Plans for Chinese New Year's Break

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So I have finally figured out my plans for next week's break. As you all know, Chinese New Years is next week and there is no school for me. A group of USACers planned to go to Guilin and Hainan for the week to get away from the cold weather here in Shanghai. Hainan is supposed to be the "Hawaii of China". I really want to go to Guilin, however, between January 5 and February 5, there is an Ice Festival in Harbin (Near the Russian border). In general, there are ice palaces and buildings that are lit up, and you can walk through them, etc. It's supposed to be a phenomenal experience. I recommend googling Harbin Ice Festival and you'll see what I mean (since I'm not an expert). I talked to one of my friends, who was planning to go to Guilin about the Harbin Ice Festival, and she said that she was dying to go but no one wanted to go with her. I told her that I really wanted to go too since it's only held during the first month of the year and this will be the only opportunity for us to go. We were able to round up a group of 5, including myself, to go.

Today 5 of us bought our train tickets to Harbin which cost us 483 kuai each. Unfortunately, they ran out of soft-sleepers so we are stuck with hard sleepers for 33 hours!!!! :-O. We will either bond during this trip or totally hate each other. I'm really looking forward to going despite the 33 hour train ride on a hard sleeper. We have a great group of people going together, so it will definitely be a lot of fun regardless of what we will have to go through in order to get there.

Spending money begins NOW...Not including rent, I was able to survive by only spending $300 U.S. since I have been here (includes food, random items needed for the room, clubbing, drinking, taxi rides and school supplies). I guess I need to withdraw some more money to prepare for my trip to Harbin. I'm going to try to find some snowboarding pants and a scarf because it's going to be COLD.

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Comments

[jennifer]

THIRTY-THREE hours?!!?!? i'd kill myself. have fun!

[olivia]

whats a hard sleeper???