And now, Qingdao

Returning to Beijing after Inner Mongolia, I took a couple days' rest and hit the road again.  Well, the high-speed train tracks to be more precise.  I have never in my life taken Amtrak after my 21 years of existence being born and raised in the states, but have probably spent more hours on Chinese trains this summer than I would have liked to.  

My travel itinerary for the next couple weeks.

 After about seven hours, I made it to my hostel in Qingdao and began to explore the surrounding area.  The next day, Joseph joined me from Korea and we went from tourist attraction to tourist attraction via bus and foot using my handy Baidu maps and Baidu travel apps.  The days were tiring but full as there was really a lot to see!  Qingdao is a coastal city in Shandong province which was once colonized by the Germans, so it is well known for beaches, German architecture, and, of course, Tsingtao beer.

Walked along the pier near our hostel.

Recognized the Tsingtao logo.

Hi Joseph.

Toured around the naval museum.

The famous Chinese poet Lu Xun has a beautiful park here in Qingdao.  And yes, that is me on the rock.

Qingdao was named after Qingdao Island which is off the coast of Qingdao.  Qingdao Island is an island shaped like a violin.  Here we're facing the neck of the violin and catching a beautiful, albeit foggy, view of the city.

May 4 Memorial

Day 2: We hiked up a hill in Signal Hill Park and got this view of the city.

Of the German-looking buildings, many of the nicest ones are churches.  This is the charming protestant church at the foot of Signal Hill Park.

Within the church.

The former German governor's mansion.

Tsingtao beer factory!!

Tsingtao everywhere.

Beer street at night.  In August, there is an annual beer festival here with beer from all over the world.  It seemed crowded enough on a normal night.

And that was all in less than two days!  More to come on Qingdao.

Like I said, the blog is not dead!

I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.  --F. Scott Fitzgerald 

Contrary to the recent blog inactivity, I'm now a few weeks off of the most intense traveling I've ever done in my life!  In light of the Google Reader shutdown while I was gone, I'd be surprised to find out I have any followers left.  Regardless, coming home and telling friends about my travel stories has inspired me to continue documenting my travels for the blogosphere anyways.  If anything, it will be a sort of virtual journal for me to remember this summer.  Besides, now is prime time to write things down before these memories become too vague!  That would just be tragic.

Ok, so I think I left off at the very beginning of summer when I was in Inner Mongolia.  It was probably one of the more unique places I went to in China given that we spent less than half of it in a big city.  A few UC friends and I hopped on a little tour bus with another family and our beloved tour guide, Li Dao, and endured long bus rides between Datong, the Xilamuren grasslands, the capital city of Hohhot, and the Gobi desert.  Half the trip was spent trying to entertain ourselves through those long road-tripping hours.  Besides making a significant amount of progress on my trainchinese app, I think I gained some abdominal muscles from laughing at animal sounds we started making to embarrass the driver.  But ok, enough about the bus ride and onto horseback!

So refreshing to leave Beijing and see some blue skies!  We stayed in these touristy eurts while in the grasslands.  Much too nice to be authentic, but they do go well with the clouds in the background, no?

Mongolians wrestling tourists and throwing them into the sand for our viewing pleasure and..well..I guess their pleasure as well.

Passed by this Monglian Aobao while horseback riding.  They told us it's used for romantic love.  I guess they weren't lying if this is true.

I really wanted to touch this cow but was too scared.

Woke up at 4am for sunrise in the grasslands and it was worth every minute!  My little iPhone camera does not do it justice.

A few days and many kilometers of bus traveling later, we find ourselves hanging out with these lovely desert creatures!

I just really liked taking pictures of them.

Yup.  Inner Mongolia was pretty awesome.

Besides camel-riding in the desert, we also went sand-sliding and got way too much sand blown up our nasal cavities.  It was worth it, though.  The feeling of sitting on a spiny-backed camel, looking around, and feeling like you're in a scene of "The Prince of Egypt" running from Pharoah was surreal to say the least.  I wish I could have blogged earlier about this trip so as to remember more details.  In the meantime, I'll hold onto hope that someday I can go back.

The beginnings of my summer!

Just took a trip to Datong in Shanxi province and to Inner Mongolia.  Here are a few photo highlights.  I promise, more to come soon!  Also, I realized a better way to keep track of where I'm going and what I'm up to is through my Instagram.  (Mostly because I'm such an inconsistent blogger.)  More pictures at instagram.com/chankrista

我的留学生活

So maybe some of my sentence structure and word usage are a little awkward, but at least I can confidently say I couldn't have done this 4 months ago. Here's my last written assignment for my Chinese class. Its title roughly translates to "My Study Abroad Life". Feel free to fix my Chinese if you know how to do so! Otherwise, a copy and paste onto Google Translate will give you some funny sounding English which offers a rough interpretation of what I meant to say.

以往的我从高中开始，就憧憬将来的留学生活了。 当时，出国留学的机会还遥遥无期，我并不能想到会有今天的我能在北京过的日子，甚至二月刚到北京的时候，我也预料不到今天的我会对留学生活有那么美好的印象。

刚到北京时，我的目的只是提高汉语水平，多理解中国文化。我还记得到北京的第一个星期，因为还没开学我就趁机几乎每天都出去体验一下附近的旅游景点。长城，天安门，颐和园，牛街，前门诸如此类。因为我跟着许多新朋友一起去欣赏这些对我们很新颖的地方，所以每天都兴致勃勃，沉浸其中，玩得非常来劲。

陶醉在这种刚出国的兴奋中，我都把快要开始上课学习的实事忘到九霄云外了。开学时，每天积极出去玩的习惯要随之而放缓了。我还记得在北大上的第一节课，用中文给一位来自欧洲的女同学介绍自己。到那一刹那我才真正地察觉到自己要面对一个全新的语言环境。虽然我习惯下意识用英语讲话，在这个学期刚开始的几个星期，我每天都必须刻意地动脑筋想起适合的中文词来表达自己的意思，偶尔会感到心烦意乱，可是只好坚持下去。

因为如此，我更得到启示去提高我的汉语水平。除了上汉语课以外，我也有参加一些课外活动让自己有更多的机会用中文跟其他人交流，比如游泳队，国际部社团，当志愿者教英语等等。有闲暇时，我也会克服我比较内向的性格去约一些中国朋友一起出去玩或者吃饭聊天。我还有落实若干其它的学语言方法。我的手机从英文变成了中文模式，本来常常上脸书，可是在中国开始多用人人与微信，上出租车为了跟司机聊天会刻意地想谈资，本来用英文写日记也换成中文了。这样过了几个月，我感觉到自己的汉语水平渐渐开始有所进步了，多半是因为我的努力有了回报。就算我的中文还剩下许多要学，我现在的交流能力比起二月的也有大大的提高了。

在中国学语言的过程中，我不单得到更多语言知识，而且也认识了很多新朋友，也积累了许多愉快的回忆。在五一节放假时我去了东南亚旅游，和几个朋友做每天行动的计划让我们的关系变得颇为密切。还有一次，我报了铁人三项的比赛，快到终点时有其他北大的运动员呐喊为我打气，最后我排到第三名，获得一本珍贵的证书与宝贵的回忆。我也很珍惜每天上课，在食堂吃饭，去泊星地咖啡厅和朋友一边学习一边聊天的快乐时光。回国以后，我一定会很经常地追思这些留学生活的日子。

Remembering how to roller blade in order to take advantage of the great deal on shoe rentals.

Scalped for tickets and saw the Backstreet Boys!

Followed shortly by a performance from 风雷,PKU's street dance group.

Representing PKU at a city-wide triathlon.

Day-trip to nearby city 天津 Tianjin.

Night view of Tianjin

Hipsters exist in China.  So does hipster Chinese music.

Saw with mine own eyes and heard with mine own ears from Madeleine Albright!

This will likely be my last post before this semester ends, and I'm genuinely sad to see such a good thing come to an end.  As much as I wish it could go on longer, looking back at pictures from the past months fills me with a real sense of satisfaction and, dare I say, joy at having tried something new and found the experience to be worthwhile.  But I guess for some reason I just haven't gotten enough yet because I'm staying in China until early August!  Which, hopefully, means this blog is not yet dead.  More to come. :)

Back from Hong Kong

There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.  --Ecclesiastes 3:1

Seeing as I've been in China for three months now in a large city like Beijing, I think I've hit a sweet spot where I've gotten into enough of a routine to feel like I'm living a normal student life but at the same time I can take a break and go to a new spot to revisit the novelty of seeing this place through a tourist's eyes.  A typical week here can consist of long study hours in cafes and daily runs on the treadmill alongside birthday celebrations, day trips to the Summer Palace, and a flight to Hong Kong.  

The long corridor of tourists in the Summer Palace.

The view at Summer Palace.

Trying to learn to play Three Kingdoms 三国杀and mostly just feeling confused.

 I was in Hong Kong for the past week mainly to attend a cousin's wedding, but there are probably a million other things I appreciate about going back to the place where I spent my childhood summers.  To name a few:

A respite from the Great Firewall of the mainland.

Blue skies and cleaner, albeit extremely humid, air!

Cute old people.

Eating home cooked meals every day with cute old people.

Witnessing family traditions.

Seeing the passage of generations and thinking about how time really does change things.

Cute young people.

Seeing everyone dressed up for a day of 10238123+ photos.

饮茶yumcha all day erryday

Reminiscing the past.  (old photo of my parents' wedding in HK)

Coming back to Beijing with a fully stocked snack pile.

With this wedding and hearing about friends in the states graduating as I begin the last month of my semester here, I start to think a lot about what it means to make the most of what we have in the present.  One more month...:(  It's gonna be hard to say goodbye.