Counting down the days

My days in Beijing are numbered. I have 12 days left in this country that I've come to known over the course of four months. And while it's been fun and I would definitely come back here someday, I'm ready to go back home to New York. I miss my family and friends. I miss Flushing. I miss Manhattan. I miss my favorite places to eat. I miss NYC style pizza. China's been great and I've had an awesome experience here, but I'm ready for home. Foreals.

I can't wait to spend the holidays back home. I LOVE New York during the holiday season. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I love the decorations, I love the lights and I love Rockefeller Center (I almost typed out Rochester. Freudian slip? Probably..) and the gi-normous Christmas tree. I feel all giddy right now just thinking about all that I will be going home to.

It's a bit surreal to think how fast my time in China has passed by. When I first got here, I thought to myself, "Wow. Four months is a loooong time." And now, I have 12 days left (actually, 11 days and 10 hours ... but who's counting? Pshhh). To be honest, I'm a little sad to leave. There are a lot of things in China that I won't have back in the States. For instance, bargaining power. I won't be able to bargain for anything in the States because everything is at a set price. Don't mind me if we're hanging out and I try to bargain for a lower price on something that I obviously can't get for cheaper, haha.

BUT, I'm not that sad. I'm pretty freakin' excited to go home. I just have to get through all my final exams and papers and then I am home free!

People, places and things

Foreals, I'm terrible at updating this blog. I apologize. I know many of you are anxiously waiting for updates on my life in China via this blog. Haha, right.

Anyhoo.

It has been quite busy lately.... probably? It feels like it's been busy. I can't really remember what I've been doing since I last posted on Halloween. Fail. It snowed again in Beijing; it doesn't really count though because it was man-made. In fact the first time it snowed, it was also man-made. Yep, that's right. The Beijing government is controlling the weather. Isn't that ridiculous?! They shot up silver nitrate into the clouds to make it snow. It's terrible because 40 people died due to the snow, either because of the cold or because of car accidents. It doesn't snow much in Beijing, and the snow that we got on those two days is equivalent to all the snow that Beijing's had in the past five years. Soo... the government needs to stop meddling with nature. If this happened in America, Capitol Hill would be up to its neck in lawsuits. Fo'sho.

In other news, I'm going to Xi'an (西安) this weekend! I am pretty excited!! I'm traveling without any IES guidance; it'll just be me and a few friends. We're leaving tomorrow night on an overnight train to Xi'an and will get in around 6AM (I'm assuming?). I might bring my laptop with me, so if there is a free moment, I will try to blog about my trip. If anything, I will be twittering about it, harhar.

For those of you who have never heard of Xi'an, the city is home to the Terra Cotta Army.

Yeah, that's right. I'm going to see these bad boys over the weekend, among other things :)

Halloween & snow in Beijing!

First snow in Beijing on the first of November; almost sounds kind of poetic, huh?

It snowed all morning and for most of the afternoon. The weather changed so rapidly over the past couple of days. I didn't do anything today except stay in my room and do my homework while watching movies on youku.com. It was nice; I'm going to miss having pretty much any movie I want to watch at my disposal. I watched The Ugly Truth, half of Phantom of the Opera, P.S. I Love You (I was on a bit of a Gerard Butler craze after watching the Ugly Truth) and I just finished watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I LOVE that movie. It's a strange and whimsical movie, but I love it.

Yesterday was Halloween and I went out with a few girlfriends to celebrate Halloween the Chinese way. Halloween isn't widely celebrated in China, but it is observed by the younger generations because of all the Western influence in Beijing. So, one of the amusement parks in Beijing, Happy Valley Amusement Park hosted a Halloween party last night where you pay 60 kuai (less than $10 USD) to get into the park and rides are free and unlimited until 10pm and that was where the six of us decided to go. It took a while to get there because the park is on the other side of the city, and we got there late and there was a TON of people already there. The lines were super long and it was freeeeeeeezing. We spent most of our time waiting on line, and we ended up only going on two rides: bumper cars and free falling. The better rides weren't even open, so no roller coasters. It kind of sucked; I couldn't feel my body because it was so cold and then it started to rain. We left around 10:30 or so, and it took us forever to get a cab because there were so many people~! Originally, we had wanted to go meet up with some people at a bar or something in Sanlitun, but none of the cab drivers wanted to go to that area because it was so trafficky.

I ended up sharing a cab with two of my friends back to the area near my school, hoping to get some KFC since none of us ate dinner. Unfortunately for us, it was already closed when we got there. Sooo, we attempted to find a McDonald's, but I gave up and took a cab back to school because the rain picked up and I was freezing and tired.

Worst Halloween night ever. This just reaffirms my apathy towards Halloween. Now I like it even less.

I even dressed up for it, but no one really saw the costume because I was wearing my jacket the entire time. Four of us dressed up as the Ninja Turtles; I was Raphael! We bought green T-shirts, dark green tights and different colored stockings to make our eye masks and wrist bands and stuff. I was skeptical about looking like the Ninja Turtles at first, especially because we weren't able to find anything for our turtle shells. But when we put the eye masks on and stood together, we totally pulled it off!

It sucks that our costumes went to waste on a failed night.

At least we look good in the pictures.

China is keeping me busy

I'm really bad about updating my blog, aren't I?

It's been over a month since my trip to Yunnan, and I still haven't posted up any pictures or details of my trip. And now I have pictures from my weekends at the Great Wall and Nanjing to post up as well. Ack! It's all piling up.

Good news: I finally got myself a Flickr Pro account, so I'll be slowly posting my China pictures up there. Check the sidebar for a link to my photostream :)

Also! I have SIX weeks left in China. It's crazy how fast the time went. I've grown fond of China and I'll be sad to leave, but I'm excited to go back home and see my family, friends and Dan :)

Okay, next post, I will post up pictures. PROMISE!

Back from Yunnan and back into the groove of classes and 听写

Hello!~

I got back from Yunnan on the 30th/1st. We got back pretty late from the airport. Classes resumed this past Tuesday, and I've been settling back into the routine of classes and studying. I'm so glad we had a break after our long trip; it was a much needed rest. I'm kind of glad I didn't go anywhere. Traveling for 10 days in Yunnan was tiring enough.

The trip itself was definitely a great experience. Despite some difficulties and challenges, I still had a lot of fun and got to bond with the people in my group. I took a lot of pictures (around 1,400) and will be posting some soon. Please be patient with me :) I am quite lazy when it comes to uploading pictures onto Flickr and writing blog posts. BUT! I will get it done ... eventually ^___^''

For now, this short post will have to suffice; I need to finish my travel essay for Chinese class and study for tomorrow's 听写 (dictation)!