Shanghai

Hey everyone! After we left Beijing by train we went to Shanghai. We didn't have any required appointments there, so we could do whatever we wanted. It was nice, and much more relaxing. But we were only staying there for three days and since we were leaving on the third day we only had two days to see one of the biggest cities in the world. The first thing we did was go to the Shanghai Museum. Supposedly it was going to be the best museum that we had ever seen. They had a few really cool exhibitions, like the exhibition on Cathrine the Great, an important figure head in Russian history. They also had an exhibition on the history of pottery in China, and they had different examples from different eras.

As you can see, some styles were really different and interesting.
We went to the street near our hotel that was the big shopping disctric. We went at night, and I bought a sweatshirt!

We didn't do that much shopping, but it was fun to see the different shops and stuff. Lesly, one of my roommates, and I went to Starbucks! It was fun, but they didn't have as many drinks as they do in America, and it was really expensive (American prices).

We walked around the street, and then at the end of the shopping street is the Shanghai harbour.

After that, we just went home since we were tired from all that traveling.
The next day we tried to go to the History of Science and Technology, but we couldn't get in so we just went home to relax a little.

Beijing

After we went to the Great Wall, the next day we went to a different the Temple of Heaven. That was pretty interesting, I met a lady from Israel. The Temple of Heaven was a temple that the emperor visited to worship Shang Di, who is the god of China's original religion. Most Chinese don't worship Shang Di anymore, but a lot of them appreciate the religion of the past. The religion worships Shang Di, and then the five elements under his control. It was a very beautiful temple, but my camera died at the time, so I don't have very many pictures there. When we were done at the Temple of Heaven we went to the Pearl Market that was near by. They are really famous for having cheap pearls. The only thing that is annoying is that the sellers there are very aggressive about selling and they will actually drag you into their stores. So it's pretty exhausting to shop there.

The next day was Sunday, so we went to an international church. Went to dinner around the area where the Silk Market was (which as you can guess sells silk) and while we were at the restaurant we found an example of classic Chinese attitude towards foreigners. We were looking at the menu and we saw that it was pretty expensive, so we were thinking about leaving and instead we decided to stay. When we went to look for the waiter to make our order, we found a menu that was all in Chinese (though we could understand most of it) that had prices for Chinese that were about a third of the price. So we ordered from the Chinese menu, and made the waiter frustrated cause we wouldn't pay the foreigner price. After that we went to the Silk market and went shopping, but we didn't stay for long because it was just as exhausting as the pearl market.

On Monday we went to the Summer Palace, and I had to give a presentation for a homework assignment. Once again it was really cold, but even more so than any other day. Each person had a history assignment to give a presentation on a book that we read. My book was a touristy book about the Summer Palace so, unlike most everyone else, I had to give the presentation like a tour. It was actually a lot of fun, to finally see the thing that I had been reading about. The Summer Palace is the place that a lot of emperors and empresses stayed during the summers, and sometimes even ruled from there. It was built like a painting, with a lot of lines and balance, making it really beautiful scenery.

On Tuesday we checked out of our hotel and left for the Forbidden City before we got on the train for Shanghai. We walked through Tienanmen Square and looked at the big picture of Mao, then we went inside the Forbidden City. 

This was the palace that the most of the emperors lived in. Really beautiful architecture, and it was interesting to see all the things that they put into the architecture to show status and the things they put in because of their superstitions. This was the presentation of another student in the group, but while he was presenting, and while we were visiting, the Chilean President visited the palace so they kicked out all the tourists so he could have a private tour. Most of the stuff that he was going to talk about was blocked off and we never got to see it. It was a bummer, but it defiantly made the experience more memorable.

Here's one of the guards. He and all his friends were pushing everyone out by holding ropes that blocked off the rest of the square and funneled everyone into the section that tourists were allowed to be in. We didn't get to see much, but we went into the Imperial Garden.

Instead of flowers like you would normally think goes in a garden, they had interestingly shaped rocks. It was really interesting. There were different paths and buildings inside of the rock formations that were really beautifully designed.

After we were done going through the Forbidden City, we went to this Buddhist Temple that was behind the city. The temple was partially on a mountain top (more like a big hill) and it had a lot of pagoda's on top of the hill that looked over the city. It was amazing.

After that we went to the train and left for Shanghai.

More China Travels

I haven't blogged since we left Xi'an (pronounced She'-in), so I'll see if I can remember what happened.

After we left Xi'an, we got on the bus to the railway station, and I realized that I'd left all of my food money (about 1500 kuai) in my room in the hotel that we had just checked out of. I felt so stupid, but I'm glad that I remembered because they were able to let me off with the assistant Bethany, to go back to the hotel and try and get my money. So we ran back and asked the ladies to let us in, having already given them our keys, and checked the room. Of course it was still where I left it, but I was truly panicked at this point. Also a rule that's a part of this program, if you ever are late to something and it causes you to miss your travel arrangements, first of all the group will leave without you, and if you don't make it to the place in time, you have to pay for the transportation costs. And sometimes if the assistant Bethany waited for you, or stayed behind for you, you have to pay for her too. So the reason for my panic, was not necessarily that I was afraid to lose the money, but rather, because I didn't want to have to pay for two train tickets to Beijing. We were lucky, not only did we catch the bus (much cheaper than a cab) we didn't miss the train, we got their really early. So everything turned out great!

We got on the train. They are a lot smaller than I imagined. I was on the top bunk of my compartment, which wasn't that awesome, because it was actually the smallest. We all talked and ate dinner (ramen noodles naturally), and then went to bed. When we woke up in the morning we were almost to Beijing, so we got ready, and departed the train when we got there. We took a bus to our hotel and checked in. My roomies and I decided to switch around, since in Xiamen we have 4 person bedrooms, Xi'an we had 2 person bedrooms, so we switched to the person that we hadn't roomed with in Xi'an. I roomed with Tracy and Lesly and Kayli roomed together. We had a lot of fun. After we lugged our stuff to our room we met downstairs to go to the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall.

We took a bus to the Ming Tombs, and it was really cold outside! After we got into the Ming Tombs everyone decided to buy these silly panda hats. I didn't get one, but I did buy a hat! It was cold enough to warrant a hat.

(the little guy in front is Ben, by the way. not a random Chinese...)

The Ming Tombs were pretty cool, especially since we had just finished our history class and therefore knew a lot more about the Ming Dynasty than your average tourist. So it was pretty interesting to see, but it was more of a garden than a tomb so we enjoyed it for the beauty.


When we were done, we took another bus ride to the Great Wall. The bus ride was neat too because we drove through a lot of mountainous areas and we could see the Great Wall in the distance. We got there, and started to walk. For those of you who don't like walking, climbing or strenuous activities, the Great Wall is not for you. After parking the bus, we walked up a long stretch of road (a hill, I say up for a reason) and then we get to the gate. After we got inside we could poke around the souvenir shops or just head straight up the wall. My group decides to go up the wall, so we started climbing the stairs.

I'll let the pictures talk.

It was amazing. So beautiful. So indescribable.

After that we drove back to our hotel.

Terracotta Army Visit

This is me in front of the entrance to the Terracotta Soldiers site. The statue behind me is the Emperor Qin Shi Huan (whom the soldiers were guarding).

When they were excavating the soldiers they also found many small figurines such as carriages and weapons. The amazing thing about the weapons was that they were still sharp after a few thousand years. Apparently the Chinese found a way to keep their weapons sharp even before the west did.

Funny thing about being a foreigner in China, is that everyone wants to take their picture with you like you are famous. The kids at our school (for the service project) even wanted our signatures. So we often get asked to take pictures with random Chinese strangers. This is one. At this time, there were 4 guys that wanted an individual picture of each of them with each me and my friend Tracy. Then this girl saw that we were letting them take pictures, so she wanted one too. I thought I would join in the fun.

There were so many soldiers! It was really amazing.

They all had different faces.

There were chariots at one point, but I think they crumbled. The statues remained.

You could make your face into a terracotta soldier!

Service Project China

Hey everybody! I haven’t talked to everyone in a while, so I’ll have to catch everyone up. So since I last talked to you, much has happened. We had all of our classes, that I told you about and we finished those. There were finals a week or two ago, we had to take for the classes that we’ve had till now. So then we had a service project.


We were supposed to do the service project on the trek when we are in Xi’an and go to a ranch to help them with their cattle? I’m not really sure. But instead, because our flight wasn’t available till the next week we went to a school in Xiamen. It was only about a 30 minute bus ride from the University campus, so we were able to stay in our dorms while we were helping with the service project. The schools wanted the kids to be taught English (and they had already learned a little in their classes through textbooks, but it's different when you hear it from a native speaker), so we were assigned 4 classes every day. Thankfully we were working in pairs, so I was paired with a guy on our trip named Ben. We had kids from 1st grade to 6th grade in my classes. On the first day, Ben and I had 2nd graders who were really well behaved. At first we started to teach them things like how to say "How are you today?" but then someone told us that it was too hard for them, so we started to draw pictures on the board and teach them what the English word was. Things like fruits and colors. For colors we would point to the kids clothes and say a color that was written on the board. Then we would ask "Nali, nali?" and they would point to other kids in the classroom that were wearing the color and those that were wearing the color would stand up. They had a lot of fun pointing it out to us. We also had a 3rd grade class, and then a 6th grade class. The 6th graders were harder because they already knew all the stuff that we were saying. So we tried the months of the year and things like geography. They already knew it all so we were mostly helping them with pronunciation. The last class of the day was the same first graders we had had earlier. On the second day we had 2nd, 4th, and 3rd graders. We had more of the hang of how to teach them so it was more fun than the first day, although the anticipation was more stressful because we knew what we were getting into. On the last day we only stayed for 2 classes because in Chinese school the teachers devote half of Friday to explaining the homework that the students are to complete that weekend. The school served us lunch since we were helping them (we later paid them for it, because they were a poor school) and then there was recess, and we could play with the kids. It was so much fun. All of the kids were adorably cute (although a little rambunctious) and they all were really excited to be learning from us. The school was a really poor school, and they didn't have enough money to pay for better teachers so having foreigners come to help was really exciting for them.

After our service project we were scheduled to depart for our history trek. We left on Wednesday the 27th of October and flew to Xi'an. When we arrived it was cold! It was weird because Xiamen is pretty tropical, so it stays pretty warm for a longer period of time then up north. So it was pretty surprising when we left the plane. From the airport we took the bus to the Xi'an International Studies dorm (it's actually kind of like staying in a hotel) and got situated before we had dinner. The funny thing about China is that if you are below the Yanztse River no one turns their heat on till November 15th. No matter how cold it gets. So since we are below the river, no heat. It's pretty cold. Both inside and outside. So I've gotten used to wearing my jacket all day, and staying under covers when I'm in my room. We have classes in the mornings here, on the history of China and the different dynasties and stuff. Xi'an is more rural than Xiamen (in parts) but it's also the ancient capital city for the Shang Dynasty. So when you go to the metropolis section of the city, there are old city walls, a moat, a bell tower, and a lot of old architecture. It's very beautiful. Yesterday we went to the Muslim quarter, an area of town where you can buy a lot of touristy things, like knock-off name brand stuff, fake Chinese artifacts, real Chinese artifacts and the usual random stuff that tourists like to buy. It's really funny though because they really push you to buy things, and you have to bargain for your price. It's hard to walk away if you really don't want it. But I've been able to find some really good deals on some cool things.

Today we went to the Terracotta Warriors. They were really cool. We had been taking classes on the Qin Dynasty and learning all about Qin Shi Huang. He's the emperor that the soldiers are guarding. He really wanted immortality, so he tried to make a way that when he was in the afterlife, he would have everything that he needed. There is also a mausoleum that he is buried in, which is pretty cool. He had a map of China that covers the whole ground, and there might even be one that the ocean and rivers in the map are mercury, but no one is sure whether or not that account of the construction is accurate. So when we looked at the Terracotta soldiers, they were awesome. It was pretty dusty in there though and very cold. There are a lot of broken ones, because supposedly there had been enemies of the Qin Dynasty coming in to destroy the solders and take their weapons. All of them have different faces. That's a little creepy. The weapons that they found with the army were still sharp after 2000 or so years. That was cool. While we were there I over heard this story (may not be true) about a German guy who when he was visiting the Terracotta Warriors he dressed to be exactly like one, and when no one was looking he went and jumped over the fence and stood in the army. I didn't hear the rest of the story, but it made me laugh so I thought I would share it with you.

For the rest of this week we are just having classes and next week we start to go to Shanghai and Beijing. I don't know when I'll be able to get online because we don't have internet anymore, so we are having to go to an internet cafe. I hope all of you are doing well! I'm miss you all and can't wait to come home at Christmas!

Chinese Culture‏

So after telling you all about the things that I have been doing here, I figured I'd give you all (if your interested) a small lesson in Chinese Culture (if you don't already know), and share with you what I have been experiencing as the little differences. Most of these are no big deal and make me laugh, so there is little stress. In fact, I would even go as far to say that I don't think that our cultures (as far as the younger generation goes) is that much different from my generation back home in America.


First of all, the thing that I find most entertaining, is the fact that there is no need or desire for lines. If you want to order something at a standing restaurant, you walk right up the the counter, regardless of other people standing there, and order. Even if you interrupt her or someone else ordering it's not that uncommon or rude to just yell out your order to the cook and shove your money in their hand. Whoever gets the the counter and gets their order in first, will get their meal whenever the cook is done cooking it. It's also not uncommon for the cook to cook whatever is convenient first rather than in the order of the people who came. I've had to stand waiting for 15 minutes before while other people who ordered after me got their order, and I was served last.

Another thing, which I actually find really fun and exciting, is the streets. People don't have the right of way, at least it doesn't seem that way. Car's don't really have many laws that they really follow (other than the basic ones). Most of the time bikes (bicycles and motorbikes) are in the street, even the freeway. The basic rules of the road are, don't get hit and don't run into anything. Therefore, if something is in the way, you move around it. If you can't move around it, you honk at it until it moves out of the way. I've seen people standing in the middle of the freeway having a conversation, and all the cars just honked and moved around them. This makes driving really exciting. But, it makes crosswalks even more interesting. :) There is no rule that cars have to stop for crosswalks, but they still don't want to hit anyone. Of course pedestrians, at least the Chinese ones, are aware of the fact that if they want to cross the road they need to pick a time when there is a break enough in the cars to walk or run through. Sometimes we will walk halfway across and find that the other side of traffic is coming and there is no break. So you stand and wait in the middle of the two lanes until you can continue. It makes crossing the road really an interesting experience.

Something else that is different is the laundry. I was expecting this but I guess I'm still a little bummed. They don't have dryers, so we have to stick with the good old fashioned concept of air drying. Our room looks really funny during laundry day because of all our clothes that are hanging up around our room.

It's also a little bit weird, because there is limited washers, if you fail to take out your laundry in time the guard will take it out for you in order to give the washer to the next person. It makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable, but I don't mind that much.

It's weird being a foreigner, many people stare at us and talk about us in Chinese. We have even had random people come up and take a picture of us or ask us to take a picture with them. It's a little strange... but funny. One time I was trying to tell a lady that her camera cap was on before she took a picture, and then it ended up (after some language confusion) that me and Lesly (my roommate) were taking a picture with her. So we are going to end up on some random person's facebook page or something and not even know them.

Eating with chopsticks is fun, but the more you learn about how dirty it is here the more you realize the necessity of not touching anything. It's not uncommon when you walk on the street to see children going to the bathroom. In fact, most children who haven't been potty trained yet, instead of using diapers, have a hole in their pants so they can go when they need to. People spit on the streets and litter nasty garbage frequently. Shoes are not to be worn inside for this reason. We have room slippers, and when we visit our classroom off campus we have to remove our shoes before going inside.

These are a few of the things that are different about our culture. I find them more interesting than annoying. I think it's fun to experience all of this (except for that last one) first hand. I promise to stay safe and well. If you have any questions, please email me! (it's megan.elaine.04@gmail.com)

Xiamen

Hey Everyone! Sorry it's been taking me so long to be able to get to do this, but I've been SO busy! So after we flew out of Hong Kong, we took about a 2 hour flight to Xiamen. When we got there it was just about as hot as it had been in Hong Kong, but not as humid (it's hard to believe now, it's seems like so much more humid because it's so much hotter).

At the airport we took a bus to the university, and on our way we got some hawking experience. The teacher that was escorting us to Xiamen University was trying to sell us cell phone chips. You buy the chip and you get a cell phone later and you put the chip in and it gives you minutes. Clever. Then we arrived at the university and we had to walk to our dorm and check in. After waiting for our keys we found our room! Yay! Our room is a suite, meaning it has 2 rooms and 1 bathroom that we share. My suite-mates are Lesly and Tracy, and my room-mate is Kaylee. They both have working air-conditioners, which is really nice. Our room even has a view of the ocean! We got our own TV too, but we can't understand the show so we don't watch much.

We got our schedules and we began to have classes, much to our dismay, about everyday starting at 8am. We've been having classes for a while now so I'll just give you a summary. We take Chinese 1, the teacher is Chinese but she is a very good teacher and I've been learning a lot. We get to put most of the things we learn into practice right away. I'm also taking a Contemporary Society class, which talks about China's government, economy, people, food, music, etc. That one has several different teachers for the changing topics, but we have had one teacher several times over and she knows a lot about the subject. After that we usually have a class with the group about crossing cultures and sometimes about the contemporary society stuff. I'm in the business concentration course, so I have extra classes that I take, such as International Business in China. I really like this class. The professor is really knowledgeable and he is really excited about the subject, so he is very fun to listen to. I did mention that this was our general schedule, but our schedule changes so much we can never be sure about whether or not we are going to have classes in the same room at the same time with the same teacher. But it's fun, you just have to be flexible. Just today, when we went to our IBC class we stopped on 3 different levels before we found our class. An adventure!

We've been pretty busy with classes, but we have had the chance to go and visit various places around Xiamen. All of our meals are eat out meals, and we can eat in the canteen or in any of the restaurants around town. Across the street from campus (about a 10-15 minute walk from our dorm) is a shopping/eating area that we like to go to. They have a little street mall, and some really good standing restaurants, along with some sitting ones. My favorite, which I finally got the chance to check out the other day is a restaurant called "The Loving Hut" (weird name, I know) which is a really good, and nice, vegetarian restaurant. A lot of monks eat there. They sell vegetable buns for 1 kuai!!! (that's about 15 cents) A good meal is 2 buns. Not to mention they are delicious! There are a lot of veggie restaurants here, which makes me really happy. There is another area that has better shopping, we call it downtown, the Chinese call it Dongquian Lu. It's got a little night market and several malls stacked up everywhere. It's really fun, because if you go you just follow the crowd and go into some of the smaller streets you will find a lot of really cool shops. They are the ones that are cheaper cause most of the tourists don't go that far in.

On Monday, September 20th we got our first typhoon! It was really exciting. There was lots of wind and rain, and our classes got cancelled. We all had to stay inside for the whole day. The ocean (seen from my window) was really crazy looking. A very exciting experience.

There was a holiday on Wednesday September 22, called the Mid-Autumn Festival. It's kind of like a thanksgiving. Some of the Chinese who are near their families go home and gamble and share moon cakes. We had some moon cakes, they weren't that great, but it was an interesting experience. We got invited to several parties but I didn't go because I wasn't feeling well at the time. Even though it was a holiday, there was still class on Wednesday because our group had classes that weren't through the university. But then because we had the day off on both Monday (typhoon) and Wednesday we had to have classes on Saturday and we would have had to have classes on Sunday too but our program director got those cancelled for us so we could go to church.

On Sunday we attended a Chinese church where they spoke both Mandarin and Hakka (a local dialect). We didn't understand any of it, but it was very interesting to see. Much of it was done very similar to church back home, worship, then a sermon, then closing worship. They had Chinese hymnals and some of them had Pinyin (the romanized version of characters, which is readable to us) in them, so we could sing along! The church was on an island though, so in order to get there and back we had to take a ferry. There were also a bunch of historical buildings on the island that attracted a lot of tourists (we saw several groups while we were there) which of course attracted a lot of tourist shops. So we went poking around and found an ice cream place. Bethany (the program TA) also bought this thing that she didn't tell us what it was until after they ate it, which ended up being congealed sea worm. I didn't have any because someone told me that it had fish in it.

For class on one of the days last week we went to a factory run by a westerner and got the grand tour! He told us a lot about his operations and what he is able to do for his workers as far as making their life better. He used his business as a way to show compassion for the people of China, it was really awesome. A little weird to see things that we buy in America being made here though.

Another thing that we do, which is required for some credit, is to go to English Corner. That's where we meet other Chinese and chat. It's a lot of fun, most of them are coming to practice their English and make friends. I've already made two! I met Apple, who is majoring in Enterprise Management (which I'm pretty sure is similar to business management), and Eric (whom I named!) who is majoring in something similar to engineering. They are both really nice, though our friendship hasn't progressed much since I've only met them twice... but I'm really excited to have friends in the Chinese community! They promised to give me a Chinese name the next time we meet!

Hopefully I'll be able to post again soon!

The Peak and Buddha

Hey, everyone! I'm officially in China now. We moved into our dorms and are getting settled in. I had a little trouble setting up my internet, but now it's working great! (it's in my room too! so I don't have to go anywhere!) So back to where I left off, before we left Hong Kong...

So we went to an international church on Sunday. They had services in English, so it wasn't hard to understand.

It was really nice, the pastor was from Canada. After church was over we went to dinner, but before we left the church it started raining like a flash flood. It was awesome! The workers at the hotel (where the church was held) had to put up blocks to keep the rain from flooding it, cause it was coming up several inches already. :)

We went to dinner, even though it was raining off and on. It was funny though because it was raining so hard and thickly that even if we did have an umbrella it would soak through. So we were all getting wet anyway. We went to dinner and I ordered this soup that turned out tasting really gross, so everyone shared with me a little of theirs. After dinner we went to a history museum. It was pretty cool, they started out talking about how the land was formed and went all the way to where they are today. It wasn't that exciting to me, but I know some of you would have enjoyed it. Those pictures are on my Face-book.

On Monday, we had a morning class but the afternoon was free. So the whole group decided to go to Victoria's Peak. We took the tram to the metropolis, which was awesome in itself. We saw several really famous buildings, like the one that was used in Mission Impossible 3 and another one that was supposedly in The Dark Knight (not so sure about that one...). Those pictures are on Facebook also. After that we had to take a bus up to the peak. We had tried to plan it so that we got there at sunset, and it actually turned out really well. We got up to the peak, which had the most English we had seen in a while, since it was very much a tourist site. After we got up to the top it was really awesome.

We stayed up there until after dark, and they have a light show every night at 8. It was pretty cool, but I didn't manage to catch it on camera. Here is a night view...

It was really pretty.

On Tuesday, we all decided to go up and see another tourist attraction, the big Buddha. That was another tram and bus ride up a windy road. It was another touristy site, but there were a lot more Chinese than there were tourist. It was pretty cool, there were a lot of really interesting things that we got to see about the Buddhist religion.

It was really beautiful, but it was a lot of stairs. I'll try and post more pictures of that on Facebook.

On Wednesday we are going to Xiamen to move into our University dorms. I'll post again later. Talk to you later!

Hong Kong

We went downtown for dinner yesterday and ate at a little street restaurant. It was really good. I got fried noodles. It was funny because they didn’t speak English and we had to figure out what they were asking. Luckily they had an English menu before. We had to ask for chopsticks because they gave us forks first. I’m used to chopsticks now, though I’m still not very good at eating with them, but using a fork would be weird to me.

After that we went to the street market and walked around and some of us shopped. I don’t know if I’m ready to buy anything yet because I heard that they jack up the prices because it’s a tourist city. So we’ve been told that in Xiamen it will be cheaper. 

There is a common thing that a lot of the locals do is to buy umbrellas that are UV protectors. I’m thinking about getting one. Kind of like parasols. It’s really interesting how tall and thin their building are. It makes me feel like I come from a small town. This is a view from the field in the camp that we are staying at.

The white buildings in between are public housing and the pinkish ones are private. It’s really humid here, and almost constantly foggy or smoggy, probably both.

Here are some pictures that I haven’t shown you yet…

This is the classroom that we get while we are at the camp in Hong Kong. The classes that we are taking is just survival Chinese and some history about religions in China.

We ride the trains to get to downtown Kowloon and we go to the “Ladies Market” (which is that market that I showed you above) and the bigger section of the city.

There are lots of mountains around the city and TONS of greenery! I’m lovin’ it! It’s so beautiful, though it is rather wet outside all the time. It feels like we are in a sauna whenever we go outside.

So far...

After we left from the airport, we got to our housing situation while we are in Hong Kong. We are staying at the YMCA camp in little houses they call bungalows. There are about 14 of us in the CSP group, I think about 9 girls and 8 guys. They tried to keep us awake by keeping us busy for the rest of the day, so they had a few things planned. We had lunch at the camp that was really good. We all had to use chopsticks, and learn their table manners. One of which is that if you don't like something in your food, you spit it on the table. And from there it and anything else will be cleaned up by the cleaning crew. If you clean up after yourself you are considered rude because you are taking their job. After lunch we had a get together meeting that explained what we were going to do afterwards and gave us a kind of general overview schedule for the week that we are here. Saturday gets to be a free day that we get to do anything we want to do. I'm thinking about going up to this place where you can look out onto the city and ride gondela's all the way up there. So anyways, after the meeting we took the train to downtown to the shopping district to look around. By then it was about 3 or 4 am to my inner clock and I wasn't all that excited to be walking around. We all split up into our separate groups and walked around the city. My group went to the botanical gardens and walked around. We all met up at a Starbucks (and yes, as a matter of fact they do have them on every street corner. not as bad as Seattle though) and went to the wet market that is in Ma On Shan (where the camp is) and got dinner. I only had a croissont from a bakery in the market because I wasn't feeling very hungry. I actually got the croissont for breakfast, and got some soup for lunch but I ended up switching them. Hong Kong uses their own currency that is different from China because they used to be separate. They call them Hong Kong dollars and it's about 1-7 ratio to American dollars. It makes it a little weird when you are buying a can of soda for 7 dollars. When we got back we were supposed to eat dinner and then we could either go to sleep or try and stay awake. After eating my dinner, I decided I was going to read for a little bit but in the end my sleep ran out and I was unable to stay awake. It was around 7 pm. It was actually kind of funny cause I fell asleep almost instantly after just laying my head down for a second. I wasn't expecting to go to bed either and I think I was still in my clothes. I woke up about 2 hours later and realized enough to clear off my bed and get ready like normal.

This morning was weird in the fact that I woke up at 8 am (highly unusual for me). In the morning we had a class that taught us a little about the history of the language, and we ate lunch and then we had a little meeting that let us introduce ourselves and learn about the other people of the group. We talked more about what was in store for us and went over the rules one more time before we make any mistakes. Jet lag is still here. It's strange getting tired at three in the afternoon. But then I remember that it's actually after midnight for me at home. Later we are going to the wet market again to get dinner and breakfast since the camp only provides lunch. Hopefully tonight I can stay awake a little later than 7. I miss home but I'm having lots of fun here! Love you guys!

I'm here!

I finally left yesterday from Seattle, and after a long stop in LAX I made my way to China. I'm here, I'm tired. We're sitting in the airport and I keep thinking that it's evening, but it's actually really early in the morning. Tuesday just vanished. We left on Monday, or really Tuesday at 1am, and we arrive really early on Wednesday. It was a long flight, but it didn't seem that bad because I slept for most of the first half of the 13.5 hour flight. Also because they had a personal TV that you could play a selection of movies on. I watched Remember Me, Prince of Persia, and Star Trek. Nothing really eventful happened on the flight. We got here, went through immigration, and we are now sitting in the terminal waiting area. We met the director of the program and we are going to try and stay awake for the rest of the day till evening. The airport still looks pretty home-like, or rather anywhere-like so I don't really feel like I'm that far from home yet. I'll probably put another post on as I get to know what I'm doing more. Talk to you later!

Acceptance

Today I officially received my acceptance letter into the China Studies Program (CSP). I wasn't expecting anything less, because they said that it wasn't that competitive to get into, but I still didn't want to start anything until I was sure. Of course that added a lot of paperwork that needs to be filled in soon. Which is a little stressful because I have a bunch of finals stuff that I need to do too. Well I just wanted to start this blog. This will be my blog that I will try to keep updated while I'm in China and tell you guys about my experience. I'll be leaving September 7 from LAX airport. Talk to you then!