The End...

So, for the past month and a half, Blogspot was blocked by the Chinese government. Who knows why, but then again, who knows why the Chinese government does anything that they do? Anyway, I am back home and attempting to recover from jet lag. It's going alright. I still have to update about my Yunnan trip...which I wrote half of until China decided to block my blog!

Just as an brief update, I completed my papers and Chinese exams with flying colors. The rest of my stay in Shanghai was pleasurable and relaxing. The Shanghai heat was soothing and although humid, I enjoyed it very much. I will miss all the friends I made and there is no doubt that I will be seeing many of them shortly.

As a conclusion to my year abroad, I would recommend an experience like this to ANYONE. I had the time of my life and learned so much about Chinese culture: lifestyle, customs, etc... I would not trade this year that I had for any other experience. Sure, I missed a season of ice hockey, and a year with my Smithies, but when will I be able to study in a different country again? When else would I meet other college students with the identical travel bug.

If you were to ask for a one word description of my year abroad, it would be...WOW.


My besties. Amber & Shannon

All the photos from the below slide shows can be found on my Picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/cassandra.chao


Slide Shows:
Trip to Suzhou



Last Week in Shanghai

Back in Tan, from Yunnan!

Hey all! I'm back from the most amazing time I've had in China thus far. I am maybe 10 shades darker than when I left Shanghai, with a whole new attitude for my study abroad experience. I will attempt to write the happenings of this past week in detail, but I can't guarantee everything to be posted. I will upload photos to picasa of Hang Zhou and Yunnan, once I remember to upload Picasa, haha.

Anyway, here it goes:

SATURDAY, APRIL 25
Woke up early (8am) grabbed a bubble tea, and took our charter bus to HongQiao airport. Flew for 3 hours to Kunming. Sat next to Char and Esteban, both of whom are so lively that it helped the three hours fly by. Figured out why my camera could only take 150 photos, and found out how to reformat it so I could take 600+ photos, but I did lose 10 hilarious photos of people doing exercises on the airplane.

Arrived at our hotel, not too far from the airport. Had an hour or so of free time, where Amber and I walked around the pedestrian street to find food, ice cream, and bubble tea. :) Sadly, Amber's camera was drowned in her purse because her water bottle leaked so we headed straight back to the hotel to fix it.

Met up with the 7 Beijing kids, who were all really fun to chat with. We, as the entire Alliance group, walked to dinner at a nearby 'traditional' restaurant where we enjoyed food and live music. More free time thereafter, which included Amber konking out around 8 pm, and me sitting watching some random Chinese tv show.

SUNDAY APRIL 26
Bright and early start to the day. Took the bus to the Stone Forest. Kunming has tons of rock formations, explained to be from continuous fault line activity. At the Stone Forest, a bunch of us decided to go off the beaten path and go rock climbing. I think as I have gotten older, my vertigo has progressed. Rocks...slippery= exciting, but scary.

Had lunch and the afternoon off to walk around Kunming. Had "over the bridge noodles" which consisted of a large bowl of boiling broth, and they give you separate plates of noodles, and ingredients for you to put into the broth, somewhat like hot pot. Tasty.
Ryan, Joe, Kyle, Jake, Shannon and I decided to go find Muslim street, which we never did find, but came across Pet Street. As cute as all the kittens and puppies were, I felt terrible that they were sitting in the hot, hot heat. Of course we all fancifully thought that we would buy them all and free them off the bus while we drove to the airport.

I wish I could describe the streets of Kunming to you. Let's just say that "under construction" signs don't exist. And if they did, NO ONE abides by them. We were walking on half cemented, poorly brick-lain roads. Sewage pipes were sticking out with liquid seeping out...anyway... we headed to the airport for our experience in Xishuangbanna. Got to the hotel rather late, so headed off to bed.

MONDAY APRIL 27
Xishuangbanna!! Definitely my favorite stop on our entire trip.
Woke up bright and early again and headed towards the Mekong river...the group split up to several raft/boats where we would float down the Mekong for the next 2.5 hours. Our boat driver was a sneaky guy and gave us little pans to have water fights with the other rafts. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous and the weather was divine. Not too hot, not too cold, and the best part was that we all got soaked from the water fights. But, where were the super soakers when you needed them?

All the rafts stopped at a random beach along the river where there was a computer and printer set up for people who wanted the guides to take photos...Of course, we all had our own cameras. There was a volleyball net set up so people played a game of like 15 vs 15, yes, a huge volleyball game. Wasn't on the beach long until we got back on the boats to our destination. Omar then took us to the local market where we had some food and others bought dried fruit, extremely cheap fabric, and other goodies.

Took the bus from the market straight to JinHong(sp?), a Dai Village where we stayed at different host families. This was such a neat experience to live and experience the Dai lifestyle. Amy, Lindsey, Leona, Shannon and I were in one host family. That afternoon we hung out with our host mom, her daughter, and son in law. Taught the son-in-law how to play President's and Assholes as well as B.S. He won both games after we taught him how to play... At 5:30, we had an Alliance vs. Dai basketball game. Shannon and I decided to have our own fun and take the son-in-laws moped (with his permission,of course), and rode down the Dai village streets. After a few bugs in the eyes, nose, and mouth, we turned around and headed to the basketball game.
Alliance lost, but not by much.

Had dinner at our host family's house. Yum is the best word to describe it. Then afterward, we headed back to the basketball court to watch a show that the Dai people put on for us, but this didnt go on without Alliance participation. Of course I volunteer for a game, without knowing what's going to happen. 4 guys, 4 girls...rules of the game...Guys blindfolded while girl gets piggyback ride...objective...pop four balloons on the opposite side of the court. Ok..we lost, but didn't cheat!

Got to light these huge lanterns and saw some crazy homemade 'fireworks'.
After an exhausting day we headed back to our homestays where we were covered with mosquito nets for the night, nice.

TUESDAY APRIL 27

TO BE CONTINUED...SOMEDAY

Because I was unable to finish this post...
photos follow! as always...

Back from Hangzhou

I have been back for three days, from my exciting, but short-lived visit to Hangzhou.


Friday
Shannon, Charlotte, and I left for the train around 3pm on Friday, finding out that we paid way too much for a train ticket. Of course, we were seated in the highest class, which really is nothing to complain about for 10USD. We sat by a traveling flute group who ended up entertaining us the entire train ride to Hangzhou. They played their flutes, chatted with us, and sang for us. In return they wanted us to sing a song for them..Sadly, the only song the three of us knew lyrics to was the Star Spangled Banner, and I'll be the first to tell you how embarrassing it was. Especially to have the conductor tell us we were too loud!

Fortunately, all the entertainment on the train ride made 2 hours fly by. When we arrived, we grabbed a taxi towards our Couch Surfing host's house. Took about an hour due to traffic, but after getting confused where we were for 30 minutes, we finally found our lovely homestay. We dropped off our stuff only to then be picked up by my uncle for a dinner with him and his daughter. We walked around the corner to a hotel's restaurant where we feasted on scrumptious food.

Thereafter, we met our host at a local winery, where they were celebrating the one year anniversary of the cellar. Hangzhou's standard of living is much cheaper than that of Shanghai, considering cocktails are priced 15RMB as opposed to 50+RMB of Shanghai's nightlife.

Hitting midnight, I planned to head home first since I was meeting my extended family early in the morning. Shared a soft and comfy king size bed with S and C, and we all slept soundly.


Saturday
Woke up around 8 without disturbing my fellow bunkmates. Visited my aunt and uncle who lived within 5 minutes proximity. My aunt showed me around her apartment complex, which were bountifully filled with flower gardens and beautiful scenery. She then took me to see my grandpa's younger brother and his wife. It's great to see how my grandpa's brothers all look and act alike. Seeing them made me really think of home. Snapped a few photos with them then headed out with my aunt and uncle for a nice lunch north of West Lake.

After they dropped me off, I waited for Shannon and Char to get back from the wondrous American style buffet brunch (extremely jealous after they described what was on their menu). It was already late in the afternoon, but we decided to walk to West Lake (Xi Hu), which was about at 30 minute walk from the apartment. There we, and our host's friend, rented bicycles to ride around the lake. We rented 3 bikes for 20RMB/hour (3USD/bike/hour). I can say, I will never ride a bike in China again. First of all, the tourism in Hangzhou is out of control, especially around West Lake. Second, the traffic is horendous. Put 4 girls single-file biking into the picture, unsure of where they were biking...disastrous. Ok, so it wasn't that bad, but it was definitely dangerous. I would be much safer on my motorcylce in the streets of Northampton.

We walked home after an hour around West Lake and we picked up some Taiwanese dumplings on our way home. I think the most exciting time in Hangzhou was the happenings of this night. Our CS (Couch surfing) host knew a underground music scene in Hangzhou, where local artists would be displaying their art, and a few bands would be playing. It was interesting because Charlotte and I knew one of the bands playing: Boys Climbing Ropes, a band that opened for Hardqueens in Shanghai. There was another band whom all of us loved called Retarded Reptiles; their music was a mix of techno and alternative...quite interesting.
We were getting tired so headed back to the apartment where we all konked out and didn't wake up til morning.


Sunday
I got up early again, around 9 while the other two got up around 11. Unfortunate for us was the weather was dismal: cloudy and rainy. Because the other girls woke up so late and the weather was atrocious, we grabbed lunch at Subway and took a cab to Hangzhou's cheap market. There I bought 4 sweaters 35RMB (~5USD) each, a yellow blazer 60RMB (~9USD), and some necklackes 10RMB (~2USD) all of which got tangled together and are unwearable.

Knowing that our train was at 4:50, we prepared to leave the apartment around 3pm, which on a usual day would give us ample time to arrive at the train station. But of course, there were no taxis willing or able to take us to the station. We stood outside in the rain, lacking umbrellas, with all of our bags, waiting for a cab. Fortunately, I have relatives in Hangzhou, so I called my uncle hoping he could take us to the station. He could, but we waited another 45 minutes for him to drive through what normally would be a 10 minute ride, due to traffic. We got to the train station in one piece at....4:52 pm. Our train had already left.

I went to the ticket office and requested that our tickets be changed...but of course they couldnt because the ticket wasn't a direct way to Shanghai, so I had to get it refunded. I waited in another line to get it refunded, only to find out I could only get the first half of my trip refunded, because it was outgoing from Hangzhou, but the arrival into Shanghai ticket could not be refunded. We were left with 23RMB of an originally 60RMB ticket, each. With that money, I went into yet another ticket line to purchase new tickets to Shanghai, only to be denied when I was two people away from the window...."没有票去上海了" (No more tickets to Shanghai). So we were left with one last option...take an illegal bus back to Shanghai. I definitely did not think it was a good alternative, yet there were many people lined up for it. So, we took out another 40some RMB to pay for the 65RMB bus ticket back to Shanghai. We were all soaked, wearing skirts and shorts, sitting in the back of a charter bus riding through the traffic of Hangzhou back to Shanghai.

Well, I'm home and safe aren't I? Just remind me next time I go to Hangzhou that I should hire a driver.


This upcoming weekend, Alliance is taking the Shanghai Fudan group and the Beijing group to Yunnan. All of us are so excited to go. I am most looking forward to Xishuangbanna because it is considered to be the Hawaii of China. I saw our itinerary and we will be floating down the Mekong river in a raft for three hours. I am so ready for a tan and ready to leave the Shanghai pollution behind!

Until next time.