Hello [ni hao] Internet. It is a balmy 85° here in Yangling, China today and I think the sky is blue underneath the thick covering of smog. After moving our room, my roommate Jamie and I finally have internet connection, so because this blog post is late in coming here is a recap of my first few days in China:
·
A miserable 13 hour plane ride [but I did get to
watch Frozen and all 3 movies in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy complements of
United Airlines™]
·
An 11 hour ride from Beijing to Xi’an on a train
that was a cross between the Hogwarts Express and an Army barrack. I got the
pleasure of awkwardly sleeping on a bunk facing a random Chinese man for the
majority of the journey
·
A trip to a wildlife sanctuary that had LOTS OF
PANDAS [after we drove two hours in the wrong direction to a zoo that did NOT
have pandas]
·
A walk around a
Temple of Fortune that will apparently give me luck [so this should mean I will
ace all of my classes second year]
· An entire day spent
in the awesome city of Xi’an where we toured the Bell and Drum towers that are
centuries old and ate lamb soup in the Muslim Quarter
·
An 8+ mile bike ride
on the Xi’an City wall that used to enclose the old city
·
3 uneventful days of Traditional Chinese
Veterinary Medicine classes
So far China is everything and nothing like I expected. There is some air pollution, but it is not
nearly as bad as I expected. The locals stare and take pictures of you, but the
Chinese Veterinary students we had the pleasure to spend time with have been
absolutely wonderful [we bonded over Walking Dead and Game of Thrones]. The
food has also been really good [except for that one time I ate these mushrooms
that where shaped and disguised as noodles], but the day I figure out how to
use chopsticks will be the day the Mets win another World Series. Thank God [or
Buddha, or whatever] that our hotel room has a Western style toilet. The
bathrooms in China are affectionately referred to as “Squatty Potties”, which
means you squat over a hole in the ground and do your business. Its’ disgusting
and I think I’ve pissed on my own leg more times on this trip than I ever did
growing up [And did I forget to mention that bathrooms don’t provide toilet
paper or soap? Because they don’t] and I will have to throw away my sneakers
before or after I get home because I am sure I have stepped in more urine
[amongst other things] than I care to admit.
Tomorrow we are
heading back to Xi’an to see the world famous Terra Cotta Warrior Soldiers and
do some more sight-seeing in Xi’an. Hopefully these blog posts will become a
daily thing, or at least far more frequent now that I have interwebs [but the
great firewall of the Chinese internet blocks Facebook so I won’t be able to
upload photos there until I get back].
Cheers!
Oh and my brother requested that the only thing he wanted me
to being him back from China was something “Made in America”. I accepted the
challenge and have thus far been defeated, but I still have 11 days so there is
always hope. I can however, get you Beats headphones for 20 yuan [Less than $5
US].
p.s. Thanks to Mama Kaelin for uploading this since China
doesn’t want me to be able to access anything fun [although reddit is allowed
here, which is weird], if anything shows up weird on here, it’s her fault not
mine.
