This past weekend was Duan Wu (Dragon Boat Festival) in China. As a national holiday, we got a four day weekend off from school. For this holiday, I went to Inner Mongolia as part of a CPITS (China Palance International Travel Service) tour. I am usually not a fan of tours, but this I had a really good time over the weekend. I decided to be adventurous and join a tour to meet some new people. A new friend, Johanna whom I had just met days earlier organized students from Tsinghua to go, so I decided to jump on board. It [View Full Entry]

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The Syracuse University Abroad program went on our last group trip together to Chengde. [View Full Entry]

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What do you do when you are itching to get out of the dorm rooms? Explore Beijing of course! Besides the travel seminar and some trips here and there, I have not really taken the time to explore Beijing. So these past few days, I went to those places where I always said "someday I'll go there...." On Friday, I went to Xidan and Wangfujing with my Thai friend, Ake. We know each other through Chinese class and have become really great close friends. We wanted to do a little bit of shopping and I had never been to Wangfujing before. [View Full Entry]

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My trip to Chengdu this long weekend was absolutely amazing. I had the opportunity to explore in the city and meet lots of new people. This trip was particularly special because I was able to meet my friend, Feifei's parents in Chengdu. Feifei and I both go to Macalester College and we became good friends through being co-workers at the International Student Program office at Mac. With this special connection, my friends and I had one of the most unique and rewarding experiences. We learned about Chinese hospitality, culture and about the city of Chengdu/Sichuan province from her parents and a [View Full Entry]

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Today, I got the opportunity to participate in a Vietnamese student sport competition in Beijing. It was unbelievable! I definitely did not know what to expect when the day started, but it was more than I ever imagined. The competition was held at the Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU). At the event, there were so many Vietnamese students from all sorts of schools in Beijing. I could not believe that I was in Beijing surrounded by hundreds of Vietnamese students. Each school had their own sign which they proudly carried. In the sport competition, I got to represent Tsinghua Univ [View Full Entry]

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On this particular Sunday, Suzie and I set out bright and early to Tian'nanmen Square in search of tea and cookies. We had one destination in mind and a subway card and map to help us navigate the transportation system. During the travel seminar, we had visited Tian'anmen Square, but my memories of the first trip was all cloudy skies and rain, rain, rain. From what I heard, the Chinese government has somehow made it rain on that day to address the drought problem---it hadn't rained since November. This time around the weather was just absolutely perfect. It was great to [View Full Entry]

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On this Saturday, the environmental studies class and the Chinese culture and society took a field trip to multiple places around Beijing. Though, I am not taking either of these classes I decided the trip was a good opportunity to get off campus and further explore the city. We visited three locations in particular and stopped at a very nice restaurant for lunch. The first location was Lao She's Museum. Our visit was very short---I think I spent about ten minutes in the courtyard chatting with a new Chinese friend from Tsinghua and then we were off again. Because I'm am [View Full Entry]

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After a long week of classes, my friends and I on the Syracuse program organized a KTV outing with our fellow Chinese classmates and friends. To say that ithat t was fun is an understatment. We sang our hearts out in Chinese, English and even in Japanese and Korean! It was a great time to bond with our Chinese friends and make efforts to bridge the connection between American students and Chinese students. The night was in part to celebrate one of my Syracuse friends (Chris) 21st birthday! We all had fun singing "Happy Birthday" in Chinese and English. :) Enjoy [View Full Entry]

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After Chinese class, my friends and I decided to go on an adventure to the Summer Palace. The weather was absolutely gorgeous with very sunny and blue skies. The trip was quite a learning experience as we all had to communicate in so many different languages. It was very international group as there were people who spoke Korean, Thai, Filipino (Tagalog), English, Japanese, and course our common language of Chinese. Since for the most part we were all in the same level Chinese class, it was definitely a challenge having to communicate. One of the Korean girls understood a lot of [View Full Entry]

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Today was the official day of International Women's Day and I had a Chinese friend (Guo Dong) invite me out to dinner in the area around our university. I also asked a friend (Derek) from the Syracuse program to join us for dinner and it turned out to be a really fun evening! We went out to eat at Korean Restaurant. The area by my school is called "Wudaokou" 五道 and is generally know for two things: the large population of international students and its large Korean restaurants, shops and businesses. Needless to say the food at the restaurant was very [View Full Entry]

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