jpetey75
Jacob Joined: May 18th 2009
Logged in: August 24th 2011
Logged in: August 24th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
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This is the story of my new tattoo... Two of my friends and I were out one night, and we started talking about tattoos. I said I wanted to get one, one of my friends, Katie, said she encouraged it, she already has two of them. One of my friends, Orit, she didn't like the idea and had a lot of negative opinions towards tattooes. That led to a huge argument between them which was pretty entertaining, but in my mind Katie won, so I was pretty pumped on the whole tattoo thing. Then we went into Lush, a bar/cafe place which had open mic night. There these two middle eastern looking guys were on the stage playing and I was like "they look like they are from Israel." Orit, who lived in Israel before said ... read more
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I had my interview for Beijing Home Delivery and got the job. The manager told me I could start the following Wednesday, which gave me nine days of freedom. Katie would still be in China for a couple weeks so we decided to go to Hong Kong. It would be a good adventure for her, and it would be a way for me to reset my visa again so I could stay another couple months and not worry about it. We had plenty of time so we decided to buy train tickets. The tickets cost about $75 dollars one way and the train takes 24 hours. The tickets are for a bed so it’s actually not bad. Two days after buying the tickets, and me getting my tattoo (I wrote a different blog for that already) ... read more
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After a two hour delay at the Beijing train station Chris and I were on the slow train to the middle of nowhere. The train ride was four hours, and for the most part it wasn’t bad. We nodded off a few times and talked to some people around us, a couple who were actually from the county we would be going to. We were the only foreigners on the train, which was only the beginning of that experience, we had no idea what was in store. We got off the train and it was a very small train station, we walked out the exit and there were four people waiting for us there. They were surprised to hear we spoke Chinese, and they were very happy to be able to communicate. The first night we ... read more
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RANDOM DAY IN BEIJING Hi - it is Tues morning here in Beijing; quick update from our experiences yesterday. We were planning on going to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square yesterday and to get our train tickets for Qingdao trip - struck out on all three - the May 1 holiday seems to have been through Monday and the Forbidden City, etc was SO completely crowded - it was unreal - we drove by in a cab and all you could see is literally a sea of black haired heads and bodies packed together - it was crazy - so we quickly dismissed that idea; then we got to the train station, again so crowded! this huge room packed with people in lines waiting to buy tickets - we were the only 3 "whiteys" Brian ... read more
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So the following few blogs are mostly written by Lisa...I think most of you have seen them, and actually even seen the pictures if Lisa has shown you, so it might not be very interesting but I figured I might as well post them. I have added some notes all surrounded by brackets and corrected some minor mistakes haha ;-) We just got to our "hotel"/dorm at Jake's university. It was a long, but good day of traveling; all of our flights were on time or early - and we really liked Korean Air it was very new and comfy and everyone had their own little video screen to watch movies, TV programs, listen to CDs, or play video games. It made the time pass faster - and they kept feeding us - we ... read more
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Yangshuo was extremely beautiful. The main part of the city was a pedestrian street with shops and some hotels and bars. There are mountains all around and also the famous Li River runs on one side of the city. The restaurants in Yangshuo are mostly Western food and coffee shops, and everything is very expensive by China standards. We ate at a place that had all kinds of food, I ate curry. They also had some dark Chinese beer, which I’ve been trying to find but never found it for a reasonable price in Beijing. It was pretty good, it tasted kind of sweet like it had a little bit of molasses in it. We ended up talking to the waitresses there because we were the only customers since we were eating a little bit late. ... read more
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That night we took a late night flight to Guilin after eating a group dinner. The hotel in Guilin was very nice, the nicest and most expensive hotel we would stay in the whole trip according to Zoey. The next morning we got up and had a couple hours to walk around Guilin. I met a man on the street that is a calligraphy professor at Guilin University. He offered to bring us to try some of his sister’s tea at her new tea shop. The tea was made from the cinnamon trees in Guilin, Guilin in Chinese means cinnamon forest. The tea was amazing, but it was a little spendy for me so I didn’t buy any. Mack however, bought some and seemed pretty excited about it. He also showed us some of his calligraphy ... read more
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After the Panda Center, we got back on the bus and went to Dujiangyan. Dujiangyan is an irrigation area as well as a really beautiful mountainous region. The park we stopped at also had a huge Bonsai tree garden, it was crazy. I have never seen a garden that beautiful, it was spectacular. There was so much green around me because of the richness of the area and the air was so fresh, it was like a paradise. That night we stayed in the town near Dujiangyan, it was a pretty cool little town. It had a nice little shopping area for the tourists, but I wasn’t really interested in that. A group of us decided to walk into the area where the locals inhabited to see if we could find a more authentic meal. We ... read more
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We left for the trip the day after our finals, Saturday night. We got on an overnight train from Beijing to Luoyang. The train was not as nice as the train we took last semester from Beijing to Xi’an. It was the same set up with six beds together then a wall, but unlike the Xi’an train, there was no wall between the beds and the hallway, so it was really just a big open area. We talked to some very nice people, which seems like a common occurrence on trains in China. I slept well and was ready to start my trip when we arrived in Luoyang early the next morning. First we went to the Shaolin Temple, which is the home of a very famous martial arts school. Kids are brought to the school ... read more
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The next morning we woke up early and headed to the train station to go to Xi’an. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but babies in China don’t usually wear diapers when they are outside, just pants with a slot in the crotch. If they need to do their business they pretty much just squat on the side of the road. So there was a baby in the Luoyang train station walking around making trouble, all of a sudden she stopped and squatted. I didn’t think it was weird at first because Chinese people squat all over the place to rest, due to lack of public benches, and maybe partly due to their ability to squat comfortably (which I can’t really do). But anyway, moral of the story, baby peed on the ground. Her dad used ... read more
