Pics: Wooden Pagoda

Some pictures of the Wooden Pagoda in Da Tong including one of me with my roommate Hae-In and one of some classmates spelling out ACC, the name of the program I'm doing.

Midterm Break: Trip to Da Tong 大同

It seems as though I should write about this while it is still fairly fresh in my memory, although I truly am still a little shocked that we have already passed the midterm break and the summer is more than half over. So following our marathon of a midterm test (including a written test and two oral presentations of 5 and 12 minutes length) we got ready to go traveling about China a little, courtesy of ACC's planning. Between the two options for the midterm trip - Luoyang and Datong - I chose to go to Datong for one because the places we were going to looked more interesting but also because I've already been to Luoyang, which is where the Shaolin Temple is. As it turns out this was a wise decision for another reason - it rained almost constantly while they were in Luoyang and Chinese streets are simply not built to deal with rain so flooding was definitely a problem for them. Lucky for those of us who went to Datong not only did it not rain but it wasn't unbearably hot either. Before leaving some teachers had warned us that Datong's air pollution was worse than Beijing's and while certainly noticeable, I had been prepared for the worst and was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't too much of a problem.

Anyways, on to the specifics. Thursday night we took an overnight train from Beijing to Datong, arriving early the next morning. We then met our two tour guides and headed off to the hotel to clean up and drop off our luggage (I, being a fairly light packer, only brought a single bag/purse so didn't have anything to drop off, but most normal people brought two bags or a backpack and a purse). And then before long we were back on the bus heading out of Datong to visit first the Wooden Pagoda, then the Hanging Monastery, and then last to hike a mountain. Hold while I go find the sheet of paper with the Chinese names and more historical/informational background so that I can fake impress you with my knowledge.

Ok, so the Wooden Pagoda (应县木塔) was built in the eleventh century and is one of the oldest wooden buildings in the world. It's said that no nails were used in it's construction. Upon arriving, we all took some time to appreciate the outer facade of the building and hundreds of small birds whirling in and around the pagoda before heading into the pagoda itself to climb some very, very steep, very old stairs up to about the third floor or so (this included some cross over beams that even I had to stoop for). In retrospect of course, going up was no sweat compared to coming back down (smooth but uneven wood, oddly placed handrails, really steep decline - luckily I didn't have to add fear of heights to that list but I know some people who did). Afterwards we walked around to the back of the pagoda where there was a small temple before getting back on the bus and heading to the next destination. As you may soon be able to tell, we didn't spend much time talking with locals or even really wandering the streets around these places - we were definitely tourists and acting like them, no pretensions otherwise. I have a post in the works about what it means to me being Chinese/Asian American in China but traveling with a lot of foreigners (who are easily identifiable as foreigners (老外)) means that you get a lot of stares and attention from the locals.

Next stop? Hanging Monastery or 悬空寺 which is a monastery built into the side of a mountain thus basically is "hanging" off the side of the mountain supported only by some poles that lead from the edges of the infrastructure diagonally back into the mountain. I think this was definitely one of my favorite places to visit just because it has a very interesting set up given the architectural requirements of their location - lots of skinny pathways and many floors - and had a nice view out into a small valley with mountains in the background. I only wish I could get there sometime when their weren't so many tourists because I definitely think that the monastery has the right atmosphere but it is hard to fully appreciate such sights when you are goaded along by hoards of tourists (both foreign and from other parts of China) crowding behind you and the constant noise of both their chatter and that street carved into the mountain across the way where the traffic is absurd. Nonetheless, it's an impressive sight to see. So as not to completely overwhelm this post with pictures (and because I have yet to actually upload them onto my computer) I will shortly post pictures of each sight so you can get a better idea of what they look like. I promise they will come in some sort of timely manner.

At this point, our stomachs (mine for sure) were all grumbling since it was already nearing 2pm so luckily the next stop was lunch. Our food was ordered for us ahead of time and we were treated to a veritable feast (this is in American standards, by Chinese standards we may have been at least a handful of dishes short, I mean there was some food left on the table but not an absolutely absurd amount left as seems to be a requirement for a true Chinese feast) that included a whole fish (yum), some of Da Tong's specialty - knife cut noodles, and lots of other delicious food. Nothing so strange as to scare off the foreigners (whereas last time I was in China back in high school at one meal they fed us whole steamed fish and only the Asian Americans feasted on them while the other looked on skeptically - my classmates now are definitely more open minded about food).

With energy slightly renewed but also partially sucked into a food coma, we got back onto the bus and headed to Heng Mountain (恒山) - it is apparently the Northern Mountain of China's Five Sacred Mountains. Once there we were presented with a choice to either take the cable car or hike up that mountain. The teachers all took the cable car while all but one student chose to at least pretend like they still had lots of energy and hike up the mountain. Despite a teacher's warning that there was one particularly difficult part, it was a pretty easy hike, made even easier by the fact that in the 1990s they paved the entire way up the mountain. In total to get to the almost highest spot it took maybe 40 minutes or so - really not bad at all considering what my family likes to do (i.e. go on significantly longer, steeper hikes). Along the way there were a bunch of small-ish temples to peek in and around.  Funnily enough at the base of the mountain where the parking lot, there was a performance going on with very energetic music and the mikes/speakers were loud enough that for almost if not the entire way up we could head the music (which in some ways may have helped us maintain our energy but also took away a bit from the natural beauty and I guess purity for lack of a better word that I expect climbing a mountain to include). Still, definitely an interesting case of man meets nature, or nature meets man, whichever you prefer.  Anyways, after walking back down (while "learning," meaning trying and failing to learn, some Chinese songs from our very enthusiastic tour guide, getting some ice cream to help us all cool off, we got back on the bus and headed back to the hotel.

When we got back to the hotel even though we had the rest of the night free, since we were pretty much all exhausted, we made a quick trip to the super market (which was not as quick as desired because when you ask Chinese people for directions and they tell you that it is not very far they actually are just going along with the trend of all distances in China are deceiving so you should double or triple the time they tell you it will take to get there). Bought some small snacks along the way and then walked back through some hoards of street vendors to relax and talk in our hotel room.

If you're still reading, I'm pretty impressed. And for the sake of helping my really bad memory I'm going to keep going. So the next morning we woke up for breakfast buffet at the hotel, which had a mix of both Western and Chinese breakfast foods including my favorite, hot soy milk that you can add sugar to, yum. After that, we headed off to the Yungang Grottoes (云冈石窟) and then the Huayan Monastery (华严寺), both of which were closer to Da Tong city center so we spent significantly less time on the bus that day then the prior day. So Yungang Grottoes is essentially a massive set of caves each with hundreds of stone carved Buddhas. In total, there are some 51,000 statues ranging from a few centimeters to tens of meters in height. The visit involved copious amounts of picture taking and a modified Chinese version of the Buddha's story. Originally just simple stone carvings, at some point in their history many of the larger Buddhas were painted over. Now of course that paint is all faded (in fact much of the caves have noticeable wind and water damage). Some of my classmates were saying how they wish the Chinese government would invest in repainting the statues to return them to their former glory, but in my opinion that would actually be more of a loss than a gain - even if you are attempting to restore them to some kind of original form I think it's better just to appreciate that which is not impeccably clean and new looking - I guess I just think of that as less tacky tourist-y and in general just like the feeling of being able to visually understand some of the affects of time.

After one last round of pictures with a camel outside the caves gates (you could pay to take a short ride around the small courtyard and have your picture taken with it), we headed off to our last planned out tourist destination, Huayan Monastery. Definitely the smallest and least crowded of the places we went, it had a more unique architectural style coming from the Liao Dynasty (907-1125 according to Wikipedia - which I can't actually access here) and according to our handy sheet of blurbs is one of the largest Buddhist halls still existing in China. I do think the Chinese might be overly willing to call many different places the -est of China or of the world and when you reach that place you may be underwhelmed - not to say that Huayuan wasn't an interesting place to poke around for a bit, but it didn't have the power to induce awe that some of the other places had.

That night we had some free time before the overnight train back to Beijing so we walked around aimlessly for awhile before splitting into groups for dinner - had some really delicious dumplings, edamame and peanuts sitting outside while talking and drinking Tsingtao over the span of a couple hours, was a really relaxing night with some badminton birdies flying around behind us. Arrived back in Beijing nice and early around 5am for a short bus ride back to our dorm and some more zzz's.

Pics: Di Tan Park

Hmm, I don't know how to capitalize Chinese names when Romanizing them (Di Tan? Ditan? DiTan?). I also just made up that word...

Pics: Confucius Temple

Now that our midterm is finally over, I have time to upload the rest of my backlogged pictures - enjoy!

Chinese Host Family 中国家庭

On Saturday, my phone decided to be strange and show me a text message for two seconds and then disappear off the face of the earth. Luckily, I'd seen the words Chinese family and figured that the text was from Adam, the other ACC student I share a Chinese family with, who later told me that the rest of the text had been about the fact that our Chinese family had given us a call to say that they wanted to take us out on Sunday morning, 10 am. Having no other set plans besides perhaps being a really earnest student and getting a jump start on writing the oral presentations for our midterm exams, we agreed to go (with no notion of what we were going to be doing). Also, in case your confused since I am living in a dorm, ACC gives us host families but they aren't home stays, we can just spend time with them on weekends and ask them for help when/if we need.

[Tangent: That night, Adam, Sam and I went out for perhaps the very best chuanr (串儿) I've had yet, although the place near CUEB also has pretty good chuanr. If you're wondering, chuanr are basically like kabobs covered in a spicy powder and you can get meat ones (we had lamb, lots and lots of lamb) but I've also gotten really delicious eggplant ones.]

As it turns out, beside being out first chance to meet the father and son in the family, it was also my first trip to the area surrounding Beijing, called jiao qu (郊区), which loosely translated means suburbs, but they are almost completely different from American suburbs, at least the American ones I am familiar with. The area is beautiful and has the rural feeling that I think a lot of Beijing-ers crave (the pollution in the city is, as newspapers attest, quite bad). Houses are smaller and farther apart with yards, gardens etc. We went to my host Chinese family's grandfather's house for lunch (they invited us to stay for dinner but Adam and I both hadn't started preparing for Monday's class yet so we had to trouble them to let us leave earlier). The food was delicious and fresh - undoubtedly the most authentic Beijing fare I've had yet including rou bing (肉饼) which can loosely translated as meat pancake (there were also veggie ones), chicken feet, mu er (木耳) which is a fungus, green bean soup, fresh cucumbers from their garden and lots more. Naturally, since it was an authentic Chinese meal, food abounded and there was much effort to ensure that we were really eating enough and trying everything in the right order/enough of everything.

Afterwards we relaxed and talked a bit while our host brother (who's English name is Bob because it is easy to say and remember) taught us a Chinese game that vaguely reminds me of Magic (although since I have no idea how to play Magic it may have no relation whatsoever). Anyways it's grounded in some really famous book and there are 4 players trying to survive and there are weapon cards and bonus cards and it was very confusing for people who couldn't read everything on the cards or remember what all the different ones mean. Still, it was definitely an interesting experience especially with the sports channel of CCTV on in the background which included boxing (streamed in from Vegas), China vs. US volleyball game and some very strange form of pseudo-gymnastics.

Pics: Lama Temple

Now that I have figured out how to successfully add pictures, the next few days may be somewhat of a picture blitz as I try and catch up from the beginning. Here are a few of the my favorite pictures from when I visited the Lama Temple in Beijing.

Chinese Contemporary Art 101?

This weekend, since it didn't rain on Saturday (though it did still rain on Friday night) my friends and I went over to the 798 Art District. But since I woke up pretty early that morning, I first took a bus over to Ritan Park like a real Chinese person. I think it may have been the first time I was at one of these public parks when most Chinese people go so there was lots of people watching to be had which was, as always, lots of fun. From badminton to dancing (saw a little fan dancing and also just regular almost ballroom-esque dancing), from tai chi to Chinese yo-yo, from loud singing to the Chinese two-stringed instrument, the er-hu, there was plenty going on for a not terribly large park. There was a nice buzz of noise accompanying the peaceful atmosphere of the park with the occasional more jarring contrast of honking cars.

Anyways, after walking around for awhile, I took the bus back to school to meet up with Bonnie, Kirsten and Hae-In for some quick Korean food and then a taxi over to 798. Originally, this area was a bunch of run-down abandoned factories but it has since become a growing Chinese modern art community in Beijing and is full of small shops and galleries, as well as some larger, more well-known museums (most particularly, one located in the original factory that the district sprung from). As with any space where you put together a lot of art, you're bound to have some hits and some misses, especially facing a vast area of aesthetic tastes, so I saw some things I liked and some galleries that I needed only a few minutes to feel done. I've attached a collection of pictures that I took - most of the galleries didn't allow pictures so the selection is a bit limited and obviously these are only things that I liked. Of particular note are the Buddha and the train. The Buddha is an interesting, if opaque, commentary on older values with modern commercialism - it may be hard to see, but the entire Buddha is made up of stickers, including brand names.

The other food for thought pictures is that of the train. It was saved after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and was fixed up a bit, but for the most part left in its original state as a reminder of the past, but as indicated by the title of the exhibit "Hope Tunnel" also a source of hope and inspiration when considering the support given to Sichuan in the earthquake's aftermath. While an interesting exhibit, I am not sure that I would call it art, even if I would call it moving, but what made me think more than the presence of a train from Sichuan was the way the Chinese tourists treated the exhibit. With pictures galore. Bonnie and I watched one man take ten different poses with the train and that was only one man, there were scores of others also eager to be captured on film with this important remnant of disaster. When reading the artist's blurb about his work, it seemed not to be the appropriate place for such, well, I don't know the right word, but almost commodification. But thinking about it more, what does their action mean? It might be commodification; it might be the belief in a chance to be part of something historically important albeit tragic; it might be a tool of memory (just as the train is); it might be a coping mechanism - I can't actually judge these people for acting as they did, I can only question their unknown motives. How do we see artifacts (for lack of a better word) like this? How should we? Is there even a right in the matter? Did we Americans only notice it as strange because Americans don't act so overtly in this manner at our memorial sites? (Though we take pictures, it seems somehow not the same - perhaps this is influenced by the freshness of the incident, not sure on that count either) Does the train even qualify as a memorial site? Well, this is all why I said that the exhibit certainly qualifies as food for thought. If you have any thoughts on the subject (understanding that none of you have been since 1. it is in beijing and 2. it opened the day we went), these kinds of questions particularly fascinate me and I'd love to hear any thoughts you might have!

The district is huge so I may try to go back again while I'm here as it seems there is much to see and the exhibits change every few months, so come fall, I will get a whole 'nother glance at what is being now called Chinese contemporary art (which seems to be a rather large field). But for now, you can get a small glimpse at some of what I saw, minus the most crazy pieces. Maybe next time I'll shoot pics of things I don't like, but 'til then you are stuck with the lens of my personal aesthetic tastes (which have no grounding in art history or anything academic like, in case you're wondering).

A Glimpse at My Current Academic Life

As promised in my prior post, here are the pictures of my prep work for class - some grammar structures and a vocab list.

Let's Try Those Pictures Again

Having been recently informed that the last attempt to upload pictures failed, I'll try again.(In case you're wondering why this is so complicated, it's because Blogger is blocked in China and all my posts are being done via email.) Can you see the dorm room pictures now?

A Little Something About My Favorite Topic

And what might that me, you ask? It shouldn't be that hard to guess - the clatter of pots, the smell of oil frying, the din of a well-packed restaurant all inducing your mouth to begin salivating. It might not count as a heavenly experience to an American used to impeccably clean restaurants and service that introduces themselves with their name and a smile, but here, and for me, it's all about the taste. Quality environment? Not important. Cleanliness? Not important. Amazing service? Not important. Being able to read the menu? Not important.

It's really truly all about taste (aided, without a doubt, by a healthy dose of monosodium glutamate). Sometimes the menus have pictures, usually I know what kind of meat to expect, but even when I pick at random off of a list of Chinese characters I can only read a quarter of, at these home style little food shops, pretty much everything is good. I've ordered noodle soup that surprisingly had tomatoes (those of you who know me well will be shocked to know that I actually quite liked it), yams (according to the menu) that were actually bamboo shoots and vegetables I don't even remotely recognize the name of. We've ordered things that are "exploding" according to their English translations and played the point and order game with street vendors. Granted sometimes you'll get something more oily than you expected, a different color than you expected, and something with mushrooms, but it's all part of the adventure. It's about how loud you can shout "fu wu yuan" to the waiter/waitress to get their attention (服务员), it's about tracking down the places that offer free tea, and it's about being stuffed when you leave the table, having realized only at that moment when it is too late that you have officially eaten far more than you should have (which is, of course, not to say that it wasn't completely worth it, because 99% of the time, it is).

And having pretty officially made friends with only people who share my love (if not to the same degree) of Chinese eggplant, the only thing left to do is learn how to make it myself. That story of that adventure will follow later (but do know that the first step has been taken - I have two pots, a cutting board, a cleaver, paring knife, two bowls, and of course, some chopsticks).

Finally, Some Pictures! (Dorm Room)

I finally made it out to the Pearl Market today where I picked up a dress, scarf, and most importantly, a USB stick for my camera's memory card. So here are some pictures of my room. I don't remember what my size limit is for uploading pictures via email so hopefully this works!

 

And for your further enjoyment, I took a couple snapshots of some of what I do to prepare for class each day - recognize any of the characters?

Grammar structures:

Vocabulary lists:

Hot Pot, Parks, and Museums, Oh My!

As I was preparing to send this post off into the broader cyberworld, I noticed that though I have put "hot" in the title, I have forgotten to mention something important to every basic conversation with other people - a brief discussion about the weather! It has been in the high 90s to 100s these past handful of days (according to my roommate, Hae-In, we've made some international news for the blistering heat) and then in a strange turn of events, on Friday afternoon it began to pour and has been raining since then. Unfortunately, the rain makes going out exploring much less appealing...but doubtful that it will ultimately stop me. Currently planning on heading over to 798 Art District this afternoon for a glimpse at contemporary art in China and will update more on that later.

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Wednesday: Had my second go at hot pot in China, this time at an actual restaurant that Bonnie and I picked at random from a stretch of restaurants as both of us sought respite from prepping for an oral presentation. As it turns out, we definitely should have brought more people because the soup pot comes with at least a half a chicken already boiling in it (which made for a highly delicious, if fairly salty broth).  To this we added some napa cabbage (they were out of bok choy) and tofu pieces (picked out from a menu that we could barely read, but did recognize dou fu) and spicy dipping sauce. By the end, I'm pretty sure both our stomachs were on the verge of exploding, but they gave us a card that lets us go back for a free soup base (and then only have to pay for the added ingredients) so while it was the most expensive meal I've had here yet, it was probably worth it.

Thursday: Decided that perhaps I didn't need from 12 noon until 12 midnight to study for tomorrow's test and that after a complicated week of trying out another level of Chinese here at ACC, that I could use a little break, so I chose to go to the nearest park, Chao Yang Park (潮阳公园) since I figured that eventually I would indeed need to return and get to working/reviewing.  Hopped on a bus right across from the school's south gate and took it a mere 4 stops up to the park's south gate where I proceeded to amble around for about 2 hours or so. The park is one of the larger ones in Beijing and includes an amusement park, wedding hall, large pond/lake, cherry blossom valley, and the Olympic beach volleyball courts.  Still, for all that is a perfectly nice park, I found that it didn't have much that was particularly special since I was not into any of the amusement park rides, the cherry blossoms obviously weren't out, and there far fewer quality spots to sit down and rest than at the other parks I've gone to so far. On the other hand, this was the most couples dressed in Western wedding garb taking fancy pictures that I have seen as of yet (probably more than 10 within the time that I was there, and that it is taking into consideration that I probably saw some couples more than once).

Friday: I really ought to come up with a more interesting means of organizing these entries, but alas, I am not fully used to blogging so in the mean time you will just have to deal with the pseudo-blow-by-blow.  After our weekly test in the morning, ventured out for our "Language Practicum" to the Capital Museum (首都博物馆) which is HUGE. I didn't count but I think it has something like 5 floors so we only had time for 1 before heading out to lunch with Du Laoshi. one of the teachers (I think I will try and make time to go back, especially since it is really convenient to get to via subway). Since the section of the museum we visited had a lot to do with traditional notions of family, marriage, and children, we spent a lot of time discussing gender inequalities of that age which was really interesting, also somehow ended up discussing the various stereotypes (some good, some bad) that people tend to have about various provinces/cities in China (i.e. Hebei has very smart people who treat their friends truly excellently, Beijingers are a little self-important, and people from Shanghai feel more worldly than the rest of China, and like aside from the really large cities, everything else is rural - there were tons more associated with all these places, but I've already forgotten some of them...). Anyways, after parting ways with the teacher, I ventured into the expat district with Kirsten to look at a fairly well-known bookstore. Alas it didn't have what we were looking for, but I spent a bit of time browsing through a short stack of Chinese children's books which was something I'd been wanting to do for awhile now. Upon seeing that it had started to rain (of course, when we asked our taxi driver if he thought it would rain, he said no and that the fact that the sky looked so grey had to do with China's fast past of development), we decided to poke around the large, fancy, rather expensive mall - though it was almost all window shopping, it was still fun to see what kind of fashions are "in" right now in China plus some very cute slightly more boutique-y feeling stores in the underground area. On the bus ride back, we passed what looked like a really nice park that is fairly close to the school so if I end up having time this week I might go check it out.

Eh, I'm Bad at Titles

So technically, I can still count and could entitle this post Weekend 2 aka the Weekend after Week 1, but that seemed boring. So I came up with a better one, you know, or not. I'll work on it, I promise. Ok let's see, on to the actually (maybe) interesting things: on Friday, I had my first test, language practicum and Chinese table. The test went well and was out of the way by 10am so the relaxing part of the weekend started nice and early. After everyone finished the test, every week we have a different activity for the Chinese language practicum (语言实践), which is in essence just a school organized outing to practice using our Chinese with real Chinese people. Anyways, this week we went to a Chinese university to talk/interview and have lunch with Chinese college students. I and a group of five other ACC students ended up, funnily enough, at McDonald's with two really nice Chinese student s.  Originally we were going to go to a Korean restaurant above their school's cafeteria, but since it was closed they took us to Mickey D's since it is apparently not only a popular place to go study and talk with friends, but it is also about ten times more comfortable than anywhere else they might have taken us. I don't know if this was true or not, but it was funny that they figured we wouldn't want to get Chinese food.  We talked for a couple hours about the World Cup and food in general, and then they taught us some Chinese slang, hopefully going shopping with the girl I talked to more sometime after they go on summer break next week.  Usually lunch on Fridays would be Chinese table (中文桌子) where you eat with the teachers, but since we met with the Chinese students that was our replacement meal.  Friday after getting back from the other university, I took the subway with Faith and Julia to Hou Hai which is the district roughly surrounding the Drum Tower that has tons of hu tongs (胡同) -- which are little alleyways with lots of shops and places to eat, they're also really old so have that great old architectural style -- and is really fun to poke around.  We basically just walked and talked for awhile going in and out of the many alleyways.  That night, I met my Chinese host family with Adam, the other ACC student who shares a family with me.  Actually, it was only the mom who came since the dad was working and the son was playing basketball.  At some point we're supposed to grab a meal with all of them, but the son has class every day (including Saturday and Sunday) so so far no plans.  Later I went with some friends to the expat district to watch the last half of Brazil-Netherlands game which was particularly exciting and full of goal shots and goals. All the Chinese people in the audience got super excited anything interesting happened which made for a really fun atmosphere.

Saturday: Despite the intense heat, since I had woken up relatively early (meaning my roommate was still asleep) I decided to take the day to explore a bit and took the subway up to Yong He Gong (雍和宫) which is the Chinese for the Lama Temple in Beijing. The temple is really beautiful with some great Buddha statues and the sweet scent of incense. I too took the opportunity to burn some incense and pay my respects - it was a very calming experience even if it was also a crowded, hot and humid one. The last temple of the long stretch had a 18 meter tall Buddha that also extended 8 meters underground carved from a single piece of sandalwood. Unfortunately, no pictures allowed, so you will all just have to go see for yourselves :) Afterwards, I walked over to Kong Miao (孔庙), the Confucius Temple, which was much smaller and less crowded than Yong He Gong, but also an interesting place to wander around. Almost faded stones with the writing of Confucius and his followers that are hundreds of years old are scattered throughout. There's also a massive three-doored gate and large main building with the memorial/monument (not sure what the technical name is) to Confucius surrounded by smaller ones for his main followers/fellow scholars. Last stop for the day in that same area was Di Tan Park (地坛公园) which gave me some time to sit down and relax in the shade for a bit; I even got a little homework done.  Di Tan has a really beautiful garden that is oriented around healthy living so it has four sections (wind, water, earth, fire (think feng shui)) and information everywhere about what is good for different parts of the body - I don't remember much of the information but it was also just great as a garden in and of itself, lots of locals hanging out with families and friends.  When I got back, I ended up with eating dinner, talking and laughing with Kirsten ( a fellow Williams ACC student) about all sorts of random stuff while drinking some chrysanthemum tea. A nice physically relaxing end to a mentally relaxing day. (And this time I remembered my camera so as soon as I find/buy a camera cord I will post pictures.)

Sunday: Technically this should have been an all work no play kind of day but since I actually didn't have too many vocabulary words to learn for Monday and got a large chunk of my essay done during the morning, I had plenty of time to spend with an aunt (not actual aunt, close family friend) who is in Beijing for six weeks teaching English and studying Mandarin. Since we were coming from opposite sides of the city, we decided to meet at Oriental Plaza which the Wang Fu Jing subway stop exits right into.  After walking around a bit trying to find the Food Court area, we decided on getting some hot pot - my first of this trip. Ah, so delicious - lots of different kinds of veggies and tofu plus a little bit of spice. Having probably eaten too much, we decided to take a walk before coming back for some of the delicious looking shaved ice.  At the far end of the mall from where we had been we stopped for a bit to watch a soccer juggling demonstration before walking towards the back end of the mall for a stroll outside in and out of some of the hutongs back there. Since the heat was fairly sweltering (although mitigated slightly by shade and an occasional, very nice breeze) after being out for a bit, we went into a little coffee shop for a rest (got my first milk tea of the trip, also very yummy).  Having stayed in the nice air conditioned, comfy seats for awhile sipping our "small" (read, quite large) teas, we went back into the heat for a short 'nother tour 'round the neighbor before heading back in for that shaved ice (mangoes with green tea ice cream).  All in all, it was a great day - lots of delicious food and it was great to get to talk (from learning Chinese to grandparents to Taiwan and back) and spend time with Auntie Donna, who I usually only see a couple times a year (note to self: remember to ask her about restaurant recommendations when I get back to the States).  Ended the day with finishing up my homework (not nearly as fun) and listening to some new Chinese music (have yet to look up the lyrics so I have no idea what they are singing about...it's fun) and writing this.

The end. (Phew.)