As promised from my last post- here are pictures!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14179315@N05/?saved=1
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
DUI BU QI!
Firstly, I'd like to really appologize to anyone of you who were keeping tabs on my blog and started getting disgruntled when I didn't update. I got a bit busy after I last posted and then I fell ill and quite honestly... I found I was telling people on facebook and in my emails about my adventures more than anything (so I grew lazy and didn't want to repeat it. : P) Oh well! We often plan things and then those plans fall through...
HOWEVER, I will make up for these past... oh, three or so months? It is currenly early evening here in Hangzhou, so I will not be able to upload pictures. However, later tonight when my internet shapes up I will upload a bunch of pictures and then make another entry posting them for you to see! In the meantime, PREPARE FOR A MEGA BLOG UPDATE!!
HERE WE GO...
September:
During the month of September we explored Hangzhou all over the place.
We did a lot of walking up hills and venturing into forested areas with no clear destination other than, "Well, there was a sign saying something was over here!" It was a lot of fun, even if I was sweating profusely and swatting away very buzz-happy bugs. One thing about China I noticed is that there are no "normal" sized bugs. Either they are very large and quite frightening or they are very small and extremely annoying. HOWEVER I have survived thus far, so they haven't gotten to me yet!
Despite the humidity and the heat of the September, the exploration of Hangzhou was a lot of fun. We visited a lot of old temples- including a very neat Buddhist temple with a very large tourist attraction. Not only did it hold over a hundred statues of famous monks, but it also had VERY LARGE statues of Buddha and a "1000 buddha" mural. Outside of the temple gates were a series of rocks and mini caves where stone depictions of various Buddhist figures were carved into the walls. It was a very unique experience, even if the place was crawling with people.
There were more little exploration journeys consisting of temples, pagodas, West Lake and various markets as well! All of them some-what similar and yet having their individual flair.
OCTOBER:
My talk of October will be dominated by Beijing.
We took a sleeper train up to Beijing which lasted about 12-16 hours, but lost track of time. That was an experience in itself! I've never been on a train like that before and my experience with trains in general are really lacking. It was neat though- three beds bunked on each side of a compartment with a tiny metal tray in the middle with warm water and a garbage can. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by friends from my study abroad group AND be on the bottom bunk both to and from Beijing. There were so many people everywhere! The bathrooms were sort of gross... it was rather odd to go into a squatter bathroom on a train and to be able to see the tracks racing below!!
BUT YES, BEIJING!
To simply put it, Beijing was fantastic! The temperature was nice and cool, to the point where the majority of the people in my group wore long sleeves and such. Beijing often had the haze from the pollution, but it didn't effect my travel or my perception of Beijing as much as I thought it would actually. We were lucky and had a few really beautiful days there! My favorite was when we journeyed out to the Great Wall. It was a few hours drive and we drove through very small towns and the country side- and I think that part alone was perhaps my favorite part. It sounds odd, I know but I just loved looking out the window and taking in all the natural beauty that China had to offer. It was interesting to pass by farms and see the fall leaves on all the trees and in a way it really reminded me of fall back home.
The Great Wall itself was just as amazing as I expected it to be. It's really a humbling feeling to climb the wall up a great big hill and then look around to see the wall snaking over the mountains and hills as far as the eye can see. It's just crazy to think of how people built that wall so long ago and the symbolic representation of it for all of China. It was also fun because when we were going back down, I took a zip line to the bottom! THAT was cool!
In Beijing we also visited the Forbidden Kingdom, Tiananmen Square and a really big shopping market. It's really fun going into those to see all the bartering, but I found I'm not that good at it. I do enjoy watching others barter away though! A lot of the people in our group bought shoes, shirts and various other things. The two girls and myself in the group bought new purses! Although mine is more of a satchel, as I needed something bigger to store things in without lugging my obnoxious backpack.
Beijing had some absolutely delicious restaurants to eat at as well. My favorite was a famous mushroom restuarant where you order a bunch of mushrooms and sit around a table with a big pot in the middle of it. Then they slowly add ingredients to this boiling pot, starting with duck. The duck is raw and slowly cooks as all the ingredients are added at particular intervals. They instruct you when to drink the broth and then after a while (and several ingredients later) the duck is ready to eat. By then you've ate a bunch of mushrooms, broth and various other meat they added in (like lamb). The duck at this point is extremely delicious- having simmered in the pot so long with the mushroom broth makes the taste excellent! My favorite part though was the broth! Hah, I'm so boring!
Restuarants aside, we did visit some lesser known things in Beijing (well, in comparision with the Forbidden Kingdom). We went to a museum, the Confucian temple, a few interesting streets and the like. It was really proud because a friend and I navigated using the Subway to meet at the Confucian temple from the market. We had to ask for directions and it was cool to be able to get our meaning across! (We had to look up how to say "Confucian Temple" though!)
So yes, my trip in Beijing was really excellent! It definitely was the highlight of my October. After Beijing however I fell sick and eventually went to the hospital. THAT was an experience too. It was completely different than any hospital that I've been in back in the States. It felt more like an old middle school than a hospital! Anyway, the sickness that I had... I technically still have, since the drugs and such they gave me didn't help. However I'm feeling a lot better than I did, but I look forward to going to the states to hopefully get it treated or at least recover away from the location where I developed it!
NOVEMBER:
November's highlight was my trip to Suzhou! We took a weekend where we hopped on busses and drove about two hours south to the city of Suzhou. Honestly I had never heard of Suzhou until we traveled down there, but now I'm really glad I went!
We stayed at a really nice hostile that had AMAZING fluffy blankets! (Seriously, they were amazing and warm and just destroyed the blankets we have here at the dorms). The hostile itself was in the old part of town, which was really cool. All the buildings looked aged but their age gave them a great deal of character. The roofs had the rounded, linked tiling like many of the older buildings back in Hangzhou did- but those buildings were usually tourist attractions and this was just a place where people lived! Our hostile was also right next a canal which was really pretty and a lot of girls getting married were dressed up in traditional gowns and getting their pictures taken.
We went to the Suzhou museum, which is well-known for being really well put together. ARRGH, I forget the designer's name but apparently the architect who designs the Louvre also designed this museum! (I'd look it up by my internet would take a day and a half. :( ) I got lost eventually when I wandered over out of the display area of the museum and into a preserved house of a prince that was linked to the museum. That place was HUGE! It was so cool! Any house where if you wander around you get lost, is AMAZING in my book. There was even a large opera room where they used to watch operas perform! It's really hard to describe the place... but it had a lot of mini courtyards and various rooms hidden in nooks and crannies. It was just neat because I could go virtually anywhere and I wasn't blocked off like back in the house we visited in Hangzhou.
We then visited the "Humble Ambassador's Garden" and spent the rest of our daylight there. Things were a bit wet since it had been raining on and off, but my friend Amy and I explored the whole place quite thoroughly and had a lot of fun! It was just like walking in a really old and beautiful park with coy fish ponds and even a bonsai tree garden!
We then walked around all night looking for dinner in the new part of Suzhou where there were a great deal of flashy lights and TONS of KFC advertisements. There were so many signs for that chicken place that it was a little bit creepy. We did eventually find a place to eat however!
The next day we were allowed to go off and do whatever we want and so a group of us just spent the day wandering around Suzhou. (Well, we had a destination but we failed to find it so we ended up wandering around forever!) We ate lunch at this delicious baozi and jiaozi joint and then met up with everyone once again! From there we went and watched an opera! It was SO neat! It had three different plays that were each thirty minutes long. The costumes were GORGEOUS and while there was no background that was intricate at all, the costumes alone were just amazing. And even though I couldn't really understand all what they were saying, the message got across pretty well with the acting. It was just so neat!
After the opera, we hopped on a bus and went back to Hangzhou!
I'll also note that in November we celebrated Thanksgiving by making our own jiaozi, eating fruit and playing monopoly! We eventually gave up with monopoly though, because it was getting late but I totally would have won!
DECEMBER:
And now we are to the present! For December I'll be going shopping again this Sunday. Amy and I went shopping last weekend and bought a few christmas presents and also ordered hand-made shirts for ourselves made out of silk! I figure it'd be something really neat to have! I was originally going to buy a silk blanket because they're amazingly soft, but they're SO expensive! @_@
So next sunday we pick up our shirts and I go shopping yet AGAIN to try to put another big dent in my christmas present list!
I'm also planning the weekend before I go to China, to perhaps take a bus to Nanjing and spend a day or so there. I really wanted to do that since I've come to China and now I have a card that tells me where I can stay and I know a few people who say the museum there is great. PLUS I've studied a lot of history surrounding Nanjing, so it'd be really interesting to actually visit the place.
Who knows!
SO YES, that is a very brief summary of my time here thus far! Sorry I only highlighted one thing really in each month, because otherwise I'd be writing pages! In my next entry later I'll include some pictures! :3
Zai jian!
HOWEVER, I will make up for these past... oh, three or so months? It is currenly early evening here in Hangzhou, so I will not be able to upload pictures. However, later tonight when my internet shapes up I will upload a bunch of pictures and then make another entry posting them for you to see! In the meantime, PREPARE FOR A MEGA BLOG UPDATE!!
HERE WE GO...
September:
During the month of September we explored Hangzhou all over the place.
We did a lot of walking up hills and venturing into forested areas with no clear destination other than, "Well, there was a sign saying something was over here!" It was a lot of fun, even if I was sweating profusely and swatting away very buzz-happy bugs. One thing about China I noticed is that there are no "normal" sized bugs. Either they are very large and quite frightening or they are very small and extremely annoying. HOWEVER I have survived thus far, so they haven't gotten to me yet!
Despite the humidity and the heat of the September, the exploration of Hangzhou was a lot of fun. We visited a lot of old temples- including a very neat Buddhist temple with a very large tourist attraction. Not only did it hold over a hundred statues of famous monks, but it also had VERY LARGE statues of Buddha and a "1000 buddha" mural. Outside of the temple gates were a series of rocks and mini caves where stone depictions of various Buddhist figures were carved into the walls. It was a very unique experience, even if the place was crawling with people.
There were more little exploration journeys consisting of temples, pagodas, West Lake and various markets as well! All of them some-what similar and yet having their individual flair.
OCTOBER:
My talk of October will be dominated by Beijing.
We took a sleeper train up to Beijing which lasted about 12-16 hours, but lost track of time. That was an experience in itself! I've never been on a train like that before and my experience with trains in general are really lacking. It was neat though- three beds bunked on each side of a compartment with a tiny metal tray in the middle with warm water and a garbage can. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by friends from my study abroad group AND be on the bottom bunk both to and from Beijing. There were so many people everywhere! The bathrooms were sort of gross... it was rather odd to go into a squatter bathroom on a train and to be able to see the tracks racing below!!
BUT YES, BEIJING!
To simply put it, Beijing was fantastic! The temperature was nice and cool, to the point where the majority of the people in my group wore long sleeves and such. Beijing often had the haze from the pollution, but it didn't effect my travel or my perception of Beijing as much as I thought it would actually. We were lucky and had a few really beautiful days there! My favorite was when we journeyed out to the Great Wall. It was a few hours drive and we drove through very small towns and the country side- and I think that part alone was perhaps my favorite part. It sounds odd, I know but I just loved looking out the window and taking in all the natural beauty that China had to offer. It was interesting to pass by farms and see the fall leaves on all the trees and in a way it really reminded me of fall back home.
The Great Wall itself was just as amazing as I expected it to be. It's really a humbling feeling to climb the wall up a great big hill and then look around to see the wall snaking over the mountains and hills as far as the eye can see. It's just crazy to think of how people built that wall so long ago and the symbolic representation of it for all of China. It was also fun because when we were going back down, I took a zip line to the bottom! THAT was cool!
In Beijing we also visited the Forbidden Kingdom, Tiananmen Square and a really big shopping market. It's really fun going into those to see all the bartering, but I found I'm not that good at it. I do enjoy watching others barter away though! A lot of the people in our group bought shoes, shirts and various other things. The two girls and myself in the group bought new purses! Although mine is more of a satchel, as I needed something bigger to store things in without lugging my obnoxious backpack.
Beijing had some absolutely delicious restaurants to eat at as well. My favorite was a famous mushroom restuarant where you order a bunch of mushrooms and sit around a table with a big pot in the middle of it. Then they slowly add ingredients to this boiling pot, starting with duck. The duck is raw and slowly cooks as all the ingredients are added at particular intervals. They instruct you when to drink the broth and then after a while (and several ingredients later) the duck is ready to eat. By then you've ate a bunch of mushrooms, broth and various other meat they added in (like lamb). The duck at this point is extremely delicious- having simmered in the pot so long with the mushroom broth makes the taste excellent! My favorite part though was the broth! Hah, I'm so boring!
Restuarants aside, we did visit some lesser known things in Beijing (well, in comparision with the Forbidden Kingdom). We went to a museum, the Confucian temple, a few interesting streets and the like. It was really proud because a friend and I navigated using the Subway to meet at the Confucian temple from the market. We had to ask for directions and it was cool to be able to get our meaning across! (We had to look up how to say "Confucian Temple" though!)
So yes, my trip in Beijing was really excellent! It definitely was the highlight of my October. After Beijing however I fell sick and eventually went to the hospital. THAT was an experience too. It was completely different than any hospital that I've been in back in the States. It felt more like an old middle school than a hospital! Anyway, the sickness that I had... I technically still have, since the drugs and such they gave me didn't help. However I'm feeling a lot better than I did, but I look forward to going to the states to hopefully get it treated or at least recover away from the location where I developed it!
NOVEMBER:
November's highlight was my trip to Suzhou! We took a weekend where we hopped on busses and drove about two hours south to the city of Suzhou. Honestly I had never heard of Suzhou until we traveled down there, but now I'm really glad I went!
We stayed at a really nice hostile that had AMAZING fluffy blankets! (Seriously, they were amazing and warm and just destroyed the blankets we have here at the dorms). The hostile itself was in the old part of town, which was really cool. All the buildings looked aged but their age gave them a great deal of character. The roofs had the rounded, linked tiling like many of the older buildings back in Hangzhou did- but those buildings were usually tourist attractions and this was just a place where people lived! Our hostile was also right next a canal which was really pretty and a lot of girls getting married were dressed up in traditional gowns and getting their pictures taken.
We went to the Suzhou museum, which is well-known for being really well put together. ARRGH, I forget the designer's name but apparently the architect who designs the Louvre also designed this museum! (I'd look it up by my internet would take a day and a half. :( ) I got lost eventually when I wandered over out of the display area of the museum and into a preserved house of a prince that was linked to the museum. That place was HUGE! It was so cool! Any house where if you wander around you get lost, is AMAZING in my book. There was even a large opera room where they used to watch operas perform! It's really hard to describe the place... but it had a lot of mini courtyards and various rooms hidden in nooks and crannies. It was just neat because I could go virtually anywhere and I wasn't blocked off like back in the house we visited in Hangzhou.
We then visited the "Humble Ambassador's Garden" and spent the rest of our daylight there. Things were a bit wet since it had been raining on and off, but my friend Amy and I explored the whole place quite thoroughly and had a lot of fun! It was just like walking in a really old and beautiful park with coy fish ponds and even a bonsai tree garden!
We then walked around all night looking for dinner in the new part of Suzhou where there were a great deal of flashy lights and TONS of KFC advertisements. There were so many signs for that chicken place that it was a little bit creepy. We did eventually find a place to eat however!
The next day we were allowed to go off and do whatever we want and so a group of us just spent the day wandering around Suzhou. (Well, we had a destination but we failed to find it so we ended up wandering around forever!) We ate lunch at this delicious baozi and jiaozi joint and then met up with everyone once again! From there we went and watched an opera! It was SO neat! It had three different plays that were each thirty minutes long. The costumes were GORGEOUS and while there was no background that was intricate at all, the costumes alone were just amazing. And even though I couldn't really understand all what they were saying, the message got across pretty well with the acting. It was just so neat!
After the opera, we hopped on a bus and went back to Hangzhou!
I'll also note that in November we celebrated Thanksgiving by making our own jiaozi, eating fruit and playing monopoly! We eventually gave up with monopoly though, because it was getting late but I totally would have won!
DECEMBER:
And now we are to the present! For December I'll be going shopping again this Sunday. Amy and I went shopping last weekend and bought a few christmas presents and also ordered hand-made shirts for ourselves made out of silk! I figure it'd be something really neat to have! I was originally going to buy a silk blanket because they're amazingly soft, but they're SO expensive! @_@
So next sunday we pick up our shirts and I go shopping yet AGAIN to try to put another big dent in my christmas present list!
I'm also planning the weekend before I go to China, to perhaps take a bus to Nanjing and spend a day or so there. I really wanted to do that since I've come to China and now I have a card that tells me where I can stay and I know a few people who say the museum there is great. PLUS I've studied a lot of history surrounding Nanjing, so it'd be really interesting to actually visit the place.
Who knows!
SO YES, that is a very brief summary of my time here thus far! Sorry I only highlighted one thing really in each month, because otherwise I'd be writing pages! In my next entry later I'll include some pictures! :3
Zai jian!
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