The End

I'm leaving Beijing in about 10 minutes to catch my flight, so can't write much. Just wanted to say a few more words before leaving my study abroad experience in China.

Final verdict --- I'm glad I came. I learned a lot about China and Chinese culture, but also learned a good deal about myself. I am confident now that I can do well on my own and will be successful in anything I choose. Going abroad by yourself with basically nothing proved to be a very difficult experience, but I think I did well. And that shows me that I can be successful in anything I do.

As cheesy as that sounds, I believe it. I can't wait to get back and see how things have changed, hopefully not too much. I can take the best of me before the trip and combine it with the new me and hopefully can be an even better person.

Good bye Beijing. Thanks for all the memories and great times. I'll carry with me what happened this semester for the rest of my life and have no regrets on my decision to come here. Can't wait to come back with friends or family and show them where I spent a semester in college.

Seems like a really long road, but I made it.

I'm done.

Confused

Less than a week to go left in Beijing and I've made my decision about the Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou trip. It's a no go.

At this point I think I've done the traveling I've wanted to do. I've seen a bit of Shanghai, enough to tell me that I'm not dying to see the rest at this point. It's always good to save a city or two for your next trip back right? Whenever that may be...

I'm dedicating this week to writing my papers and seeing the few things left to see in Beijing. I hope to go over to the Yashow market tomorrow in hopes of doing some serious shopping. I'm talking suits, shirts, pants, not to mention buying gifts for all those near and dear to my heart. Yes, Moti, even you will get a nice little present from Beijing. I wonder if they make Chairman Mao chew toys?

Other than shopping I hope to go to this restaurant in Chaoyang that supposedly serves up the best dumplings in all of China. I wouldn't mind tasting the donkey dumplings with vegetables. Might as well enjoy that sort of thing while I can right?

As it's finally setting in that I'm leaving very soon, I find myself getting sad about that very fact --- leaving. Ask me one month ago and I couldn't wait to go home and be with my friends back in good old Oxford leaving behind all the antics that China throws your way. But now I'm realizing that I'm going to miss all those antics. There has to be some psychological term for this, maybe something along the lines like withdrawal syndrome?

Nevertheless, to my surprise I am getting sad about leaving this place. Although I don't really consider it home, it does, excuse the cliche, hold a special place in my heart. There's just something about this city that I haven't been able to put into words that makes me feel good and comfortable. Things just seem easier and carefree over here.

Hopefully I'll be able to figure out how to describe this feelings before I leave because who knows if I'll ever feel it again. You only study abroad once in your life, and although this may not have been my ideal city it was definitely an experience. I'm glad I came to Beijing, China and spent a semester abroad.

Beijing, wo ai ni.

South of the Border

Back from my first week of travels and I'm exahusted. I changed around my dates a little and went to Xi'an last Wendesday to Friday. I then left for Hong Kong Friday afternoon and then was in Shanghai for a night and onto Hong Kong for the following few days. Here's the run-down:

Xi'an --- A great place to visit for a day, but wouldn't spend much more time there. I took the night train which left from Beijing on Wendesday night and arrived in Xi'an the next morning at 8am. From there I basically saw all the sights I could see in 12 hours and was back on a train to Beijing.

The first site I saw in Xi'an were the Terracotta warriors. They are actually about 1 hour outside of Xi'an so I was able to get a quick nap in. Actually being there, only 20ft. from the terracotta army was a breathtaking experience. This is one site that pictures CANNOT do justice to. Pit one, which was the main pit, is enourmous. Seeing this was well worth the two nights of no sleep on the train.

After I was done admiring the terracotta warriors I made my way back to Xi'an to see a few more sites. Not to my suprise once I got back into the city it was very difficult for me to get a taxi. For some reason, and the same goes for Beijing, 75% of the cabs won't even stop for me. They'll just peer over, wave their hand in the air and shake their head NO. Then they'll go 50 feet ahead and pick up a Chinese person!

But I guess that's part of the charm. What's really funny is how I was being pestered by a man wanting to take me on his scooter. Since I know better than to get on a complete stranger's scooter, I brushed him off telling him I didn't want to ride that thing. 20 minutes go by and a cab finally stops. I told him where I was going and he looked at the man standing next to me. They exchanged a few words in extremely fast Mandarin and then the man quoted an absurdly high price. One thing I've learned about cabby's in China is that they are very territorial. If one cabby see's another cabby talking to a customer or at least trying to get them to become a customer, they'll back off real fast or even go to the extent to help them by telling the customer an extremely ridiculous price (as in my case).


So looks like I didn't know any better and next thing I know I have the wind flying through my hair on the back of some guys scooter. He was a nice guy, although he failed to obey almost every traffic law - going through red lights (after they've been red for minutes), going the wrong way down one-way streets, and to top it all off driving on the sidewalk. But I made it there in one piece, so looking back I can't really say I didn't have a little fun.

I did my thing in the main area of Xi'an. Visit to the Drum Tower, Bell Tower, and Muslim street. The Muslim area was great. For dinner I had some yang rou po -- tender lamb with bread crumbs in a soupy broth, the specialty of that area. Delicious. I went back to the train station, on another scooter =), and made my way back to Beijing.

I was at home for a mere 3 hours, enough to take a shower, check my email and get a very starteling phone call from my family. I had hardly slept in the past two nights so when I finally managed to get a quick nap in I get a very loving phone call from all of my family celebrating Thanksgiving dinner. It was nice, but made me a little homesick as for the first time I was the one person that was missing, rather than one of my older sisters who no longer live in Toledo.

I held the tears back though and made my way to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is an amazing city. Period. It is probably one of my favorite cities that I've been to anywhere in the world. It's doesn't really represent Chinese culture (not that it should, since its technically not part of China) but I loved it anyways.

Great weather, great food, friendly people, and interesting places to go. What more could you ask for in a city? A lot of funny/interesting stories to tell you about Hong Kong, but at this point don't have the time or energy to blog about them. Hopefully during a later post...

I'm having second thoughts about going for another full week of traveling, as I've already spent a day in Shanghai. We'll see what the train prices look like and make my decision in the next day or so. At this point I don't know if I have the strength or time, since I haven't really started my papers yet, to travel for another week.

As always though, I will keep you posted.

Home Strech

I had my one and only exam two days ago for my management class and lets just say I did what I needed too. I didn't put too much effort into studying simply because I needed to get a 12% on the exam to pass. Since my grades don't transfer back to Miami for once I was delighted to just do the bare minimum. So that's that.

I have 3 papers to write for my other classes in lieu of a final. A 10 pager, a 5 pager, and a 2 pager, pretty manageable. I am trying to get those done in the next few days because after that my travel schedule takes off.

Less than one month to go in China and literally only a handful of days actually left in Beijing. Here's a tentative schedule of what the next month looks like for me.

Nov. 23 - 25 --- Xi'an
Nov. 26 - Dec. 1 --- Hong Kong
Dec. 3 - 7 --- Shanghai
Dec. 7 - 8 --- Suzhou
Dec. 8 - 9 --- Hangzhou
Dec. 11 --- Tianjin
Dec. 15 - 18 --- Bangalore
Dec. 18 - 25 --- Udupi
Dec. 25 - 28 --- Dubai
Dec. 28 --- Back to Beijing
Dec. 29 --- Toledo

It's going to be one busy month, but I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Some of these places I will travel to on my own and some with my roommate Drew. At first I was scared to travel by myself, but I've gotten a decent grasp of basic traveling Mandarin so I'm not too worried. I think that traveling by myself a little bit will be nice.

Obviously I'm excited for each and every city, but can't wait for a special few that I know will be a great time. Bangalore -- visiting my good friend Kalit from college. I haven't seen him in about a year, so it'll be nice to meet up and catch up with an old friend. Udupi -- two of my cousins' weddings, definitely a good time! Dubai -- a long anticipated trip to my roommates hometown. Bhavik and I are going to tear up the streets (and sands) of Dubai. Cannot wait for those cities.

Eleven cities in one month. Needless to say the minute I step inside my house in Toledo I'm going to hit the bed, Moti in arms. This very well may be the most hectic and stressful (traveling is always stressful to some extent) month of my life, but I can't wait to go out and see the world.

Here's to a lot of frequent flyer miles.

I know, I know, it's been almost a month since my last post, but I knew this blogging business would be hard to keep up. I'll give you a little update about life in Beijing since my last post.

The great wall was nothing less than amazing. I'm pretty sure I've put pictures up of the trip but if not, will do soon! It was something I've always wanted to do and it was really great to finally see the legendary great wall of China. It was a fun trip with two of my good friends from Germany, who I got to know really well and have really made a strong friendship with them since.

I feel like I've assimilated into Beijing life, moving through daily life as if there was never anything before. Things seem so routine now and the things I encounter don't really annoy me as they did when I last wrote. I've gotten it into my head as - that's just the way things are. It's almost like a second home.

I've re-booked my ticket home to the US for December 29th. I've also booked a trip to India (Bangalore and Udupi) for mid-December and also Dubai for 3 days in late-December. I'm really excited to go back to India and visit a good friend from college and go to my cousins weddings in Udupi. Dubai, what can I say about Dubai, of course I'm excited to go stay with my roommate in his home town and live it up!

As for Beijing, I finally feel like my time is coming to an end. Although I still have one solid month here, I feel as though I'm on my way out. One of my classes has already ended, I have a final exam next week for another, and yet another ends in 2 weeks. After my exam next week I will have 5 day weekends. Yes that's right Deepa, I will have more days off than I know what to do with but don't worry, I am appreciating it and know I'm very spoiled.

As for all those free days, I think I'm going to plan a trip to Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou, and a separate trip to Hong Kong and maybe Macau. I also want to make it out to Xi'an to visit Mr. Terra Cotta Warrior, and I'm sure I'll have no trouble fitting that two day trip in somewhere amongst the free days.

As my time grows clower to an end I want to start writing some reflections pieces on my time here in Beijing. What I've noticed is that I really miss being home. I miss being in Oxford, around everything that is so familiar to me. I wouldn't change this experience for the world because I've learned a lot about myself, but I can't say its easy to maintain friendships and relationships while abroad. Was it all worth it?

Who knows?

So here's to a strong last month of blogging. I hope I can at least manage to squeeze one post out a week, I don't think that's too much to ask, although I am a very busy man over here. =P

Beijing oh Beijing

I hate to say it, but the longer I'm in Beijing the less I like it. I like it most of the time, but there are certain days when I just can't take it. I'm not sure if this is a don't like all of China thing, or just don't like Beijing. I'll have to wait and see when I visit Shanghai. But it's different living somewhere and going there for the weekend, you know?

Something that goes along the lines of getting really frustrated with this city is getting frustrated with Beida. Now again, I'm not sure if this can apply to all schools in China or just mine, but it seems that they are terribly unorginized and incapable of fixing a simple situation.

For example, on the course sign up sheet they had listed a course titled "International Financial Mangagment" which I planned to take. I go to the first class only to find out that the class doesn't start for another 2 weeks. Ok, they made a simple mistake on the course sheet, no worries. Go back 2 weeks later and there is still no class. I go to the business school office only to find out that the whole course is now cancelled.

This was the week I got up at 6am to take a flight back from Sichuan province in order to make it home in time for this class. A simple email saying, "the course you have signed up for is now cancelled due to xyz. Sorry for the inconvience." But no, I was just supposed to magically sense that the class was cancelled.

This put me in the bad position of being one class short and already being in the fourth week of the semester. I had to sign up for another class and catch up on 3 missed classes worth of material. But for some reason it wasn't bad at all to make that up...

On another point about the school, it is suprisingly easy. Beida is consistantly either the #1 or #2 school in China, year after year, yet it seems to be easy. Is this just because of the classes I'm taking? Who knows.

I got back a group paper which I thought was a pretty sub par paper, for my Operations Mangagment class today, and got a 96% -- highest grade in the class. My group didn't work that hard and wasn't really close to any of the right answers that the teacher had gone over after we turned in the assignment. In the comments she wrote that our paper was very well written and we had good use of language. This may be because Drew and I did most of the paper seeing how our European groupmates weren't confident in their grammar skills.

It's just interesting to me because I work really hard at Miami to get good grades, but over here is seems like I haven't really had to even open a book yet. I mean I'm not really complaining, but I am at the same time. I wish I was learning over here, because this is my one time to learn about China in China.

I guess this just allows me to not have to worry about schoolwork on the weekends which will allow me to travel more. I'm sure next month I'll have more stories of how annoying this city and my school can be at times. Everybody needs to vent sometimes.


At least I'm going to the Great Wall tomorrow. I'm going to the most challenging/dangerous part of the wall called Simatai. I'm going with 4 Germans in my program, should be an interesting day.


TIC.

National Day Holiday Trip

I've been back from my week long trip for a few days now and haven't really been motivated to write down my feelings about it. I had a great time on the trip and it was everything I expected, its just that I've actually been busy around the house and in Beijing the last few days and haven't had time to write about my trip.

First I was off to Chongqing. I had heard about Chongqing from two friends from Miami that have been there for a few months and are studying there for the next year, but never really knew what all the hype was about. Now I do. Chongqing maybe the fastest growing city in China right now and after seeing the hundreds and hundreds of cranes, I believe it. As my friend Andrew put it, China's new national bird is now the crane.

After a few days in Chongqing, I headed to Chengdu. Unfortunately I didn't get to see any of the earthquake damage sites but in a way I'm glad I didn't. Chengdu was filled with culture streets and pandas. The pandas were cute, but not all that exciting. Just sat around and ate, or just sat.

Next was Leshan. This is where it starts to get interesting. At this point I've left my friends from Miami behind in Chengdu and it's just me and my roommates. I like to think that I planned this part of the trip because I figured out all the logistics for the rest of the trip, and to my surprise there was not one glitch.

Leshan was a smaller city, parts of which reminded me of Udupi. It had that small town feel, but actually had a few tall buildings. The main attraction in Leshan was Dafo, or Giant Buddha. It was something that I really wanted to see while in China as I've seen it on TV multiple times (thanks Zimmerman --- not). It was a breathtaking sight to see how big the Buddha actually was in person.

After only a few hours in Leshan we hopped on another bus to Emeishan. Emeishan or in English, Mt. Emei, is one of four sacred Buddhist mountains in China. We we're checked into our hotel in Emeishan when we decided to go check out a local monastery called Baoguo Si. Walking around Baoguo Si I was really amazed at the planning put into this specific monastery.

While in awe I was approached by a Chinese man named Patrick. Patrick told us that he was a tour guide in the Sichuan region and was basically a VIP at the monastery. He told us that we could stay at the monastery if we wanted that in one of the guest rooms for only 30 RMB ($4.40). We had already paid our hotel for the night, but called them up and told them that we were going back to Chengdu that night and got out of the hotel. We ran back to the hotel, picked up our stuff and stayed at the monastery that night.

Staying at the monastery wasn't life changing or anything, but it was definitely a cool experience. We got to eat dinner that night and breakfast at 6:30 in the morning with the monks. It was really peaceful in the morning, feeling like it was just us and the monks.

So we had a full day of climbing, around 9 miles total. In fact, we only had time to climb up half way because to climb to the top you need a full 12 hours. We had to catch a bus back to Chengdu that evening, so could only do half. Nevertheless it was a fun hike. Went to monkey mountain (check out the video of that monkey intimidating me!) which was a lot of fun, at some a great lunch on the side of the mountain, and just had a good time hiking the mountain and breathing the fresh air that seems to be in short supply in the bigger cities.

I went back to Chengdu that night and back to Beijing the following morning. All-in-all a great trip to Sichuan province. Oh, and forgot to give you the scoop on the food. Excellent! The hot pot was particularly good (boiling meats and vegetables in a vat of oil, water, and spices). We got the lowest amount of spice in our vat that night and it was still hotter than anything I've had. I can't even imagine the spicy stuff!

Back to Beijing, back to school. The schoolwork is starting to pick up although I really don't see it getting overwhelming anytime this semester. This school may have a great reputation as the best school in China, but there are many things that make it seem like it's not. More about this during a later post though.

Now that I've made it to Sichuan, just have to go to a few other cities before I go home. Speaking of home, I'm coming home early, although the exact date is TBD. I've found out that my exams will end by Christmas, so maybe come home then, maybe go to Hong Kong, maybe go to India? Not quite sure yet, but I will be home for New Years.

Gan Bei.