I've always been fascinated with translating things I've learned in English into Chinese. I had a lot of fun one night looking up the names of different elements and cell biology in google translator (铀= Uranium, cool huh?) and despite having gotten up at 5 AM this morning to head to work, I still have enough energy at the end of the day to play ( Read more... )

Instead of being lazy and waiting for a bus, I decided to walk all the way back home from the Husky Stadium after tutoring today. It is a 30 minute hike from the low-lands by the lake up the thousand steps by McMahon Hall and finally through the treacherous sidewalks held by the Hobos on the Ave. But I made it. Depsite being hungry, it was a ( Read more... )

Whenever I come home, I always try to read some of the Chinese magazines my parents subscribe to. My mother gets regular subscriptions to the Chinese version of Reader's digest 读者 (but more mainstream and contains a wide variety of poetry, short essays, and interesting articles). This trip home, she strongly strongly recommended that I read an ( Read more... )

This morning, bright and early, my dad and I went to the Temple of Heaven. Beijing was windier today than I expected and as a result, all the smog from the large chimneys are blown away and the sky is crystal clear and sapphire blue. We arrived at the Temple quite early (9:30 AM) and thus avoided many tour groups that normally don’t show up till 10 ( Read more... )

I slept in the apartment on my own last night, the building is 30 years old which means I’m slightly afraid of ghosts but thankfully, nothing happened. Either that or I slept too soundly to be bothered. In the morning, Fang Fang took me on an adventure through Beijing’s subway to 秀水街 to buy some bags and jewelry (*cough cough* ).

It is not so much ( Read more... )

Wow, today was so incredibly busy. In the morning (after a rather long process of finding a restaurant that serves breakfast) my dad and I went to the Forbidden City. Oh my gosh, it was even better than I imagined it to be. I went there a couple of times when I was little but it was always in the summer and the whole experience tend to be a bit ( Read more... )

 I am tired as heck right now because of jet lag, but simply put, today was amazing. In the morning, Fang Fang’s mother took us on a drive into Beijing proper passing by what seemed like hundreds of 20 story apartment buildings (one area of apartment buildings have a total of 300,000 residents!) We passed by Olympic Village and parked the car so ( Read more... )

I recently discovered Xiaonei.com (Link HERE), a righteous ripoff of facebook with every icon identical but also completely in Chinese. As a finals procrastination tool I decided to look up my friends from Elementary school, at least those I've kept in contact with over the years. They were all on the site and it was such a happy feeling to see ( Read more... )

Once again, I am on an amtrak train heading back to Seattle. Thanksgiving this year was a much needed and wonderfully relaxing 5 days. There was the traditional potluck this year only this time around, I felt too old to be playing MASH with the 12 year old girls but awfully young to be sitting with all the Westlake Moms while they talk about the ( Read more... )

Is it better to remain happily ignorant or miserably wise ( Read more... )