Moganshan Lu- Art District

Here are just a couple pictures from Moganshan Lu, a strip in Shanghai that has a lot of art galleries, I visited it this past weekend and took a lot of pictures so I thought I'd put some up... All the pictures are either from walking there or inside the galleries.

Shaoxing Part 2

Here are some of the other pictures I took, mostly coming from An'Chang and Screaming Mt. There's drying meat hanging out, the pig head's my favorite, a lady making sausage and at Screaming Mt. a lady painting a tree trunk... I'm not sure why but I liked the picture, and finally some of the kids in our group by the lake by the mountain. If you have any questions about anything feel free to ask. Enjoy!

Shaoxing

Here are some of the pictures from Shaoxing, the first are from the clothing factories we visited, then the boat ride I took, there's a picture of me with Helen, our program's assistant director, next is a lady washing her hair by the river and finally one of me in the bonsai garden at Lu Xun's old  home.

Thanksgiving Pictures

Here are a few pictures from Thanksgiving, I'm not in any of them because I had to take them, just picture me there. 

Josh is making the apple pie, I also showed a close up of it. The hanging pumpkins had each one of our names on it, mine's a little left of the center.

Thanksgiving and our trip to Shaoxing

Hey everyone!!

     I haven't had much to put up lately, although I did go on a trip to Shaoxing a few weekends ago, which was fun, just really really cold. I didn't bring a coat to China because Shanghai's weather on average never is supposed to go below the mid 40's for November and December, although it was in the 30's last weekend and 70 today so the weather's never something you can really depend on. 

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving, our program directors reserved the top floor of this restaurant for us and we were able to use the kitchen and given a budget to make dinner, which was a lot of fun, we tried our best to make all the dishes we remembered from back home, although you can't find all of the ingredients here. I helped make an apple pie, we couldn't find a pie crust so we were going to use graham crackers to make the crust but we couldn't find graham crackers either so we bought these other biscuit things that looked similar and did our best. We ended up using 8 sticks of butter for 4 small pies... it came out looking more like a cobbler than anything else, but it was really good. 

The next morning on Friday we all left for Shaoxing for the weekend, it's a city about 3 hours West of Shanghai. That afternoon we toured two textile factories, Shaoxing is known for it's textiles so that was interesting. The floors are divided by what's being made, so everyone on the same floor is making the same type of thing. We kept making jokes that they knew we were coming so they told all the 7 year old kids to take the day off... not funny i know.

      During the other two days we visited this 1,000 year old river town of An'Chang which I'll try to put pictures up of. We also visited Screaming mountain, took a boat ride to the hometown of Lu Xun, who's one of China's most famous writers.

      All in all it was a lot of fun but we all got back around 5 on Sunday night and still had all of our homework to do, so it was also a very tiring weekend.  

More Macau and Zhuhai pictures

Here are some other pictures from Macao and Zhuhai... We knew we were back in China when there was trash in the water, picture of the Pearl River Delta after just going through customs from Macao to Zhuhai. Seafood drying at a fruit farm in Zhuhai. a baby cow in a parking lot, none of us ever really figured why there were cows there, the parents were eating pineapple scraps. A sweater getting made in a clothing factory, the pieces are made by machine and then sewn together by hand, in case you were interested. Lastly, me in front of the Macau Tower model, in the 360 cafe (in the Macau Tower). To its left is the Pearl Tower in Shanghai, which you can see a picture of from my earlier posts.

      All travels aside I'm doing pretty well, trying to get some of the end of semester work done now so I don't have to spend the last 6 weeks I'm here in a panic. Hope everyone's doing well, stay warm!!!!

Back from Hong Kong/Macau/Zhuhai

Hey everyone!

      Late Saturday night I finally arrived back in Shanghai from our week-long field trip to Hong Kong, Macau and Zhuhai. We visited a variety of different places including the MGM Grand in Macau, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, a chemical factory in Zhuhai and the Chinese University in Hong Kong... I watched the election from my hotel room in Macau, some of the guys in our group actually skipped the first half of the day's activities in order to watch it, all very exciting. Anyway....  

      There's a picture of me on the top of the Peak, which is a famous area of Hong Kong where you can see the entire skyline, we went at night but if you can pick out that building behind me with the criss-crossed lights, that's the building that Batman breaks into in The Dark Knight. That view from the cable car is on our 1 free day in Hong Kong, it's the longest cable car system in the world and goes up a mountain that has the world's largest sitting Buddha on the mountain. The pointed tower is the Macao Tower which is the tallest building in Macau and offers the world's tallest bungy jump (233 meters), 7 of the guys in our group ended up doing it. The last two are one of me on the roof of the MGM Grand Macau by the pool and Granville Road (there's also a Granville Square) by the Hong Kong Museum in Hong Kong.

Procrastinating

Hey!   

    I was working on my Chinese homework but I needed a break so I thought I'd talk a little more about my trip. Last week was vacation, which was a very welcome break; classes here are very challenging... especially Chinese. We're in Chinese class for 3 hours a day, 4 days a week meaning that we do learn a lot but there's a lot of work involved. 

     My study abroad group has a week-long trip to Hong Kong in 3 weeks and between now we'll have had 3 tests in Chinese, our midterm being the day before we leave, so if I don't write very much between now and then you'll know it's because I'm studying. Next Thursday we're going to the Peking (Beijing) Opera as a field trip, it's world famous so I'm really excited about that, I've never seen an opera before, much less a Chinese opera. Besides that I've been pretty busy with school, there are a lot of art galleries in the city that I want to go visit, especially before it starts getting cold... it's about mid 70's now but should get down to the 50's in the next month or so. 

      One thing that's more different here from anywhere else I've lived is the food. I love Chinese food, although it's nothing like what you get in the US, there's no such thing as General Tsou's chicken in China. As you may have guessed there's a lot of rice and noodles, but depending on the region of China food can be very different. I've been eating a lot of soup and rice and noodle dishes... there's a lot of street vendor food that we can get behind our school, but it's usually deep fried and I usually get something else. I have had to change what I normally eat quite a bit though since I started living here. For example, in China things like cheese, salads, sandwiches and deli meats really aren't that common. They don't actually eat much dairy at all, except yogurt. I don't have a kitchen where I live so I can't cook any of my own food, which I miss doing but I've adjusted for the most part, and while I'll dearly miss my xiao long bao and strawberry pearl milk tea I can't wait to have a reuben or pizza again. 

      I should probably get back to work though, I hope everyone's well!  Here are a few more pictures. One is of the Shanghai Circus we saw during orientation and the second is of a meal we had when we visited a small town as a field trip... the snails were actually very good.

Beijing pt. 2

Here are some more pictures from Beijing, from the Forbidden City and Summer Palace. The picture of me with the two girls is a picture their mom wanted me to take with them, I must have had my picture taken with at least 25 different people by the end of that trip, also the last picture is at the Summer Palace and is of the longest corridor in the world, with hundreds of paintings on it.

Beijing Trip

Hey everyone, this past week was the Chinese National Holiday week (October 1st is sort of like our July 4th) so we got a week off of school and went traveling! There was six of us that did this 5 day Beijing tour (travel within Beijing is a little difficult since the city is so big so we decided that a tour would be the best way to see everything we wanted to.) Here are some pictures from my trip, starting at the Olympic Stadium. 

The second two pictures are of my group and I in front of the entrance to the Ming Tombs and an elephant on the Sacred Way. The last pictures are from the Great Wall.

More "Zhaopian"

Hey people, here are some more pictures...

The first two are taken from this restaurant we went to showing the variety of food and me eating it. The last two are taken from my balcony, compared to most of Shanghai we have a very green, tranquil campus.