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French Toast?
This is what I got when I ordered french toast Another week is done! I can't believe it...I'm already a third of the way through the program, but I don't feel like I have been here for very long. My classes finally started kicking in this past week. It was pretty intense as far as homework and quizzes. I have a test in one of my classes on Wednesday, so we will see how that goes. How can they do this to us when we are in China?!
This past weekend was full of adventure, and I really enjoyed it! We went to Nanjing on Thursday night and stayed in a hostel that is right next to this big shopping center. It was called the Sunflower Youth Hostel. It had a lot of character, but no western style toilets, so that was an adventure. I think I am starting to get used to using them, but I think it might take me a while to get used to the smell...
In Nanjing we went to the two big tourist places - Purple mountain and the Nanjing Massacre museum. They have three main sights in Purple mountain - Linggu Temple, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's Mausoleum, and the Ming Tombs, which have
Linggu Temple
Full of incense, statues, and bowing this great walkway with a bunch of stone animals. It was pretty neat! The Linggu temple was absolutely gorgeous, and it was cool to see the big buddha statues and the huge amounts of incense that is burned there. The mausoleum was pretty cool, too, and I learned a lot about Sun Yat-Sen, who is considered to be the "father of China". He united China in the early 1900s, and so they think he is pretty great around here. After going through the museum and seeing all of his accomplishments, I think he is a pretty influential person 😊 The Mausoleum was up about halfway on this mountain, and it was a pretty good trek to get to the top. It was a pretty hot day, too, so that made a little bit less than perfect. When I got to the top I was very sweaty and very tired, and they were selling Gatorades. I bought one and it was the best Gatorade I have ever had in my life. It was so perfect! After visiting the Mausoleum we went to the Ming Tombs, but they were closed for construction, so we only got to see the "Sacred Avenue" where
there is a walkway with huge stone animals. That was pretty cool.
After our adventure at Purple Mountain, we were on a search for our bus back to the hostel. It took us an hour and a half to finally get to the right bus stop. First, we went to a bus stop that had the bus route number on it, but the bus never came. Then, we tried getting a cab, and ALL of the cabs were full! We waited for 30 minutes, and there was not a single empty cab, which is very rare because it usually only takes 30 seconds in Shanghai. We finally walked to another station, where we got on the first bus that came, and showed the bus driver where we wanted to go. He dropped us off at the right bus station, and 20 minutes later the bus we had been searching for so long was finally there! We were very grateful...
The next morning we woke up and went to the Nanjing Massacre Museum. I didn't know this, but during WW2, the Japanese came over to Nanjing (the previous capital of China) and they killed 300,000 people in their rampage
Julie Beck
She is so gracious to take pictures with people! of China. Thousands of people were killed and put in this one mass gravesite, and that is where the Museum is. It is a very graphic museum. They had excavated a lot of the skeletons and had this big building right over the grave site. We walked through, and there was a big open space in the middle of the building where the skeletons had been excavated. There were signs around the place that described what happened to the people based on autopsies done. It was a really intense experience, and something I will never forget. There were so many brutal things that happened to them, I can't believe I had never learned more about it! It was a very educational experience, and the architecture really made the mood even more forlorn and dark and depressing. It wasn't really a fun thing to do, but it definitely opened my eyes.
After that Museum, we went to McDonalds for lunch, and then I came back to Shanghai on the train by myself so that I could come to the Julie Beck Fireside that was in Shanghai. I sat next to an ecology professor from Nanjing University who is learning English, and we spoke for an hour and a half about ourselves, Chinese and American Holidays, and other things. He was trying to practice his English, and I wasn't especially captivated by the book I was reading. So, that was pretty cool because he had his wife and daughter on the train, too, so I got to meet them as well. Really great family.
The best story of the week has to go to how I actually got to the Julie Beck Fireside, because it was truly a miracle. When I got off the train from Nanjing, I called my friend who was going to meet me and take me to the house where the fireside was at. I tried calling about 8 times and every time it said that the phone was out of service! So, I had no one else's phone number and I had no idea how to get there besides the metro stop that I was supposed to get off at. Plus, I had all of my stuff with me from the weekend and I smelled pretty terrible. I called a friend to look up an email that I had online with directions, and I got some phone numbers from there. Then, I got on the metro and headed for the stop that I remembered, hoping that I would somehow be able to get directions and then somehow be able to communicate that information with the cab driver. I later realized that this route would have been impossible. I called those phone numbers, and they were about to send me some vague directions in a text message, but then I saw some people on the subway that I knew that were headed in the same direction!! It was such a huge coincidence!! The subways run every two minutes, and there are 7 or 8 different cars on each train. Plus, I only know about 15 people from church at this point, and most of them have their own cars or their own drivers. When I saw those people, I was so excited! I was so glad to see people that I recognized and one of them even spoke Chinese and had the map with him. After getting off the train and squishing 5 people into a cab, we were off, and after a few wrong turns and asking for directions, we finally made it with 2 minutes to spare! There is no way I would have made it with some vague text message directions. Needless to say, I was very grateful.
Julie Beck's talk was really great, too. She spoke for a little bit about the Relief Society around the world and then she opened it up for questions, and that was really neat. She talked about the role of women as an influence in society, and she talked about how men can better support their wives and daughters. It was a really neat experience, and I got to take a picture with her afterwards, however corny that is. Her husband was a great guy, too. Very funny. he would interject her fireside with funny comments every once in a while. It was just a really great night. Afterwards, a friend drove me home, and I was very grateful for that.
This morning I went to the first part of church, and then we had an activity with the Study Abroad program where we were able to go to the home of some of the Chinese students at the host university. Today was a special holiday called the Dragon Boat Festival, and we went to their homes to eat this great meal. Afterwards, they took us to this great shopping area, where I browsed and got some awesome ideas for gifts. I'm excited to go back and buy some things for people back home 😊
Now I am back in my dorm room and writing in my blog. Hopefully it won't take too long to upload pictures, so look out for some pictures of Nanjing, etc. I'll write next week! I hope everyone is doing well! I miss you guys tons!
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Tim
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sweet beck story
That is an awesome Beck story!