ceisenberg

Health update: I got my stitches out Wednesday morning and I'm feeling a lot better. Walking distances and standing for a long time is still painful and I don't have a lot of energy, but I'm on the road to recovery. Today I went to the doctor (hopefully for the last time!) and he said I can take off my bandages on Saturday or Sunday. I even looked at my scar which was gross, but the doctor said it looked fine so hopefully it will get less gross as it heals. I'm going to be super OCD with putting vitamin E on it as soon as I get back to the US. Other than that, this past week has been my last with most of my American classmates (同学们). We spent the week doing all of ... read more

Many of you have probably heard about my latest adventure--appendicitis in China. I will preface this entry by saying that I'm fine and on the road to recovery (appendix-less) so don't worry about me! Last Tuesday after class, my stomach started hurting really badly. My first thought was food poisoning, but soon I realized it was definitely not that. My lovely roommate Audrey accompanied me to Global Doctor, a western/American clinic near campus. The doctor there felt my stomach, tested my blood, and did an ultrasound. However, they couldn't tell anything from those tests other than that my white blood cell count was really high which usually means infection. Just to be safe, the doctor decided I should go to the hospital to get a CT scan. A Chinese nurse who spoke English, Maggie, came with ... read more

Thanksgiving in China was...interesting. There were a few Thanksgiving dinner options at different expat places around town, but they were all expensive and my friends and I knew they wouldn't be as good as the Thanksgiving dinners we would have had at home. So we decided to do the most ridiculous thing possible--we went to Hooters! We had class from 4-6pm on Thanksgiving, so we went for lunch instead of dinner. It was hilarious, and they had real Heinz ketchup so I approved. After class, we did do the Thanksgiving tradition of watching a movie, and then we went to Mooney's (an expat bar) to celebrate the rest of Thanksgiving. Audrey and I ended the evening at KFC. I suppose chicken and french fries is kind of similar to turkey and mashed potatoes? Not really, but ... read more

(Sorry I'm behind on blogs--tons of schoolwork this week. I'll write about my trip to Emei Shan soon I promise!) I got to see Harry Potter 7 at least 13 hours before everyone in America, which was cool! It was also really nice because in China, you get reserved seats for movies, so for the midnight showing we only got there about 15 minutes before the movie started. If we had been in America, we probably would have had to be there hours early! There were tons of foreigners there, so it was hard to tell how the Chinese people reacted to it, but it seemed like everyone there really liked it. The Chinese people next to me were talking and texting through the whole thing, but that is completely normal in Chinese movie theaters. This ... read more

On Sunday, we checked out of our hostel and went to catch our train back to Chengdu. We decided to be even more thrifty than last time and got “hard seat” tickets. (We originally wanted to get “soft seats” but they were sold out.) For some reason, we all thought that because the train left at 1PM we wouldn’t need to sleep on the train despite its arriving in Chengdu at 5:20 AM Monday. Anyway, we found our train and seats with little difficulty—because the train stations are so crowded you have really no choice but to get on the train because the crowd of people just kind of pushes you along. Our little group made a “train” in the crowd so we could stay together. It was like preschool! The train car was ridiculous—people everywhere，or ... read more

This past weekend, four friends and I went to 西安 (Xi'an, China's former capital). I had already been there on the pre-program study tour but a couple of my friends hadn't and those of us who had been wanted to go back because it is a really cool city. We took the overnight train there, and to save money we got hard sleeper tickets. Basically, the train car is filled with rows of bunks three high. Because they are three high you can't exactly sit up straight in them. Other than that slight issue, it was way nicer than I expected! We whiled away the 15 or so hours playing poker with jiao (Chinese cents), eating Subway sandwiches we got before we left, sleeping, and listening to the Australian tour group next to us speak. One ... read more