Hello everyone! Once again, it's been a while. I've now been back in the US for just over a week (it feels like longer) and I really need to finish this last update before I forget all the details! So, in my last post, I left off right before my mother and I headed for Guilin. So we arrived early in the morning in Guilin and took a shuttle into town. After getting off the shuttle (which didn't drop us off at our hotel) we discovered that some of the taxi drivers in Guilin have a bit of a 'cabbie's union' [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone! It's been awhile! Sorry about that, but I haven't done a lot of interesting things in the last couple of weeks. The last couple of weeks have been dedicated to doing end the semester projects and tests. But here's a quick note to sum up my last 2 weeks. Some recent Shanghai highlights include bowling, go-karting, and another trip to QiPu Road for cheap clothes. Also, my friend Sophia from Hong Kong visited!! She studied at my school a year ago and I have not seen her since she left the US last summer. So, naturally, it was a [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone!! Sorry it's been so long! I've been quite busy since I got back from vacation a week and a half ago. Last week, our first week back from vacation, was fairly quiet but the looming threat of finals and papers has had everyone hear (and myself) scrambling to get things done. It's really crazy that I only have a week and a half of classes left. Where has the time gone? Yesterday my time spent in China hit the 3 month mark! I anticipated that time would pass by quickly here, but not this quickly! Last Friday, CIEE hosted [View Full Entry]

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Yunnan Province is located in Southwest China, about as far southwest as you can go before you hit Tibet, India, or Laos. Being bordered by so many different countries has led Yunnan to gain (rightly so) the reputation of being very diverse. Statistics vary, but from what I've been told/read, about 40-50% of Yunnan's population belongs to ethnic minorities. Within Yunnan Province, our group (6 people, including myself) went to Kunming, Dali, and Lijiang. Kunming, capitol of Yunnan, is known as the 'City of Eternal Spring' because of its year-round mild weather. Also, because China only h [View Full Entry]

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I know the title for this entry is a little...bizarre, but there really isn't any way to connect everything I'm about to talk about. I have a bit of a back-log of things I've done in the past two weeks, and need to get them published before my Spring Break (starts this Friday!). Some of you may have noticed that the pictures in my previous entry are missing...I know about it. Travelblog.org (as much as I love this website) has, for a second time, lost my photos. I'll admit, I'm feeling a bit lazy at the moment, but I'll upload them [View Full Entry]

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大家好！Hi everyone! It's been a while, or it feels like it anyway. I haven't had too much to write about lately. We had midterms this past week, so the past couple of weekends have been fairly quiet; traveling limited to Shanghai. Now that it's Spring, I've been able to play more volleyball than before. But pick-up volleyball games here are a little different than at Umass. With 33 million people in the city, and who-knows how many traveling through campus, games end up with a lot of random people. No introductions, or "nice to meet you"'s. Also, one part of the [View Full Entry]

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Sorry about the delay everyone! I know I said I'd have this second half of my trip typed up for you to enjoy a couple of days ago, but I lied. I had to play catch-up this week after missing classes Monday because of food poisoning. But, I'm better now, and it's the weekend here, so on with the show! After leaving Inner Mongolia Monday night (3/23), we arrived at 2 am in Xi'an Tuesday. We caught a few hours sleep in our nice hotel before restarting our day with sight-seeing. We first went to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, built [View Full Entry]

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It's been a long week of traveling! I've decided to split the week into more than one entry, because I have so much to tell, and 1,000 photos to sift through. This entry is about my trip to Inner Mongolia. We (the entire ACS CIEE group, ~20 people) left Shanghai on Friday morning for Hohhot, the capitol of Inner Mongolia; not to be confused with Outer Mongolia. Inner Mongolia is part of China, and most of the residents in Inner Mongolia are Han Chinese, not Mongolian. Though the street signs generally are bi-lingual, with Chinese and Mongolian. Hohhot is a nice [View Full Entry]

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"Why are you all dressed in green?", asked a curious Chinese student. "Is it Arbor Day?" A good guess-after all, trees are green. But no, it's St. Patrick's Day. How do you explain what St. Patrick's Day is to someone who doesn't understand? Well, this is the conversation I had several times throughout the day: "It's an Irish holiday." "So you're from Ireland?" "No, we celebrate it in America." "Oh. So what is the purpose of this holiday?" "To get drunk." "Oh. This is a holiday?" Yeah, the various groups of green got more stares than usual as they made their [View Full Entry]

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I had a fairly quiet weekend this time 'around. I've been dealing with a nasty cold, but thanks to my quiet weekend, it's getting better. Now, on with the story! On Friday, my friends and I took a trip to the Shanghai Planning Exhibition. Remember that picture of the blue gumby-like fellow? Well, he's the mascot. And the planning exhibition, well, it's the plans for the 'New Shanghai'...Part of Shanghai, anyway. The restoration/building process is only taking place in the heart of Shanghai, along the banks of the Huangpu river that runs through Shanghai and keeps the city thriving. Mos [View Full Entry]

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