Advertisement
Published: February 7th 2009
Edit Blog Post
China
The gang! (L to R)Lauren, Theresa, Marisha, Aaron, Natalie, Lisa, Chelsea, Ashley, Pieroni, Laura, and me. This happened over 7 months ago, but I figure if I'm going to keep this blog alive, I should write about my trips in it regardless of how long ago it was. Background info: I was at the University of Evansville when I signed up, and all the 9 other students and 2 professors are all still there. Aaron, Lisa, Marisha, Theresa, Ashley, Chelsea, Lauren, Laura, Nathalie, Prof. Ro-ger, and Dr. Milner. Miss them!
Okay so we left Evansville for Atlanta on May 12, 2008, and as soon as we landed, we got phone calls about a huge-ass earthquake in China. Of course. Minutes before we take off for Shanghai we get this awful news. Great. But we board anyway, 16 hours or so, I get the seat in the dead middle of the plane >:ยท
We get to Shanghai and it's late afternoon the next day. We're all freaking exhausted on the goddamn busride into Hangzhou.. which took like 3 extra hours. We were all snap-happy with our cameras, too, but we didn't realize at the time that the interstate wasn't the most scenic thing to photograph.
So we finally get into the city of Hangzhou and to Zhejiang
China
outside the international dorm building. University. We divide into roommates and I got paired with the awesome Lisa. Then we ate dinner... I guess. I was a zombie at this point, but I remember screams coming from the unfortunate ones that ate green bean-disguised peppers. Bu hao y'all!
Slept like a goddamn angel that first night, even though the bed was made of concrete. I don't know why but jetlag seems to effect me worse than anyone else I travel with.
After our orientation we all went to the Bank of China to get our money exchanged, then we were instructed by "Pro-fess-or Ro-ger" to go get lost out on the streets. So Lisa, Marisha, Aaron, and Lauren all took of down the street looking for West Lake, which was the only thing I knew about Hangzhou at this point. We pass through a park, some residential areas, the big-ass shopping mall, and a stinky-ass open market. That market was awesome even though it stunk to the high heavens. God, it was RANK. Eels, blacker than black fish, live chickens, foreign froots. No pictures unfortunately.
So after we walked around for forever, we were trying to find a place to eat, when Aaron randomly jumped
China
inside the international dorm lobby onto a random city bus (which supposedly took him to the Hangzhou ghetto). Yea.. we didn't see him till the next morning. And the funny thing is is that we found a good Japanese style place like 5 minutes later. Best GD fried rice your girl Rae has ever had!
More walking.
Classes started the next day. We had 4 (I think?) Chinese language classes total, and then Chinese history and political economy twice a week or so for 4 weeks. Our history professor was insanely awesome. He experienced the Cultural Revolution and the days of Mao. I still feel like I didn't learn a whole lot, because for one thing we only had classes for 4 weeks, and that is not even near enough time to grasp how much history China has. Political economy, not as awesome, unfortunately. The language classes were probably everyone's favorite, our laoshi was adorable!
Other than classes, we did some excursions in and out of the city. There was the silk steet, the boat rides on West Lake, the Olympic torch relay, some teahouses, night markets, a weekend in the Yellow Mountains, and more temples and gardens than I can remember.
One
China
me and the giant Mao statue of the more particularly interesting things that happened to me was the night of the welcoming banquet. We were waiting in the lobby of the international dormitory when this Chinese man comes up to me and asks me to be in his "shopping" movie-documentary. I said hellz no at first because I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. But then he asked Pieroni, who said okay. So I went along with it to because hey, why the hell not? So that weekend we went to this giant shopping mall Newera Plaza and shot a commercial. It was funny at first because your girl Rae cannot act AT ALL. But at the end it took a turn for the worst when I had to model some chandeliers and they put me in this hideous gold and magenta ball gown. It was so embarrassing! I'm glad I never saw the end product. Eh, at least I have a fun anecdote.
So for four weeks we were in school, did some fun touristy things, ate a lot of chicken on a sitck, played a lot of Egyptian Rat Screw, and then for the last week in China we did
China
playing in the park our first full day in China all the sightseeing. See upcoming entry for Shanghai, Bejing, Xi'an fun.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.288s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.041s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb