Greetings from Nanning!

So I’ve just been writing these in a Word document since I can’t find a decent internet connection to upload them. Today, it is HOT.  And HUMID.  We’re in the very south part of China, which has a tropical climate. It will take some getting used to, especially since we’ve been staying in cities with climates very similar to what we’re used to back home. Today, we went to the Guangxi Botanical Gardens, where all kinds of medicinal plants are grown.  We saw all kinds of plants used in traditional Chinese medicine, including the one plant rather popular all over the world, known as 大麻.  You may know this plant by many other names in the U.S., but it’s most commonly known as Marijuana.  Yes, there was a small patch, but nothing worth picking.

After our trip to the gardens, we went to our hotel, which Dr. Ming tells us is rated 5-stars. It was a really nice room, except for the beds, which were incredibly uncomfortable.  Here in China, beds are not soft like in the West.  Here, they are literally boards covered in blankets.  It’s supposedly good for your back.  We changed into some nicer clothes and we went to a banquet provided by one of Tao’s good friends, who is a very successful businesswoman.  Much to my surprise, we were joined for dinner by a couple of faculty members from Concordia: Ken Foster, and Per Anderson.  We dined for a long time, and by the time we were full, a whole three hours had elapsed since we left our hotel.  Tomorrow, we’ll need to get up early again, this time to catch a train to Beihai, a city on the southern coast of China.  We’ll stay there for one day, after which we will return to Nanning for a homestay.

Greetings from Nanning!

So I’ve just been writing these in a Word document since I can’t find a decent internet connection to upload them. Today, it is HOT.  And HUMID.  We’re in the very south part of China, which has a tropical climate. It will take some getting used to, especially since we’ve been staying in cities with climates very similar to what we’re used to back home. Today, we went to the Guangxi Botanical Gardens, where all kinds of medicinal plants are grown.  We saw all kinds of plants used in traditional Chinese medicine, including the one plant rather popular all over the world, known as 大麻.  You may know this plant by many other names in the U.S., but it’s most commonly known as Marijuana.  Yes, there was a small patch, but nothing worth picking.

After our trip to the gardens, we went to our hotel, which Dr. Ming tells us is rated 5-stars. It was a really nice room, except for the beds, which were incredibly uncomfortable.  Here in China, beds are not soft like in the West.  Here, they are literally boards covered in blankets.  It’s supposedly good for your back.  We changed into some nicer clothes and we went to a banquet provided by one of Tao’s good friends, who is a very successful businesswoman.  Much to my surprise, we were joined for dinner by a couple of faculty members from Concordia: Ken Foster, and Per Anderson.  We dined for a long time, and by the time we were full, a whole three hours had elapsed since we left our hotel.  Tomorrow, we’ll need to get up early again, this time to catch a train to Beihai, a city on the southern coast of China.  We’ll stay there for one day, after which we will return to Nanning for a homestay.

Goodbye, Chongqing!

19 May 2015

The past couple days we’ve spent just hanging around Chongqing.  The first day we were there, we went to the hot springs for some well-deserved R&R after several days of travel.  There were so many different pools there, including some with aromatic oils, others with various herbs, which all played a part in Chinese traditional medicine.  There was even a little pool with hundreds of tiny fish in it to clean dead skin cells of your feet.  It felt weird.

The next day was Sunday, so Tao gave us a free day.  I slept in until 11:00, so I caught up on some much-needed rest.  After I got up, I went out to explore the city.  Our hotel was right in the center of 沙坪坝(Shapingba) district, which meant that there were all kinds of stores to check out.  I eventually met up with some other students in my group, and we set out and just explored for the entire afternoon.  Chongqing is a really cool city, I wish we could have stayed there longer.

The next morning, we went to SISU to tour the campus and sit in on a class.  There were several Concordia students studying there this semester, and we were all glad to see our friends.  We got to see the dorms, as well as a few restaurants and various buildings around campus.  After the tour, a few of us went to 磁器口(Ciqikou), which is an ancient city in the middle of Chongqing, replete with souveniers and shops.  We hung out there for a while, and it was really cool to see all the old architecture.  Once we returned to the hotel, we rested for a while before a night out on the town.  We were out late last night at a KTV singing karaoke with our fellow Cobbers. We sang a variety of songs, including ones that we learned from Chinese class or ones that are popular back home.  It was actually kind of fun, because there were even new American songs that the SISU students hadn’t heard yet!  Also, there was a 1900 RMB 4.5 liter bottle of Black Label there at the KTV, which I thought was pretty funny.

This morning we all had to be down in the lobby at 6:00 to depart our hotel for the airport for a 9:30 flight to Nanning.  We all took naps at the airport while waiting to board our airplane.  We’ll touch down pretty soon, the flight to Nanning isn’t nearly as long as the one from Beijing to Chengdu.  Stay tuned for more updates!

I bought a selfie stick.  Don't judge.

This is the logo for a Chinese car brand called Chana.  Definitely not based on something else...

Ciqikou.

Yum!  Chicken Naggets and Cnspy Chicken Stvips!

I bet I could down this in a sitting.  Just kidding, people.

Hey, I just met you...

15 May 2015

Today we leave Chengdu on a train for Chongqing.  We’re taking a high speed train, it gets up to about 250 km/h, which is pretty darn fast.  It reminded me a lot of the Amtrak back home.  Maybe I’ll take a train ride out to Chicago.  

14 May 2015

Today we got on a bus and went to the 乐山, which is a giant Buddha carved out of the side of a mountain.  It was pretty cool, we had to do some hiking to get there, but the view was incredible.  Here are some pictures:

... Okay, if you say so...

Rawr.

This is the staircase we had to take down to go to the bottom of the Buddha.

We saw this island/cliff off in the distance, I thought it looked cool.

It was pretty hard to get the whole thing in the frame.

Here is a panorama of the river, it's what the Buddha would be seeing.

After the 2-hour bus ride back, we went to go stay with our host families.  We basically just stayed there for one night, but it was still pretty cool.  For dinner, we made dumplings (饺子.) 

Everyone makes them a little differently.

Here are the ones I made.

This fruit is called a louquat.  It is very good.

  After dinner, my host mom and brother took me out on a walk to a park in the middle of Chengdu.  The weather was really nice for a walk, not too hot or humid.