After lunch we headed to the Humble Administrators Garden, it was beautiful! All the flowers were gorgeous and there were ponds as well as pagodas everywhere! There were HUGE coy fish in the ponds as well! It was very calming and relaxing, which was a nice break from all the hustling and bustling we were doing in Shanghai. After that we went shopping at two different places, got Starbucks, and much needed pizza from Pizza Hut. Okay, I know Pizza Hut right? But one there pizza is good here (not as good as other places in US, but still decent) and two, it is really fancy! I am not kidding you! I will get a picture of one the next time I am in one. After that we headed back to what was the craziness of Shanghai!
So this was a good day! We headed out of Shanghai to go see Tiger Hill in Suzhou. It was a really cool area and very beautiful! Our guide was interesting, we are pretty sure he made up a good part of the stories. But it was fun anyway! After Tiger Hill we headed to lunch at this sketcho restaurant where everyone did not eat a lot. A good amount of weird smells in the air and there were probably about 10 flies hovering around our table when we came in. Brad, such a great guy, used his amazing chopstick skills to stick a chicken head right in front of my face. Love ya Brad... :P
After lunch we headed to the Humble Administrators Garden, it was beautiful! All the flowers were gorgeous and there were ponds as well as pagodas everywhere! There were HUGE coy fish in the ponds as well! It was very calming and relaxing, which was a nice break from all the hustling and bustling we were doing in Shanghai. After that we went shopping at two different places, got Starbucks, and much needed pizza from Pizza Hut. Okay, I know Pizza Hut right? But one there pizza is good here (not as good as other places in US, but still decent) and two, it is really fancy! I am not kidding you! I will get a picture of one the next time I am in one. After that we headed back to what was the craziness of Shanghai!
0 Comments
![]() So during our stay in Beijing, we were taken to a farm about an hour away from the city. The guy who owns it used to work in the white collar work force and gave that up to start sustainably farming. He uses no pesticides or anything harmful. He also allows plants to go about their own cycle of life and farms with the weeds instead of killing them. It was really interesting to hear about his philosophy and why he wanted to start this type of farm when no one else around him is doing it that way. They also made us a great, fresh lunch with almost all the vegetables coming from the farm! The group helped him collect some sort of buckwheat. Several people cut themselves, so I was glad to not be involved in that danger! The group had a lot of fun and they complete a whole small field as you can see in pictures. I got to spend time with Latwanna, so that was relaxing! Outdoors garden work just is not my thing. Ok, not exactly singing in the rain, but it definitely was a lot of fun! We went to a Karaoke bar in Beijing for half of the day on Sunday. I honestly did not expect to sing very much, or have as much fun as I did. We were able to let loose as a group, drink a little, and sing to some American songs at the top of our lungs. The Karaoke bars are really cool here. They have private rooms that you can reserve with several mikes and hundreds of songs to choose from. We had the VIP room, the biggest one with the most songs, and we stayed probably for 4 or 5 hours. Everyone got into it, even shy Tyler a little.
Sadly that is the end of my singing career, back to belting it out in the car and shower :) After that, Aaron (App Grad who is now working at Fudan as an ambassador of sorts for the UNC system) took us to a Mexican place for dinner that was pretty decent. Jackie and I totally got robbed for a plate of pathetic nachos, we paid 48 yuan for. But it was relaxing and fun! One of Aarons friends from California joined us, as well as a Japanese guy that did magic tricks for us - we were very impressed! Ok, so I know I have yet to update everyone on all of the things we did in Beijing and here in Shanghai. Beijing will come soon, maybe tonight. And I promise, nothing of great importance has happened her in Beijing. Except for I almost got run over by a McDonalds delivery guy (ask Liz to sing the song for you, it's funny). On the not of getting run over, well you know that age old rule we were all taught - look before you cross. Well that doubly applies here in China. First off people drive like maniacs and use their horn every five seconds. Second off, no one pays attention to most of the road rules, or rules in general like don't smoke here or don't throw trash. But anyways, we presented our research today at the Shanghai Forum and it went pretty good. Of course me as a perfectionist, I have a list of things that could have been done differently. But it was received well, so hats off to all of the Holland Fellows. Right now we are getting ready to head to kareoke for a good part of the afternoon, we shall see how that goes. Then starbucks, donuts (Liz and I found a parisian bakery where you can just pick what you want, we learned ordering is quite impossible without Chinese), and possibly Phase 10 are in tow for later! Lastly, a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my younger brother Galen!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe you are 18! Sorry I couldn't be there to celebrate, but I hope you had tons of fun and got some good gifts. Also, if you could save me a piece of cookie cake that would be excellent, they don't have stuff like that here. Tonight we also went on a cruise of Beijing at night! It was beautiful and I actually got some good, maybe blurry, pictures! So the time has come that I am turning to Peanut Butter to survive. We are currently in rehearsal for our research presentation, and let's just say we are going to be here forever! Despite my lack of utensils or something to eat it on, I am pressing forward and acting in a somewhat barbaric way... Eating peanut butter out of a jar with my finger. Yes, I know not lady like - but definitely fits to my personality.
I woke up this morning after another night of cold sweats and possible fever. I am not quite sure what the issue is, so I guess observation will continue. I am currently sitting in the middle of a large editing session with an awful headache. I have never experienced a pressure headache before, and holy crap is it awful! Every time I sneeze it feels like my brain is going to explode... Hopefully that will not happen! So cheers to peanut butter and making it through this awful and long winded rehearsal! So, tonight I have been pondering what diseases I may return to the States with. You may wonder why this random topic has come up (however, if you know me well you will recognize that I can be quite the hypocondriac). I am currently sitting in our hotel lobby supposedly working on my research, in my defense I have done quite a good bit. Liz just headed upstairs, and Latwanna relocated to another area because of the chinese gentlemen smoking right near us. The best part of this situation is, there are signs that say NO SMOKING. After mentioning the man smoking to the front desk clerk, nothing was done. To the hotel clerks defense, I am pretty sure he was not clear on what I was trying to communicate.
Anyways, there are several diseases I feel quite sure I may contract. First off, lung cancer from second hand smoke. Everyone and their mother smokes here, and not only smokes but chain smokes! Everywhere we go someone is smoking, it is awful. Then there is the mad animal disease I will probably get from all the meat I happen to be eating because it is never quite clear what is in what dish. So far I have had beef and pork (I am soooooo sorry piggy family!). Then there is the general dehydration I will probably sustain all summer, I continue to drink water but the food has such high salt content I am pretty sure I need to be drinking gallons more a day. Of course then I could always get a weird bacteria from accidentally swallowing water in the shower or running water over my toothbrush, yep had to boil water several times to clean the toothbrush because of that. Hopefully my fever of 100 that I experienced the other day is the extent of my ailments while here (fingers crossed)! And hey, maybe Liz and I will cancel all the bacteria out with the amount of beer we will be drinking (it seems here that it is either bottled water, beer, or coke). Since I have not had time to sit and write out what I have done up to this point here is a little breakdown. Great Wall, dumplings, Summer Palace, weird food, Tianeman Square, Forbidden City, shrink wrapped covered plates with "french fries". I am sure you are probably laughing or wondering what the heck the title means. If you are a 2012 HF, then you are definitely laughing your butt off right now! This is a sort of Martial Arts/Mediation thing. Each move helps your health and body in some way. The five animals were: Bear, Monkey, Tiger, Crane, and the Fruit Picker (ya I know not an animal). At first I took pictures of everyone and laughed a little. But then I finally joined in, and after getting over how stupid I felt, it was fun. After we watched videos about it inside, we went outside to do it. There were tons of people walking by and observing, but we all were way to into it to notice.
After the martial arts, some of us went to the major downtown part of Shanghai to go to a Temple. It was so ornate and beautiful! It was weird to see a temple in the middle of sky scrapers and big name brands like Guess. After the temple we ate at a cafeteria place close to where we were going to see an acrobatic show. The show was a lot of fun, and Ricky was the star!!! He was chosen to have knives thrown at him... Hmmm I wonder if they actually threw them or not? In the same place as the show, there was a city market. Those are markets that sell foreign products from countries such as Great Britain, America, and Germany. I got some febreeze lol, can't be without my febreeze for too long! ![]() We arrived on the 20th in Shanghai after an all night train ride. Luckily we had rooms on the train so we were able to sleep, albeit in tight quarters. But it was tons of fun! Our Fudan partners met us at the train station and took us to our hotel. Virginia got me this cool business card holder that is pink and has the Fudan University symbol on it. The first day there we took a tour of their campus, which is beautiful! It was definitely not what I was expecting. There was a bell on campus that we had tons of fun taking pictures with. After the tour we had a welcoming orientation, and let's just say that the Fudan students put our welcoming to shame. They had tons of stuff prepared, from little gift bags to an information guide about food and Shanghai. After that we went to the welcoming banquet, where there was soooo much food. That seems to be a trend in China, everywhere we go there are always more than 8 huge dishes to eat. I think we all gained a little bit of weight during our 3 weeks together. After dinner we headed back to the hotel for much needed sleep! ![]() Holland Fellows 2012 in front of the entrance to the Forbidden City, between Alan and Daniels head you can see a picture of Mao On the 19th we went to Tiananmen Square, a historical area that you should definitely look up the information on if you don't know what happened. It is where Mao's body is in a coffin tribute sort of thing. Many Chinese come from all over to pay their respects. The square is right in front of the Forbidden City. There were so many people and tons upon tons of Chinese babies! Every girl in our group probably took pictures of and with 20 different babies. All of them were quite adorable, and at the end of the Forbidden City I found a little girl that played with me, we played peek-a-boo! It was really interesting to visit this historical place that we have learned so much about this semester, but very few Chinese people know about it, unless they were alive then. And even then they are limited on the truth. The Forbidden City had so many beautiful buildings and rooms to look at. We also ran into a symphony group from a school in Kentucky. There conductor actually graduated from Appalachian State, small world! After Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City we went to a sketchy place with plastic covered plates for lunch. We got these potato string things that we all started calling fries, we were a little deprived of western food. After lunch we walked to this lake area called Houhai. We were told a lot of people our age hang out there, and it turns into the night scene during the evening with tons of restaurants and clubs. Rachel also got to go into her first Chinese Starbucks, I thought she was going to cry. She is definitely addicted, lol! At Houhai Liz and I found these wallets that had Chinese sayings translated into English that were completely wrong and extremely funny. My favorites were: "You are my heart, you are my liver, you are my life 3/4" and "if you dating with the girl the purpose must be manied if not ur hooligan". Oh too funny!!! To get back to our hotel we had to catch a cab, which was quite an experience and they seemed to not want to pick up white people. We also got taken for a ride and had to pay like 5 more yuan than the other groups, wow almost a whole dollar! Once we finally got back we had just enough time to go to the grocery to get snacks for the all night train ride! I ended up with Oreos and a sort of Chinese Pringle which tasted like tomato soup. The train ride was a lot of fun, but a shower would have definitely been appreciated! Most of us ended up using Wet Ones and the sink on the train to try and clean up a little. Luckily, once we got into Shanghai we were able to shower! ![]() 2012 Holland Fellows in front of part of the Summer Palace in Beijing We visited the Summer Palace in Beijing on the 18th after visiting the company Liz is working for this summer, a Chinese online news website. The people at her office were very nice, and we got to have our pictures taken in the news studio where they film. For lunch they took us to a revolving restaurant that overlooked a majority of Beijing. The food was really good, and we got to learn more about two of the employees Liz will be working closely with. After lunch we headed to the Summer Palace. Click on "Summer Palace" to learn more about it :) The Summer Palace was used by many emperors who spend a lot of their time there. It was quite beautiful! While there we walked down the longest corridor in Asia, maybe the whole world I can't remember. We also took a dragon boat ride across the lake. Once again we had tons of pictures taken of us. |
May...I am spending May traveling around with the wonderful Holland Fellows group! ArchivesCategories
All
|