Last Post From the Other Side of the World

The first post I made here in Shanghai was titled "First Post From the Other Side of the World" so I guess we have come full circle.  It is time to leave; my flight takes off in less than 24 hours.  I will leave the emotions, thoughts, and real conclusions to my next post or posts, but until then, it has been great.  I have really enjoyed blogging from here, sharing my stories and pictures.  I have learned and I have grown as a person.  My perspective on the world did not change as much as I thought it could, but it is not unchanged.

I am excited to get back to the US and to Michigan.  I will be back tomorrow afternoon.  I will also be incredibly busy when I get back, but if I should see you in between now and when I go to Ann Arbor, please please, please send me a text when I get back.  I want to be able to see as many people as possible.  I have stories from China that I did not share here (and be honest-did you really read THAT carefully) and hopefully I can be at least mildly entertaining, but don't be shy- I want to hear about your summer too.

China, it's been awesome.  Thanks to the people in the JI program, the friendly people at SJTU, and the wonderful city of Shanghai, and thanks to all of you (including the mysterious Russians whom I have yet to identify) for following my adventures.  It's been a pleasure to share.

Day (TotalDays - 5)

Hey everyone,

Quick post: There are five days left on the program. It feels strange; there is so much I was able to do and see here, and I was fortunate to have this experience.  I will be back in Michigan on Sunday.  In the meantime, I am going to have fun in Shanghai, or attempt to.  Let's just quickly check the weather.  Business as usual:

I am going to miss you, Shanghai, just not your weather.

Great Wall and rest of Beijing

Continuation on the previous post:

Sunday was our trip to the Great Wall.  We were on a tour with a big group through the Hostel, and we went to the Mutianyu section of the Wall.  It has a chairlift to get up to the wall, and has a toboggan down, which is awesome.  The mountains were awesome. Not quite Huangshan awesome (see two posts ago), but still really awesome, especially with the wall etched into its side.

It's a pretty decent hike up the stairs.  Not too bad; frankly nothing compared to the Huangshan Mountains.  I think we were much better suited to climb the stairs than most others because we had just been to Huangshan and climbed thousands of stairs, as opposed to hundreds.  We began at tower 6, then climbed up to tower 1, back to tower six, then to tower 12.

From there we waited in the long line to get onto the toboggan (When capacity up > capacity down, big lines form).  They need to learn some Industrial Engineering and figure something out so you don't have to wait a half hour to use your ticket to get down the mountain.  (Rant over)  Finally, we had a good Chinese lunch and met a nice Portuguese couple who were traveling all over China for a couple weeks.  It's sad that they were impressed we knew what Portugal was.  Finally, we went back to the Hostel on a really hot, uncomfortable bus ride, but it was all okay because it was a truly awesome day.

And I got pictures, lots of them:

Not my finest picture, but a great background.

If you are still scrolling, congrats, you get to read about the fourth day.  That night, we went to Din Tai Fung (Same restaurant I went to in both Qingdao and Hong Kong).  It was, again, excellent.  They have a couple of locations on the west coast, so if you have a chance, go there; it's real Chinese food, not like Panda Express.

The next day we went to Temple of Heaven, which was awesome, but by that point we were all pretty wiped.  It also didn't help that it was, again, scorching hot.  Here are a few pictures:

That night was our train ride back to Shanghai.  I am still recovering.  It was mostly aweful; the two guys behind me wouldn't keep their mouths closed between 2 and 6 am, you know, when you're supposed to BE QUIET AND SLEEP.  I met an English teacher from the U.S. teaching in a city far in the north, and had an interesting conversation with her.  She was happy to be returning to the U.S. for a short visit.  In her town, there are 3.5 million people, and only 50 are not Chinese.  All 50 get together each Sunday, which is pretty cool.

It was nice to get back to Shanghai, and the major part of my travels are now over.  I have a final on August 5th, and a project due the 11th, which is the day I return home.  11 weeks have been awesome so far, and although I want to continue my travels, there just isn't enough time.  13 weeks should be perfect.

Beijing Days 1 and 2

This past weekend was my trip to Beijing and the Great Wall of China.  It was awesome.  I will take this day by day:

Day Train:  We took the Bullet train to Beijing, which is cool from an engineering standpoint since it uses Magnetic Levitation and goes 300 km/hr.  It also only took 4-5 hours, which is why it is so convenient.  Finally, we arrived and got to the hostel, which was also a pretty nice Hostel.  We were dead hungry when we got to the train station, so we ate there, not in the city.

Day 1: Tienanmen Square and Forbidden City:  Very cool area also.  Hard to really describe, you just have to go there. Forbidden City is a huge city where a Chinese Emperor would live in the Ming and Qing dynasties.  Lots of beautiful buildings and a nice garden area.  And...my camera was out of batteries.

Olympic area:  We toured around the area that held the 2008 Beijing summer games.  For me, this was really special; I love the Olympics, and I thought the Beijing games stood out as one of the best in recent memory.  We were able to go into the Birds nest and Water Cube.  Again, no camera, but I do have some pictures from my phone, which will upload when I get back to the US. (On August 11th)

We had dinner at a restaurant that served really good Peking Duck.  It was awesome and delicious.  There was also a dish with bacon wrapped mushrooms (also incredible, we ordered a second plate).  And my camera was still out of batteries (warning, I am breaking trends; no amazing food pictures will be included in this post, even though the food was amazing)

Day 2: Summer Palace: Finally my camera was charged!  Summer Palace was a HUGE area with lakes, bridges, ponds, and temples.  Really really cool area.  Proof?  I finally have proof!!!:

(Ok, but first, dinner: we were in the mood for Mexican, so we went to a really good mexican restaurant and I had steak for the first time in two and a half months.  It wasn't the best steak I've ever had, but it tasted glorious)

Man painting Chinese calligraphy with water using a brush

Ok, so the internet is being strange. I will post the rest of my trip very soon, but it is probably a good idea for me to separate the posts.

Heaven With a Side of Fog and Stairs

Hey Everyone,

This weekend was a trip to the Huangshan Mountains (Yellow Mountains).  It is the mountains that scenery (namely the floating mountains) from Avatar is based off of.  Yep, It was that beautiful.

This will be one of those posts without a ton of words, and more heavy on the pictures.

Day 1: Went to a small village outside of the mountains.  Had some nice water areas and very cheap souvenirs.  Like too cheap to even want to bargain.  For the equivalent of 5 USD, I picked up a variety of pretty cool items.  We also had a nice lunch before heading to the Hostel.  I took some pictures on my phone and they will transfer once I get back to the US.

Day 2:  Hiking UP the mountains.   It was a lot of stairs.  Like a LOT of stairs. Times 10. Times 10 again.  For a given amount of trail, I would guess that 70 percent of it was stairs.  There were a couple of outstanding peaks that we made it to, and were able to get to the hostile in time to relax and play a quick game of hide and go seek.  I was never found and had to give up my location each round (Thank you Robinson Pioneer Village training).  All in all, the day was tiring, but worth it because of this:

Protip: Click on the first picture and scroll forward/back using the right/left arrow keys

Day 3:  If you have made it down this far, props.  We woke up inside a cloud. I could see it blowing into our room through the window.  Pretty cool, but it made for pretty bad pictures.  The hike down was kind of annoying. If you've ever been in a continuous state of going down stairs, it's not fun, but I managed a few pics.

In case you were wondering, this last picture is me at the bottom after like a bajillion stairs, eating ice cream, and yes, this does count as my food picture.