A Look Back

As of today, February 17, 2014, it is exactly one year ago that I left for China. That I embarked on what was going to be one of the most exciting and formative adventures of my life. Not a day passes where I don't think of China, or something I learned, or a good friend that I met there, or even the smallest interaction with a random stranger. And not a day goes by where I am not thankful for that opportunity and for all of the people that supported and helped me along the way (special shout-out to Mom, Dad and Alex, love you guys). For me, it was a trip that made me grow as a person; a trip that made me question what I thought I knew about the world; a trip where I learned to be thankful for what I have and to live each day to its fullest. So here's to you China, *raises glass*, I know our paths will cross again one day.

Food

This post doesn't really need an intro except for the following: keep in mind the following foods were (for the most part) all served during a meal aka these are foods that were actually on a menu in a restaurant somewhere.

Strange Foods I've Eaten:
-tiger lily
-sesame balls
-liver
-chicken heart
-a fish that I saw alive less than ten minutes before eating it (multiple times now)
-sugar cane
-pork fat (literally, that was what it was)
-jellyfish
-pigeon stomach
-pig ear
-sea cucumber
-squid on a stick
-fish jerky
-salmon eggs
-flying fish eggs

-whole shrimp

-a lot of tofu

-bamboo

-whatever these things are:

Chinese candy/snacks

Mr. Shu's Asian Candy- tastes like a fruity tootsie-roll

Pyramidal M&M's

Chocolate and Peanut Butter..omnomnom

Thin wafers rods dipped in chocolate. So good. 

I eat these by the box.

Seaweed flavored Pringles. Like my (Korean) roommate 

said "That's just too asian."

A Walk to Class

Hello everyone! Sometime in the middle of March (I forget exactly what day) I recorded our walk to class in the morning. I thought that you guys would be interested in seeing what this area of Beijing looks like as well as a portion of PKU's campus. I apologize that the video is kind of long and shaky, and for the cut out in the middle of it (my stupid camera stopped recording for some reason). Also, I put some good ol', down home, patriotic country music in the background to keep things interesting. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy it!

Harbin

Hello all! As I mentioned at the end of my last post, this past weekend was Labor Day here in China, so we had the whole weekend plus Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off of school. So, Kate, Hannah, John and I went to Harbin! Harbin is really far north and super close to the Russian border. It is mainly known for its ice sculptures and snow lantern festivals during the winter, but they obviously didn't have those anymore, so we explored the spring version of Harbin instead!

We left Friday night and arrived in Harbin early Saturday morning. After checking into our hotel, we explored the surrounding area and was pleasantly surprised to see that we where two blocks away from one of the main attractions in Harbin, St. Sophia square. This square is named after a beautiful Eastern Orthodox church built on the square.

Surrounding the square was a lot of neat shops an Chinese malls. After grabbing something to eat and exploring the square a bit more, we took a cab to the other side of town and visited the 731 museum. This was a memorial dedicated to the victims of Japanese Battalion 731 who was stationed in Harbin during WWII. During the occupation, the Japanese used healthy, unwilling Chinese citizens to test chemical weapons and other germ warfare. The museum was really interesting, and thankfully not very graphic.

The next day was probably the most fun we had the whole trip. It started off with us stumbling upon an underpass that was lined with cure little shops selling all sorts of trinkets and whatnot. Also, this cool mannequin was there:

I couldn't resist.

After the awesome underground mall, we went to......the Siberian Tiger Preserve!!! Yep, you read that right. It was AMAZING. I hope you all have seen Jurassic Park, because it was exactly like that, except we where in a bus instead of a car and actually inside the area where the tigers where. I apologize in advance here because there are a lot of pictures of tigers.

It was a necessary pose

Who wouldn't want to ride a tiger?

First glimpse of a tiger from the waiting area.

Just like Jurassic Park.

Inside one of the tiger areas

He was a curious one.

African Lion

Another cool part of the park (and something they would never do in America, thanks PETA) is that we got the chance to feed live animals to the tigers. So of course we did it. There was a choice between a couple of animals including a chicken, mountain pheasant, sheep or even a cow, if you're willing to drop 2800 kuai. We chose the chicken.

It looked sickly anyway.

The keeper put in in a cage...

...wheeled the cage out over the tiger pen...

(notice them staring up hungrily at it)

...opened the bottom of the cage and 

then that chicken became this guy's lunch.

Though it sounds kind of traumatizing to watch, the whole thing was actually pretty cool. And now that's one less chicken that can spread bird flu. You're welcome, China.

The keeper teased this tiger with a hunk of beef.

And then he looked so sad that we where 

almost tempted to buy it for him. Almost.

They also had a Leopard,

a Cheetah, 

a Liger,

a Panther,

and this White Lion.

 And who goes to a Siberian Tiger Preserve without buying a stuffed Siberian Tiger? Not this girl. Meet 小王(xiaowang- Prince)!

Ain't he a cutie pie?

So that night, we decided to wander around and see what we could find. We ended up stumbling upon what's called Central Street, which is just a huge pedestrian street filled with shops and restaurants and places to sit with a pitcher of beer and eat meat on a stick (a delicious Chinese pastime). Though it was kind of late at night, the street was chock full of people.

A Pitcher-of-beer-and-meat-on-a-stick place (aka 串 chuar)

The squad: John, Hannah and Kate

Almost every sign had Chinese, Russian and English.

At the end of Central Street, we also stumbled upon (we seem to do a lot of that) these cool boats that, for only 10 kuai, would take us on a 30 minute boat trip on the river that runs through Harbin. So cool!

The next day (Monday) we all slept in until about 10:30, found out it was raining, and so we just decided to hang out in our hotel room all day. We watched some Chinese TV (weird) and also a couple movies. It was pretty much just one of those days that you expect to have on vacation. That night though, we went out to the Robot Restaurant. This was a pretty cool place where you gave your order to a robot, then a robot chef cooked it and another robot carried out the dish and stopped at your table where a human waiter would then hand you the food.

Though the robots where pretty cool, the food was actually the best part of the place. Tuesday we went to a park called Taiyang dao (which means Sun Island) and explored that area for a while. At that park, I was painfully reminded of how short Chinese people are when I smacked the top of my head on a girder while walking up some steps. Here's a picture of me with the offender on our way down the same steps:

After spending a while at Taiyang Dao, we went to a coffee shop along Central Street called Maan Coffee, Toast and Waffles. We think it was their opening day or something because everything was half price. Woo! So Hannah and I split a BLT and a chocolate waffle (most delicious thing ever).

Because we were pretty tuckered out after wandering around all day, we ended up spending 5 hours at Maan Coffee. During that time, John taught all of us how to play Euchre! Dad, I know you've tried to teach me multiple times before, and I never really got it. But now I know how to play! So Goebel family, at the next family gathering I'll be seeing you all at the Euchre table....maybe.

Tuesday night we went out to a club called Box Town. It was super nice and really big and we met a couple really cool people. On person we met was a Russian who was from Siberia. And the night ended with John and me playing fussball with two guys from Angola. How cool is that?! I was partners with Mario, and though we lost to John and Jaelzeman, it was still a lot of fun.

On Wednesday, we checked out of our hotel, wandered around some more, got Russian food for lunch (pretty much just a giant plate of mashed potatoes) spent another couple hours at Maan coffee playing Euchre, and then got dinner at a Korean restaurant. Then, with a heavy heart, we boarded the train to head back to Beijing. All in all, Harbin was a fantastic, beautiful city and there was nothing that I would change about the trip.

P.S I know this is super random, but please don't try to mail me anything from here on out. We only have 4 weeks left here and I might not get the mail before it's time to leave.

Kaifeng/Luoyang

Part of my program involves taking "excursions" as a group to different cities. The first one we did was Nanjing, and the most recent one was last weekend. We had a choice among 3 excursions, and I chose to go on the Kaifeng/Luoyang one. There was only 11 people on the trip, so it was nice and small and a lot more enjoyable because of that.

The reason we went to Kaifeng and Luoyang is because they are two of the ancient capitals of China. Beijing and Nanjing are the other two we have been to and the others are Xian, Hangzhou and Anjing. Unfortunately I won't have time to go to any of those.

The weekend started off with another overnight train ride on hard sleepers (66 people in one car again). Once again, very little sleeping was done by me. Mainly because of the chorus of snores coming from the 4 men sharing the same compartment. We arrived in Kaifeng early on Friday (we had Friday off of school because it was "sports day" or something like that) and went promptly to check into our hotel. Worst. Hotel. Ever. The floors weren't vacuumed, the bathrooms where dirty, and it was like a refrigerator because they didn't have the heat on an it was about 45 degrees outside. All part of the China experience though! Our first stop in Kaifeng was the Dragon Pavilion which was built by one of the emperors for some reason or another. I apologize for the lack of detail, but it was freezing and raining and I was trying harder to stay warm and dry than I was trying to listen to the tour guide. So all I know is that is really pretty and the emperor used to hold council and other emperor-esque duties there.

After a short rest at the hotel, we headed back out to visit a park that was modeled off of this Song dynasty painting:

It kind of reminded me of Colonial Williamsburg. Unfortunately, the weather had taken a turn for the worse, and it started sleeting on us. So instead of exploring the park more, we popped into a restaurant, warmed up with some tea for an hour or so, ate dinner and then headed back to the hotel to warm up (impossible due to the lack of heating). Thankfully, instead of spending the night cooped up in a hotel room, the teachers that took us on the trip arranged KTV (karaoke) for all of us to go to!

The next morning, a few of us chose to go visit the local Catholic church. This church was built in 1916 and managed to survive the cultural revolution.

The steeple from a distance 

 The free standing bell tower behind the church

The priest, telling us about the founders of the church.

Once we returned from the hotel, it was time to head out for Luoyang. During the 3 hour bus ride to get  Luoyang, I realized that was the first time we actually drove to a city that we where going to be spending an extended period of time in. Every other time we've taken the train. Just another difference between America and China.

Upon arrival in Luoyang, we headed over to the Peony gardens for the annual Peony festival. Apparently Luoyang is the Peony capital of China. Not sure why. But it was pretty!

This band was playing outside the gardens. 

They could stand to learn a little something about tuning. 

Being weird with Hannah, per usual. 

Overview of the garden area.

Luoyang also marked the exacerbation of something that had been happening every where else: people wanting to take pictures with us. They would get our attention by calling “高福帅哥” (tall, rich, handsome) to the guys and “美女” (pretty girl) to the girls (which is funny that they use such respectful terms when we walk around calling our selves 洋鬼子 which means "foreign devil"), and then ask us to take a picture with them. We almost always obliged. It got so bad for me one time that one of the teachers had to act like my agent and usher me away from the area and swat away all the people wanting to take pictures.

The last day of the trip was Sunday which we spent at the Longmen grottoes there in Luoyang. The Longmen grottoes is this area with lots of caves carved into the side of a cliff and inside these caves are stone buddhas carved from the rock. The buddhas where carved there because it was considered a
"holy place" and because if a family could carve a buddha, they believed they would have an easier time of reaching enlightenment. Despite the crushing crowd, it was actually a really cool area.

From across the river (which also happens to

be a tributary of the Yellow river) 

El Grupo

Sunday afternoon we took the high speed train back to Beijing and got back to the dorms at around 9:30pm. All in all, the trip was really fun, despite the rain and chilly weather.

This weekend is Labor Day here in China, so we get next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off of school which means.....more travelling! WOOO! This time we (Hannah, Kate, John and I (pretty much the Qingdao gang minus Eddie because he's going to Hong Kong instead, loser)) are going to Harbin, which is one of the northern most cities in China and is super close to the Russian border. So there is a lot of Russian influence and apparently a lot of Russians living there. Should be fun! I'll tell you all about that when we get back. Good luck to all those back at home taking finals!