This past weekend/week/coming weekend ushered in our spring break (at long last since we left right after finals to begin our seminar in Thailand, Burma, and Vietnam, just in case I've been rambling for so long that you forgot). For spring break, after finishing a couple of handwritten midterms that took way too long since I've fogotten how to use the English language, I was ready to relax, get some sun, and be happy again.
My spring break plans were to go to Sanya, Hainan province, an island off the coast of Southern China, with Kelsey I, Alex B, and Whittney. As we said many times over during lounging on the beach and through the markets, best idea ever and best vacation ever.
But anyway, my break really began on Friday morning, so I'll start there instead of the Saturday flight to Sanya.
Actually, I'll start Thursday instead after we got our midterm per diem and handed in midterms, k? Even though I might have said this already the post before. Sorry if I repeat myself. I'm burnt.
So Thursday, after leaving class, I went to the National Art Museum with Orion and Wes. Unfortunately, I forgot my student id, so it ended up being 40 kuai instead of 10, but oh well. Let me preface with the fact that I know very little about art. Sure, I threw pots (in the making sense, not the making mess sense) in middle school and high school, but viewing paintings and most sculpture is purely done for my personal enjoyment since I know nothing about technique. What I do know is that I absolutely loved the 5th floor exhibition of a Chinese print maker named Chao Mei, as well as the Turner exhibition from the Tate gallery. You can check out both here: http://www.namoc.org/en/Exhibitions/Current_Exhibitions/index.html Quite excellent and a great way to unwind on approximately 3 hours of sleep.
Thursday evening, I went to dinner with 9 people to a restaurant out the West Gate (there are 2 gates we use at UIBE, the East Gate has been dubbed "Eat Street" with cheap food and the West Gate is more expensive but nicer). Zach, our program assistant who graduated last year from Carleton, decided that he wasn't speaking any Chinese since we all were heading off for break and needed to learn how to get food ourselves. Unfortunately, this meant that I was crowned menu queen and not only had to order food for 9 people, but also request 2 more chairs since 2 people were coming later (we went as a group of 7) and didn't now the word for chair. There was a lot of miming going on, but it got the job done. At the very least, I know I won't starve or not know where the bathroom is as long as people around me know Mandarin.
Friday: Got up earlyish and went with James and Orion to what I've dubbed "The Temple of Hell." In actuality, it's the Dongyue Daoist Temple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Dongyue_Temple
and it has a ridiculously large number of rooms that you walk by with these really great statues inside that describe the different departments and beliefs in daoism. We were a little bored, and I was a little dissapointed because everything looked so plain the first four or five rooms when all of a sudden, we go to the next room and there's a demon staring at us! From there on out, there were more demons in the rooms and some of the rooms got a little gruesome. It was so intriguing. Afterwards, we headed to the electronics market so the boys could play with their electronic game things. We found an arcade in the basement where they played Tekken, which I commented was like street fighter and got promptly criticized and lectured. Looked the same to me. Oh well. We also watched Orion draw a crowd playing DDR outside. James commented that if the white guy could do it, anyone could, which is probably why there was a line for people buying the game after we left. For lunch, we went to "explodes the stomach" where I pitched in my 10 kuai to watch them eat the most disgusting food I've ever seen before going to an actual restaurant and ordering the most delicious potatoes and beef I've ever eaten. For real. After packing for my trip, I went to dinner with another big group of people to a Japanese place where there was delicious delicious sushi and tempura and other stuff that I would have to point to since I can't pronounce the name. Went to bed after that to get up to catch a taxi at 615 for our flight.
Actually, that was pretty gosh darn long, so I'll write tomorrow or so about the rest of my break since I'll have time, and we're the only ones back anyway.
love love love and aloe vera :D
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment