On the last day of being in Beijing, we started off our day by visiting the Bird’s Nest; the Olympic stadium that housed the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Building for the most part is exactly what it seems like on TV. It was still really cool to be there and I enjoyed seeing the stadium. The better part of being in Olympic Park was seeing the Water Cube. The building was cooler to be in than the bird’s nest. The inside had eateries (I had way too much ice cream), a water park, and the pools of the Olympics. One of the pools you can swim in so a lot of our group went there. It was really something inside. Would like to know if the water park was there during the Olympics, ... read more

After a 12-hour train ride from Hangzhou that we shall never speak of again, the group arrived in Beijing. The first thing that I noticed is that it does not have the same tallness as Shanghai or even Hangzhou. The buildings are still 20 to 30 stories tall but they do not make a distinct skyline. We dragged ourselves to the bus and then to the hotel where we had 2 hours to get back out and start the day’s itinerary. The first thing to do was to visit Tiananmen Square. To sum up, it’s a big-ass square. There it is also a major site for tourists, domestic and international. We were lucky because we caught it on a slow day. Still, Tiananmen was full of people, along with significant buildings to see. A tall, classic ... read more

So it’s been a while. I have been in Hangzhou for 3 weeks now and I realize that you know nothing of what is going on. My bad. I feel a discomfort in my chest. I think I feel remorse. Nah. I am just joking. It is just gas from the food. Bah-zinga. Classes are easy. I enjoy History of Asia usually, but International Relations is just giving me terms for things I already know for the most part. The only problem is the class discussions. I am in school with Management and Engineering kids that have no clue how to analyze facts or explain how their horribly incorrect conclusions connect to the point their trying to make. What frustrates me more is that I end up doing exactly what they do and offer counter conclusions ... read more

The 19th was our last day in Shanghai and the first day in Hangzhou. The first half of the day, we spent our time at the Expo. This is the big expo that showcases Chinese culture. They say that this year is a ghost town compared to what it used to be. But that still means that there were a few thousand foreigners and Chinese alike waiting to see the Expo. We went through as fast as we could and it still took a long time. The wait was worth it though; the first room is of a painting that is animated. It was the coolest thing. Apparently it is the exhibit that many people flock from around the world to see. It was simply a projection onto a screen, but the way it was shown ... read more

So to start the day I found out that all of China has the same time zone. I woke up thinking that I was late for meeting in the hotel lobby. Turns out that the sun rises at 4 am. So at 6 it would look late. But you don’t know this in a Chinese hotel because there are no clocks in the room. There are no clocks on the walls, on the phones, or on any of the 71 channels that make up cable television. Luckily my roommate had a cell phone and it auto-updated after 30 minutes of scouring for the time. Breakfast was good. There were a lot of different pastries. There was also fried rice with scrambled eggs and ham mixed in, yummy. There was also chicken sausage, bacon that was actually ... read more