Peanut goes to China

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 was the weekend of a lifetime filled with vans going at 120 mph, yurts, horses, camels, grasslands, deserts and lots of laughter. ... read more

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. In both Xidan and Wangfujing I definitely did not feel like I was in Beijing. Because this city is so large, every district/part of Beijing feels like a completely different place. Both of these two ... read more

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 University (also known as Thanh Hoa in Vietnamese) in badminton. I played in a singles match and a male/female doubles match. We had a great team cheering us on and giving us a bunch of "加油" ... read more

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 not taking the Chinese culture and society class, I was a bit unfamiliar with Lao She and his significance in Chinese history. Throughout the museum, my new Chinese friend 刘若请 explained to me some of ... read more

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 Chinese so she would translate Chinese into Korean. Then my other Korean friend would translate from Korean into English. Many times throughout the trip. you could literally see the chain of communication. It was such ... read more