feel it rocking, unlike the other boat. We had a great time and saw some really cool views of Shanghai and Pudong at night. After that, we took the bus back home and called it a night.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Things that make you go hmm...
So far on this trip, there have been many things that have surprised me and made me think. One of the first of these was Japan. Flying over it, it was nothing like what I expected. I pretty much had it in mind like it was one big city on an island. Actally, there was a lot of farmland! It really threw me off. We flew over what I'm assuming was Tokyo at night and that was more like what I expected, sprawling city lights.
Observation #2: I don't feel as tall as I thought I would. Considering Shanna is a good 4 or 5 inches shorter than me and she said that she felt tall here, I was expecting to feel like the Jolly White Giant. But really, I feel about average here...maybe a tad bit on the tall side. Mostly I just feel white. Not that it's a bad thing. I just get stared at a lot. But it also has its perks. Tonight, we have VIP tickets to this dance show on campus. That should be quite interesting. Details to follow...
Observation #3: It's smoggy here! The pollution is more or less what I expected. Some places, like campus, are very clean and meticulously well kept. Other places...not so much. The Huangpu River is a lovely shade of mud and when I asked a girl about the beaches, she just kinda laughed.
Observation #4: Even though the beds are about as soft as a slab of marble, I sleep quite well. Although...I can pretty much sleep anywhere, anytime, on anything, so maybe this shouldn't come as a surprise.
Observation #5: The greatest bargaining tool I have is my feet. If I'm not getting a price I like, I start walking away. Then they starting singing another tune pretty quickly. I got a $5 Chanel wallet last night. Elizabeth got a $15 Coach purse. Mom...you may need to send more money...and more suitcases...
Observation #6: We are way too dependant on our cars. I love public transportation! You meet the coolest people on busses. All the people our age are so eager to learn English. They all want to come to America, but can't afford it. This one guy we met last night really wants to improve his English so he can get a better job one day. Also, walking is fun. Pretty sure Elizabeth and I walked 6 miles or so yesterday and we would have done more if we didn't have to be back at our hotel before 11pm when they lock the doors.
All for now...
Observation #2: I don't feel as tall as I thought I would. Considering Shanna is a good 4 or 5 inches shorter than me and she said that she felt tall here, I was expecting to feel like the Jolly White Giant. But really, I feel about average here...maybe a tad bit on the tall side. Mostly I just feel white. Not that it's a bad thing. I just get stared at a lot. But it also has its perks. Tonight, we have VIP tickets to this dance show on campus. That should be quite interesting. Details to follow...
Observation #3: It's smoggy here! The pollution is more or less what I expected. Some places, like campus, are very clean and meticulously well kept. Other places...not so much. The Huangpu River is a lovely shade of mud and when I asked a girl about the beaches, she just kinda laughed.
Observation #4: Even though the beds are about as soft as a slab of marble, I sleep quite well. Although...I can pretty much sleep anywhere, anytime, on anything, so maybe this shouldn't come as a surprise.
Observation #5: The greatest bargaining tool I have is my feet. If I'm not getting a price I like, I start walking away. Then they starting singing another tune pretty quickly. I got a $5 Chanel wallet last night. Elizabeth got a $15 Coach purse. Mom...you may need to send more money...and more suitcases...
Observation #6: We are way too dependant on our cars. I love public transportation! You meet the coolest people on busses. All the people our age are so eager to learn English. They all want to come to America, but can't afford it. This one guy we met last night really wants to improve his English so he can get a better job one day. Also, walking is fun. Pretty sure Elizabeth and I walked 6 miles or so yesterday and we would have done more if we didn't have to be back at our hotel before 11pm when they lock the doors.
All for now...
Monday, May 21, 2007
My feet thank me
Today was a much needed and deserved R&R day. I slept in until a leisurely 8:30am. Elizabeth and I got ready and caught the bus to downtown. On the bus, we met two girls from Georgia who were also here tutoring at a different university. We chatted the whole way about this and that...how much people honk their horns here, how we both weren't given as many hours as we were promised for tutoring, the best place to get such-and-such...it was really fun. We got off at the same stop and we helped give them some directions. They are leaving tomorrow. So we went to the bank and exchanged some more money, then headed over to Yu Gardens again for a foot massage. We found the lady who approached us the first day and went up to the 3rd floor to her store. We got an hour long foot massage and then a 30 minute back massage for less than $10 each! I love China! Afterwards, I felt as if I could walk 20 miles. We decided this might be a weekly thing... We shopped for a bit longer, then caught the bus back home just in time to do a quick email check and go out to eat with our professors and a professor from Central Michigan. I am still absolutely stuffed! We had green beans, eggplant with potatoes, curry chicken, duck soup, pork, and a chicken/bamboo/onion sandwich.
Now to back-track a bit. Saturday, Elizabeth, Carlson, and I went downtown and walked along Nanjing Road during the day. It was fun, but it's much prettier at night. We window shopped for a bit, then Elizabeth and I each bought a single pearl necklace for $5. Did I mention I love China?!? We had lunch at this place that served excellant pork chops over rice and Japanese dumplings. Then, we went to the Shanghai Museum. There were all sorts of exhibits, Chinese calligraphy, jade, currency, bronze and stone work, minority costumes, paintings, you name it. There was also a traveling exhibit. It, ironically, was 'Art in America.' There was some Andy Warhol works along with other contemporary artists. We headed home after that and relaxed in our rooms for a while, then went out to eat. We had this green bean in oyster oil dish that was very good, sauteed lettuce, a spicy beef soup, spicy chicken, and a ham, mushroom, and shredded beef dish. I thought I wasn't going to like much Chinese food. Boy, was I wrong!
Yesterday afternoon, we rode the bus to a place called Forest Park that's a couple miles away. I've never seen a park with so much stuff to do! One corner had an amusement park with a rollercoaster, train rides, a mechanical bull, and other carnival-type rides, another corner had horseback riding, you could rent either rowboats or electic boats and take them down the lake and little streams, there was kite flying, people were fishing for crayfish...and much more! We saw about 10 sets of brides and grooms getting their pictures taken, you could overlook the Huangpu River, and you could also do a cable slide. I convince Elizabeth to do it with me. Imagine parasailing, but on a big cable instead of behind a boat. The guy strapped us in a big sling underneath a kite. He also motioned to this cord and said something about 'stop.' We weren't sure if we had to pull it to stop or if that was the emergency stop cord or what. So, he slung us backwards over this lake and all the Chinese people on the boats below us were laughing and taking pictures. When we neared the other tower, Elizabeth and I looked at each other and debated about whether we were supposed to pull the cord. We didn't pull it, but it stopped anyway and started moving forward. Then it stopped again, so we screamed and everyone below us laughed again. Now, when we watched the people before us, they had all come barreling in at high speed and slammed into this bungee thing which stopped them. So now on the way back towards the tower, we again debated about whether or not we should pull this cord. We decided on no and held our breath as we neared the tower. But, the guy who was running it knew that we didn't understand exactly what was going on, so he brought us in much more slowly than the others, much to Elizabeth's relief and my disappointment. I will definately be doing that again! We walked around the park for at least 3 or 4 hours and probably only saw 2/3 of it. Later that afternoon/evening, we walked around the farmers market that's a couple blocks from campus. We borrowed Monty Python from Patton (our teacher) and fell asleep about 3 skits into it. This tourist thing is hard work!
Now to back-track a bit. Saturday, Elizabeth, Carlson, and I went downtown and walked along Nanjing Road during the day. It was fun, but it's much prettier at night. We window shopped for a bit, then Elizabeth and I each bought a single pearl necklace for $5. Did I mention I love China?!? We had lunch at this place that served excellant pork chops over rice and Japanese dumplings. Then, we went to the Shanghai Museum. There were all sorts of exhibits, Chinese calligraphy, jade, currency, bronze and stone work, minority costumes, paintings, you name it. There was also a traveling exhibit. It, ironically, was 'Art in America.' There was some Andy Warhol works along with other contemporary artists. We headed home after that and relaxed in our rooms for a while, then went out to eat. We had this green bean in oyster oil dish that was very good, sauteed lettuce, a spicy beef soup, spicy chicken, and a ham, mushroom, and shredded beef dish. I thought I wasn't going to like much Chinese food. Boy, was I wrong!
Yesterday afternoon, we rode the bus to a place called Forest Park that's a couple miles away. I've never seen a park with so much stuff to do! One corner had an amusement park with a rollercoaster, train rides, a mechanical bull, and other carnival-type rides, another corner had horseback riding, you could rent either rowboats or electic boats and take them down the lake and little streams, there was kite flying, people were fishing for crayfish...and much more! We saw about 10 sets of brides and grooms getting their pictures taken, you could overlook the Huangpu River, and you could also do a cable slide. I convince Elizabeth to do it with me. Imagine parasailing, but on a big cable instead of behind a boat. The guy strapped us in a big sling underneath a kite. He also motioned to this cord and said something about 'stop.' We weren't sure if we had to pull it to stop or if that was the emergency stop cord or what. So, he slung us backwards over this lake and all the Chinese people on the boats below us were laughing and taking pictures. When we neared the other tower, Elizabeth and I looked at each other and debated about whether we were supposed to pull the cord. We didn't pull it, but it stopped anyway and started moving forward. Then it stopped again, so we screamed and everyone below us laughed again. Now, when we watched the people before us, they had all come barreling in at high speed and slammed into this bungee thing which stopped them. So now on the way back towards the tower, we again debated about whether or not we should pull this cord. We decided on no and held our breath as we neared the tower. But, the guy who was running it knew that we didn't understand exactly what was going on, so he brought us in much more slowly than the others, much to Elizabeth's relief and my disappointment. I will definately be doing that again! We walked around the park for at least 3 or 4 hours and probably only saw 2/3 of it. Later that afternoon/evening, we walked around the farmers market that's a couple blocks from campus. We borrowed Monty Python from Patton (our teacher) and fell asleep about 3 skits into it. This tourist thing is hard work!
Saturday, May 19, 2007
The Courtney-bird has landed!
Hello from the beautiful city of Shanghai! Sorry this first post took a while, but my days have been jam-packed with too many sights to see instead of being cooped up in an office on the internet. My journey began on Sunday. After getting a whole 45 minutes of sleep, Mom drove me to the airport to catch my 5am plane to Minneapolis. I sat next to a very nice lady who was in ND for a wedding in Hatton. She was from Alaska and it was her first time here. She couldn't say enough good about it. When I got into Minneapolis, I took the lightrail to a stop where Shanna picked me up. We went back to her place for some breakfast and lounging around. I fell asleep for a bit. She woke me up and we went to a nearby church. Sleeping at Shanna's only made me more tired though. They had this adorable kid's play about Daniel in the Lion's Den and I stuggled to keep my head up. Shanna thoroughly enjoyed poking me every chance she got. :) Next, we wanted to go to a place called Auntie Em's, but it was closed in honor of Mother's Day. So we muttered under our breath and blamed mom (hehe!). We went to another shop, had lunch, and then she and Sarah dropped me off at the airport.
At the airport, I met up with Steve Carlson (my professor) and Elizabeth Hams (my friend who is tutoring with me). We left for Tokyo. The plane ride was 12 hours long. We sat next to Joe from Indiana. He was on his way to the Philippines to visit his family. He hadn't been home in 18 years. He was a really nice guy. I slept most of the flight. I missed the first movie, then they played Charlotte's Web and Music and Lyrics. The airplane food was actually quite good. When we arrived in Narita/Tokyo, we were one of the last ones to go through security and almost missed our plane to Shanghai! Needless to say, we were a little worried, because Carlson went through way before us, and he was our ticket to the university. But, we boarded just as they were announcing last call. We both slept almost the whole way to Shanghai because it was dark out. All of our bags made it through, so that was a relief. We met with Jessica from USST (University of Shanghai for Science and Technology) who took us to campus. By the time we got our room key and unpacked a few things, it was past 11pm which made it over 30 hours since I left home. So I was very glad to see a bed, even if it was hard as a rock.
I woke up the next morning at 7am, which if you have ever tried to wake me up in the morning, is pretty astounding. We got ready and went on a campus tour with the graduate teaching assistant. She helped us get a meal card and showed us where class would be. Then for lunch, we met up with some students from Central Michigan University. We had some interesting dishes for our first meal. There were several that were pretty awful, but many that I liked. My favorites were the Peking duck, the sweet and sour fist, and the dumplings. Let's just say the liver pate wasn't too popular. We also had our first encounter with a public bathroom. Scary. After lunch, we lost our teacher. So we joined the CMU students and visited with some USST students. That evening, we ventured off campus for a bit and took in the sights. We were so tired that we fell asleep at about 9.
Wednesday morning, I woke up at 6:50!!! My schedule was so goofed up at home that I'm actually an early riser here! We got ready and Carlson took us downtown to Yuyuan Gardens. The streets were lined with more stores than you can shake a stick at...and that's saying something. We haggled over a few small items. I bought a magnet and Elizabeth bought this outfit that you put over a bottle. Then we were lured into a jewelry store where I bought a real pearl necklace for $10. It was so much fun bargaining with everyone! We made a few more small purchases and then had lunch. Then we went into the actually garden part. It was very beautiful. I will try to make a Shutterfly account so you can see them all. Next, we came back to campus and picked up Greg Patton (another UND professor teaching Management) to go to dinner. We went to a place a couple blocks from campus and had another delicious meal. There was this excellant baked corn dish, shredded beef, spicy beef in clay pot, and duck soup. Yummy. After dinner, we went home and fell asleep before 10 again.
Thursday. Got up at 6:30 and got ready. As I was looking out the balcony, I noticed some people doing tai chi below me. So I went down there and joined in. This one old guy was very happy to see me. "Welcome welcome!!" So I tried my best to follow along and ignore all the students who were staring at me as they walked to class. It was fun and interesting. Afterwards, the one guy smiled at me and told me to come again tomorrow. Then I went to class. It goes from 8am-11:30. Carlson introduced us. The classroom was very crowded and very hot. We talked with a few of the students around us. It turns out the students in our class had Shanna as a teacher last year. After class, we ate and went downtown again. After exchanging some money, we went to the Oriental Pearl Tower where we saw a great view of the city and ran into the Central Michigan students (small world!), the Shanghai Historical Museum, walked to the People's park where we waited for it to get dark. Then we walked down Nanjing Road. Think Las Vegas strip with every other person trying to sell you something. "Hello lady sir. Looky. Watch, bag, shoes, dvds. Gucci Prada. Cheapa-cheapa." Then we took a cab home and called it a night.
Friday. I woke up early and did tai chi with the old folks. School was cancelled because it was All Sports Day on campus. Several other schools came and there was a big opening ceremony and many events to follow. It was mostly track and field, but there was also dancing, basketball, volleyball, martial arts, and other events. We watched the opening ceremony where each team paraded around the track. When they got in front of the judges, they each did something different. Some released balloons, some shot off confetti, others had flags and rings, but the coolest one was the team that released birds. They had to have been holding them for at least an hour. It was pretty impressive. Then, Elizabeth and I set off on our grand adventure. We braved going out by ourselves. We took the bus from a local grocery story to downtown, then caught a cab to Sun Yat Sen's former residence. After that, we went to Fuxing Park and Xintiandi, and back to Yu Gardens. Now that we had some money, we REALLY shopped! We got some good deals on a few gifts and some things for ourselves too. I got this beautiful silk purse! When we were all shopped out, we caught the bus back home and showed off our purchases to our teachers. I bought my first bootlegged DVD. It was Spiderman 3...unfortunately, it was a bust. It was all in Chinese with no subtitles. It cost less than 50 cents, so I'm not too worried. We went to dinner with our teachers and two other professors. One from Central Michigan and another from Pennsylvania. I bought 'The Terminal' from a different store, and this time it was a success! We watched it and fell asleep.
The first couple days in China have been full of amazing sights, good food, and sore feet. I am thrilled to have this opportunity. I miss you all and will keep you posted!!
At the airport, I met up with Steve Carlson (my professor) and Elizabeth Hams (my friend who is tutoring with me). We left for Tokyo. The plane ride was 12 hours long. We sat next to Joe from Indiana. He was on his way to the Philippines to visit his family. He hadn't been home in 18 years. He was a really nice guy. I slept most of the flight. I missed the first movie, then they played Charlotte's Web and Music and Lyrics. The airplane food was actually quite good. When we arrived in Narita/Tokyo, we were one of the last ones to go through security and almost missed our plane to Shanghai! Needless to say, we were a little worried, because Carlson went through way before us, and he was our ticket to the university. But, we boarded just as they were announcing last call. We both slept almost the whole way to Shanghai because it was dark out. All of our bags made it through, so that was a relief. We met with Jessica from USST (University of Shanghai for Science and Technology) who took us to campus. By the time we got our room key and unpacked a few things, it was past 11pm which made it over 30 hours since I left home. So I was very glad to see a bed, even if it was hard as a rock.
I woke up the next morning at 7am, which if you have ever tried to wake me up in the morning, is pretty astounding. We got ready and went on a campus tour with the graduate teaching assistant. She helped us get a meal card and showed us where class would be. Then for lunch, we met up with some students from Central Michigan University. We had some interesting dishes for our first meal. There were several that were pretty awful, but many that I liked. My favorites were the Peking duck, the sweet and sour fist, and the dumplings. Let's just say the liver pate wasn't too popular. We also had our first encounter with a public bathroom. Scary. After lunch, we lost our teacher. So we joined the CMU students and visited with some USST students. That evening, we ventured off campus for a bit and took in the sights. We were so tired that we fell asleep at about 9.
Wednesday morning, I woke up at 6:50!!! My schedule was so goofed up at home that I'm actually an early riser here! We got ready and Carlson took us downtown to Yuyuan Gardens. The streets were lined with more stores than you can shake a stick at...and that's saying something. We haggled over a few small items. I bought a magnet and Elizabeth bought this outfit that you put over a bottle. Then we were lured into a jewelry store where I bought a real pearl necklace for $10. It was so much fun bargaining with everyone! We made a few more small purchases and then had lunch. Then we went into the actually garden part. It was very beautiful. I will try to make a Shutterfly account so you can see them all. Next, we came back to campus and picked up Greg Patton (another UND professor teaching Management) to go to dinner. We went to a place a couple blocks from campus and had another delicious meal. There was this excellant baked corn dish, shredded beef, spicy beef in clay pot, and duck soup. Yummy. After dinner, we went home and fell asleep before 10 again.
Thursday. Got up at 6:30 and got ready. As I was looking out the balcony, I noticed some people doing tai chi below me. So I went down there and joined in. This one old guy was very happy to see me. "Welcome welcome!!" So I tried my best to follow along and ignore all the students who were staring at me as they walked to class. It was fun and interesting. Afterwards, the one guy smiled at me and told me to come again tomorrow. Then I went to class. It goes from 8am-11:30. Carlson introduced us. The classroom was very crowded and very hot. We talked with a few of the students around us. It turns out the students in our class had Shanna as a teacher last year. After class, we ate and went downtown again. After exchanging some money, we went to the Oriental Pearl Tower where we saw a great view of the city and ran into the Central Michigan students (small world!), the Shanghai Historical Museum, walked to the People's park where we waited for it to get dark. Then we walked down Nanjing Road. Think Las Vegas strip with every other person trying to sell you something. "Hello lady sir. Looky. Watch, bag, shoes, dvds. Gucci Prada. Cheapa-cheapa." Then we took a cab home and called it a night.
Friday. I woke up early and did tai chi with the old folks. School was cancelled because it was All Sports Day on campus. Several other schools came and there was a big opening ceremony and many events to follow. It was mostly track and field, but there was also dancing, basketball, volleyball, martial arts, and other events. We watched the opening ceremony where each team paraded around the track. When they got in front of the judges, they each did something different. Some released balloons, some shot off confetti, others had flags and rings, but the coolest one was the team that released birds. They had to have been holding them for at least an hour. It was pretty impressive. Then, Elizabeth and I set off on our grand adventure. We braved going out by ourselves. We took the bus from a local grocery story to downtown, then caught a cab to Sun Yat Sen's former residence. After that, we went to Fuxing Park and Xintiandi, and back to Yu Gardens. Now that we had some money, we REALLY shopped! We got some good deals on a few gifts and some things for ourselves too. I got this beautiful silk purse! When we were all shopped out, we caught the bus back home and showed off our purchases to our teachers. I bought my first bootlegged DVD. It was Spiderman 3...unfortunately, it was a bust. It was all in Chinese with no subtitles. It cost less than 50 cents, so I'm not too worried. We went to dinner with our teachers and two other professors. One from Central Michigan and another from Pennsylvania. I bought 'The Terminal' from a different store, and this time it was a success! We watched it and fell asleep.
The first couple days in China have been full of amazing sights, good food, and sore feet. I am thrilled to have this opportunity. I miss you all and will keep you posted!!
Sunday, May 13, 2007
News from outside the bubble...
Great news for all of you who followed my adventures over '05- '06. I'm going back to Chiner!!! How exciting right. But wait, there's more. I'm going to be adding my sister Courtney as a guest correspondent. Super duper exciting, I know.
I dropped Courtney at the airport and was able to gauge her excitement level by the fact she could not speak English. A direct quote would be "EEEEEEE fasldfj;asijfoiahgg CHINA. EEEEEE!" She may deny it, but two people heard it so therefore it's true.
Look for upcoming posts from her and new anecdotes about recovering from jet lag, Chinglish and assorted other adventures that could only happen in my home away from home.
Peace,
Shanna
I dropped Courtney at the airport and was able to gauge her excitement level by the fact she could not speak English. A direct quote would be "EEEEEEE fasldfj;asijfoiahgg CHINA. EEEEEE!" She may deny it, but two people heard it so therefore it's true.
Look for upcoming posts from her and new anecdotes about recovering from jet lag, Chinglish and assorted other adventures that could only happen in my home away from home.
Peace,
Shanna
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Migration...
After much deliberation, I've decided to keep this blog exclusively for traveling. My day to day stuff will now be found at http://shannainthecity.blogspot.com. I'll have more of what's going on with me/the world/what colour the sky is. It's under a little big of construction for the next week or so, but will be back up in fine form in no time. Thank you for your consideration.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Blogging Status
Now that I'm home, I'll have some time ( I hope) to go back and fill in some stories that I didn't have time for before. Check back from time to time and I'll update on future travels and my life plans. Right now, the main focus is on the 4th of July and some Long Island Iced Teas. Yum!
Thursday, June 29, 2006
How do you measure a year?
Today I left China. Don’t know when or if I’ll be back, in what capacity, but I am glad that I was there for the past year. I doubted that fact on occasion, that it was good for me. Especially on the days when I was super homesick or when it was Christmas or someone’s birthday. I’ve been close to my friends and family, never lived outside of North Dakota (minus that brief stint in EGF last year), and never strayed to far from home.
Why China? That’s the country that presented me the opportunity. I will always follow what is going on with China as I now have a personal connection to the people and its future. Will I go back? It would be easier than when I moved there a year ago, but unless something comes up, I do not plan to go back to China in the near future. This doesn’t mean that things won’t change tomorrow and I’ll be heading back to Shanghai. I will be back in the US for the month of July and part of August guaranteed.
During my time in China I’ve seen and done some incredible things. Tibet, the F1 Race on the new Shanghai course, spending the night on the street, facing curious stares and shouts everyday, seeing the stars at Mt. Everest, climbing the Great Wall, frustrations and successes in learning Chinese, making friends from all over the world.
You know what you’re going to see, but nothing prepares you for it.
Not yet home…
Not one to turn down opportunity when it knocks; tonight is a night in Tokyo or rather Narita as I don’t intend on going into the city. The last week has been taxing and I have a soft king bed at my disposal. Can you blame me? Going from box spring to pillow top in a few hours and make some money doing it.
The strangest thing about the whole deal is that I’ll be in Japan for over 24 hours and not hold any local currency. Credit cards and free room and board do wonders. I may have to get some sort of souvenir as I have officially visited Japan, but we’ll see. I saw some Karate Kid-type headbands in the airport that look appealing.
The strangest thing about the whole deal is that I’ll be in Japan for over 24 hours and not hold any local currency. Credit cards and free room and board do wonders. I may have to get some sort of souvenir as I have officially visited Japan, but we’ll see. I saw some Karate Kid-type headbands in the airport that look appealing.
Monday, June 19, 2006
It's getting harder and harder to breathe....
So here's the scoop, I'm now in Tibet. The first stop on this sojourn is the capital, Lhasa. I will admit that I was expecting it to look a bit different but the city is still powerful no matter what way you cut it. The initial traveling was a bit rough as Graham and I left Shanghai. For some reason that no one could or would tell us, our plane was going to be delayed. How long? They didn't know. When can we check back to see the time? They couldn't tell us. It was decided that this wasn't anything that a long island iced tea couldn't fix. I called the tour agent and our third travel partner Hunter and got everything straightened out. We arrived into Chengdu around 1am and my head finally hit the pillow at 2am. That was just long enough for a cat nap as I had to get up at 5am, and we were back on our way to the airport by 6am. Can some one say a little travel delirious? We touched down in Lhasa and were met by our guide who is Tibetan.
Now a word of advice: When you go from sea level elevation to 3550m, it is wise to relax and not do to many things on the first day. I'm glad I heeded this advice otherwise I would have been in a world of hurt. All three of us took a nap until 2pm and headed out to eat around 3pm. We had a ton of good food for cheap (guess that runs all over China) and Graham was introduced to his newfound love; Yak. For the past couple of days this kid has gone crazy for the stuff. I guess there are worse infatuations and it does make for some pretty good material.
We've seen the major points of Lhasa including the Potala Palace (seat of government before 1959), The Jokhang (the holiest place in Tibet that is conveniently located outside our hotel), the Barkor circuit (runs around the Jokhang and it's pretty wild to see all these pilgrims doing their thing), along with a few monasteries. Tomorrow we leave for Shigatse on our way to Everest Base camp. Elevation for base camp is 5200m and I'm hoping to be able to catch my breath long enough to get a few photos.
Onward and upward never had such an entertaining meaning as they do this week...
See you when I get back to Shanghai and then back Stateside on June 29. Where has the time gone?
Now a word of advice: When you go from sea level elevation to 3550m, it is wise to relax and not do to many things on the first day. I'm glad I heeded this advice otherwise I would have been in a world of hurt. All three of us took a nap until 2pm and headed out to eat around 3pm. We had a ton of good food for cheap (guess that runs all over China) and Graham was introduced to his newfound love; Yak. For the past couple of days this kid has gone crazy for the stuff. I guess there are worse infatuations and it does make for some pretty good material.
We've seen the major points of Lhasa including the Potala Palace (seat of government before 1959), The Jokhang (the holiest place in Tibet that is conveniently located outside our hotel), the Barkor circuit (runs around the Jokhang and it's pretty wild to see all these pilgrims doing their thing), along with a few monasteries. Tomorrow we leave for Shigatse on our way to Everest Base camp. Elevation for base camp is 5200m and I'm hoping to be able to catch my breath long enough to get a few photos.
Onward and upward never had such an entertaining meaning as they do this week...
See you when I get back to Shanghai and then back Stateside on June 29. Where has the time gone?
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Coming up for air...
No I have not forgotten you, my loyal blog fans. (all 4 of you ;) The past two weeks have had me going non stop, but not that it will let up soon as I am replacing work for traveling. I'm aiming for a proper update in the next few days.
In travel news, Sarah and Graham will be arriving on Saturday and will be doing things in and around the Shanghai area.
After a week on the east coast, Graham, Hunter (a fellow UND-ite) and myself will be heading west to Tibet. So excited, you have no idea. I've been saying it for so long and now it will finally become a reality. WOWza!
In travel news, Sarah and Graham will be arriving on Saturday and will be doing things in and around the Shanghai area.
After a week on the east coast, Graham, Hunter (a fellow UND-ite) and myself will be heading west to Tibet. So excited, you have no idea. I've been saying it for so long and now it will finally become a reality. WOWza!
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