Home.

My study abroad is officially over. What an incredible journey. There are few word's that can encompass all that I have learned, seen, and experienced. Looking back at pictures, I am in awe at all that I have done this summer. Though my time in China still feels very real, my travels to Singapore and Thailand feel like lifetimes ago. I am truly blessed to have had this opportunity, and I will be forever thankful for Georgia Tech, the President's Scholar Program, the ISYE Department, Program Director Chen Zhou, and my parents for giving me such an opportunity. To my dearest family and friends, thank you for following my blog this summer, and I loved hearing from you when I was abroad.

Ah I finally made it home! What a crazy three days it has been! After spending my last day in Beijing with Onur, I stayed up that night to pack. I checked out of my room at 2:30 AM on Saturday, August 2nd. I was surprised to receive a letter from my brother at basic training at the Air Force Academy when I checked out! Reading his letter just made my day, and I wanted to call my parents right then and tell them about the letter. Then I realized that I would be seeing them at the airport in a days' time, haha :)

Everybody checked out of the dorms successfully, and we got to the airport and checked in without any problems. I even managed to  get myself an aisle seat for our 14 hour flight to the US. Our flight plan was from Beijing to Hong Kong to Los Angeles to Atlanta. It would take 26 hours to complete with 22 hours being actual flight time. However, after boarding the plane in Beijing, we ended up sitting on the plane at the gate for three and a half hours! Apparently, there was limited air space in Beijing at the time, so they couldn't get our flight out. Because of our three hour delay, we missed our flight in Hong Kong to the US. 

Originally, Cathay Pacific told us that we would have to spend the night in Hong Kong and catch the same time flight the next day. In the end, Cathay Pacific was very accommodating, and they managed to get all 20 of us onto another flight to the US that day. Unfortunately, my seat was not as awesome as it was if we had made our original flight. Since they squeezed us onto this new flight, I ended up with a middle seat in the very last row. Of course, since it's the last row, the seats are up against the wall, so they did not recline. Hooray. I even ended up getting sick on the flight to the US. It was crazy to me how my immune system had been such a champion while I was abroad, and now I was finally on my way home and it decided to get upset. I was not sick at all my entire time abroad, except for a small cold on the train to Shanghai. I hardly used any of my medicine, and I did not have "China Cough" or suffer from "Beijing Lung" like the majority of my classmates. Nevertheless, I decided to get a sore throat and a fever on the way home. Goodie.

I ended up sitting next to a pretty neat guy. He was a 23-year-old Korean, and he was going to the United States for the first time! He will be studying English at UCLA for five months. He asked me lots of questions about the US, and I told him he had to go to Yosemite National Park and Disneyland while he was in California. He also told me about how he met his girlfriend in the Philippines a month ago, and we ended up flipping through all of the hundreds of pictures on his digital camera from the Philippines. What a gorgeous place! When our flight was about to land in LA, he got so excited! He also told me that I was his first American friend :)

By the time we landed in LA and made it through customs, we had obviously missed our flight to Atlanta. The two red-eye flights to Atlanta were both oversold, so instead of flying standby, Delta put us on a flight for the next day, and Cathay Pacific handled our hotel accommodations for the night. At this point, we had been traveling for 24 hours, and I had been awake (or sleeping intermittently) for 44 hours (since I saw Onur in Beijing). haha no wonder I was getting sick. 

So we spent the night in LA, and we finally arrived in Atlanta at 10 PM on Sunday the 3rd, exactly 24 hours later than planned. At this point, it was 10 AM on Monday the 4th in China, and we left China at 4 AM on Saturday the 2nd, which means that it took us 65 hours to get from Beijing to Atlanta. Whew! 

Being home has been interesting so far. I love looking in my backyard and seeing tall green trees, green grass, and bright blue sky. I definitely do not miss the grays and browns of Beijing.

One of the first things I did in the US was speak to someone in Spanish in LA. HAHA and I actually understood him. It was funny to me that I was back in the US but I was still speaking foreign languages. 

When we were leaving customs, I had to speak to an airport attendant about our delayed flight, and I started racking my brain for how I could explain the situation to her when I realized that she spoke English! haha I was so excited! At the hotel, a woman said "Good morning" to me, and I was so excited I must've scared her with my overly happy "Good morning!" reply. I was so happy someone was speaking to me and I knew what they were saying!

Interestingly, when I first arrived in the states, I was still speaking Chinese, even though I only know a few words! When I convinced myself that people understood English, I found myself speaking English, but thinking in Chinese! Weird. I think I'm still hooked on my few words of Chinese because it was the only way I could express myself for so long. Crazy!

When we were taking a shuttle to the hotel, I was surprised when I heard the radio in English, and when me and my classmates were rambling on to each other, I had to keep reminding myself that the shuttle driver could actually understand what we were saying. We were no longer riding in taxis with drivers that didn't know English.

I am still in awe that I can drink out of the sink faucet and not get sick. I was in my hotel room, and I was thirsty, and I panicked because my bottle of water was empty, and then I realized I could just fill it up in the bathroom sink. I was so pumped! I was even more excited to see water fountains!! Those are nonexistent in China!

I more fully understand the value of the dollar. I still find myself converting everything to rumbles (Chinese yuan). I bought a chai tea at the airport in LA, and it was five US dollars. That's 30 rumbles!! I could get five lunches at the dining hall with 30 rumbles! Now, 20 USD's seems like SO MUCH MONEY. I used to think that $20 was nothing, but that's 120 rumbles, which is a lot! Goodness I do not want to spend any money anymore.

As soon as I got home, I jumped on my bed! it's big and fluffy and has a soft comforter! In China, I slept on a wooden board, an inch thick sleeping pad, and a thin blanket. There are also no couches in China. There is pretty much nothing soft to sit on in China. 

I was super excited when the public bathrooms in the airport had all toilets, supplied toilet paper, and had soap and paper towels. It's the little things in life that are making me happy right now. Not having to fish my own toilet paper out of my purse was a big plus of the day.

I had cereal and milk this morning for the first time in three months :)

I have surprised myself by how much I remember about home, and how much I do not remember. I saw my cellphone for the first time in three months. When I turned it on, it seemed like I hadn't even been without it. I still knew which buttons to press and how to set the alarm on it. I was excited. I also went out to the store today, and I remembered exactly how to drive and how to back out of our driveway. I have to admit I was a little worried that my driving skills were going to be rusty, but they weren't :) I forgot to bring my driver's license and cell phone with me though. Oops. Those were definitely two things that I didn't use in China.

I was also caught by surprise when we got to LA because at dinner I reminded that we had to add tax to the prices on the menu and that we had to tip our waiter. I was also kindly reminded by my classmates that I was not 21... . I miss China for these reasons. Other than that, I am glad I am home. I especially like walking into the kitchen and eating whatever food I like, instead of having to ride my bike to the nearest dining hall. I also like turning on the radio and the TV and hearing English :) 

Oh and ordering water at a restaurant in the US is so amazing! It's FREE and they REFILL it!!!! YAY! In China, water at restaurants was more expensive then soda and alcohol. so annoying because all I ever wanted was water. Now I can get water whenever I like. God bless the USA :)

Last Day Abroad

Today was my last day in Beijing, and my last day abroad in Asia for the summer! Oh my goodness, I can't believe that the program is coming to an end. It's weird to think that this could be the last time I am ever in China. I like to think that I will come day one day for business maybe, but you never know. Right now, I am all packed up and ready to go. I check out of my room in 3 hours, and then it's off to the airport to go home :)

Today was an awesome last day in Beijing. The weather was some of the best we've seen all summer! Sunny, blue sky, white clouds, and not too much humidity. Caroline and I went early this morning to go see Onur!!! Kristi came along too! 

We met Onur at the Water Cube after he had finished practice. It was so awesome seeing him! We only spent 3 hours with him, but it was just so amazing that we were seeing him in Beijing. I just couldn't get over how he is an Olympic Athlete (twice! He went to Athens in 2004 as well!). He showed us his Athlete ID tag, it was just all so cool.

Of course, everything is on lock down, so Onur couldn't take us into the pool or the village, but life in the village sounds so fun! They get free drinks and free food everyday, they got some cool goodies bags upon arrival, there's an olympic store just for the athletes, and there is a HUGE dining hall for all of the athletes that serves a variety of foods. Onur said the dining hall is the size of three CRC's, and it's open 24 hours! He said there are so many volunteers there wanting to help, like carry his tray for him and everything! haha!

We took Onur to Houhai for lunch. Houhai is a bar district and a shopping district along a lake. It's very pretty there all the time, day and night. We ate a traditional Chinese lunch of fried rice and noodles, and then Caroline and I took him to the Silk Market. We saw SO MANY athletes at the Silk Market! Egypt, Ukraine, Italy, Canada! I was surprised that so many of them were out and about, and they were all wearing their team gear too! I thought they would try to blend in... but I guess not. I also gave Onur a list of tourist spots, like the Temple of Heaven and Forbidden City, for him and his teammates to go see when they have some spare time.

All too soon, we took a taxi with Onur back to the Village. Onur even got to use his athlete pass to get the taxi through one of the security check points. We were dropped off outside on of the gates to the village, we took some more pictures, and then we said goodbye to Onur. I wish we were staying longer so we could see him more. It was interesting how we were spending our last day in Beijing with Onur on his first day in Beijing. Good luck to him at the Olympics!!!!

When we left the village, Caroline, Kristi, and I got some pedicures in Wudaoku and ate some chicken and rice for dinner. We returned to the dorms, and I napped for a bit and then packed up my room. I got everything to fit in the bags, even with some extra space! I'm so pumped! I'm staying up tonight to check out of my room at 2:30, and then we leave for the airport, take a four hour flight to Hong Kong, a 14 hour flight to LA, and then a 4 hour flight to ATLANTA!!!!! 

AAAAHHHHH! This is my last post from ASIA!!!!!! I'm so sad, it's been awesome :)

4th Class Completed!

I'm done! I'M DONE! I'M DONE, I'M DONE, I'M DONE! The "study" part of my study abroad is over!!!! My group and I gave our presentation yesterday, and we're turning in our paper today for our logistics class. My 4th and FINAL study abroad class has now been completed :)

A bunch of us went out last night to celebrate. We went to Pyro for pizza and Tsingtao, and then we went to Tango for some karaoke. We had our own private karaoke room that had comfortable leather couches, a bar and stools, and a big plasma screen TV for the karaoke. We had four microphones in the room, and some of my songs to sing were "Low" by Flo Rida, "My Humps" and "Glamorous" by Fergie, "Stronger" by Kanye West, and "Lean on Me". We had free juice and snacks all night. Some of our snacks included fried pastries filled with red bean paste, deep fried pumpkin cakes, dumplings, Chinese sushi (no raw meat),  and some custard filled pastries. 

This morning, we went back to the classroom for the last time. Professor Zhou gave a brief wrap up of the program, and we all filled out some course surveys. At the end of the meeting, we watched a thirty minute slideshow video of pictures from the program. David Schwartz put it together, and he used over 500 photos! It was so fun to see pictures from Singapore and Thailand. That seems like AGES ago!

After the meeting, we went to the #1 Peking Duck restaurant in Beijing for our farewell lunch. It was a very fancy "Lazy Susan meal", consisting of many many courses. Naturally, my favorite course was the Peking Duck. The cook carved the roasted duck right next to our table and served us the fresh meat. You roll the duck meat into a tortilla with lettuce, cucumber slices, and a bean curd paste (which doesn't sound appetizing, but it's really good I promise!). 

Now, I am back in my room putting the final touches on our paper before I submit it to Professor Tsui. Then I am going to start packing! Ah almost time to go home!

Olympic Preparations

Beijing has transformed.

It is night and day how Beijing is different from the Beijing when I arrived 5 weeks ago. Olympic preparations have increased as of last Sunday the 20th, and Beijing is becoming more beautiful everyday. Olympic banners line the campus, the streets, and the highways. There are potted flowers all along the sidewalks and medians. There are new road signs posted through the city that point toward Olympic attractions. The signs have English on them! There's even a sign for the Tsinghua Swimming Pool. I have no idea why, seeing as it's closed.

The new subway lines are FINALLY open!! ...well almost. The new line 5 has been open since I arrived in Beijing. It runs north to south, ending at the Temple of Heaven. Line 10 opened on the 20th, which runs east to west, and I LOVE taking it. The line goes near the venues, and it is also a much easier way to get to the Silk Market because you can avoid the nasty transfer at Xizhimen that makes you walk nearly a half a mile up a bunch of stairs. The sad part is that Line 8 is not open yet! This is the Olympic Line that takes you to the Olympic Green, the Olympic Sports Center, the Olympic Village, the Bird's Nest, and the Water Cube. I'm sure it's done being built, they just haven't opened it to the public yet. Anyway, the new subways are beautiful. They have brand new trains with new seats and handrails, air conditioning, and plenty of space because not many people are using the new lines yet. The new trains even have map the light up to show the trains progress, just like in Hong Kong! The new trains also have TVs that are currently playing instructional videos about each Olympic sport. For example, the gymnastic videos explain what the gymnists wear, how high the pommel horse is off the ground, how gymnastics is scored, etc. At least, that is what I can gather from the Chinese and animations. I think it's neat how the government is teaching the Chinese about the Olympics by playing movies on the subways. Oh, and all of the subways and trains have English recordings that follow the announcements made in Chinese! I actually know when the train is coming and which station we are approaching now. That would've been helpful about a month ago. 

Also, the new Olympic bus lines are now open too which transport people around the Olympic Green, which is made up of the Olympic Park and 10 venues, including the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. Oh and the construction by the Wudaoku subway station (the one closest to campus) is finished. They were putting in bike paths, sidewalks for pedestrians, and a bike parking area. It's not controlled chaos, instead of just chaos :)

The roads are less crowded too! As of the 20th, Beijing has been regulating the amount of cars on the roads. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, only cars with license plates ending with an odd number can drive on the roads. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, only even-numbered cars can drive on the road. Taxis and buses can drive on all days, and I'm not sure which cars are allowed to drive on Sundays. The cool thing is that the Chinese people are abiding by this rule! It's fun to ride down the street and only see odd numbered license plates. 

This system has definitely cleared up the roads. It's not so scary riding my bike anymore or crossing intersections because there are not as many cars! The new system also benefits the taxi drivers because it keeps the fake taxis off the roads every other day. There are even lanes on the roads that are designated just for Olympic vehicles, similar to the HOV lanes in Atlanta. I'm not sure what constitutes an "Olympic vehicle", but the lanes stay empty most of the time, not even the taxis are allowed to use them. There are really pretty Olympic rings painted in the lanes too. 

This car regulation system is working so well at loosening up the traffic that I will not be surprised if the Chinese government tries to continue this rule after the Olympics. It's had some great results, but there is no way that this kind of solution would work in Atlanta. Compared to Beijing, Atlanta's infrastructure and underdeveloped (or underutilized?) public transportation system would not be able to get people where they need to be. One day those civil engineers from Tech will figure something out :)

There are also officials throughout the city that are teaching the Chinese to be polite. Before Sunday the 20th, on the 11th of every month, Beijing instated "Queueing Day" where the Chinese people would practice courteous behavior on the subways and buses. Since the 20th, there have been guards wearing orange at all of the subway stations and bus stops. They have flags that they wave around too. At the subway station, each guard stands at a door of the train and makes sure the people line up away from the door, instead of standing in a big mob with their noses up against the doors. The guards make sure everyone has room to get off, and then they let the other people board the train. The same process occurs at the bus stops. 

There has also been an EXPLOSION of Olympic volunteers. They are everywhere! They were all given the same outfits to wear- a bright blue and white Olympic polo, a gray Olympic hat, a yellow Olympic fanny pack, gray and yellow tennis shoes, and gray Olympic zip-off-at-the-knee pants. These volunteers are stationed throughout the entire city and in all of the subway stations to help tourists find their way. One of the guys in our program asking for directions to the Summer Palace, and he said they were incredibly eager and excited to help him. I wish they would've been around when we arrived a month ago. I have no need for them now, but it's still fun seeing them throughout the city. Their uniforms are so bright and pretty, and they are always so happy. They all seem very proud to be a volunteer. One of my group members for my Logistics class is actually a volunteer at the Water Cube!

As far as pollution goes, there has not been much of a difference. Last week there were four days straight of blue skies, but it's been all cloudy and gray since then. I hope I see one more blue sky this week before I go home. All of my pictures of the city still have a gray haze in the background. Also, one bummer about the Olympics is that they are closing down a lot of clubs around the city... Mix, Vics, Propaganda, Kro's Nest, basically our favorite spots, are all closed :(

As far as this weekend goes, my classmates and I went too see an acrobatics show on Thursday night at the Chaoyang Theater. It was INCREDIBLE! I got to see contortionist that pulled their feet back up over their heads to the front of their faces. They were literally sitting on their heads. Their backs were so flexible! It hurt my back just watching theirs bend! It was so awesome! There were also two guys that ran around in a wheel, and there was a bike act where they put 12 girls on one bike! It was awesome.

On Friday morning, I went back to the Great Wall with Hannah, Gabby, and Adrienne. We went to the Juyongguan section, which was about an hour outside of Beijing. Much closer to campus than the previous Simatai section. The Juyongguan section has been renovated and reconstructed, so it looked really nice. Instead of doing lots of hiking like at Simatai, we spent a few hours taking tons of pictures. We got to there early in the morning, so we had the whole wall to ourselves! After an hour or so, lots of tour groups showed up, and the wall became just PACKED with people. Most of the tour groups were middle school aged kids, and they would come up to us and try to practice their English. We heard plenty of choruses of "Will you take a picture with us please?". It became more and more difficult to get good photos, so we headed back to Beijing. I had a great time. I would've liked to go to what they call a "wild" section of the Great Wall that is not touristy, and it's crumbly and overgrown and dangerous, but the Juyongguan section was still nice. If I ever go back to Beijing, I will definitely spend an entire day hiking across a wild section of the Wall. 

After the Great Wall Part 2, I went to the Olympic Flagship Store with Kristi, Gabby, and Sara. The flagship store is the biggest store for official Olympic merchandise. The place was crazy! It was so crowded and there was so much merchandise it took us hours to look through it all. My favorite items were the 5 foot tall stuffed Fuwa mascots and the 4 GB Olympic flash drives. Haha so clever. Outside of the store, it was like Beijing 2008 explosion. The street was jam packed with people, and there were huge colorful Olympic banners covering the buildings that lined the street. There were three huge Olympic stores just along this one half mile stretch of road! Can you believe that I still couldn't find the one item I was looking for that is sold out at the Tsinighua Olympic store? Yep. True story. Out of all these stores, I still couldn't find the one item that I wanted: a set of five drinking glasses that has each of the Fuwa on them. I even looked on the online store, and they were sold out too. 

On Saturday, Caroline, Kristi, and I went to the Olympic Green!!! We took the new subway line 10 and tried to take line 8 directly to the Green, but it was still closed. So we walked a good mile or two with the hopes of getting as close as possible to the Water Cube and the Bird's Nest. On our way, we passed lots of guards and lots of fencing. The ENTIRE park and venues are all still blocked off. I guess it makes sense to protect the venues, but I don't understand why the park is still closed. We passed by lines and lines of people waiting to pick up their tickets, the International Broadcasting Center (IBC), the Olympic Sports Center Stadium (soccer finals and the Modern Pentathlon), and a military zone that had surface to air missile launchers. Yikes. 

Eventually we could see the Bird's Nest, and we went up on a bridge crowded with people to try to get a better view. There was also a news crew on the bridge doing a live broadcast. Fun! After taking pictures of the Nest, we saw the Water Cube!! This is where Onur and Kathleen will compete!!!! How exciting! The Water Cube actually looks blue during the day time, and apparently it lights up really nicely at night too! There was a big parking lot by the Cube that we could enter, and this is where we took a lot of our pictures. I wanted to actually touch the building, but of course we couldn't. It was so hot outside that we just wanted to go jump in the pool. How incredible would that have been! I would have given an arm and a leg to go inside! After visiting the Cube, we tried to follow the signs and my map to the Olympic Village, but we could not find it. The heat eventually got the best of us, and we took a taxi back to Wudaoku where we bought juice and water at the 711 and then went to our favorite BBQ chicken place for lunch.

My activities on Sunday included homework and studying, and I took one trip to the Silk Market to get three business shirts tailored. Today we took our first and only exam for our Logistics class. We had a homework assignment due today, and one is due tomorrow. On Wednesday we have a project presentation and a paper due, and then my summer study abroad is complete! AH! We are going out for pizza on Wednesday night to celebrate, and we have a class farewell dinner of traditional Peking/Beijing Duck planned for Thursday. On Friday, Caroline and I plan on meeting up with Onur who arrives in Beijing on Wednesday to swim in the Olympics!

Things That Make Me Happy

1. A really good dinner with friends.

We went out to a local chicken wings restaurant for Scott Bruce's 21st birthday. There were 23 of us total, and we got a private room in the back of the restaurant. We ate over 1000 rumbles worth of the best chicken I have tasted in China! Honey wings, normal spicy wings, and abnormally spicy wings. The wings were served two at a time on a skewer. Usually I do not like spicy foods (I can't even handle the spicy hot pot!), but the spices they used on the chicken wings were TASTY! I ended up eating everybody's abnormally spicy wings because they didn't like them, but I loved them! We were also served spicy lamb on a skewer, which I liked because they used the same spices as the chicken, and the lamb had no bones.  We also ate soy beans, tomato slices topped with sugar, apples and pears covered in a sweet fruit salad sauce, and a round pumpkin pastry drizzled in condensed milk (my favorite!). We also shared a vanilla birthday cake with chocolate frosting, and it was shaped like a basketball, just for Scott :)

2. Swimming

Ever since we found the pool, Caroline and I have gone there every single day possible. Unlike Singapore, the water is pleasantly chilly, so it's much more refreshing to swim in the afternoon in China. The water keeps getting clearer everyday we swim. I'm not sure why,  but it's far from the murkiness it was when we started swimming there last week. The good news is that I can see in front of me, the bad news is I can see how dirty the bottom of the pool is, haha. Unfortunately, our class gets out at 4, and the pool closes at 5, so it gives us about 45 minutes of swimming. I like to see how much I can swim in that 45 minutes. It hurts, but I like that I'm getting back into some kind of shape. I'm no where near where I was when I left Atlanta, but just getting the feel of the water back is a start.

3. Being Ian Crocker's friend on Facebook. YUM.

4. A shower.

At the end of a long day in class, at the pool, at the weight room, biking through the dusty streets, I love when I turn on the shower and it actually works and has good water pressure. So incredible. Showers in Beijing are much different than showers in Singapore. In Singapore, showers were a way of escaping the heat and humidity. In China, showers are a way of escaping the dirt, haha.

5. Hearing from friends and family back home.

Thank you Facebook message threads, e-mails, blogs, Skype, and AIM.

6. Finishing a homework assignment in less than an hour. BALLIN!

7. Apple bottom jeans and boots with the fur.

8. The Great Wall of China.

9. The Olympic Fuwa mascots, especially JingJing the Panda!

10. Music that gets me through the day.

Currently, Chris Brown, Casting Crowns, and Colbie Caillat (wow that's a lot of C's! I promise I did not plan that).

11. Marking my weeks by my malaria medicine.

12. Being a baller in China, duh.

13. Using the Chinese Language.

When I recognize Chinese characters, such as "middle", "entrance", "exit", and "people".

When I hail a taxi all by myself and tell the driver where I want to go in Chinese, and he understands me and takes me there :) So exciting!

When I check into my dorm complex and tell them my room number in Chinese, and they understand :) 

14. The sun, chocolate, and hugs :)

Inner Mongolia!

AHHHH I just had the best weekend in Inner Mongolia!!!!!! Vast stretches of grasslands, fluffy white clouds on the brightest blue sky, sunsets, sunrises, endless desert sands, and experiencing pure freedom :)

I left Beijing on Thursday night with Caroline, Hannah, Adrienne, Melissa, Kristi, Jen, Gabby, Sara, Chris, David, Randy, Thomas, and Andrew. We had arranged a four night group tour of Inner Mongolia!

We got picked up from campus by Daniel, the owner of the tour company. We all took an overnight train to Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia. Since we signed up for the tour a bit late, Daniel could not get us tickets on a soft sleeper Z-Train like the one we had taken to Shanghai. Instead, we were spread across one of the cars in a hard sleeper K-Train, but it was still lots of fun! We were joking around about how funny it would be if we were taking an M-Train (which is the term that refers to management majors at Georgia Tech). There were no private compartments on the train. Instead, there were just isles and isles of beds stacked three high! Most of our tickets were for the middle and top beds, and I slept on one of the top beds.

When we arrived in Hohhot, our tour guide Susan met us outside the train on the platform. Susan is 24-years-old, and she grew up in Mongolia. She speaks four languages and kept apologizing that her English was very poor. It wasn't bad at all, and she ended up being an awesome and fun tour guide for our group. She even had a green flag that she held up for us to keep the group together. Haha it was awesome! I've decided that if you live in Inner Mongolia, you are either a farmer or involved in the tourism industry by working as a tour guide, tour bus driver, or at a tourist location.

We had breakfast in the city, and thus began our "Lazy Susan meals". Every meal we ate in Inner Mongolia the entire weekend was Lazy Susan style. We sat at round tables with a turn table (called a Lazy Susan) in the middle. Twelve dishes were served at every meal, and we shared them by rotating the Lazy Susan. For breakfast, we had rice with green bell peppers and chicken, hard boiled eggs, some watermelon, and a variety of different looking bread rolls that all ended up tasting like dough. There were even some rolls that looked like they had chocolate and cinnamon in them, but it ended up being red bean paste. It was interesting. Our dishes at lunch and dinner were pretty similar. Usually we had white rice, a spicy chicken dish, a whole fish (not filleted), steamed bok choy, egg drop soup, bread dough balls, tasty lamb mutton, cabbage, and watermelon.

At every meal, we were either served hot green tea or traditional Mongolian milk tea. Right out of the tea pot, the milk tea tasted very watery and somewhat salty. However, they always served a plethora of additions for the tea, such as sugar, goat cheese, and corn meal. You're supposed to put everything into the tea and eat it with a spoon. It actually tasted really good! It was kind of like eating warm cereal, and it became my comfort food for the weekend :)

After our breakfast in Hohhot, we took a three hour bus ride to the Gegentala Grassland in the Aobao hills. During the ride, Susan asked each of us to go to the front of the bus and talk about ourselves into the microphone. We ended up asking each other crazy questions, like What is your favorite smell?, and Andrew sang "My Girl" into the mic. The scenery along the ride was absolutely gorgeous, but it was nothing compared where we were staying for the night- gentle rolling hills, covered with the greenest grass against a clear blue sky with the fluffiest white clouds, ahhh so picturesque. Even the weather was incredible! It wasn't humid at all! In fact, the air was dry and quite cool, but the sun kept us warm. It was the perfect temperature the whole day. Also, there are no bugs in Inner Mongolia! There are these awesome flying grasshoppers that make cracking noises when they snap their wings together, but there are no biting insects!

We spent the day riding horses across the grasslands! The horses were smaller than I expected, and it was quite funny to see all of us tall Americans on them! I rode on a white horse with black spots that looked like a Dalmatian's coat. We rode to the top of a hill to see a monument the Mongolians use for prayer. Then we rode out to visit a traditional Mongolian family at their farm. They live in dwellings called yurts. Yurts are circular tepees with a hard clay floor covered with rugs and a wooden frame draped with canvas. There was a circular opening in the roof for ventilation that could be closed when it rained. We sat inside the yurt and were served milk tea and deep fried bread sticks for dipping. Yum! An interesting thing to note, the Mongolian woman served tea to the boys first! Quite patriarchal if I do say so myself.

After visiting the family, we rode back to camp. During the entire ride, the guides kept signaling to us to keep our horses at a walk, hardly letting us even trot. I was so anxious to just break away and gallop across the open grasslands. I was getting disappointed as we neared the camp, but then to my excitement, our guide took off and left us in the middle of the fields. Ah I was so excited! I kicked my horse into a full gallop and went flying across the grasslands!!! I was such an amazing feeling- wide open grasslands, the endless blue sky, the wind blowing by, ah I wish I could've let go of the reins and just opened my arms toward the sky! How incredible!

After the amazing horse ride, we watched a Mongolian rodeo that featured horse racing around a track, Mongolian wrestling, and acrobatics on horseback! People were doing handstands on a galloping horse! They were also hanging off the side of the saddle, carrying another rider on their shoulders, making a human pyramid, it was awesome! After the rodeo, me, Hannah, and Caroline went out into the fields to take some pictures with the grasslands. Then, we ate a Lazy Susan dinner and afterward, all of us went back out into the grasslands to watch the sunset! It was incredible! Such vivid colors against such a big sky! I took so many pictures, and looking back at them now still takes my breath away! Did I really see that in real life??

When the sun finally set behind the hills, we went to a bonfire where we watched some performances with Mongolian dancing and singing. One crazy thing about the performance, people were going on stage in the middle of the show to take pictures with the performers!! Yet another example of how the Chinese have no shame... that kind of behavior would be unacceptable in the United States. Family after family was taking their children onto stage to

stand by the singers, right in the middle of the performance! I was in disbelief! The awesome thing was that Adrienne went up there to pose with one of the singers too :)

After the show at the bonfire, I was really excited to see a big night sky full of stars!! To my disappointment, it was a cloudy night, so I didn't get to see a single star. However, there was a really bright moon that illuminated the clouds, so that was neat to see. We went to sleep later that night in our very own yurts! Yes, we stayed in yurts! haha it was really cool!

Caroline and I shared a yurt, and we woke up at 4:20 in the morning along with Hannah, Melissa, Kristi, and Gabby to see the sun rise. We walked for a good 45 minutes to the top of a hill. We watched the pink sky for a good hour, and we were about to turn back when the sun finally peeked out from behind the hills. A big orange globe! We watched it rise from behind the hills, and once it appeared, it rose so quickly! haha it reminded me of the opening scene in the Lion King. When I looked back at pictures, the sky is a beautiful pink and orange with the circular sun right at the horizon. The grasslands are darkened, and when I flip the photos upside down, it looks like the pictures are taken from space!

Oh one fun thing about Inner Mongolia was that we were the only white people there, and the Mongolians were FASCINATED with us! We got our pictures taken so many times, with and without our permission. Depending on what mood I was in, it was either really fun or really annoying to be watched. In the end, I liked it when people would ask me to take my picture instead of just plain snapping one of me when I'm eating dinner.

After the sunrise, we ate breakfast and then got back on the bus for a five hour ride to the Gobi Desert!! On the way, we stopped in the city of Baotan for lunch. Baotan is the second cleanest city in China! The section of the desert that we visited was called the Resonant Sand Gorge, and it had been turned into somewhat of a mini theme park. We took a cable chair ride (or snow ski lift) from the parking lot over to the dunes. When we arrived on the dunes, there was just desert everywhere, stretching in all directions! How cool! The dunes were gorgeous, and I liked how the wind had created ripples across the sand like the waves do to the ocean bottom.

We went on a camel ride, which was so fun! All of our camels were tied together in a line, so we looked like a nice train of camels traipsing across the desert. My camel was beautiful and white and so soft! We sat between the two humps, and it was very comfortable. We got on the camels went they were sitting on the ground, and it was like a roller coaster when the whole line of camels stood up! During our camel ride, there was some lightening in the distance, and then we started to hear thunder, and then it started RAINING in the desert! INSANE! We had to stop and get off our camels in case they spooked. An ATV was driven out to our group to pick us up and take us back to the base camp. We piled 16 wet people into this ATV, and the driver was crazy! He raced across the dunes, bouncing us into the ceiling. The windows were all foggy, so none of us could see outside. There were times when I thought the car was going to roll over! Now THAT was like a roller coaster. It kind of reminded me of Jurassic Park.

After waiting out the storm, we took some sled rides down the side of a steep dune, in which we all got covered in sand from head to toe! We then took the cable chairs back to the bus and headed back to Hohhot. That night, we stayed in Jin Jiang Hotel in Hohhot. It was a FIVE STAR HOTEL!!! Obviously, it was the nicest hotel I have EVER stayed in! Wow, we were ballers in Mongolia! Caroline and I shared a room on the 16th floor, and it had two full size beds, with big fluffy comforters, and two fluffy pillows for each of us! There was also a sitting area with a glass topped desk and a big window overlooking the city. The bathroom was incredible! The shower was actually separated from the toilet! YES! There was also a bathtub, and they gave us complimentary shampoo AND conditioner AND lotion! There were even big soft white towels and BATH ROBES!!! I took the most amazingly warm shower, and then wrapped up in my robe. Caroline and I went over to Kristi and Jen's room where we were joined by Gabby and Sara for a robe party! hahaha :)

After our ballin night at the five star hotel, we ate an awesome breakfast. They had eggs and cereal and milk! I had some peach juice, and it was very tasty! They even had banana bread and it was so moist and yummy, so of course I had four pieces :) After breakfast, Susan took us to visit the Dazhao Lamasery, the Five Pagoda Temple, and the Zhaojun Tomb. The Dazhao Lamasery was a traditional Chinese Buddhist temple built in the same style as the temples in the Forbidden City. The Five Pagoda Temple was really pretty, and there were little buddhas along the walls that people had given little yi jiao coins. To get to the top of the pagoda, we climbed through a steep staircase in a small dark tunnel. Nice! At the Zhaojun Tomb, there was a museum about the Huns that included artifacts like swords, bowls, and armor from 200 B.C.! The Zhaojun Tomb was for one of the Hun Kings, and it was at the top of a hill, guarded by a pagoda of course!

After touring Hohhot, we had some time to spare, so we walked around a mall in the city, and Caroline and I bought some juice and relaxed in a nearby park, similar to Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. They had a big concrete amphitheater with a huge TV screen that was showing a soccer game. Caroline and I chilled on the stairs, and as we were sitting, people started wandering over and sitting near us. I guess they were interested in the white people. A homeless man came over to ask us for money, and two boys paid him and shooed him away from us. That was nice of them. Also at the park, there were these ponds, and floating on the water were these big, clear, hollow plastic balls. Inside the balls were CHILDREN! Yes! Like hamsters! Running around in the balls on the water! Crazy! It looked like fun, but something like that would never happen in the US.

Later that evening, we ate dinner and then Susan took us to the train station. We took a group photo in front of the bus (it was called the Golden Dragon). Then, we bid goodbye to Susan and our awesome bus driver, Mr. Li, who was one of the most animated people I've ever met, and he didn't speak a word of English! We took the K-Train home, and arrived in Beijing this morning at 7:30. The tour company picked us up from the station and took us back to campus in rush hour traffic. We even passed a six car accident where they had all run into each other's bumpers! We ended up making it to our 9:00 class just in time! What an awesome weekend!

Updated Links

Caroline and I are featured on GT's athletics website (www.ramblinwreck.com)!! We are submitting journal entries and pictures to them about our travels this summer! How fun! Check it out! A more detailed link is posted in the "Fun Links" column on the left of this page.

Also, I've posted some direct links to my photo albums since I cannot access my Photo Website in China. I am also not able to upload photos anymore due to Internet restrictions, so this is all I've got until I get back to the States in August. Enjoy!

Caroline and I went back to the pool today with our Teaching Assistant Ralph to be our translator. We passed our deep water test (YAY! 30 seconds of treading water and a 200 meter swim), and we got our updated swimming certificate. The people at the pool were FASCINATED by Caroline and I, it was crazy! We were watched the whole time, and people were giving us thumbs up. Ralph informed me that everyone was talking about us and that we looked like professionals. One guy even asked Caroline and I to do a lap of butterfly, and he said that the Tsinghua swim team is far behind us. haha.

I asked Ralph why so many of the Chinese go to the pool, and he said it's because they don't have air conditioning because it is too expensive. So they go to the pool during the day to cool off. Oh and the showers at the pool are COLD. No hot water. And the lap pool is nice, but it's dirty and murky. I'm afraid I'm going to get sick from swimming in the water, but swimming felt SO GOOD! I swam a 1500 (the pool closes at 5 and we get out of class at 4. It was 4:30 by the time we finished our swimming test). Swimming was tough, and I was definitely out of breath, partly because I haven't swam in a month and party because there is no oxygen in China.

Oh, and Caroline and I went back to the Silk Market after swimming, and one of the ladies asked if we were athletes. We said yes, and then she asked if we were swimmers, and she was so excited that she had guessed correctly!

One thing to note about China: there is no shame. Mothers breast feed their children on crowded subways, little children walk around with no pants or underwear on, and when a child has to go to the bathroom, the mother stops them right where they are and let's the child pee on the ground. Yes, I've seen my fair share of children peeing in the corner of a store or in the subway tunnels or even by the escalator. No wonder everybody was sitting on newspaper at the train station...

3rd Class Completed

I swam today!!!!!! In a real pool!!!! Well, kind of...

First, I took my final for my Manufacturing and Warehousing class. Let's just say... I'm not going to be in charge of a warehouse anytime soon...

After the final, I was REALLY wanting to swim. Swimming is a big stress reliever for me, and I just haven't been the same without it. So, Caroline and I hunted down the outdoor pool on campus. We managed to get a certificate to access the pool surprisingly easily. We just presented our ID card, a passport sized photo, and some cash, and they made our certificate on the spot!

There are two 50 meter, 8 lane pools! There is one that is three feet deep that has no lane ropes. It is used for playing. Caroline and I counted nearly 200 people in that pool today, but luckily the pool was big, so they were all spread out. The other pool is deeper and has lane ropes and BACKSTROKE FLAGS!!!! YAY! So of course we go over to the lap pool to swim, but we get stopped by the guard at the gate. A nice man translated for us, and apparently we had to have a deep water certificate. We have to pass a swimming test first, but they only administer the tests on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so sadly, we couldn't swim for real today.

Instead, we splashed around in the play pool, just enjoying being immersed in a body of water bigger than our showers. It felt so good to stretch out and feel the water again, and naturally we got stared at for being athletic American girls. It's always so awkward being watched. We swam across the pool to the other side, and when we finished, our friend had wandered over and informed us that we were professionals. Haha of course we are :) Our friend then joined us, and we taught him a little bit about swimming. He was so thankful, "What an opportunity! I am not worthy!" haha silly Asians. He asked where we were from, and when we told him Atlanta, Georgia, he said "Oh! The capital! A famous city!" He also pointed to his eye and told Caroline, "your... your... your eyeball is BLUE!" HAHAHAHAHA sooooo cute! He said that my eyes were yellow? What?

My comments about the pool: 

-The bathrooms were all squattys, and they did not have stall doors. Just basically squat in the middle of the locker room, out in the open... yeah.

-The women all wore one pieces and swim caps.

-The men walked around in swim suits that looked like boxer briefs, but they had them pulled up above their belly buttons!

-The men also like to stand around and smoke cigarettes by the pool. Sick.

-The pool has no chlorine in it.

-The pool bottom had so much dirt and algae on it that it was completely BLACK. I didn't even want to put my face in the water, and I tried so hard not to swallow any of it.

I'm taking my camera when I go to the pool tomorrow to document these strange events.

For dinner tonight, a group of ten of us went out to The Kro's Nest. It is a pizza place modeled after Fellini's in Atlanta, and it was started and is owned by a 24-year-old Georgia Tech graduate!!!! He has opened six more locations in Beijing, and his business is making a KILLING! He's a friend of one of the guys on the program, but unfortunately he was at a different location tonight. Nevertheless, the pizza was AMAZING! So delicious! It was pricey, and I was expecting small portions (like meal in China). Caroline and I decided to split a grilled chicken salad and a medium "Fresh Pizza" (mushrooms, green peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, cheese, black olives). I was shocked when this HUGE pizza was delivered to our table, along with the most gigantic salad that could have fed by entire family of five! It was ridiculous how much food we got, and it was all so tasty! It was definitely worth the price. Every single rumble.

Haha, as a side note: the currency in China is called Yuan or Renminbi, abbreviated RMB. Hence, we've been called the currency Rumbles. haha! David Schwartz also likes to call them Rumplestiltskins, and sometimes we use the term bones. Common lingo among our group is "How many bones did that cost you?" or "I just spent 10 rumplestiltskins!" or "I'm all out of rumbles...". If yuan is the equivalent of dollars in the US, then wu jiao is the equivalent of cents in the US. We like to call the wu jiao Rumblies, and I like calling them Little Ones, like "the bike parking costs two rumblies" or "I don't have any little ones." From hear on out, I will refer to Chinese yuan or RMB as Rumbles.

The Forbidden City and Pandas!

Blue skies exist in Beijing!!!!! Saturday morning, July 12! A perfectly blue sky!!!! I ran up to the highest floor in our dorm and took pictures out the windows. Our campus is surrounded by MOUNTAINS!!! I had no idea! This was the first time I had ever seen them! What a beautiful day! 

Since it was so pretty, Caroline, Gabby, and I tried to take the subway to the Olympic Green to take pictures with the Water Cube and the Bird's Nest, but the new subway lines aren't open yet. Uh oh, Beijing better step it up. The Olympics are in less than a month! So I attempted to flag down some taxis, but all six taxis that I asked didn't understand where we wanted to go. I was sad, but we're going to try again later in the week.

I decided to stay in Beijing this weekend because of school work. We have a group paper and presentation due on Monday, and our final is on Tuesday. But no worries, I still had plenty of fun this weekend :)

On Friday, I went with Caroline, Hannah, Kristi, Jen, Sara, Gabby, Zach, and Josh to the Forbidden City! The Forbidden City served as the imperial palace for the emperor and his court from the Ming dynasty beginning in 1406 until the Qing dynasty was overthrown by Sun Yat-Sen in 1911. The Forbidden City covers 720,000 square meters and consists of over 980 surviving buildings. It is surrounded by an eight-meter high wall and a 52-meter wide moat! How cool! 

The Forbidden City is basically a line of gates and halls that you walk through right down the center. There are outer halls and courts, but the main walkway in the center is where all of the big, beautiful, and important buildings are located. All of the ground in the city is laid with bricks, except for a white marble pathway running right through the center. Only the emperor was allowed to walk on this pathway, but of course, today anybody can step foot on it and take pictures in a place only the emperor was allowed to touch. 

All of the main buildings in the Forbidden City were uniform in design. They were all crimson red with gold arching roofs. There were blue, green, and gold painted beams across the ceilings. The roofs swooped outward, and at the curved end there were a number of beasts (little statues of lions, dragons, etc.). The number of beasts on the ends of the roofs were used to distinguish one building from another, like a ranking system. There are 11 main halls, and the Hall of Supreme Harmony is the biggest and grandest. Thus, it has all 11 beasts. The rest of the halls had 10, then 9, then 8, based on their size and importance. The beasts were also placed at the ends of the roofs to keep the tiles from sliding off! How interesting! 

I also liked all of the names of everything in the Forbidden City. The main theme was harmon between heaven and earth. We entered the Forbidden City through the Meridian Gate, and then passed through the Gate of Supreme Harmony that opens up into the big and wide-open Supreme Harmony Square. Across the Square, we could see the largest surviving wooden structure in China- the Hall of Supreme Harmony that was used to host ceremonies, such as the emperors' enthronement and imperial weddings. It is built above three levels of marble stone base, and it is surrounded by huge bronze basins. In fact, these bronze basins were all over the city! Since there was no running water in the city, the basins were kept filled with water in case there was a fire. 

Behind the Hall of Supreme Harmony is the Hall of Central Harmony, which was where the emperor could prepare for and rest during ceremonies, and the Hall of Preserving Harmony, which was used for rehearsing ceremonies. Beyond these halls is the Palace of Heavenly Purity where the emperor lived and the Palace of Earthly Tranquility where the empress lived. The emperor represented Yang (the heavens), and the empress represented Yin (the Earth). The Hall of Union was located between their two residences, and it was considered the place where Yang and Yin mixed to produce harmony.

Behind the residences is the Imperial Garden. The garden was huge, and there were so many people there! There were tall and arching trees, and many of their branches were being held up by tall wooden posts. There is a 10-meter high rick hill called the Hill of Accumulated Elegance toward the back of the garden, and at the top of the rock mountain lies the Pavilion of Imperial Scenery. Once a year during the Double Ninth festival, the emperor, his wife, and his concubines all climb the hill to the top to reach the pavilion. Also, an awesome translation of a sign in the Imperial garden: "A single act of carelessness leads to eternal loss of beauty." I think an easier translation would be "Please stay off of the flowers."

While we were in the Imperial Garden, some of the Chinese troops came into the garden and started clearing it out. We got pushed to the outer edges of the garden, and a local explained to us that we had to wait there for thirty minutes because there was a special visitor touring the Forbidden City. It turns out that the Mexican president was in Beijing because China and Mexico were in the process of signing a friendship agreement. A few minutes later, we got to watch the whole delegation from Mexico, and I assume that I saw the president, tour through the garden and take pictures. How awesome would you feel if you were able to clear out the entire Forbidden City when you went to see it? I was so pumped, and I wished the US President was there too. But then we realized that if the US President was in the Forbidden City, we definitely would not be allowed to be standing there watching.

After seeing as much of the Forbidden City as possible, we shopped around at the Olympic merchandise store at Tiananmen Square. It is becoming very difficult to find Olympic merchandise. None of the stores are restocking their inventory. For example, the Beijing 08 store on campus has run out of all size small T-shirts, and they are not ordering any more. So I've been searching for other stores that have small T-shirts in stock, and it seems that all of the stores are running out. This is becoming a problem, so every time that I see a Beijing 08 store, I run inside to check out what they have because I may never find it again in another store.

Oh, a side note: China (and Singapore too) do not practice the idea of quantity discounts. For example, I buy bottled water at the supermarket. Which would be cheaper, to buy 6 individual little bottles of water or to buy one gallon of water (and refill a water bottle)? In the US, of course buying the gallon would be cheaper than buying 6 individual bottles. This is not the case in China. Buying six small bottles of water is the same price as buying one gallon of the same volume. I don't understand. There are also no deals like buying one granola bar for 3 yuan, but buying a box of 6 bars for 15 yuan. Instead, China sells one granola bar for 3 yuan, and a box of six granola bars for 18 yuan. I suppose China is making more money that way, but it does not make the customer very happy.

On Saturday (our awesome blue sky day), Caroline, Gabby, and I went to the Silk Market and Pearl Market to do more shopping. I went back to the same Pearl lady that I had visited a few weeks before, and I bought so much from her that she gave each of us a free gold chain! I also bought a ridiculous number of purses and wallets, and I need to go back to the market to buy a suit case so I can bring all of my souvenirs and gifts home!

My group and I spent a good bit of Saturday night and Sunday morning working on our paper, and when we finished it, Kristi and I went to the Beijing Zoo to see the pandas!!! It was so worth it! The pandas were so incredibly adorable! I was afraid they would all be napping, but they were being really active! Some were climbing all over a playground structure that they had, and others were laying on their backs eating bamboo.  It was all so cute!

News from home:

-My friend Kathleen made the US Olympic Team for swimming!!!! She placed 2nd in the 200 Butterfly at US Olympic Trials! Right now she at the US swimming training camp in Palo Alto, California. Then the team moves on to train in Singapore (!!!!!) before arriving in Beijing at the start of the Olympics! It is so neat thinking about the things that Kathleen will get to do! She is not only a part of the USA Swim Team, but the USA Olympic Team, all of the sports! I wonder how much free stuff she is going to get and how many awesome people she is going to meet?? How amazing! I can't wait to see her on TV, especially at the opening ceremony!

-My teammate Onur Uras made the Turkey Olympic Team for swimming! He made his cut in the 100 fly, and his swim was so fast that it set a new Turkish National Record!! He's coming to Beijing, and hopefully Caroline and I will get to see him!

-Shout out to my brother Ben and his friend Garrett! They are both at Basic Cadet Training at the Air Force Academy right now. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers. USAFA Class of 2012: Never Falter, Never Fail!

Things I miss about home the most:

-My family: Tay, Ben, Mom, Dad, and my puppy

-My teammates!! I BELIEVE!!!!!!! 

-Twice-Baked Potatoes

-Being able to read a menu in a restaurant. Being able to read anything really

-Real bathrooms (with an actual toilet, toilet paper, soap, and paper towels)

-Blue skies and the sun

-The pool

-Drinking water from the tap

-Taking a shower whenever I want to

Things I will miss about China the most:

-Beijing 2008 Olympics!!

-Being taller than everybody else

-Being an American. The Chinese LOVE taking pictures of Americans!

-Meeting 28 awesome GT students and sharing once-in-a-lifetime experiences with them

-The Great Wall of China

-Public transportation

-Cheap food, an entire meal for 75 cents!

The next two days are going to be jam packed with school work, but after our final on Tuesday, we will get out and have some fun. I am planning on visiting the Olympic Green and seeing the venues. We are also trying to buy tickets to an acrobat show, and of course I will return to the Silk Market. This weekend, we have a four night trip planned to Inner Mongolia!! We will ride horses across the grasslands just like the Mongols, ride camels through the Gobi Desert, sleep in yurts (similar to Native American tipis), learn all about Genghis Khan, and see stars for the first time all summer!

However, as it is written, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him." 

1 Corinthians 2:9

Shanghai and Suzhou

I went to Shanghai and Suzhou this weekend, and it was crazy fun and crazy busy! That's the only way to travel :)

I had a test in my manufacturing class on Thursday. The test let out at 4 PM, and at 5 PM our group of about 20 left for Shanghai. We took taxis to the subway and then took the subway to the train station. Unfortunately, the subway stop right next to the Beijing Railway Station is under maintenance, so we had to get off one stop earlier and lug our bags half a mile to the station. Once we got to the station, we spent half and hour trying to find our platform by trial and error (the display boards were all in Chinese). Eventually we found someone to point us in the right direction, and when all was said and done, we were all nice and sweaty for our 12 hour overnight train to Shanghai :)

The Beijing Railway Station was complete madness! There were people everywhere! Sitting all over the floors, all along the stairs, sleeping on the ground, sitting on their luggage... it was crazy! One interesting thing is that every person who was sitting on the ground was sitting on newspaper! When we made it to our platform, we decided that we should put something between ourselves and the floor too since the locals were doing it. Probably a good idea... who knows what's on those floors? People are practically living at the station. I'm really glad I didn't have to go to the bathroom because I'm sure they were absolutely disgusting.

Our train was so AMAZING!!!! We had five compartments that were all next to each other on the same train car, so basically it was a party the whole way to Shanghai! Four people fit into each compartment, and I shared mine with Caroline, Hannah, and Sharifa. Our compartment was beautiful! There were four beds, two down and two up, with a table in between, and a big window to the outside. On our table was a real flower in a vase and four travel toothbrush kits! So cute! Each train car had two bathrooms and a sink area. You could walk along the entire train (16 cars) while it was in motion, and train car 9 was the dining car. We all felt like we were on the Hogwarts Express. Kristi kept asking when the food cart was going to come with her Chocolate Frogs :)

I definitely enjoyed the train ride to Shanghai, and I think I got more sleep on the train than I've gotten all week. We arrived in Shanghai at 7:30 AM on Saturday. We took the subway to our hostel (Blue Mountain Youth Hostel), and then we checked in, ate breakfast, and took showers!! Yes! Our hostel was so awesome! The staff was incredibly accommodating, the hostel was so clean and air conditioned, and our room was big and comfortable, and it had a private bathroom too!

At about 10 AM, me and my favorite travel group (Caroline, Hannah, Kristi, Jen, Gabby, Sara, David, Chris, Adrienne, and Melissa) headed out to see Shanghai. Shanghai has some BEAUTIFUL buildings! I loved the unique architecture! It was even cooler than the architecture in Hong Kong (I didn't think that was possible). One of Shanghai's buildings has a big open rectangle in the top of it. Apparently, it was supposed to be a circle, but during it's construction, China was not on good terms with Japan, and the circle looked too much like the Japanese rising sun, so they changed it to a rectangle at the last minute. 

We spent the entire rest of the morning, afternoon, and evening walking around the city. It was extremely hot! 38 degrees Celsius, and a heat index of 115 degrees Fahrenheit! We went to the Urban Planning Museum where we got to see the history of the construction of Shanghai's skyscrapers. There was a really neat model of the entire big city and surrounding areas. I also learned that Shanghai is really pumped about hosting the 2010 World Expo. There were signs everywhere, as well as statues of the blue Expo mascot that looks like Gumby. 

We walked through a park to enjoy some greenery. Then we walked down Nanjing Lu, Shanghai's insane shopping district, on our way to the Bund, the older part of Shanghai that has lots of old European style buildings. After touring the Bund and taking pictures of Shanghai's Oriental Pearl (a tall observation tower) from across the water, we took ride through a psychedelic tunnel underneath the water to the other side where we spent the rest of the day. 

Later that night, we all dressed in red, white, and blue and went out to a club called Windows to celebrate the 4th of July :) It was such a great time, Happy Birthday USA!

Unfortunately, I only got three hours of sleep that night because the next morning I was taking a train to Suzhou, a small city about an hour outside of Shanghai. Suzhou is a city built along canals, and thus it is considered the Venice of China. Suzhou was beautiful and very quaint. I went with Hannah, Caroline, Kristi, Shayna, Noyoun, Scott, and Michael. We visited the Northern temple Pagoda and climbed it's 12 stories to the top overlooking Suzhou. We also went to Lion Grove and got ourselves lost in the Rock Gardens. The Rock Garden was like an adult play ground, plenty of tall rocks that created winding mazes, dark caves, and walls to climb. It was so fun, and we took some awesome pictures among the rocks. 

We ate dumplings for lunch at a local family restaurant, and they helped us get taxis to Tiger Hill. The Tiger Hill Pagoda stands on the hill's summit. It is the famous leaning pagoda of Suzhou. In fact, it is known as China's Leaning Tower of Piza, even though it was built before the tower in Piza during the Northern Song Dynasty from 959-961 AD. Also, this pagoda is not leaning because of sinking ground like in Piza. Instead, the pagoda guards the tomb of King He Lu. King He Lu was a zealous collector of rare swords, and it is said that the 1000 swords were buried deep within the hill underneath the sword pool. Thousands of years ago, people dug into the hill searching for the swords, so that is why the pagoda is leaning! Part of the hill is missing! Also at Tiger Hill, we walked through a bonzai garden with over 1000 bonzai trees! How awesome!

Later in the afternoon, we took the train back to Shanghai, and went out to club BonBon to top off our wonderful weekend. I had the time of my life that night, and we didn't go to sleep until the sun came up! I really enjoy the company of the students from Tech that are on this trip with me. We are having such an awesome time together and are sharing so many good memories. We slept in a bit on Sunday, and then we visited the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum until it was time to go to the train station to ride back to Beijing. The Science Museum in Shanghai is incredible! I wish I had had more time there! There was so much to see! 

Our train ride back to Beijing and that Monday following was very interesting. So I showered Sunday morning when I woke up, then I walked around all day in the oppressive heat. We then lugged our bags to the Shanghai Railway Station, and took our 12 hours train ride bag to Beijing. The train was supposed to get in a 7:30 on Monday morning, which gave us enough time to subway and then taxi back to campus in time for class that the professor had graciously agreed to push back to 9:30 instead of 9 to give us a little extra time to get back from the train station. However, the train was delayed by and hour, so we didn't arrive in Beijing until 8:30. Naturally, it was Monday morning rush hour, so a taxi would not be the quickest way back to campus. So, we lugged our bags half a mile to the subway station, took a crowded hour long subway ride to Wudaoku, and then we spent half an hour trying to get taxis back to campus. It was so hard trying to find an empty taxi in the middle of rush hour, not to mention that we needed 5 empty taxis to get all 20 of us back to campus. Basically, we got dominated by public transportation for an entire day straight. So, by the time I got back to campus, I just threw my bag in my room, grabbed my backpack and bike, and pedaled to class. I arrived at 10:30.

Class ended at 11:30, and my group and I spent our break between classes working on our project proposal that was due at 2 PM. We then had class from 2-4, and then I went to the weight room until 5:30. When I finally got back to my dorm, I unpacked and waited a few hours until the shower time period started, and then I FINALLY got my shower after all of that travel :) Luckily, my shower head was producing an ample amount of water. Yay!

Thoughts on China

There has been lots going on in China lately. I've been very busy with traveling and school. The classes we are taking in Beijing are much more difficult and work intensive than the two we took in Singapore. China itself is much more difficult than Singapore with getting around the city, communicating, ordering food, finding places... China is very tough.

Good news: I've finally seen the sun and a blue sky!

Bad news: It was terribly hot, and now I prefer the cloudy cooler days. Luckily those are more common.

Last weekend a big group of us (me, Caroline, Hannah, David Schwartz, Chris Morris, Adrienne, Sara, Jen, Gabby, and Kristi) went to the Beijing Art Museum. I was expecting to see traditional Chinese artwork, like landscape paintings and scrolls, but instead the museum was more like the High Museum in Atlanta that has a different exhibit every few months. The Beijing Museum was featuring this futuristic exhibit... it's hard to describe, but it was really strange. There was a long hallway of hospital beds that moved on their own, there was a big computer generated head (kind of like the Wizard of Oz) that had conversations with you, and there was this creepy body morphing video. The things I liked seeing where a big harmonic wave, strings that vibrated when you talked, crayons that sang songs when you wrote with them, plants that grew without soil, a big dark room with light beams that you could stand in, and a waterfall that was apparently fake, but looked, smelled, and sounded like real water. On the upper floors of the museum, there was an exhibit called Dresden in China, which featured some German abstract paintings that were pretty neat.

After the museum, we went to the Silk Market!!!!! It was CRAZY! First of all, it was inside, and it was 8 stories high, and there were so many shops all crammed in there, and there was a lot of people, and it was so loud, and I loved it! It was so exciting! That place is going to be complete MADNESS when all the Olympic spectators arrive! We spent HOURS at the Silk Market, bargaining for so many items! It was so fun! 

One floors was all clothes (polos especially, and soccer jerseys), jackets (fire engine red Ferrari jackets, and Adidas jackets), luggage (Coach, North Face), and shoes, shoes, shoes. I got some Puma underwear and a pair of charcoal and pink Puma shoes! Another floor was all Chinese collectables, like scrolls, old coins, chopsticks, fans, figurines, and lamps. I bought some old Chinese coins with holes in the middle that I can make into earrings and necklaces. Another floor was all SILK of course! 100% Chinese silk items, like kimonos, scarves, and neck ties of all colors and designs. Another floor was dedicated to bags and bags and bags. Purses, wallets, clutches, wristlets, backpacks galore! Prada, Longchamp, Tod's, Coach, Gucci, Burberry, it was all so exciting! Anther floor was all of the tailors that makes suits and dresses. That floor was very overwhelming, and the prices were very high. I was very happy that I'd gottena suit made in Bangkok. It was cheaper there, and the fabrics were nicer. I also already knew the drill, so I helped the guys and girls in my group pick out some styles and fabrics. I wanted to get a dress made, but it was way to expensive. My favorite floor was he top floor- the legendary PEARL MARKET! Real pearls, everywhere! It was heaven! I may have bought a ridiculous amount of beautiful jewelry for an awesome price :)

Long story short, I'm definitely going back to the Silk Market at least three more times while I am in Beijing!

My typical day in Beijing is as follows:

1. Wake up early in the morning to go running around campus with Caroline. We haven't touched water in 19 days... it's very depressing. I don't like running much, but Beijing is very flat, so I can run longer distances without getting tired out from all the hills like in Atlanta and Singapore. Also, Beijing is not as humid as Singapore, so that makes running more enjoyable too. The air quality has not been too much of a problem when running outside. My biggest problem is actually my tennis shoes. After Caroline's and my awesome Ascics got stolen in Malaysia, the only shoes we could find that were big enough to fit our feet were these Adidas shoes that are not very supportive. Caroline's knees are bothering her because of it, and the bones in my legs below my knees are in lots of pain, especially my fibulas. It's kind of weird, but it's painful. 

2. Shower. There is only hot water during certain times of the day, and luckily one of the time slots is right when we finish running. Sometimes it does not matter though- half of the time my shower does not even work... that's right, water doesn't come out of my shower head at all when I turn it on, or it just dribbles. 

3. Breakfast. I eat breakfast from the food I buy at the campus store or the Wal-Mart about a 15 minute taxi ride away. Usually for breakfast I have peanut butter on a piece of wheat bread and some raisins. There is no cereal in China, not even at Wal-Mart, and I cannot keep yogurt or jelly because there are no refrigerators on campus.

4. Ride bike to class, which is so enjoyable! I love riding my bike everywhere! It makes everything so accessible! The only issue is that all of China rides bikes, and they ride SO SLOW. And they ride slowly in the MIDDLE of the street, just randomly stop in front of you, or ride in big packs that take up the whole road. This is quite frustrating for me, so I've made a game out of passing and weaving through as many people as possible on the way to class. It's quite fun :) Oh and other things that makes bikes go even slower- when there is a person riding side-saddle on the back of your bike, reading the newspaper while riding your bike, and my favorite, holding an umbrella while riding your bike when it's rainy AND sunny! There are umbrellas everywhere in China, all the time.

5. Class. We are taking an Industrial Engineering course called "Supply Chain: Manufacturing and Warehousing".  Some of the material is interesting to me, and some of it is not at all. I do not like learning about how factories stay within constraints, like time deadlines and quality standards and cost factors, but I like manipulating different parts of a factory's process to determine how they can lower the production costs and thus make more profit. We learned "Explosion Calculus" this morning, and right now, we're working on a spreadsheet with real data from a beer brewery in China. They brew five types of beer that take either 2 weeks or 3 weeks to ferment, they have three fermenters, and there is a loss of sales if you do not meet demand, and there is a holding cost if you have too much inventory. It's very fun for me to look at the demand for the different types of beer and determine how much to produce of each type each week and see how it changes the overall profit. The hardest part of the project was coding how to calculate the profit, taking into account the setup cost, holding cost, lost sales, etc. but now that we have that part done, I'm having lots of fun manipulating the data to find the best production policy!

6. Lunch. I look forward to lunch because I get very hungry, but then I realize that the campus food is not good, and I get disappointed. Campus food is very cheap, but it is not as good as in Singapore. Maybe it is because I have trouble ordering because I cannot read the signs, and I cannot talk to the servers of the other students. Usually I choose a food stall that has the food displayed so I can point to what I want, but I'm sure that if I could just order a dish, my meals would be a lot tastier. Today, I got a classmate to help me order dumplings, and they were yummy!

7. Class again. I'm taking this class with 29 GT students, 9 students from the National University of Singapore, and 12 local Chinese students from Tsinghua University. On the first day, we went around the room and introduced ourselves. Each Chinese student has a Chinese name, and they have picked for themselves an English name. All of them got their names from the dictionary! Even Troy, my Chinese-American friend from Tech, chose his name Troy from the dictionary. His real Chinese name is Duo. So, introductions went like this: "Hi. My Chinese name is Wen Jun, and my English name is Sarah" and "Hello. My Chinese name is Wong Zhe, and my English name is Frank." There is also a Simon, Betty, Grace, and Fish. Yep, her English name is Fish. Also, one of the exciting things about having class with Tsinghua students is that two of the girls are volunteering at the National Aquatic Center (the Water Cube!), and they have offered to give me a tour!!!! I'm so pumped!

8. Weight room. After the afternoon class, Caroline, Gabby, and I ride our bikes to the weight room. This is my favorite part of the day because it is timed out perfectly! When we arrive at the gym at 4:15, there are no classes going on in the dance studio, so we go inside and pull out the mats and stretch and do abs. I like this because we do not have to stretch and do abs out in the middle of the weight room and be starred at by the old Chinese men. The Chinese guys are fascinated with us three girls because no Chinese girls ever lift weights. I don't like being watched by them though, or pointed at, or whispered about. After stretching and abs, we lift weights. Sometimes we run on the treadmill for 15-25 minutes depending on how much we ran in the morning. We are finished with our weights by 5, which is right when the classes in the dance studio start that come free with our gym membership! Aerobics is on Mondays, Latin Dance is on Tuesdays, Pilates is on Wednesdays, and Yoga is on Thursdays at 5 PM. Caroline and I stick around on Wednesdays and Thursdays too do Pilates and Yoga until 6 PM. It's a lot of fun and a good change from the workout routine that we have at Tech. But, even though I like the gym, I still miss swimming, and I think a reason I feel so stressed out lately is that I haven't been able to swim, which is a natural relaxer for me.

9. Dinner. Once again, I'm hungry but not excited to eat. I don't like eating rice or vegetables soaked in oil and grease, or salty dumplings after I work out because it feels like I'm negating everything I just did by putting trash into my body. It's been a struggle to find inexpensive but good and healthy food to eat after workout. I have started going to the store to get some cold chocolate milk, and I've found a good noodle dish that is not too expensive. Sometimes I go back to my room and eat some more bread with peanut butter. 

10. Evening. Study, study, study, group project, practice problems, facebook, email, blog, pictures, bedtime :)

China is tough, that's all there is to it. To be honest, I do not like China much. Traveling is very stressful. Any form of communication is stressful, like ordering food or mailing letters. Riding a bike is stressful because there are no helmets in China, you have to dodge cars, other bikes, pedestrians, speed bumps, puddles, and posts sticking up in the middle of the roads. Intersections are the hardest to navigate on a bike, and I do not like turning left. Going back to my room is stressful because I always worry that it is going to smell weird. Showering is stressful (unfortunately) because I have to wait until certain times to shower, I never know if my shower will turn on, and I never know if I'm going to have any water pressure, and my shower gets the entire bathroom soaking wet. Doing laundry is stressful. I tried using the laundry service, but it took two days to get my clothes back, and the lady did not use detergent, so my clothes smelled like dirt. I've resorted to doing my own laundry, but there are only 11 washers and 2 dryers in the entire dorm complex of 11 floors with 60 rooms on each floor. Class is stressful because there is so much material in such little time that I am no where near comfortable with my understanding of the material before the tests that we have every week. Drinking water is stressful because the tap is not drinkable in China, so I have to buy my water all of the time, and I drink A LOT of water. 

I am dirty all of the time in China.  When it is dry, the streets are dusty, and the air is dirty and polluted. When it is rainy, all of the dirt in the streets turns into mud that splashes onto the backs of your legs when you walk and ride your bike. I have bruises up and down my legs from parking my bike in the bike lots because I'm always running into my own bike or other bikes when I'm trying to squeeze my bike into a spot or trying to remove it and drive away. I sit around dirty a lot of the time, waiting for the time to come when I can shower. I am always sweating, just like in Singapore, so I am running through clothes like crazy, and because of the amount of time it takes to complete one load of laundry, I find myself rewearing sweaty clothes quite a bit. I am a smelly wonder :)

Asians are, for the most part, rude. I was warned that they have no concept of personal space, but I was not prepared for how the Chinese act. Even in Singapore, I was shocked at how men will push past you to get onto a bus or train. In the US, men and boys will step aside and let girls on before them, but in Asia, everyone is so pushy to get onto the bus or train. Traveling on public transportation means getting pushed, shoved, bumped into, whacked by umbrellas, run into by bikes... the list is endless. I've gone back and forth as to why the Chinese act this way, and I've determined that if you are not aggressive, you will never get anything accomplished. It is a vicious cycle. Now, instead of trying to move out of everyone's way, I've adopted the Asian technique of just bumping into people. I am glad that I am a tall, big American so that I can move people out of my way.

Also, Caroline, Kristi, Jen, Sara, and I have a list going called "Reasons You Know That You Are In a Communist Country", and I will share these with you when I am safely back in the United States in August.

Aside from these hardships of everyday living in China, we've developed the tradition of Hot Pot Tuesdays to give us something to look forward to during the week. Every Tuesday night after class and working out, about 20 of us ride our bikes down to Wudaoku and eat at a Hot Pot restaurant. We spend lots of money, but we eat so much good food, and it's always such a great time. After Hot Pot, we walk next door for ice cream and study snacks to get us through the rest of the week. Next week, we have a final Tuesday afternoon, so of course we are celebrating afterwards with some HOT POT! After dinner, we will stay in Wudaoku for the rest of the evening at Lush (a bar) and Propaganda (a dance club). 

A small note for my future reference: if you ever do business in China, remember the Chinese New Year. It's like the Christmas season in the US.

The Great Wall of China

Today is one of those days that I will remember for the rest of my life. 

I visited the Great Wall of China!!!! But we didn't just visit it, we conquered it. My classmates and I hiked along the Great Wall for over four hours, climbing up the steepest of stairs and overlooking some of the most breathtaking landscape in China.

We took a two hour bus ride outside of Beijing to Simatai Great Wall in Gubeikou Town to the northeast of Miyun, Beijing. We chose to visit the 

Simatai Great Wall section because it is out in the middle of nowhere, and thus very far away from tourists. It is the only part of the Great Wall that has the original features of the Ming Dynasty well reserved. This section consists of 20 watchtowers covering peaks over 1000 meters high! Deep in the valley,  there are two springs called Mandarin Duck Springs. The west spring is warm and the east spring is cold. They join in the middle, creating one lake that is half warm and half cold. At the end of the day, I zip lined off of the Great Wall, over the lake, and landing in the valley at the base of the mountains.

Hiking along the Great Wall was such an incredible experience. I love how the Great Wall was built along the very highest ridges of the mountains. It is unbelievable how these walls were built, starting as early as the 5th century B.C., without modern machinery! It is so high up, so far away from the city. How did ancient China get all of the man power to accomplish such a feat? I suppose the threat of invasion by nomadic tribes like the Mongols is reason enough.

The climb along the Great Wall was so steep!! It must've been insane during an attack. I can't imagine a warrior running up and down the wall in armor with weapons during a invasion. It must've been very dangerous. I was slipping and falling myself, and I was moving slowly! I also thought that the watchtowers were so neat! It was cool to imagine warriors living in the towers and scanning the horizon for invaders. Seeing the watchtowers along the ridges reminded me of the scene in the movie Mulan when the warning torches are lit across the Great Wall, alerting China of approaching enemies. How incredible!

The engineering on the Great Wall was interesting. As mentioned before, mobility is extremely difficult along the wall. The steps are uneven, slippery, and steep. However, I thought that the engineers did a fine job of dealing with water along the wall when it rains. Imagine a section of the wall that slopes 30 degrees upward. Imagine water rushing down the wall. Dangerous, right? So the engineers built raised stone ledges every ten steps or so that catch the water and funnel it out a hole on the side of the wall. It was kind of like a rain gutter catching water along the roof of a house. During a rain storm, I'm sure the Great Wall looked like it was crying with water spouting out from both sides, kind of like how a boat empties its ballast tanks. The only problem would occur in very heavy rains when large amounts of water could spill over the ledge if couldn't be funneled off the wall fast enough. Maybe one day I will see how the wall works when it rains heavily, but I'm glad that today it did not rain. It was cloudy today though, which made me sad because the views were not as far and crisp as I would've liked. However, the cloud cover kept the temperature very cool and enjoyable.

I left the Great Wall with the hopes that someday I would return. There are bricks in the wall that have Chinese inscriptions on them. Many of the bricks on the wall are engraved with Chinese characters that say the date when and the factory where the bricks were made all those thousands of years ago.

When we returned to campus, Caroline, Gabby, and I met up with Susan, my local friend I had met at the university. Susan took us on our bikes to the weight room that she had found for us. She translated for us and helped us get a tour of the facility and apply for a club membership and get our questions answered. She was so wonderful to help us out so much. I'm so glad that I met her. We will start going to the weight room on Monday, and I'm also interested in taking some of the classes they provide for free with membership, such as yoga, pilates, aerobics, and dancing. It looks fun! I must say though... we will be the only girls lifting weights. The Chinese boys on my trip have explained to me the differences in what Americans and the Chinese find attractive in women. Americans like tan and toned women, whereas the Chinese like light-skinned and softer women. It makes sense, and you can totally tell. Women in China are so thin and tiny, and they carry umbrellas at all time to shield themselves from the sunlight. Crazy. 

Ahhhhh what a wonderful day :)