A Man. A Plan. A Trip. New York.

Last Friday we all decided we wanted to go to New York.  

Monday 0:59 AM we bought 5 bus tickets and booked a hotel for New York. 

Monday 8:45 AM our bus departed for New York.  

Yep. We were gonna drive, but Hiroko's mom required that we take public transportation @___@. Anyways, yeah, woke up around 5:30 Monday morning, took shower, dad drove me to pick up Robin (his mom also required he be picked up by adult), went to Yisheng's house, Quan's dad drove us to the bus station. Sketchy B-more. Slept on ride up.  

Arrived in NYC, walked around Chinatown...went to Times Square and did more walking around...Went to Rockefeller center and tried walking around but got stuck in mob...went to check in at hotel which was located a block outside Chinatown. After we left Chinatown, we were like...are we in the ghettoes? On the corner of a building I saw the name "Sohotel," and was like "crap. I can't believe we got a hotel in the ghettoes." (this picture is across the street from our hotel).

Once we got to the front door, it was better, the interior was well decorated, not Chinese-owned. Anyways, check-in was like this: We had 5 ppl, but we registered for 4, so Yisheng and I checked in while the 3 of them waited outside. First off, she saw my ID, and prolly saw that I had just turned 18...and I was checking in with a girl. Next thing I know, Hiroko walks in and also comes up. So I just turned 18, and am checking in with 2 girls. We get the room, and manage to get all 5 of us into the room, even though at one point a maid came in and I had to hide in the bathroom.  

For dinner we were going to eat at Quickly, which I had only heard of a while back as an awesome bubble tea chain. Also, they had shabu shabu. Unfortunately, there was a wait, so we kept going. We found another shabu shabu/hotpot place, so thats where we ate! Food was okay, didn't really like the sauces, nor the broth, which was just mala mix + water (the plain broth hiroko, yisheng, and robin got was basically boiling water). Anyways, I hadn't had hotpot since summer so I was okay with it. We were supposed to go ice skating afterwards, but were too tired, so we went to buy some cards and azn drinks (I got a lemon tea?) and went back to the hotel. 

Hahah stomach wasn't feeling so well, and didn't want to go to the bathroom in our room with no lock...so went downstairs to the lobby to find one. But there wasn't one. So I went outside, trying to find a restaurant or something, but couldn't find one. The street was literally deserted. All the chinese stores closed shop, there were no restaurants bc it was still outside Chinatown. So I found a hotel about 2 blocks away from my hotel, went in, told the Chinese man at the counter "my hotel's kinda far away....can I use your bathroom?" and he let me use the employee bathroom. Hahaha. The toilet couldn't flush. Left the bathroom, said "thanks" and ran back. What I just said was prolly incredibly disgusting but OH WELL. xD  

Playing cards didn't work out so well. No one was in the mood. So we played Meow. As in, turn off lights, touch other people, when you get touched you meow. Yeah. thats what we did. Then we just did nothing. I was doing karaoke from Hiroko's iPod, and yisheng and quan were reading the chiense magazines they bought earlier. robin and hiroko were uh...i dont even know? Then we slept. Umm so...i wasn't sure of the reasoning, but we slept guy girl guy girl guy. @____@. My mom flipped out when she found out later ("DID YOU GUYS HAVE SEX??") Tried telling ghost stories, tried playing contact, but all failed.  

I woke up first next morning (although apparently Hiroko was imsomniac all night long), and took a shower. Then we spent a while taking photos, including ghost photos with Robin's DSLR, and finally cleaned up and checked out. Ate a chinese breakfast! was uber happy about that! 豆腐脑~ yummy yummy 美味すぎた~ Also had a 油条 but it was disgusting. fried to a crisp, each bite was oil gushing into my mouth. But yeah, was very pleased with my tofu. so pleased i ate some of hiroko's sweet tofu. (mine was savory).  

After breakfast we went ice skating! Was fun, I hadn't ice skated since sophomore year I believe. But yeah, the five of us were holding hands, and going really fast, and I fell on my butt. It hurt...it was definitely going to bruise...and I didn't want to get up...and when I got up, Yisheng and I stayed along the wall while everyone else continued skating. And then I noticed that everything in my vision was turning really bright... I thought was that there was too much light from the sun being reflected from the ice. Thought I was just getting sleepy or something, tried shaking it off but it wouldn't go away. Then my hearing started to go as everything started sounding distant. Told Yisheng that i felt like i was about to faint, and she was like "yeah..your lips are white..." so i started skating along the wall towards the rink entrance, but luckily yisheng called these 2 rink guards to take me off the ice. Anyways, the woman was being pretty bitchy, like "Now that you're in here you need to go to the hospital." I was thinking "well....i'm leaving NYC in a few hours, there is no way im going to the hospital." So I asked her, "Can i just sit here for a few minutes? It's not as bright in here and I think I'm getting better." "Well, I'm on my break time, so no you can't stay here unless you're going to the hospital." Yeah, so Yisheng and I left the room and went to go get somethign to drink. Anyways, after some sugar (the orangeade had 70 some grams of sugar @___@) my vision went back to normal, and I didn't fell lightheaded anymore...almost thought I was diabetic....but then realized sugar helps normal people too xD. Anyways, went back to skating. [Edit: Later the woman and also one of the rink guards asked me if i was feeling better. aw they actually care D:] 

After skating we spent quite a while wandering around trying to find a restaurant. Eventually, like an hour later, we found Momo Sushi ("hey hiroko, it's momo! like your dog! let's eat there!" "my dead dog.") and had dinner. I ordered 鰻丼...yummeh yummeh.

After that, around 5, we rushed back to Chinatown to catch the bus. Robin and I really wanted some last minute bubble tea, so we went to run off around the bus stop area to find it. After about 20 minutes of searching we found it, it was 5:50 by this time and our bus leaves at 6. Anyways, rushed back, found out bus was late...

Cancun cont'd

So yeah, Sunday we got timeshare tickets. Monday we went to Chichen Itza with Guo Lili's family. On the bus, I sat with their daughter, Mimi, who's like 26. On the ride there, our moms would not stop talking. The tour guide was talking to us about the Mayans, and the only other sounds I hear are our parents talking. On the bus, there was this massive asian guy, who was seriously like 6'6 or taller, wearing a cut up tshirt. Hahaha and at Chichen Itza he kept following Mimi, ie getting close to her etc xD. So yeah, Mayans were pretty interesting people. Apparently the date the earth ends isn't really the earth ending, but a rebirth involving water. NASA says this may be a day involving planetary alignments that will do something to the tides...in my head i was like "oh no another great flood." Also, apparently Mayan's traced the exact date their civilization started, which was like 3000 years ago, while I believe Christians (if following the Bible exactly) can calculate Adam's birth to about 3500 years ago...depending on your source. Coincidence? On the way back we had "lunch" at 4:30 in this buffet place...and there was seriously nothing that looked good. I took some interseting photos there, but they would've been better with a DSLR.

Tuesday we went to Tulum and Xel-ha. This time we went with everyone, and went to Xel-ha first. Eric and Jeremy wanted to do swimming with dolphins, so again Mimi's and my family went to go do our own stuff. So we went snorkeling. Twas fun, except there weren't many fish except for at the beginning. After that we had lunch, which was really really good compared to the previous day's. In the afternoon, we went to Tulum, and took some nice pictures (DSLR PLZ). On the way back to Cancun, again the parents would not shut up. This time, they were giving us time to sleep, and turned the lights off, and all I hear are the parents talking and the little kids shouting to each other @_____@. For dinner we ate at the sushi place. Was okay I guess. I caught a cold that night tho. Afterwards we played cards! 找朋友!

Wednesday wasn't really anything. My parents and I went to La Isla mall and walked around until noon. Then we had lunch at Sunset Grill back at our hotel, WHERE I STUBBED MY TOE ITS EFFING PURPLE NOW MY NAILS GONNA FALL OFF DDDDD:. I was totally pissed. My dad stubbed his too, but it just hurt, no injury. akjhdfadshflkasdjlhf. I'm writing this Wednesday 12/31, and it's still purple. Doesn't hurt now though, just feels weird when touched. After lunch we just hung out on the beach, took some photos, and then went to dinner. Dinner was at Sunset Grill again. It took so long to get food, because this was Christmas Eve. Afterwards, we played cards again.

Thursday morning = packing and eating breakfast and LAST MINUTE PHOTOS XD. During breakfast, I was already brain dead and was falling asleep. On the car ride to the airport I was drifting in and out. At the airport I was asleep while the adults played cards. We got to Atlanta, and customs took so long. First we chose teh slowed line at passport control. Then the lady directed us to the LONGEST line for the x-ray machine, etc. And so we missed our flight by like a minute. They were closing the door when we got there, so they didn't let us on. So we wanted until 7:05 PM. I had Qdoba for Xmas dinner then xD. Got home around 11 PM.

A Bruised Groin

So I'm in Cancun right now.

Got here Thursday night, basically spent the whole day being angry and emo, mom got pissed eventually. When we were coming out of the airport, a woman at a desk near the exit introduced herself as a tourist assistant, and started telling us about stuff. And I thought my mom was being pretty rude about "We're sleepy...we're not interested" when the woman was just trying to help us. Later I realized she was a timeshare person....didn't realize what timeshares were until just recently hahaha. By night it was better after we checked into our oceanview suite xD. Basically its a 1-1/2 floor suite with a full glass wall on one side that views the beach, + balcony. Yeah, it was only for one night though, because we had to move into a normal room the next morning.

Woke up early the next morning, (1) to be emo, (2) to see the sunrise. Eventually my mom started talking to me again, so everything was good xD. Umm, didn't do anything really on Friday I think.

Oh yeah, everything's free. So like if you're at the pool, you call the waitress over and tell her to get you a strawberry daiquiri, sangrias, and [most] other drinks you could want xD. And there's always something on the menu with tequila in it. I had a coffee au tequila yesterday. First the waiter does shows off his fire pouring skills, pours the tequila into the cups, adds the coffee, adds the cream, and then drizzles flaming tequila along an orange peel spiral into onto the coffee.

So yeah, Friday morning woke up early, then breakfast, ummm then my parents went to go see a timeshare thing with their friends, so I had to watch over these 3 kids. Supposedly I could "go to the beach" and "check up on the kids every once in a while." Eventually it turned out I had to stay with the kids the whole time...

Friday afternoon I went with my mom to downtown Cancun, which is where the locals live. Yeah, it looked just like a random small city in China. Not really worth seeing I guess... The items they were trying to sell to tourists were also crazy expensive. We tried getting 2 sunglasses, that I insisted on 100 pesos for both [~$10], which were originally 480 pesos (yes...they tried selling me sunglasses for about $24 each....). My mom doesn't like bargaining, so she took the both of them for 200 pesos. They were not worth 200 pesos. We tried getting back and luckily I am an hispanohablante, because no one there on the streets spoke English. So yeah 6 years of Spanish culminates in me saying "hai" to a latino lady in the middle of asking for directions. And asking things like "el estacion de la autobus es aqui?" (1) I avoided saying "Is this?" because I wasn't too sure how to use "este/esto" anymore, (2) my words are all the wrong gender, (3) I'm pretty sure it should be parada instead of estacion. Haha my mom was not impressed. @___@. But yeah, we eventually found our way back. On a side note, it's pretty funny seeing Chinese people interacting with mexicanos when both of them speak with accents. Also sometimes embarassing.

On Saturday I didn't really wake up for breakfast, and so I woke up around ten to go bike around the island with my parents and their friends. I was pretty apprehensive at first: during the summer in China, I remember trying to ride the bike in my grandparents' yard while my grandfather sat on the steps watching me. Basically I couldn't ride it at all because I couldn't find my balance and so made myself look like a fool. It was especially bad, because seven years ago my grandfather was taking me to town, so he told me to get on the back of his bike, but I couldn't get on [sorry I didn't have any experience jumping onto the little rack on the back of the bike], and he was like "真叫笨" [So stupid]. Yeah, I could imagine him thinking "真叫笨" as I kept losing my balance on the bike. Anyways back to Saturday. My dad said it should be okay, people never forget how to ride a bike. But he forgot to consider that he had probably thirty years experience riding a bike. While I only rode a bike for three years or so back when I was in first or second grade. But yeah, the bike tour guide had to stop for me many times, eventually I got the hang of it again though. Hurray. It turns out I remember how to ride a bike. 真不叫笨啦~. But now my butt hurts so much. I'm sure I bruised it or something riding on the an-ergonomic seat.

After the bike ride we had lunch at this grill place. Was pretty good, I had grilled octopus! Takoyaki except not. After that we went on a jungle tour, except it was actually two people in a motorboat driving across the lagoon to the snorkeling area. Yes there were some mangroves, but that was it. No animals. No trees. And it was hot and the sun was blinding me. But yeah, snorkeling was fun, saw some fish...some coral...except they had lines preventing you from going too close to the coral. So most of the time was spent bonding with some fish. Haha I totally expected a shark to just appear from behind the coral or something.

Dinner was at this place called Maria's, the second time we went there. It's free (part of the hotel), but you need to make reservations because its one of those look-at-our-extremely-small-but-well-decorated-portions restaurants. But since it was free, we basically got all we wanted xD. Yeah, it was Saturday night when I got the flaming coffee.

Today, I had to wake up at 7 because I had to go to a timeshare thing with my parents to get discounted tickets for the places we wanted to go. It was supposed to be 90 minutes, but eventually took almost 3 hours. After that we went shopping in a flea market located on the actual Cancun strip, so it was much better than downtown's. For some reason my parents refused the free breakfast the timeshare offered, so my first meal was around 1 o'clock. Yep, then I tried sleeping, but my parents and their friends really wanted to go to this other beach, so they dragged me there (my mom got pissed at me again, because I was being "antisocial" when all I wanted to do was sleep D:). But yeah, that beach was pretty fun. Got back around 5, took a shower, and so here I am. Going to dinner (at Maria's for the third time) around 6:30.

Final Days in China

Once in Beijing, we parted ways again. Mao Da and I took a taxi back home...and we basically did nothing the whole day. On the 24th, Jenny and I went to Liulichang and looked at the stores there. They mainly sold calligraphy stuff, artsy stuff etc. We walked in a tea shop where the owner could speak English, and was actually talking to an American girl. The girl apparently goes to Emory and was studying abroad, and loved that tea shop so much she and the owner were good friends. Anyways, the owner did a tea ceremony for us with Lychee black tea, so of course I couldn't leave without buying some tea @___@. The owner complemented that we were very mature and she thought we were older. HA. We had KFC for lunch, and then went to Wangfujing. On the 25th we were going to go to Yuanmingyuan, but Jenny couldn't make it since she left on a trip to somewhere with her family. Thus, Alan and I met at the Wukesong Station and went to Wangfujing (AGAIN) and had McD for dinner. On the 26th, I stayed home, and went Wangfujing (AGAIN) with Alan. We met his friend Xu Yizhou, and then went to Tian'anmen to take some pictures. I had to leave them early because I had dinner with Qiuqiu's (not Nanjing Qiuqiu) family. After dinner with Qiuqiu's family, we went to his aunt's workplace, and she gave me a free Olympics related tshirt. 

On the 27th, I stayed home (in Mao Da's house)...went online, facebook, and then went to Yuan Ming Yuan with Robin and Jenny. It took forever to get there, liek an hour prolly. Mao Da was at some class, so his dad drove me to pick Mao Da up and then dropped me off at Yuan Ming Yuan. Robin rode the subway, so it took him like 20 more minutes to get there. I remember Jenny took a princess picture, and she tripped on the stairs there. Hmmm also, there was this nice maze place we walked around. We had to leave early, because Robin and I had to go see this performance at the new opera house that night. So we left around 3pm, and went to Wangfujing again, so I could buy shoes (since you had to wear shoes in the opera house). I bought some pretty expensive Li ning shoes...forgot how much they were, prolly around 30 USD (EXPENSIVE for china), and they were also one size too small (either a 45 or a 44...I'm 46). So we had McNuggets for dinner, and Robin and I left Jenny to catch the subway to the theater. We got there, and took some pictures in front of it. We got this guy to take a picture of us, so then Robin offered to take a picture of him. He wasn't sure if it worked, so they playbacked, and with the guy standing next to him (I found this out recently), Robin saw that one of the pictures was the guy naked. Hahahah. The skit was about Sun Wukong, was pretty interesting. 

On the 28th, I began at Wangfujing (AGAIN) with Jenny and Robin, and then went to Beihai with them. Unfortunately, we couldn't go everywhere there, but we did go boating. We bought some snacks, and then just sat on the boat for like 2 hours or so. After Beihai, we tried going to Qianmen, but the street was closed, or what we thought was the street. Apparently, it wasn't what we were supposed to look for. Anyways, Jenny and Robin went off by themselves, because I had to meet my gufu (dad's younger sister's husband) to get from him the package of gifts I had given him earlier to take to Henan (where my dad's side of the family lives). My gufu works in Beijing, that's why I was gonna give it to him to take back to Henan, but then I found out I was going to Henan anyways, so I went and took it back from him. Anyways, it took FOREVER calling a cab from the Tiananmen/Qianmen area, because cabs aren't allowed to stop there. After about an hour of looking for a cab, I got one, and arrived to Shichahai, where my gufu works/lives. He and his friend took me around Shichahai, which is a restaurant/nightclub district all surrounding a lake, where you can ride boats and whatnot. A LOT of foreigners go there. My gufu also showed me some of the hutong restoration projects they were working on. It was getting really late, and i didn't want to make Mao Panyong stay up for me, so I quickly rushed home on the subway. Haha, I also had to get Mao Da to keep the door open for me. 

On the 29th, I packed, and then left for the train station to HENAN in the morning. At the station, I realized...that...I...left...the...gifts...AT HOME. Wow. So retarded. Spent last night getting the package from my gufu, and then I leave it at Mao Da's house. Way to go. So I bought some food gifts at the station and just brought it along with me. I arrived in the afternoon in Luohe. Like NO ONE was in the Luohe station. Wow. I went outside, still not many people outside. Obviously a smaller town, lots of dust everywhere. I found my aunt (dad's younger sister), and she was with her daughter (their second child). We rode the bus to Beiwudu, met up with my grandpa, who then drove us in his little motor-tricycle to their village of Zhanghua. So...yeah...I don't like living in rural China. On the way back my aunt stopped to go grocery shopping in this meat store, and she was like "what do you want to eat tonight?" and I'm thinking "I'm not sure I want to eat any of this..." Anyways, yeah, dinner was pretty good. I didn't eat much, according to them, and they were like "Why? You don't like it?" But I actually thought the food tasted pretty good...I actually was just full. Yeah...then we took a shower. As in, I had to take a shower with my two boy cousins. Yeah. a 13 year old and an 8 year old. On the roof. In the dark. An 8 year old. @_____@. That night they just watched tv...so boring. And my uncle kept asking me about job opportunities in the US..and my aunt also asked. She said she'd be willing to watching someone's kids or just wash dishes at a restaurant...but yeah, I don't think they'd want to. Life would suck for them in the US. So much more freedom to do things in China, especially if they don't know English. I remember waking up a lot that night, and my grandma was awake many times. And like, she kept putting blankets on me, but it was so hot =/...and she turned off the fan too...

The next morning, I wake up, and its dark, and my grandma was gone already to make breakfast. and then she woke me up at like 6 in the morning to make me eat food. And I'm thinking I DON'T WANT TO IT'S SIX IN THE MORNING. But she kept saying "吃吧吃吧" in a somewhat-whiny-I'm-hurt-if-you-don't tone. So I ate some food. Then the whole day I played cards with my aunts. Was pretty fun at first but got boring after a while. Cards as in Chinese cards as in the game lasts for a few hours. During that time, 2 more of my cousins came to visit, but they left before dinner. For dinner, we went out to eat. We left the village, and went to like the town center area, which was basically an intersection, and found this restaurant to eat it. Uhh...the food was okay I guess. There was only one main dish. Like a big pot of spicy chicken. Idk...my uncle's not rich so I was okay with whatever. Then my cousins and I fooled around with my camera some. One of my baby girl cousins was being especially annoying. She was liek "take a picture!" and then "show me the picture!" and then "take anohter picture!" Went home, took another shower. 

I'm pretty sure the whole time I only peed once. Because, there are A LOT of mosquitoes in the bathroom, and I'm afraid to stay too long in there. Oh, and at the restaurant, I remember going to the bathroom, except the bathroom was actually in the backyard (it was a family owned restaurant), and it was completely dark in the corner of the yard they pointed me in. There was a wall, but once you walked past the wall, you couldn't see anything, so I just randomly peed on the ground...hoping I made it into the hole. 

The next morning (31st), I was awakened by my grandma to eat again. I was supposed to leave at like 9 (I think?) in the morning, but she wanted me to eat at 7 just in case. So I watched some movies with my cousins, and then my family friend drove me to the train station. 

Got to BEIJING idk where, but that night I went out to eat with Mao Panyong's family and their friends (who are also friends of my parents) at some really fancy restaurant. One side of the hallway, the room numbers ended with 8. The other side numbers ended with 6. The second to last numbers on both sides were never 4. So...on the first floor, numbers on one side were like 118, 128, 138, 158, 168...the other side was 116, 126, 136, etc. (6 and 8 are lucky numbers, 4 is unlucky because it sounds like the word for death). Yeah, lots of very interesting and expensive looking foods that night. 

The next morning, the 1st, Jenny and I met at Shichahai, where I again met my gufu to give him the gifts back for him to take to Henan. He took Jenny and me to this nice restaurant, except 2 of the dishes in the beginning were really disgusting...tofu that looked like poop, and these veggies that looked like grass. Must be an acquired taste. Anyways, there were still yummy things like Kung Pao chicken, zhajiangmian, etc. Btw, that day was SO CLEAR. You could see really far down Chang'an Avenue...wow, good job 共产党! After that, we met up with Robin at the museum, where I only stayed an hour, because my uncle (the older of my mom's 2 younger brothers) and his wife went to pick me up to take me to PINGGU COUNTY, where my mom's parents live. That night was my grandma's birthday (lunar calendar), so we celebrated. That night, my uncle and I drove back to Beijing, he dropped me off at Mao Da's house. 

The next morning, on the 2nd, Jenny's aunt picked up Robin and I to go do stuff. Jenny's younger cousin tagged along (amy?). First we had dimsum for breakfast at some expensive hotel. We were going to go to Qiangui KTV (the really expensive one), but they were full so we went to Mailedi (Melody). Mailedi's deal was really good. It was basically like, "If you buy our food, we'll give you the rooms for free!" And we were like "how about we just pretend we bought your food and pay that price for your room...because we're full." They said no, so basically we ended up paying not much money and got a whole table of food....

After KTV we went to Xidan, a shopping district, and 77th street Underground mall. This isn't like the underground mall in Atlanta. It was multiple stories underground, you could easily get lost there because there are escalators going everywhere. After Xidan, we went to Tiananmen to take some pictures, and changed into our "I live under your bed" tshirts that we got at Xidan. Finally, we went to Wangfujing again and the night snack street. Sigh, my last night in Beijing. Oh, and then we rushed home again because I was supposed to meet Qiuqiu's mom to give back the Guanyin Boddhisatva Jade necklace she gave me....because I'm not Buddhist, and I saw that it cost like 1300 yuan, I believe, which is almost 200 dollars. So it would've been a waste to give to me. When I was giving it back I could tell she wasn't that pleased...but oh well. Got back late again to Mao Da's house. 

Xi'an

At the train station, Mao Da and I met up with Jenny, who was talking with the travel agency person because he needed her help to talk to foreigners. We met a family from Chapel Hill, NC! On the train ride to XI'AN, we tried to play some cards, then we got into the hand slapping game. One of my fingers felt dislocated for a while, but it eventually got better. After Mao Da went to sleep, Jenny and I broke out her sketchpad, and drew random things. Then I taught her the Korean alphabet. And then we finally went to sleep. Oh yeah, after we went to sleep, she stayed up a bit until her mom got home for lunch to look at her AP scores. In the morning we arrived in Xi'an, and from the train station the receiving travel agent took us to the tour bus area for the East Line. 

First thoughts: Xi'an was a much smaller city than I imagined. It was the most visibly polluted city so far, and its streets were narrow...Everything paved with those black rocks/bricks. 

We realized the tour we signed up for was 散客, which means each day of the tour was with a different group of people. Thus, the day we arrived (19th) was on the East Line tour. Our tour guide was...interesting. I call her the vampire lady...she's really pale, with blonde/yellow hair, her eyebrows were shaved off and tattooed brown, and she wore lots of makeup but had wrinkles around her eyes. Anyways, she seemed really pissed off the whole day at this Muslim couple. The driver was had an argument with the wife or something...lots of drama. For dinner we had Xi'an's famous 羊肉泡馍 with those rice starch pieces or whatever. we went to PartyWorld that night. So expensive. @__@. 

On the 20th we took the West Line tour, and had dumplings at the famous dumpling place near Drum Tower for dinner. The next day was raining, but we went to climb Huashan...It was crazy...so slippery...at the end of the day, my shoes were soaked and stinky, and I had a bruise on my back from slipping (it took like a week to go away @___@). After getting changed, we went to Huiminjie to get some food. We ate at 3 different places I think. Kabobs, Xiaolongbao, and something else...I forgot...Then we got some dragon whisker candy, which was so fun to play with. 

The next day was a day inside the city: basically climbing the city wall, etc. It was kinda drizzly. Then we walked around the shopping area for a while, and then went to the travel agency to pick up our luggage, get some McD's, and then hop on the train back to BEIJING. On the train, Mao Da sat in a different car from us, so Jenny and I just sat there eating McD's and talking with the person across from us. At first he stared at us for the longest time when we spoke English. We were totally creeped out, and thus spoke in Spanish. Then we found out his daughter's actually at NYU, but he lives in China. There were also a lot of Koreans on the train, so we had fun listening to them xD. Later, we went to Mao Da's car and hid behind the door (his bed was on the top row, at the end of the car), and pulled on his blanket. The first time, he tugged it back. We did it again, and tugged more furiously, and then started sitting up. Jenny and I quickly hid behind the door, but Jenny started laughing. After waiting a while, we peeked to see if he was lying down again, but no he was still sitting up staring back at us xD. He thought his blanket was falling at first...until he heard Jenny laughing from around the corner. At night Jenny and I talked about Christianity, and random stuff, and ghost stories. Also there was a Korean guy chatting with a Chinese guy about religion...and Jenny and I wondered if we should've joined the conversation. 

Back to Beijing

In BEIJING I stayed at my jiuma's house again, and then on saturday she made chive pizza. It was with corn flour, so it basically tasted like cornbread + chives on top. I didn't really like it...but good attempt anyways. In the afternoon we went to Pinggu. On Sunday morning, we had breakfast, and then were walking around the village, and we passed by a funeral. My aunt wanted me to see what a Chinese funeral was like. Basically there were a lot of people watching. The family memebrs of the deceased all kowtow'ed at the shrine in the yard. There was a shirt on top of the room, symbolizing the departing soul. Also, they took the pillow, cut it open and burned it. After lunch, we went back to Beijing by bus. I went to Xiushuijie with Robin and Jenny, and then we ate at Xiabuxiabu just as it was closing. At night, I got lost going back to my aunt's house. It took like 2 hours. @____@. On Monday the 14th, I stayed with Qizheng at his house and watched movies all day long and then went to his Kung Fu practice. On Tuesday, I took him to KTV with Robin and Jenny. He didn't sing and was pretty shy, but what can you expect from a 10 year old with a bunch of high schoolers. For lunch we had Korean food in the basement of Cuiweidasha, and it was darn expensive xD. After that we went to Wan4tong1 to do some shopping. Of course, Qizheng saw some gameboy games that he wanted me to buy...but I didn't. He seems to think I'm loaded and can buy him anything. He told me to buy him a PSP, and I'm like...I can't even afford a PSP for myself @__@. Finally, we had to leave quickly because of Qizheng's Kungfu practice. I totally didn't realize we could have ridden the subway, so when Jenny and Robin went down the subway right underneath Wantong, we stood outside waiting for a bus that never came...so then we realized there was a subway. Also we took it in the wrong direction at first because Line 2 is a circle. We weren't late, and eventually went to his Kungfu practice. After practice I went to Mao Panyong's house that night. 

In the morning, I watched Smallville on TV, and then Jenny and I went to the Travel Agency in Guomao...It seriously took the whole afternoon. Eventually we got a trip to Xi'an and found out that Mao Da would come along too! Unfortunately Robin was busy that week....(Eventually we found out he had classes for something). After getting that sorted out, we went to the Summer Palace just to take some pictures. Midway, there was a Korean guy who pulled me over and took me to one of those dress-up-as-a-king-and-take-a-picture things and told me he was making a commercial for Korea, and that I had to say "我是中国的皇帝，这是皇帝吃的料理" and also "我最喜欢的是松鼠鳜鱼" or something along those lines. The Korean guy knew Chinese and English, so there wasn't a communication problem. The photoshoot person was also pretty accomodating...meanwhile everyone outside stared and Jenny was LOLing. Eventually I got a free picture out of it xD. By the time we were leaving, there were already very few people in the park. Also, there were a lot of sketchy underground taxi drivers waiting by the exit...

Nothing of importance happened on the 17th. At least I don't have anything written down.

On the 18th, I was basically at Mao Panyong's house the whole morning. At noon we went to go eat hotpot with Mao Panyong's friends (some of them knew my parents). I had like some sort of eel looking thing on a skewer o_O. There was spicy and normal broths, and there was also prune juice = good times. In the afternoon I packed, and at night Mao Panyong took Mao Da and I to Beijing West Station for our trip to XI'AN. 

KTV

Ktv is by far one of my most fav things to do in China. Over the course of my vacation, we went ktv'd 5 times @____@. Twice in Shanghai at Haoledi's (2 different ones), once in Xi'an at Qiangui, and twice in Beijing, once at a Mailedi, and once at some place whose name wasn't in a conspicuous enough spot (robin says it was Tongledi).

Ktv is Karaoke TV, as big a part of Chinese social life as going to bars is. I actually only realized that ktv is only supposed to be for adults (they had a sign in the room, "No minors without accompanying adults!" but no one really follows those rules anyways).

Anyways, the inside of a ktv building is well decorated, very modern. The reception desk takes you to your own private room, which is equipped with a comfortable black leather sofa, a coffee table for drinks and food, a computer for selecting songs, and a huge-screen tv. The lights are dimmed however you want, and strobe lights are available.

The most expensive place I went was Qiangui (a taiwanese chain), which was 288 yuan for a small room for 3 hours (about 40 bucks). It looked like a 5 star hotel, was multiple floors, and had a buffet in the lobby 24/7 (the midnight-snack buffet looked pretty good too). A lot of ktv's are open 24 hours a day...

My fav place was Mailedi though. They had the most songs, including many recent korean and japanese songs: big bang, ayumi hamasaki, dbsk, lots and lots. They were also the cheapest. It was basically free for 3 hours as long as we ordered 159 yuan worth of food...so 159 yuan for 3.5 hours + all this food that we didnt even finish.

Shanghai

So we left for Shanghai on 7/6/08 at noon. It was me, Robin, and Qiuqiu.

First Impressions: Shanghai's pretty awesome. Lots of tall buildings while having little pollution. Shopping paradise, and bubble tea stands everywhere. It was also pretty hot, but better than Nanjing.

That first afternoon, we checked in at our hotel (which by the way, was free because Qiuqiu's uncle had connections). Our hotel was right on Xizang Zhonglu (Tibet Middle Road), which is in the center of downtown Shanghai. Across from our hotel was the train station, a block north of us is the famous Nanjing Road. After checking in, we decided to go to Nanjing Road. It's a huge road (no cars allowed) surrounded by many malls with all your designer brands and whatnot. There are also a bunch of restaurants (not one, but two mcd's!), small shops, and food stands. From there we walked down Nanjing Road to the Bund, this road next to the Huangpu river (which splits downtown shanghai). it had a lot of western architecture...the palce where all those foreign countries settled when they came into shanghai. from the bund we took pics of Pudong (Huangpu East), which has all the business-y stuff and the famous skyline. around 10 we decided to get dinner at UBC Coffee....I got teppanyaki again xD

The next day Qiuqiu had to go to some university to register for english classes, so Robin and I went to Chenghuangmiao. Chenghuangmiao, or the Temple of City God, is this temple surrounded by all these shops and restaurants built with traditional chinese archtecture. So...its a fun place to just walk around and buy small trinkets or all kinds of food (sbux and kfc are available for the un-adventurous xD) Chenghuangmiao also includes the Yu gardens. Hmm I ate 2 boxes of takoyaki and also some popcorn chicken from kfc. Yisheng messaged me and asked us to go have dinner with her, so we went back to our hotel in the afternoon.

People: Yisheng Lin goes to Oakland Mills, going to UMD, met her at math team. Jenny Su is my mom's friend's daughter, also graduated this year, going to Emory. I met her when I was in Orlando, but we didn't know each other that well then. Liu Li is this guy from Nanjing, Qiuqiu's friend.

Yisheng took us to Wujiang Road, a "snack street" that also has a bunch of small restaurants. Qiuqiu loves chicken wing kabobs, so she bought some even though we were gonna eat in a restaurant. After eating we went to ktv (my first time ktving!) at Haoledi.

Ktv is karaoke, really popular in china. Different from the karaoke in the US i guess... you get a small room equipped with a huge tv, a computer for selecting songs, and a comfortable sofa. There are thousands of songs in the computer, virtually any chinese song you can think of, and many english, kroean, and japanese songs. ah it was so fun =) we went home around midnight. Good thing about living in a hotel with no parents is that you can go home whenever you want.

The next day we went to the Shanghai museum with Jenny. personally i don't really like museums; most of the exhibits were boring except the new one about the origins of the olympics. We had lunch at Papa John's (how creative) and decided to go to Qipu, this palce with quite a few malls all dedicated to [very cheap] clothes. Robin and I noticed that qipu "tseepu" sounds like "cheap" (concidence??). After that Jenny had to go home, and Qiuqiu told us to quickly go back to the hotel cuz her uncle (uh oh, the loaded uncle) invited to (a probably very expensive) dinner. So yeah, we arrive at some 5-star hotel, and the uncle takes us to his private room. For dinner there were things liek duck tongues, small lobsters, sea cucumber soup, etc. you get the idea. Qiuqiu's uncle had to talk to qiuqiu, so he got someone to drive robin and me back to the hotel first. We were bored, so decided to go to Nanjing Road again.

The next day we went to Qibao, one of the many Venice-looking places in Shanghai. Since the entire Shanghai/Suzhou region is like all rivers and canals, there are a lot of those river-straddling towns. Qibao was disappointing though...it was only one street. One end of the street sold trinkets and clothes. One end sold food. Around noon, Qiuqiu's friend Liu Li arrived from Nanjing. The four of us went back to Wujiang Road to eat some barbecue, and then we went ktving (on nanjing road, but also a haoledi) again. this time with beer (which makes everything mroe fun xD). around 11 we went back to the hotel and played cards...until like 3 am.

Next morning we had, guess what, TEPPANYAKI! except this time, it was made in front of us. yum. after getting train tickets back to beijing, and back to nanjing for liu li and qiuqiu, robin and i went to the art museum. meanwhile qiuqiu and liu li just played cards and watched tv in the hotel. on our way back from the museum to the hotel we saw this hilarious engrish in the park:
Qiuqiu and Liu Li are know each other a little too well xD Qiuqiu's always threatens him by saying "I'm going to tell everyone about what you did to that girl and how you're a pervert!" She also calls him "da bian (poop)" and "zhong ba (w/e that means)". They're always arguing with each other and chasing after each other hahaha. That afternoon we went to Qipu again, and Robin got more Hello Kitty stuff. Oh btw, Robin's goal in Nanjing and Shanghai was to get hello kitty stuff, as much as possible, to give to this girl that goes to school with him. He was planning on giving it to her in hong kong (where she was for the summer), but we ended up not going to hk, so now he'll have to awkwardly go to her house in the U.S. and give it to her there xD. After Qipu we met up with Yisheng and her boyfriend at Xiaofeiyang (Little chubby lamb), a hotpot restaurant. Mmmm twas delicious. They gave our sodas in these collectible glass bottles. After that we played some pool with them, and then went back to our hotel. I learned some Shanghainese that night, "alamapeh." it means something along the lines of "there are no more free tables" o_O. We didn't feel done for the night, so Robin, Liu Li, and I went to Nanjing Road again to get a yexiao (midnight snack). Since i lost the card game the night before, I had to treat everyone to McD's. Qiuqiu wasn't with us, so we just got her something to take back. Then we went to an internet bar. They checked ID, so only Liu Li could get a computer. Robin left after a while, and I sat there really really bored-ly watching Liu Li play wow. We left around 1:30, and on the way home we were approached by a man who was like "young girls, young girls, itnerested? very pretty, come take a look." i said, "no we have a train to catch in the morning. we don't have money anyways..." Then Liu Li started being perverted and wondered aloud how mcuh we couldve actually gotten with our money...."30 yuan for a girl, nothing more...50 yuan for a girl and a chair...70 yuan for a girl and a bed...100 yuan for multiple girls and a bed....200 for the girls, the bed, the midnight snacks, and the other accessories..." somethign along those lines.

Friday morning, we took the subway to the train station. All four of us were on the same train, a bullet train btw, but Qiuqiu and Liu Li were gonna get off in Nanjing. Around 8 pm or so, I arrived back in BEIJING.

Nanjing

So, train ride to Nanjing. Twas pretty good...it was a sleeper train, and I was on the middle bunk. Ugh there was no headroom and I basically had to jump off to get on the ground @___@. On the bus there was a mom and a daughter who carried a box, and eventually they showed me there was a duck inside xD So then Qiuqiu messaged my phone, telling me where I should meet her in the station.

People: Wu Bian is my mom's college buddy who lives in Nanjing. He owns some biotech company that's coincidentally going to work on something with my mom's lab. His wife is Xiao Rong, she and her older sister are famous in Nanjing because of their beauty salon chain. She ALSO happens to own a biotech company. Their daughter is Qiuqiu, an 18 year-old who graduated from high school but apparently didn't do too well on her gaokao (college entrance exams) and so is planning on going to college in the United States (UMD most likely).

First Impressions: Wow, Nanjing has clouds. Nanjing's much less polluted than Beijing (well, before the Olympics). Blue skies, clouds. It's also really really really really hot. Considered one of the "four big ovens" of China.

So we had trouble finding Qiuqiu (whom I have never met in my life) at the station, but eventually we realized it was a girl we had passed earlier. There was a man with her, and I was about to be like "Ni hao, Wu shushu (hello, uncle wu)" but then i realized it wasn't her dad. It was a chauffeur. @_____@ It ended up being Qiuqiu's aunt (xiao rong's older sister)'s chauffeur. wow. SOMEONE's loaded. He dropped us off at the Sun Yatsen Memorial Scenic Area, which is basically a mountain with lots of historically important things, including Sun Yatsen's tomb. We went to these gardens, which had a place called Bridge World, basically all kinds of bridges crossing this stream. And then we went to the Ming Tombs, which had a long road with stone animals on both sides. Overall, it was so boring. And hot. And sweaty.

Then we decided to leave, and got the chauffeur to take us back in the city. For our late lunch, we decided to eat teppanyaki, which was SO DELICIOUS. YUM. Then we went to Qiuqiu's aunt's house, and her aunt took us to dinner in an expensive looking place with expensive looking foods. The rest of the week we went to other places like the Confucius temple, Zhan gardens, the Zhonghua city gate, Song Meiling's villa, Sun Yatsen's tomb, the Presidential Palace, and the Nanjing Massacre museum. We also had a day to walk around Xinjiekou, some shopping place (I bought a Jay Chou piano book =]).

Our last night there, Wu shushu invited us to eat Nanjing local specialties. we ate things like duck blood, snails, stinky tofu, and chick embryo. Eww so you open the egg and there's this embryo staring at you, with eyes and beak and all. you pick it up with your chopsticks, dip it in some spiced salt, eat it (no bones or anything!). then you eat the yolk, which is bright yellow and covered with blood vessels. there's also some really hard protein cap or soemthing at the other end of the egg...

Qiuqiu's house was by far the best place I lived in China. My mom was like "Don't stay too long in Nanjing, you still have to go to other places." But I didn't want to...her house was just soo comfortable. Besides normal things like internet, tv, she also had a piano (ya i hammered away my jay chou quite a bit), a very comfortable bathroom (bathrooms can get pretty bad in china), great air conditioning, yummy snacks (stocked with things like chinese yogurt, bakery bread, Lipton Milk Tea Powder), and the world's most adorable puppy. Their house is a condo, the top 3 floors of an apartment building. Ahhhh it was so great living there. Unfortunately, we were going to leave for SHANGHAI the next day...

Beijing 2

So. lets see. so the week of 6/23 i was at my lao jiuma (mom's youngest brother's wife, my uncle's rarely home so i think of it as her house)'s house in pinggu district (part of beijing municipality, but an hour outside of beijing city), and she took me and her daughter to eat various things. monday was yangxiezi, lamb spine. they give you a big pot of broth with, you got it, lamb spine. you eat all the meat, and then you use the remaining broth for hotpot. ugh it was so salty and i was full and we had plates of extra hotpot materials =/. tuesday. hanguk yori, korean food. soooo good, my fav was the beef and the lamb. not a big fan of pork...or barbecued veggies....wednesday was food at home, which i didn't rly like that much ;P. thursday we went to a chuanba, a "kabob bar." all kinds of kabobs, including cuigu (cartilage). ugh i dont see what there is to eat abt cartilage. it tastes like normal meat, but its harder to chew. on our way home, it was abt to rain and ppl were still selling their vegetables on the streets. a woman had like 3 huge stalks of scallions left, and she said to my jiuma "2 yuan and i'll give you all of it!!" and my jiuma said "no, we only need one." i felt pretty bad for the lady, she probably only makes like 20 bucks a day....meanwhile i spend 20 bucks in like half an hour...

On friday, Song Boyu (lao jiuma's daughter) and I took the bus back to Beijing city to live with my da jiuma (the wife of the older of my mom's two younger brothers) for a day or two. she's really really young...maybe 30? and she's at least 10 years younger than my uncle (da jiu). she also lives near the bird's nest and her son Song Qizheng is 10 years old (but looks like he's 7 or 8 haha). The next day she took us to eat lunch at golden hans, its a buffet, but there's also barbecue, which the waiters take around to each table to carve meat off of. then we went to tiananmen to take some pics, and at night went to the birds nest to take pics. on sunday we went back to pinggu, and Boyu and I joined my da jiu for a "business lunch." it was hotpot, and it was really really good...but since it was a business lunch, there was a lot of beer and cigarettes...my uncle forced two 600ml yanjings on me xD...the business partners got pretty drunk. my other uncle (my dad's sister's husband, who works with my mom's brother) was also there. at night i went back to beijing city again and lived with Mao Panyong (parents friend's house)

on monday i went to go see robin, went to wangfujing in the morning, and then went to go eat peking duck with his grandparents for lunch. at night mao panyong took us to the train station for our journey to NANJING

Beijing

Probably no one will read the whole thing, but I'm mainly writing for myself ;P.

So I arrived in Beijing on Wednesday night (18th, Beijing time).

First Impressions: ugh why's it taking forever for us to find a gate to park at. It srsly took like half an hour. And eww, orange lights make it look poor. They srsly need white lights. I was at Terminal 2, the old one...didn't even get to see the new one.

The PEK airport is outside of downtown Beijing, so on the way to Mao Panyong's house, there was srsly nothing. Only half constructed buildings, lots of trucks carrying stuff (at 11 pm) and coal-flavored air.

People: Mao Panyong worked with my parents when they lived in Beijing. His wife is Liu Ayi and his son, a freshman at Wuhan University (where my parents and Mao Panyong went), is Mao Da. Ling (Alan) is the guy i practically grew up with in the U.S., he moved back to china with his parents in 6th grade.

The next morning, I ate breakfast with Mao Panyong and his wife, and then packed up to go to Ling's house. The pollution that morning was...uhh...disappointing. Mao Panyong said it was actually getting better. I suppose...it looked much worse than it actually felt.

I rode the bus. Beijing mass transit is very efficient. They instituted a new system, using reloadable cards that can work both for buses and the metro, at a discounted fare (unlike DC's use of the full fare for cards). All the buses have scanners at the entrance that can scan the card even though bags or wallets, making everything much more streamlined. It was impossible getting off the bus though. The doors closed, and I had to tell the guy to reopen them.

After going to Ling's aunt's house, we went to Wangfujing. Wangfujing's the equivalent of Shanghai's Nanjing Road or New York's Times Square. It's made up of quite a few (5-7, i would say) huge malls with designer brands (all real, rofl), plus lots of other department stores and small specialty stores. The bookstore there has basically everything in its 7 floors. Everything there's all flashy and w/e. The day I went (Thursday) also had bad air, so things were smoggy. I really want to see it at night though. There's also a Wangfujing Market, kinda like the markets of Old Beijing. You can buy all your Beijing snacks, from Turkish roast to sushi to lamb, scorpion, or even seahorse kabobs. For lunch I just got some takoyaki from the market...it tasted liek pork..=/ on second thought i prolly just ordered wrong =/

In the afternoon, we went to the Forbidden City. I don't have a student ID, but there was a lady standing outside selling tickets for 40 yuan (normal price is 60) for students who did not have their IDs (normal student tickets are 20 yuan). I bought hers, although the ticket lady would've probably let Ling and I both get the student discount anyways...

On Friday, we went to the Temple of Heaven, where Ling and I got by with discounted student pricing ;P. There's this really cool Echo Wall (Huiyinbi), a huge circular wall encircling a temple (not the main temple) and 2 annex halls. You stand at opposite sides of the circle, behind the annex halls and face north. Then you can have a "wonderful conversation," according to the sign. There was some ppl that obviously didn't read the sign, and just faced the wall expecting to hear and echo of themselves.

After the Temple of Heaven, we had lunch at KFC (the portions are sooo small) and then went to some electronics store. Ling bought a DS + empty cartridge + case for 1200 yuan. Later we found someone willing to sell that package for 1000...but oh well. Ling only has 2000 yuan though, to buy food for the next trimester of his school...After taht we went to Xiushuijie, or Silk Street. It probably used to be a street, but it now converted into a 5 (or 6?) story mall, but it still retains its market atmosphere. Vendors are individual, selling thingz like fake designer brands, tees, jewelry (real jewelry. things are called fake because of the brand labeling, not because of what they are made of), electronics, etc. I just got a couple touristy tees and also a 2 gig sandisk SD memory card. I bargained it down to 70 yuan (~10 dollars) so I'm happy.

About censorship: Wikipedia is not blocked in China, but pages like Tibet and Dalai Lama are. Potala Palace wasn't however. In Ling's copy of Natl Geographic (english), Dalai Lama was mentioned, bc of something he quoted, but his name was crossed out in black. Yeah...so I don't understand why the government worries about these things. Everyone (including Chinese) knows about what is happening in Tibet, and students are taught things like what happened in 1989 in schools (albeit underplayed). Instead, some censorship is just meaningless.

Saturday was REALLY CLEAR outside. You could actually see blue in the sky, instead of gray. There was this tower near Ling's house that I couldn't see the day before, but could see on Saturday. On Saturday, we went to Xidan, another market/commercial district. There were like 6 huge malls cramped together on 2 blocks of road, with many smaller specialty brand shops (Nike, Adidas, etc) plus many restaurants (there were 3 KFCs on that one block alone @____@). We weren't too hungry so we just bought individual things at KFC (he had coupons).

We went back to Ling's aunt's house because my uncle was going to pick me up at 3 to go to my maternal grandparents' house in Pinggu District. Pinggu is part of Beijing administrative region, but is about 1.5 hours outside of Beijing city.

People: My mom has two younger brothers. The older is my Da jiu. His wife is my Da jiuma, and his 10 year old son is Song Qizheng. The younger is my Xiao jiu (or lao jiu) and his wife is my xiao/lao jiuma. Their 13 year old daughter is Song Boyu (or Niuniu).

We got to Pinggu, and basically ate food. My grandparents live in a village, so I was surprised to find out that they had internet. And their bathrooms changed as well. Instead of just stoop holes in the ground, now there are 2: a stoop toilet WITH PLUMBING and a western toilet. Surprisingly, I only used the stoop toilet @____@. Maybe i felt that a little straining in my thighs was better than having my butt touch someone else's.

I have 2 cousins on my maternal side: a 13 year old girl and an 8 (or maybe 10?) year old boy. My grandparents currently raise 6 dogs:
1. Xiaolifeicha: i love his/her name. and its an uber cute dog also
2. Lala: Qiaoqiao's mom. lala's pregnant by dabao again...her vagina's all drooping and stuff from the first delivery =/
3. Dabao: qiaoqiao's dad
4. Xiaohua
5. Xiaobu: the watchdog that bit my mom 3 yrs ago
6. Peipei (?): i think they gave this dog away. its one of lala and dabao's children
7. qiaoqiao: lala and dabao's daughter

There's a cat also but no one talks about it.

Sunday was similar. We went to the market in the morning, ate food the rest of the day. At night, I left with my aunt to her house (the 13 year old girl's family), because she said I would be too lonely in the village (my other uncle and his family, the 8 year old boy, were leaving back to their home in Beijing Sunday afternoon, and my grandfather was going back to the hospital. Uhhh so basically we left my grandma home with the dogs. and the cat.

My aunt lives in Pinggu City. Today is Monday, and so my aunt went to work, but she comes back home for lunch. My cousin, Song Boyu went to school in the morning. She has a 3 day break now, and then goes back to school for finals. So in the afternoon, Niuniu took me to an internet cafe with her friend, cuz my aunt's internet (which I'm using now) doesn't let me sign in on Duke's online thing. Well, it lets me sign in, but freezes if I try to access my Duke email, etc.

So I got my Duke stuff cleared up at the internet cafe. Except, apparently there was a questionaire that my parents compelted for me. I was wondering what essays some other Duke people were talking about, and when I saw online today that mine was completed, I saw that my parents had written one word answers for some, and even left others blank. Ugh, i was pretty pissed when I first saw that.

Well, my aunt's gonna be taking Niuniu and me (the dad lives in Beijing city during the workweek) to various restaurants this week...lamb kabobs, korean barbecue, hotpot, etc. I will be going back to Beijing city on Sunday night. On monday night robin and I will be leaving for Nanjing.

Leaving for China in 36 hours

So, i guess this will be my China blog. I hope to update it whenever i get a chance at the computer, or my fb too i guess.

I'm soooo excited about going....but I don't want to pack =/

I'm leaving 9 AM on tuesday and arrive wednesday night (local) in Beijing. There will also be a 2 hour stop in Tokyo...hoping to fulfill my japanese desires haha. try some food. get some books...probably Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石, cuz hiroko refuses to ask her dad to get it @___@

i'll be staying with alan and wandering aroudn with him in beijing for a few days, then go visit my aunt/maternal grandparents on the outskirts of beijing, then go back into beijing to meet with family friends, then leave with robin on our trip starting july 1st to nanjing, shanghai, and hong kong. and maybe even guangzhou, shenzhen, xi'an. not sure yet. coming back 8/3.

i'll post a cell# when i get one, be sure to call me if you're in china! there's like what. 10 of you?

if you want anything from china, feel free to ask. otherwise i'll just get stuff for ppl i think of. if you get something, it means i care. if you don't, it means i prolly dont wanna see your face ever again =]

[Beijing has built the world's largest and most advanced 'dragon' airport, in time for the Olympics.]