HONG KONG JULY 6th Today I got up later than usual. I mean, I WOKE up on time but didn’t GET up until about 8:11 this morning. I rushed to breakfast afraid that I was going to miss it. Ate some really good noodles then went to the lectures. They were boring as usual but I did learn some stuff. Afterwards we went to a poor neighborhood in Hong Kong—or rather a ghetto of Hong Kong. We were told to hold onto our wallets and watch our bags because of pickpockets. Now, having been to Panama already the place where pick-pockets pros roam the streets, there was no way I was going to get robbed in broad-daylight, that’s for sure! I know every trick these people could've possibly pulled. But there was this weird one guy—an ... read more

Hong Kong July 4th (4TH OF JULY!!!!) Today we saw the Hong Kong museum of history. It was quite interesting. Hong Kong has soooo much history behind it, it’s incredible! We had our first lecture today and it was really cool. The Taiwanese students are very funny and friendly. While on the bus I talked with 2 boys named Archie and Jeff they're pretty funny. This morning the girls helped me out with ordering breakfast because I was late. During our discussion group time we all actually talked and got to know each other and each others' country’s pretty well. It wasn’t awkward at all (for me anyways). My discussion partners (non-BSU) are Wilson, Tommy, Annis, Kimberly and Layla. All are from Taiwan except Layla who is from the mainland Guangdong province. After the lecture and ... read more

BEIJING JULY 2ND I CLIMBED THE GREAT WALL! I mean it was so surreal I could hardly believe we were actually walking the great wall—that is until we started walking. Right off the bat you could tell it was very tiring and very dangerous because of the steep steps, great height and large groups of tourists. By the first gate I was DYING!! We supposedly started on the 8th gate, which happened to be the steepest, and there were about 5 gates in total, I made it to about gate 1 ½. After a while it was getting hard to breathe, the steps became very inconsistent, and I became more and more afraid of falling off or puking on the side of the great wall that I just said forget it and went back down. I ... read more

June 30th Thursday Ok. I was so tired yesterday I couldn’t even change out of my clothes or write the blog for what I did. I don’t remember when we got back but I do know that I was awake at 530am and we walked all day till nightfall. Yesterday we did 4 things: first we went to Jingshan park, then the Forbidden City, then traveled to the opera house (which was shaped like an egg), then we saw then we saw a kungfu show. When we arrived at Jingshan park first thing I noticed was the row of bicycles at the entrance. Basically Jingshan Park is where one of china’s emperors, I believe from the Ming dynasty, climbed up the hill in despair at not being able to save Beijing and then hung himself on ... read more