Intersession of Awesome!

Hello, friends!

It's been a while since I've posted because I've been away from internet for the last week! I had my first round of finals for Chinese and Public Health classes last Tuesday and Wednesday, and they both went well, but on Thursday I left Beijing for a 5-day trip to the South.

On Thursday, a group of 20 of us took a 20-hour sleeper train from Beijing to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). Friday, we climbed up the mountain, which was a huge physical test. I climbed stairs for thirty minutes, then I had to go down all the stairs I had just climbed to take a cable car to the meeting point because that half hour was only a quarter of the way there. After lunch, we all hiked to the top of the mountain, where we stayed in a hotel/hostel/camp cabin type setup where we were ten to a room in bunk beds. The mountain was so cool. I have never really experienced mountains before, and this one was amazing. There were such interesting trees that I wished I had brought a Chinese tree identification book with me to figure out what they were. The rocks were beautiful, the fog made everything mysterious, and looking down on how far we had come up was a really great feeling.

Saturday, we woke up at 4:20AM planning on seeing the sun rise, but it was cloudy/foggy and raining, so we went back to sleep for another two hours and then did some more hiking after breakfast. Chinese breakfast is really interesting; there is rice porridge to which you add vegetables, fried rice, hard boiled tea eggs, pumpkin, noodles, and all sorts of sweet and savory pastries. It is very different from the yogurt I have been eating, but delicious in its own way. After climbing down the mountain, we took a bus to Huangshan City where we visited Tunxi Ancient Street for tea and shopping. We went back there after dinner to walk around as well. It was a really cool area that had the old Chinese look you go to China to see. The shops on the street sold tea, inkstones, and a lot of the same souvenirs and jewelry.

Our hotels for the other nights were pretty nice. We were two to a room and we each had our own beds, and the bathrooms were pretty clean. Bathrooms were always questionable on this trip. I haven't really talked about them much, but in China, public toilets are squat toilets. They are always messy and smell really bad and there are never soap or paper towels/hand dryers. You have to bring your own toilet paper and hand sanitizer. It tooke me a week to get up enough courage to even try to use one. This trip had a surprising abundance of western toilets, and I always celebrate when I find them here. Having that in the hotels was really amazing and if we had only had that, it would have been comfortable for me.

On Sunday, we left Huangshan City and drove to Qiandao Lake (Thousand Island Lake). The drive there was beautiful; I was sitting next to my friend, Andrea, and we kept pointing out pretty things to each other out the window. We went for a boat ride on the lake, and stopped at three of the islands. This excursion was a very Chinese experience because it exposed us to their internal tourist culture. It is cutthroat; there is a lot of pushing and horn honking. The first island is what our tour guide, Jaky (like Jackie Chan), called the best island. It was a hill that we climbed up and had an amazing view of the lake and other islands. To get down, we took the slide. They made tracks with fake grass and gave you a little wooden boat to sit in and slide down. That was a lot of fun. The second island was Snake Island which was a rather upsetting experience because we all went in with American expectations of animal kindness, but in China the animals are there to be entertainment for the humans, and we all rushed through that island because we couldn't handle the way people were treating the snakes. The third island had a temple on it, and I ran up the stairs to the top of this area that had an arch, and the view from up there was really pretty. After the lake, we drove to Hangzhou, where we spent the night.

Our last day away was spent at the West Lake on Hangzhou and the Ancient Street there. The Ancient Street, again, consisted of old architecture with shop after shop of the same souvenirs. The West Lake, however, was gorgeous. It is the location of many love stories and considered the most beautiful and romantic place in China. We took a boat ride on the lake, saw the fish pond, and then went to Ancient Street. From Ancient Street, we went to the train station, where we took the bullet train from Hangzhou to Beijing. That was a seven hour voyage in a car that was like an airplane if airplanes gave each person three times the legroom and one-third more chair space. For dinner on the train, it was funny because my Asian friend ordered the same food I did and was handed her box with chopsticks and I was given mine with a spork. I haven't used western utensils since my arrival, so we just laughed at that because it was so ridiculous.

I set a few goals for myself on this trip, and I met all of them. The first was to take a picture with each person I was traveling with. The second was to take at least 200 photos (I took 225). The third was to fill my journal with my memories, and I wrote all 40 pages. Each time I reached those milestones, which I hadn't shared with anyone, I felt really great and accomplished. They were goals that were important to me so I could document, remember, and enjoy the trip, and I did just that. 

 Tuesday was a free recovery day in Beijing. I slept in, did my laundry, and had an afternoon excursion to the Temple of Confucius and the Silk Market. The temple was pretty cool, it was the first one I've seen that has not been Buddhist, and it was a very nice place to walk around. We got a little lost on our way back to the subway and found this really cool hutong that had restaurants, cafes, and indie shops that we definitely want to go back to. The Silk Market was the same stuff as last time, and I didn't really need or want anything else, but I had a lot of fun watching my friend Haley bargain for the things she wanted. She speaks fantastic Chinese, but looks very blond and American, so the vendors are always very confused by her. She is also fierce with the haggling and generally gets her price, so we had a pretty good time. We found a restaurant nearby for dinner, and it was Shanghai style food that was absolutely delicious. We had cold cucumbers in a soy/garlic/peanut dressing, green beans, eggplant, a tofu dish, kung pao chicken, beef and mushrooms, noodles with scallions, a pork dish I didn't eat but the others enjoyed, and "squirrel fish" which is fish that looks like a squirrel the way they plate it. I loved the food, particularly the chicken and vegetable dishes.

I think the group I traveled with really bonded, and I feel a lot closer to the friends I made in the first four weeks of this program. We did a lot in a short amount of time, had a whole bunch of physical exertion, and came home with shared experiences and inside jokes. The intersession vacation was a truly wonderful experience.

We start our next set of classes tomorrow, so for me that means a new Chinese teacher and the beginning of the Traditional Chinese Medicine class. I am so excited to intensively learn about TCM! There are just a few things left on my tourism list, and I am thrilled about that because I think I can make them happen even on weeknights. This long weekend was really great, and I am so happy to have travelled to another part of this amazing country. I can't believe that this is week five of eight already.


Today is awesome because I got to explore some cool places and eat good food with great friends.