More pictures!

Catching up on pictures!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002755&l=642f5&id=1181220088

苏州 - Suzhou

Our group took our third and final program trip together and visited the city of Suzhou. Like most of the cities we visit in China, Suzhou is a very ancient city. It was once a capital of the Spring and Autumn Period, where the King Helu humbling named the city the Great City of Helu. The city is most famous for its gardens and landscaping. Walking through the center of town, we crossed many beautiful canals and little picturesque streets. We stayed at a very nice hostel that was right along a pedestrian street that followed a canal. It gave the city a kind of cozy feeling for me, even though it rained on our last day there. The highlights of the trip included a visit to the Suzhou Museum and the Humble Administrator's Garden. Both are best shown through pictures, so you can look through my facebook album at your leisure.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002713&l=59b38&id=1181220088

Happy Thanksgiving!

The semester is coming to its inevitable end! Craziness! Like all semesters, time has picked up speed since the first few weeks. A lot has been going on, but unfortunately this blogging site never loads very well because of the slow internet. Because of this, I'm quite behind in things that I want to share. To make up for this, I will give a quick update of some of my recent activities.

Thanksgiving was just a while ago and rolled around without much of a fuss. It's kind of strange to go to class on days like Thanksgiving, but at the same time, no one was making a big deal about it. (Except the Americans, who had to complain a little bit about going to class.) I can feel the same thing happening with Christmas. Even though I'm sure the holiday season is in full swing in the States, including baking, music, lights, and of course shopping, there's nothing much happening here to hint that Christmas is approaching. It's not even very cold. It dipped below freezing a few nights ago, but otherwise we are having pretty mild weather. I don't expect to see Hangzhou covered in snow. They did have a very heavy snowfall last January, and I'm sure the city was gorgeous covered in snow. The city is very pretty now too. The crisp cool weather goes nicely with the changing colors of the leaves. When I look out our hallway windows, I can see a still very green hill in the background, with auburn red leaves right next to our building. Very pretty. I'll have to go down to West Lake soon to see how the leaves are changing there as well.

Assemble the dumplings!

Back to the topic of Thanksgiving. We celebrated Thanksgiving last Friday night by getting together with all the students on our program, our program director, and his son who did most of the great cooking. For dinner we ate some nicely prepared duck and lots of jiaozi or dumplings. We all worked for our dinner by helping to assemble the dumplings. Since we made lots of dumplings, we got to eat lots of dumplings! We also had some fruit, sugar cane, and chocolate to snack on. Even if it didn't feel like Thanksgiving, we had a very fun, cozy night together!

Our handiwork

上海 = Shanghai!

A few weeks ago our group took a weekend trip to Shanghai. It was a quick trip, but we got to see some really great sights. The nice thing is that Shanghai is just an hour and a half train ride away!

Here are some highlights from the trip!

Our first night in Shanghai, we went to a very nice restaurant and had dinner. It is very fun to have elaborate dinners like these, especially on Central's tab. :) Dinner included some delicious tuna sashimi and amazing scallops...I didn't even know I liked scallops!

Sashimi sculpture and scallop treasures

Our first night also included a walk to the Bund, an area along the river that runs through Shanghai. This area is close to the seaports that made Shanghai the entrance point for many Westerners in earlier years. Because of this, the Bund has mainly very European-looking buildings. It was a little strange to walk around and sometimes get the feeling that we were transported to Europe!

European architecture along the Bund

The Bund is also a great place to see the famous Shanghai skyline. They are constantly building in Shanghai and the skyline has some very tall buildings. One of the most recognizable is the Pearl Tower. The skyline also shows the tallest building in China, the Shanghai World Financial Center. This is one of the tallest in the world.

In front of the "Pearl"

Our trip also included an interesting tour around the Shanghai Modern Art Museum. The Museum was right on People's Square in an old brick building....covered in technicolor ants. The ants were actually an exhibit. The museum was pretty amusing to look through and there were a lot of multimedia exhibits. Most of the time I just had to smile and enjoy other people's enjoyment of the art because I had a hard time appreciating the art. The Chinese people in the museum really liked taking pictures in front of all the art, especially big dinosaur/people sculptures on one floor. Needless to say, the museum fulfilled my need for modern art for a few years.

Dinosaur sculptures with human heads
Some examples of life imitating art

They are very busy in Shanghai getting ready for the 2010 World Expo. We visited an Urban Planning Museum that showed all the elaborate buildings and setups they will have for 2010. One of my favorite buildings that they are planning is the China exhibition hall, which is basically an upside down pagoda. Another reason to come back to visit China!

All in all, we had a really great time in Shanghai. The weekend went quickly, but I felt like I got a good feel of the city. Shanghai was very different from Hangzhou and even Beijing. With all the Western-influence architecture, we always knew we were in a totally different city. Walking around at night, the city glows with colorful signs and lights in every direction. Also, we saw tons of foreigners in Shanghai, many tourists but also many who live and work in the city. Because of this, we got to eat some western foods that we wouldn't normally find in Hangzhou. (Chicken panini and root beer! yummm...)

If only...

The Chinese really like to spit. I remember walking around during my first week in China, and hearing a violent and alarming noise. It sounded like a small furry animal getting sucked into a vacuum and shot back out. It turned out it was just someone gathering some phlegm and spitting it out onto the sidewalk. It was my first time of many to hear that noise. Whenever we go out and walk around, we usually see many people releasing some phlegm-age. Each time I see them do this, I'm more and more convinced that I probably can't even spit like they do. Somehow it seems like they are cleansing themselves from deep within. They might even think that we're gross because we spend our lives swallowing our spit. I do know that if the Olympics would have had a Spitting event, we would have been dominated... the Chinese are phlegm champions.

More Dormitory Exploring

Here are some more features of my dorm room.



I have troubadours outside my room! This is Corey showing Kalah how his "guqin" works.




This is my awesome, tiny homework book. This is where I practice my characters and write sentences. Oh yeah, Mickey is hardcore.




This is my first assigned essay in my Chinese class. It is about introducing my lovely family! (If you are a Renes, you must learn Chinese to know what I have to say about you!)




The final feature in my Chinese dorm room. Here, I have a cell phone. I finally, somewhat reluctantly, entered the new millenium.... with the cheapest cell phone I could buy. I mostly use it as an alarm clock.

Thank you for joining me in this short tour of my dorm room in China!

Dormitory Exploring - Food and Drink

I decided to show some of the small details of my dorm room that show something about my time in China. There are a few things here in my room that you probably wouldn't find in my dorm room in the U.S. Let's take a look...



A Chinese staple, the water boiler. These are an essential here in China. You'll find them in hotels, we had them on our train, and I'm guessing there are in every home in the country. I can fill this up with boiling water at the end of the hallway. It keeps the water really hot for about a day. My boiler is pink and lovely.




My Chinese dorm room is stocked with tea! Right now I have some longjin green tea, which Hangzhou is famous for, and some perfumed tea. My tea cup has a filter that keeps me from chugging the tea leaves.




Cantaloupe gum! It's tasty.




Liquids are always good. Here in China I buy a lot of bottled water. Also, I like to get this orange juice. If you can tell from the label, it's the Minute Maid brand, but it's pretty different from U.S. orange juice because it's suuuper pulpy. But I do happen to like chewy juice. The middle bottle is a new discovery....apple flavor milk! It's actually more like a yogurt drink. I think it might be healthy because it has half of the word "nutritional" on it. Sometime it's hard to know.




Korean lunch to go! We have three Korean restaurants really close to our dorm and have been eating there more often lately. I like these sushi rolls that have ham, egg, and veggies. Also, it's not a Korean meal without some spicy kimchi.