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.