Spring Break, Woooooo!
So, this is going to be an all encompassing update. 2 weeks ago i went to Hangzhou with CIEE. It was amazing. It is very green and has a large lake to the west of it (called "west lake") and mountains surrounding. It is very beautiful and a great spot for a romantic vacation. Last week, I had my two finals, on the same day, and I did poorly on both of them. I don't know my grades yet, but I'm praying for the C. This past week was spring break. I left with my friend Weichen for shanghai on friday night. I spent saturday afternoon with my chinese sister, Star, and she showed me around the city. Shanghai is definitely in my list of favorite cities (which, is definitely not as long as the list of cities I dont' really like). On saturday I had some starbucks in the morning and ended up chatting with this canadian filmmaker who was in Shanghai making a documentary on the automobile for national geographic, we talked mostly about politics and such. I then went with Star to lunch and left for my Uncle's place in Yangzhou. Yangzhou was an interesting city. Not as developed as Shanghai, but very pretty with lots of history, parks, and new buildings. There was also a noticeable lack of white people (i only saw one other white person there, and that was from a distance in a park that had at least 20,000 people in it), so naturally I stood out even more than normal. A good example of this was when I first arrived, a car pulled over and stopped so that these little kids could stare at me and yell. My uncle and aunt use bath houses rather than their own bathroom (I think it's a leftover from the old workunit mentality), so that's where I went to bathe also during those few days. If I thought I got alot of attention on the street, being naked in a room full of chinese people was like, well, I was a 6'4" pile of burning magnesium. People wanted to look, but also didn't want to at the same time. It's kind of flattering, in a creepy way, when the guy who is drying off your legs while you're naked (because that's their job, not because he was being friendly) calls you handsome, and then beautiful. Yeah... well, I also saw some parks, a palace, bamboo grove, the largest museum of block printing in asia, and a museum of yangzhou history. On wednesday I went to Nanjing and hung out there with ashley and allison. We saw the botanical gardens, climbed a mountain, and saw sun yat-sen's tomb. Overall I had a great time there, and a great spring break. Now I'm back in beijing, unfortunately, and have to go to class on monday, even more unfortunate. At least I was able to drop my US-Chinese relations class.
Lots of other stuff has gone on, some personal tragedy, some very good things. I've decided to keep a hand written journal for that stuff, and this is going to be more just a general "what I'm up to" thing. If you want to know what's gone right and wrong with family friends and women, just drop me a line.
Lots of other stuff has gone on, some personal tragedy, some very good things. I've decided to keep a hand written journal for that stuff, and this is going to be more just a general "what I'm up to" thing. If you want to know what's gone right and wrong with family friends and women, just drop me a line.