China

Nihao!!

So China is over already! How did that happen?? About ¼ of my trip is done now…I can hardly believe it! So here’s the deal…believe it or not, I just don’t have the time to write out a two hour blog post about my trip to China. I’m going to give a brief summary, sorry if it’s boring. Just think that whenever you see me, all the stories are written down (in my personal journal), so perhaps I can tell you the exciting stuff when we are together in 3D. I have no time because the classes are so far from fake it is not even funny. They expect us to do an INREDIBLE amount of work, mostly reading, while visiting these countries. If they’re acknowledging that we have no weekends and that countries are fun but not a break and NOT a chance to study, they have a very funny way of showing it. We generally have only two days in between ports, in which everybody pretty much sleeps through class because they’re so exhausted, tries to recover from any illnesses or injuries incurred in port, upload and sharing pictures, updating blogs, writing journals, hearing all their friends’ stories, and….oh yeah, doing class work and constantly going to meetings, most of which are mandatory or just necessary. It’s ridiculous.

Anyway…China! The first day in Qingdao, my sister Erica met up with me! It was really fun – despite the fact that I despised Qingdao. It was rainy and gross, the people were rude and none of the spoke English (people told me that lots of people in China spoke English), I felt like I was constantly either being ripped off or trying to be ripped off, and it was just bad. But once I met up with Erica, we wandered around, she bargained for some necklaces for me, we strolled the coast line, went to some small parks, ate noodles for dinner and had imported black tea with some Chinese man (he strained it right in front of us)! So seeing her was very fun, but I was sooo ready to wake up the next morning and go to Beijing!

In Beijing, we basically just did all of the touristy stuff: we shopped/bargained/got harassed at the famous Silk Street fake name brand market, had a Peking Duck gourmet Chinese welcome banquet dinner (yes I tried it! So proud of myself! Would never order it though…), and headed back to the hotel. The next day we climbed the Great Wall and many of us took a toboggan type sled all the way down! It was a lot of fun and cameras were going off like crazy. We had a photo op of the AMAZING Olympic venues being built for 2008!!! So cool! The next day was jam packed with things: we did Tiananmen Square, saw Mao’s Memorial Hall and his dead embalmed body, saw the Forbidden City and the Imperial Palace, as well as the Temple of Heaven and another bargaining market. That night we met up with Chinese university students, from the University of International Business and Economics. Although most of them had never been to a bar before, they rented one out just for our large group (of about 120 people in total) (what does that say about American culture?) My girl, Fubeili was really nice! Two of the boys from UW and I went outside with our students and had a really great conversation with them, so that was a fun cultural exchange. After the little gathering, a group of us just hung out in a café in the warm night air. Beijing is so dirty that it turned the inside of my nose black! I wish I could go back and see it next year to see how much they can do to get ready for the Olympics…they have quite a bit of work to do but they’re going at it full speed and doing their best. The last day we went to the UIBE and walked around for a little bit. They have goats on their campus. Weird. It was a Sunday but many students were in classrooms, unsupervised and studying. We then went to a Lama temple that was really pretty before heading off to the Summer Palace…where I kind of want to now live…it was GORGEOUS!!!!!

Our plane from Beijing to Hong Kong got us back to the ship right before 2 AM…so I got very little sleep before waking up and going on my trip to Lantau Island and visiting the longest beach in southern HK (don’t get too excited, it was 80 degrees and pouring rain), a super adorable fishing town with a fun place called the Tai O Market Street (don’t worry I have tons of pictures!!!), and then we went to the largest bronze outdoor Buddha in the world. It was enormous!! After hanging out with Buddha, we went to a monastery and ate a traditional vegetarian meal – which included some amazing spring rolls and some very delicious vegetables. Upon arriving back in the main part of Hong Kong, all I had time to do was make it to the post office and buy stamps and mail off postcards before going to back towards the ship. The ship was docked at the largest mall in Hong Kong…so I spent a chunk of time calling Jon and my parents (in the middle of the night for all of them, of course), and then went out to dinner. The mall just happened to have a Roots store – my favorite store ever, which I have never seen outside of Canada. And Roots just happened to be having a 50% off sale on tons of stuff including yoga clothes. So I got this super cute yoga shirt that I love for about US$12!!!!! I’m very excited about that.

Anyhow, I wish I had more time to tell you about my reactions to China and the stark contrasts between China and Japan that are so obvious to me now…but this morning we are floating down the Mekong River towards our port in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, and yesterday I got up at 4 AM and did pretty much nothing but school work and going to meetings, and then I of course went to bed late doing all that stuff, and now I’m up early again to watch the sunrise and see the differences between floating in the middle of the ocean and floating down a river….pretty exciting! So from here I go to Vietnam with a side trip to Cambodia, I am so excited!!! So I’ll write again in about another week!

Love,
Hilary