Lets play catch up

July 11, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized

Alright, There is no possible way for me to go into the usual detail of previous posts and catch up to the present, so I thought I would give a little brief snippets of things that have happened until now.

U of M vs JI Basketball Game:
Basketball is the most popular game on campus, and one of the most popular games in China. Someone thought it would be a good idea to have a game of the U of M students versus the JI students. The concept in itself wasn’t a poor one, but it ended up being kind of funny. Our opponents ended up being the JI basketball team. As a refresher the JI (Joint Institute) is a large program here that partners with the University of Michigan. There are around 700 students in the JI program, and they are divided into seperate classes by year. Each class has their own team, and then there is one JI team which was made up of the best individuals from each class team. We ended up playing the JI team.

There was about seven of us total that ended up playing for Michigan: Myself, Tony, Edgar, Darren, Tim, Ian, and Gerald. Anyway we ended up putting together a decent team considering we didn’t have too many people from U of M that came to China. Anyway we got beat pretty badly. We actually kept it close in the second half of the game, but it wasn’t ennough to overcome the deficit from the first half.

Some people on the U of M team were getting kind of worked up about what they thought was unfair calling, but I don’t even know ennough rules in basketball to recognize what unfair calling would be. In my completly unqualified opinion I thought things were called fair. I ended up having a lot of fun playing, and did pretty well including a couple of come from behind blocks that felt pretty good.

Team Meeting

Grand Opening: Club Sky

My friend Jonas was searching online in the first session for possible things to do one weekend when he came across an ad for a grand opening of a club called Club Sky. It advertised that everyone who went would receive 5 free drinks, and that there was no cover. As soon as this was discovered and confirmed by calling the club we decided to try to get people to go out. I should probably apologize to Elain at this point who was planning to go to a KTV (karyoke) with lots of students that night as I ended up stealing all of her group to come with us to this new club (of course we did end up convincing Elain to come as well) We ended up getting pretty much the entire group of U of M students to go out together.

My dad always told me that if it sounds too good to be true then it is. Well… dad you were wrong in this circumstance. We arrived at the club, and it was a lot nicer than anyone expected. The whole club was very upscale looking, but was suited right for our age range. There was good music, a decent DJ, five free drinks, dancers (that worked for the club), and a couple performances though-out the evening.

We all ended up having a good time that night, and it was fun to have all of the students out together again.

Other Clubs:

We visited a couple of other clubs during the trip including G+ and Lux (they are about 20 feet away from each other with no cover so you can go back and forth during the night) Both of these clubs were also great. They were in a very nice part of town aimed more at tourists with nice western style restaurants. My favorite part of the trip to these clubs is being able to go down and take a break with a Western sandwich (my only sandwich of the trip) and some coldstone ice cream.

Many students have been to other clubs, but as the session wore on and my classes picked up my weekends consisted mainly of studying and training for soccer.

The Transition:

A couple of weeks ago the first session ended and all but me and one other student (my new roommate David) left campus. They either went to work at an internship (most of which were in downtown Shanghai) or they simply headed back to the States. With them leaving a new group of students ended up coming to campus but this time the group was much smaller… only six new students.

I also ended up having a heavier class load, along with an increased soccer training schedule. As a result I don’t end up doing much on the weekends besides trying to relax, catch up on school work, and work out, while the session 2 group (minus one) does a lot of traveling. I also managed to get into the Chinese Language and Culture class after working with the JI office to come up with a suitable schedule that would allow everyone to take the class including myself (as the previously scheduled version didn’t allow me to take the class).

Restaurant

We ended up going to a traditional Chinese restaurant to try some exotic foods as part of my culture class.

I ended up trying

  • Jellyfish – Kind of weird… it looks like jelly but is actually crunchy
  • Pregnant Whole Shrimp (including legs and eyes)
  • Stinky Tofu (Which you could easily mistake as just $8%t on if you went on smell alone, but surprisingly didn’t taste too bad.
  • Spicy Tofu
  • 1000 year old egg (no it’s not 1000 years old… just looks like it and kinda tastes like it)
  • Duck Jaw- including Tongue
  • Cold Bitter Mellon
  • Rice Wine
  • Shrimp Balls – Very tasty

and much more I can’t remember the name of, or I don’t have enough an idea of what it actually was to describe it in English.

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My Dear Friends… My Dear Friends…

July 4, 2009 · Filed under Trips

Hello to all of my loyal fans (all 6 of you),

Major Note: As you will notice at the end of this post, I have started a YouTube channel where I will upload small clips and maybe later even some video of my trip. You can get to it here:

http://www.youtube.com/b0otable

In an attempt to catch up with my blog I am going to have to go over some things fairly quickly.

View Pictures of the water trip here

One of our last planned trips for the session one group was a trip to a what the staff referred to as a water town. Once again we the students had no idea what to expect, but what we weren’t expecting was for our bus to stop outside of a large KFC with a noticeable lack of water for something known as a water town.

We quickly learned that we still had some walking to do before we would actually get to see the “water” area of the water town. We were introduced to the most intense tour guide I have ever met in my entire life. It turns out the water town kind of showed more of the old parts of the Shanghai area. Shanghai is considered a very modern city by most, but it also has a long history. The old Shanghai was a fishing city.

Our tour guide taking control

Our tour guide taking control

The tour guide was very proud of the history of home town and of his English ability. It was refreshing to see someone who seems content with what they are doing.

One of the first stops on the tour was an impressive bridge with an interesting history that crossed the main waterway of the city still being used to transport various materials and people. I think my grandpa would have been fascinated by the various exotic boats that were on the river, including a boat made of cement.

The name water town ended up being very appropriate, I would describe it to be similar to the pictures of Venice I have seen. There were tons of little shops selling all sorts of things and food. It was obvious the local economy had adapted to be tourist based.

One of the first stops within the city was the old residence of one of the wealthiest members of the town, which consisted of many impressive buildings, ponds, gardens, and other eye candy. (see the web album for more pics)

My house should have one of these

My house should have one of these

One of my favorite parts of the trip was in a temple where there multiple paintings of the various activities one might expect to participate in if they were unlucky enough to end up in hell.

One of the less graphic levels of hell

One of the less graphic levels of hell

The temple had very ornate decorations and was a little out of place with the rest of the town.

After the temple we got to see a traditional Chinese Medicine pharmacy. Let’s just say it is a great deal different than the pharmacies my mom has worked at. Point and case is the image below, which is a special medicine wine (yes as it gets consumed) which includes among many exotic ingredients including snaked wrapped around a stick.

Die or Drink this?

Die or Drink this?

After our formal tour we got our chance to be tourists and go around to all the local shops. There were many impressive items that I had not seen at any shops before (quite rare at this point in my trip). I also enjoyed some of the music played by various shop owners including the one in the video below.

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Beijing final update

June 24, 2009 · Filed under Beijing, Trips · Tagged , , , ,

Alright… and now for the long awaited conclusion of: Tom’s trip to Beijing

Part 4 of 4 – View pictures from this day

Getting up was very difficult Sunday morning… the intensity of the trip combined with the sleep deprivation did not work well for getting up early. We had quite an agenda for planned, as we were hoping to hit all of the left over major attractions in Beijing and make our flight back to SJTU.

The first stop of the day was the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven was a large park with various old style Chinese building around. The biggest attraction in the park was actually the people. Every section of the massive park was filled with older Chinese people doing some sort of activity. It was wild to see both the quantity of people, and the range in the activities being performed. There was dancing, sword practice, card games, Frisbee, and many other activities that I don’t even know the name of. Everyone was so active, lively, and happy. I really was thinking to myself that I hope I will be that happy when I am older. I even thought for a second about the feasibility of coming back and retiring in a community similar. At the minimum I think it would be worth a trip to China just to get ideas of what one might do to stay active.

.

I just really liked this picture

I just really liked this picture I took

There are more great pictures from the Temple of Heaven on the web album.

The next stop of the day was Beihai park, an imperial garden to the northwest of the Forbidden City. I don’t know why, but I really wasn’t expecting too much from this stop. It was so close to our hotel that I figured it would just be an average park, but alas… as so many of my assumptions on things have been here was completely wrong. The park was actually very nice. It was more open then some of the other attractions, but there was still plenty of marvelous architecture and works of art. There was also a quite impressive street artist who was able to “paint” portraits of people in a matter of seconds with nothing but water. Tony kept telling us that we had to see the 9 dragon wall. I was expecting something quite massive and ended up getting my hopes up a little high… especially since my heel was still giving me trouble and it was on the complete other side of the park from where we started. The wall was still impressive just not at all what I was thinking it would be.

The Bai Ta (White Dagoba) is a 40 m high stupa placed on the highest point on Qiónghuá Island.

The Bai Ta (White Dagoba) is a 40 m high stupa placed on the highest point on Qiónghuá Island.

After Beihai Park, we rushed over to Olympic Park after stopping at our hotel to pick up our luggage. (Yes we looked stupid haling our large suitcases around) I knew my dad would be disappointed if I didn’t at least visit the olympic site while I was in Beijing. The two main attractions were of course the bird’s nest, and the water cube. The water cube looked very cool from the outside. There is also a nice fountain display on the outside of the building. The bubbles are a very unique attribute of the building, and I think that in order to truely appreciate the building I would have had to come at night when all of the light displays are on. The building itself is already showing some signs of wear, and I wonder how long it will be able to stay in its current form. Inside the water cube was alright, but there was not much to see. The stadium in the pool is large for a swimming pool, but it was still just a normal pool. The practice pool which was gigantic was actually more impressive to me.

The bird’s nest on the other hand was amazing  both on the outside and the inside. The stadium is just so amazing to look at and when you walk into it you can almost feel the Olympic spirit. The indoor of the stadium was a vibrant red for the most part, and they had some amazing videos of the olympics on repeat on some large monitors.

After the Olympic Park, we walked to a train that took us all the way to the airport and made our way back to campus, completly exhausted, but with an experience of a lifetime.

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Whose Alarm is that…

June 9, 2009 · Filed under Beijing, Trips · Tagged , , , , , ,

This is post 3 of 4 about my trip to Bejing

Saturday: (View Pictures from this day)

Getting up Saturday morning was a little rough for two main reasons;
One: We got up very early again (We all end up yelling at whoevers alarm goes off first)
Two: We just spent the night on bar street

We ended up getting out of the hotel at a decent time (7:30ish) and made it to our first stop of the day… The Summer Palace. The Summer Palace Chinese name fittingly translates to “Gardens of Nurtured Harmony.”  I would describe it as a large park much of which is covered with water. There are many impressive works of Chinese architecture that looks especially good from across a lake. One of the things I have noticed about the Chinese buildings is that great thought was put into the actual location of each building. Often times buildings will be lined up with one another, on top of a large hill, or placed just perfectly for an amazing view from various vantage points.

View from across the lake

We were rushing through the park, and it seemed as though people were slightly irritable with the lack of sleep. I ended up getting separated from my group after taking a picture, and spent most of the time wandering on my own. This seemed to be exactly what I needed. I felt refreshed and went from feeling dragged around, to having complete autonomy. I ended up exploring some of the many different natural features of the landscape on my own. I was climbing up a large hill when I found an old cave that was pretty interesting. It felt very Serene to be alone in nature just exploring parts of an ancient culture. I spent much of the day walking around a large lake exploring various sights along the way.

Entrance of the Cave

Entrance of the Cave

One of the more impressive features at the Summer Palace was the Temple of Buddhist Virtue which contained a large statue of Buddha.

After the Summer Palace we went to the the Niujie Mosque, which is the oldest Mosque in Beijing. It wasn’t exactly as big as you might expect, but the people there were very nice.

We finished the Mosque fairly quickly and were just able to squeeze in our next destination: Fayuan Temple. It was somewhat small, but it was pretty interesting to see actual monks walking around. There was also a very cute dog that kept following people around.

After are scheduled agenda was completed we decided to take an impromptu stop at the Pearl Market, which was basically a very large mall like building of knock off stuff. It was fun to go around bargaining for deals, and I ended up picking up a few souvenirs here. We debated on what to do for dinner and ended up heading back to Wangfujing to the night street vendors, where you could try all sorts of wild cuisine. This included stuff like snakes, spiders, scorpions, eels, and many other weird items. I stayed pretty conservative with my choices, but a few of the other guys tried some scorpions.

The day ended with a couple hours of books before bed, allowing me to get to sleep by around 2 or 3AM.

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I finally did it… (Friday)

June 5, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged , , , ,

This post covers Friday’s activities on my trip to Beijing (part 2/4)

Friday: (Pictures from this Day)

Whenever you tell anyone about a trip to China, they always mention one thing: The Great Wall. I was a little worried that I wasn’t going to be able to see it during my time here since I didn’t have much time off, but going to Beijing made it possible.

We arranged a day long tour with our hotel for about 200 rmb (roughly $30 US, catching on to the conversion rate yet… me either … dividing by 7 sucks). We knew it would take us to the Great Wall, a Ming Tomb, and lunch, but that wasn’t all they were going to do for us.

We ended up going to the Juyongguan section (I think) of the Great Wall, and believe it or not it wasn’t really what I expected. Instead of calling it the Great Wall they should have named it “The Great Stone Ladder” (at least for our section). I couldn’t complain though the landscape was beauitful mountainious- reminicient of out West in the states. We spent about two hours climbing the wall, and it was quite an experience. It was something I think I will remember doing for awhile. It was also fairly physically challenging.

View as we start climbing

View as we start climbing

Climbing the wall

Climbing the wall

After successfully making it up four towers and back down in one piece our tour proceeded to take us to what was to be the first of many combination stops/tourist traps. We ended up going to Beijing Dragon Land Superior Jade Gallery where many different forms of Jade artwork were made. They gave us 50 RMB voucher (a prelude of what to come) then a very brief tour which included a glimpse of the process in which the jade was made into various pieces of art, and how to tell fake jade from real jade. Then we went into a large showroom area where we could purchase any number of jade items. To be fair the store was actually really fun and they didn’t make you feel obligated to buy anything.

Beijing Dragon Land Superior Jade Gallery

Beijing Dragon Land Superior Jade Gallery

The next stop was to one of the thirteen Ming tombs. We were expecting to spend a decent amount of time here, but we ended up going to one of the smaller ones which allowed us to get in and out in record pace. I thought Mallory might like this combo turtle dragon statue they had there.

Turtle Dragon at Ming Tomb

Turtle Dragon at Ming Tomb

After the Ming Tomb we went to lunch at the SIWEI Friendship Store, before we actually got to eat as they “prepared our table” we were lucky ennough to be given a tour of how various urns were created and painted, something the friendship store just happen to sell a lot of. You could tell these stops were for tourists as the parking lot was filled only with large buses. Lunch itself was very good and a decent amount of food since it was included in our tour fee.

Working Painting an Urn

Working Painting an Urn

The next location we got to visit was the Beijing Dong Wu Silk Museum. The provided us with a fairly detailed tour of how silk was made, and we even got to help stretch out some silk that was being used in a blanket. The museum section wasn’t huge but it was very well done, and they even had an old machine that they used to process silk with. We then got to their showroom where they had loads of different blankets and silk clothes for our purchace. After we found the unmarked exit we proceeded to our next stop- Dr. Tea.

Silk Musuem

Silk Musuem

We were taken to a private room where our tour group was prepared various samples of Teas to try, along with information about each Tea. We tried Jasmine, Oolong, Litchi and Puerh tea. I was surprised that even I liked the tea, and they almost got my business, but I was able to hold off with the likely hope of finding a cheaper item elsewhere.

Our final stop was of the tour was a foot massage place. We each got to a herbal soak, then about a 2o minute foot massage. It really worried me how painful my feet had been during the past couple of weeks (particularly my heel) and when I was getting the massage I could definitely feel the pain localized in various areas. I may have to go to the doctor to get an x-ray if the problem persists. Anyway overall the massage was great. We then were told about the differences between eastern and western medicine. How eastern medicine was more focused on preventing problems while western medicine was focused on treating. The presentation was actually enjoyable. We were then asked if we would like to have some doctors come look at our palms if they were available. Pretty soon all the doctors came in and started talking to everyone. The guy who examined me went like this:

Doc: Any digestion problems?
Me: Not really
Doc: Any insomnia problems?
Me: Not really
Doc: Your pretty much healthy

Apparently I was the only one who got the you are  healthy answers. Everyone else was asked or told strangely similar things, and then were offered various medicine for their ailments. One of our members was taken in a private room to be told something serious. I believe it was something along the lines of he wouldn’t be able to have sex in the future unless he bought some meds that cost 600 rmb/bottle that need 2 bottles/month for 3 months… you do the math.

Anyway I actually enjoyed this as well, it was like I was at the fair while getting a foot massage, and we all had a good laugh about it on the bus.

This concluded our hotel arranged tour. We ended up seeing some great places and quite a few stops that weren’t expected but were fun anyway (most the time)

We were all starving after the trip and ended up eating dinner at a “Hot Pot” restaurant called Little Sheep, where you select various types of vegetables and meats and you put them onto a boiling pot in the middle of your table when you want to eat them. I enjoyed this hot pot much more then I did the hot pot on campus.

At night we ended up going to San Li Tun, a bar street. We quickly realized that like almost everything in China, the prices were negotiable. On a side note: many of us have almost started price negotitions as a hobby. We always are trying to see who can end up with the best deal. The first bar was very relaxing and we ended up having a couple of beers outside in the cool air. We ended up going to a couple more bars during the night including one where the was singing. We ended the night on with a bit of a tiff with a bar who basically doubled are drink order without telling us, but in the end it was only a few bucks.

They were singing Hey Jude

They were singing Hey Jude

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A Not So Small Detour – (Wed/Thur)

June 5, 2009 · Filed under Beijing, Trips · Tagged , , , , ,

This post covers day (wed/thur) of  Beijing 

Wed/Thur: (View Pictures from these days)

Surprise…

I went to Beijing with the other U of M students from Wednesday night through Sunday evening. We divided ourselves into three groups and each group made their own plans. My group consisted of myself Jonas, Chris (my roomate), Shravan, Wenting, Jiefu, and Tony. My group was extemly lucky because Chris and Wenting can both speak a decent amount of Chinese and Tony is fluent and can also read Chinese. I feel kind of bad how much work Tony had to do for our group throughout the trip in translating pretty much everything for our group and often times other groups.

 

We ended up staying at the Redwall Hotel, which was a fairly nice place near the Imperial Place and Baihai park. I have decided to divide up the trip into separate post because of how much we did while we were there. If you have ever played Oregon Trail before, you will understand what I mean when I say we were set at Grueling pace, and lost a couple oxen on the way.

 

So without further adieu: Wednesday Night

 

We arrived in Beijing very late after a fairly long day of traveling. If your not familiar with China Beijing and Shanghai are not exactly walking distance apart, so we decided to fly over a 10ish hour high speed train ride. We arrived at our hotel around 1am and unpacked. Jonas and I then decided to walk around our hotel and see what we were near. We ended up talking to a local shop guy for a bit (talking mainly consisting of hand gestures as neither group really spoke the other language). Finally we called it a night around 3am and went to bed.

 

Thursday – First Day of Activities.

 

We got up bright and early on the first day (and every day for that matter) and started our adventure in Beijing. One nice thing about Beijing was their fabulous mass transportation systems. They had buses going all over the city that cost 1rmb to ride, an ever extending subway network that cost 2rmb to ride, and a plethora of taxi’s that were great to fill in gaps where buses and metros were unavailable. This meant as long as you had someone who could read Chinese transportation was very cheap.

 

Our first stop of the day was Wangfujing which is a famous shopping street in China. We spent some time strolling through some of the shops and then ended up having “breakfast-ish” on the 7th floor of a large mall. (As I haven’t found anything that resembles anything like what I would consider breakfast, it is basically just lunch in the morning).

 

After lunch everyone except Wenting and Jonas went to Tienanmen square. Jonas had to shop for some new clothes since he had accidentally left his luggage in Shanghai. Tienanmen is a very nice area. It is a large open plaza for the most part with different government buildings placed carefully around.

We decided to go into the first building we saw which was Zhengyangmen, which was formally known as the front gate of the inner city of ancient Bejing. One of the nicest parts about going inside Zhengyangmen is the view of Tienanmen Square. We walked around the square for about an hour in a normal tourist fashion before heading the the forbidden city to meet up with the rest of our group.

Zhengyangmen Gate

 

 

When we first got into the Forbidden City I was a little disappointed. It was a beautiful from a nature perspective but there weren’t very many buildings and the ones they had were fairly small, although it was impressive that everything was hand painted and unique….. THEN our group realized we weren’t actually inside the forbidden city but a park just outside of it.

The actual Forbidden City was breathtaking. It was an incredible collection of building, many of which are connected together in a massive complex. It was incredibly large, and you don’t really get a sense of the scope of the place until you get into it and are able to get a view of how large it is. My biggest regret of the trip was not being able to spend more time there. We were trying to catch a Tea show performance and we didn’t realize just how large it was until it was too late. I still got some pretty amazing pictures of the city which you can see in my albums.

Just one small section of the Forbidden City

 

We ended up rushing to try to get to the tea show, but ended up missing it as our quest for a taxi kept taking us in the wrong direction until finally it was too late. This was unfortunate in more then one way as it turns out the performance was a special one for the holiday and was at a highly reduced price, and we decided later not to go back and pay the full price.

 

The next stop of the day was the Lama Palace which is a monetary of the Geluk School of Tibetan Buddhism. We were able to go at a little slower pace throughout the temple as it wasn’t near the size of the Forbidden city, although impressive in its own right. The temple had many buildings with ornate statues of Buddha inside. Unfortunately you are are not allowed to take pictures of the Budda’s otherwise my web album would be stocked full of them (although I did manage to snap a few pictures ;) ). It had a very relaxing atmosphere and many Chinese people came to pray.

 

Lama Temple

A building in the Lama Temple

 

After the temple we rushed over to meet the other groups and a professor and his family for Peking duck for dinner. Our collective group ate six ducks along with many other side dishes.

 

Dinner was fairly late and long so it was night by the time we were done. My group split into two groups. One group going out to the bars and the other going back to the hotel. I really wanted to go out to the bars but I thought I should get some sleep and study a bit for my exam on Monday. I ended up catching a taxi with Tony. When we got back we decided to see what this light was near our hotel. It ended up being the outside of the Forbidden City. We walked along the outside of the city for awhile which was lit up before heading back and calling it a night.

 

Mmmmmmmm

Mmmmmmmm

 

 

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Busy Busy Bee

May 26, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged , , , , ,

 

Whew…

 (Let me start off saying I hate the internet here… as I was just approaching 700 words into a post when my browser decided to reset itself and I lost everything.)

Well it has been a very busy last week, but perhaps not in the way I was hoping for. My classes have are roaring at full steam and with the amount of work generated I have been finding very little freetime. While I am here I am taking EECS 353 – Digital and Analog Communications systems, and EECS 401 – Probability and Statistics.

One thing I can say I have learned from 353 is how much math it is possible to write in a 1.5 hour time span. My professor starts on the chalkboard and goes through the math and an incredibly rate which is expected to be transcribed into our notes. I feel that I can either pay attention or take notes… not both. I wish I could not write down what is written, but as there are no lecture slides posted we are expected to have the notes from class to do the homework.

 In 401, I have been really pushing the boundaries of my math skills. I considered myself to be fairly good at math at Michigan, but the amount of math that is expected here is nothing I have experienced before. Much of the homework takes hours and hours to do, involving many proofs and derivations.

With the amount of work I am putting into both classes I feel at Michigan I would be very confident going into the midterm exams, but here I am just hoping to pass. Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised.

Another good portion of my time is going towards workouts now, although not as much as I would like. I am starting to do formal track workouts again, lifting, and playing soccer when I can get a chance. I am also experimenting with a new service called Gyminee online, which has some really nice features in tracking your progress with lifting, although not enough micro management options for my running workouts. For the running workouts I have resurrected and modified the excel sheet that I used for the last two summers my dad came up with.

With all of the things going on, I have needed to start organizng my time a little better. In order to facilitate myself in this task, I have started to write things down in what I guess would be called a planner. At first I just wrote things down in a soft notebook, but now I have bought a little hardbound book to record my schedule, to do list, and workouts in. The specifics of the workouts eventually make it to excel and Gyminee. Hopefully this system will allow me to have enough time to experience China a bit more.

As far as general life on campus goes, I have found some more places to eat at. I have discovered that the canteens are nice every once in awhile, but they are cafeteria food, and they serve the same thing every day. It is really nice that the delivery here is free and there is no tipping. Although my favorite place to get delivery from recently had an electrical fire and may be out of commission for awhile. The nice thing is that with food prices so cheap on campus you can afford to experiment a little. For example today I went to a new Canteen that I heard mixed reviews about. I ended up liking what I got: a 9 inch personal pizza, a starwberry smoothie, and some noodles with meat (similar to chow mein), all of which cost just over $2 US.

I did manage to make it back to Shanghai tonight for the first time in over a week to go to a nice Taiwanese restaurant. My friend Jonas and I were running a bit late so we had to go by ourselves there. It was fun to see that with the little Chinese we knew, we were able to make it to the location in Shanghai, which is a taxi ride and two train rides away for a total of about an hour.

Jonas Getting a Ticket

When we arrived at our destination, Charmanj, we quickly found the other students and sat down. The restaurant was nicer than I expected and the food was already on the table when we arrived. The group had ordered a ton of dishes which were to be shared.

I was a ittle hesitant at first, but then I took my first bite and … wow. The meal turned out to be the best meal I have had in China yet (albiet the most expensive around $15) and one of the best meals I have had in my life.

 

First Round of Food (I am taking the picture)

First Round of Food (I am taking the picture)

We had:

Stir Fried Minced Pork & Chopped String Beans
Three Flavor Potted Chicken
Chinese Doughnuts Stuffed w/ Pineapple Salad & Shrimps
Stewed Beef & Beef Tendon w/ Turnip in Clay
Sweet & Sour Perch w/ Pine Nuts
Oyster – Egg – Chinese Cabbage Pancake
Stir-Fried White Yam & Loofah w/ Medlar
Taiwanese Pork Fried Rice
Peanut Smoothy
Fresh Strawberry Smoothy
House Pudding Bin

 

MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm

MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Click the image below for the names in English and Chinese
What we ate

What we ate (Hand copied by our guide Czahreena)

 I honestly liked everything I tried… even the weird sounding stuff, although my favorite was probably the Peanut Smoothy and the shrimp dish. Hopefully I will find time to go back there a couple more times before I leave.

  Well I should really be getting to bed here. Tomorrow is a long day, and I am now very hungry after writing about that fantastic restaurant.

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A New Type of Amusement Park

May 17, 2009 · Filed under General Life, Trips · Tagged , , ,

I received an email earlier this week reminding me of my participation in the upcoming JI – U of M treasure hunt. This was very interesting to me since I had no idea that I was even signed up to go on such a trip, but apparently it was part of our agenda here. The email said that the hunt would take place at the Oriental Green Boat amusement park. Naturally I assumed it was some kind of park with roller coasters in a cedar point sort of way…  but I was completely wrong.

We arrived to the park and I quickly realized this was not an amusement park by the definition I was familiar with. It would be hard to exactly classify it as a park since I have never seen anything quite like it in the States.

As I walked into the entrace we were greeted by the following view:

(As an interesting side note: If you look closely you will see the world expo 2010 mascot Haibao… I told you he was everwhere)

After getting through the entrance we were told we were going to have to go to a waiting area while the volunteers went to the different sections of the park to set up. I was expecting to go to some grass field and wait… but I was wrong. We went under a bridge and then were treated to the following surprise:

The first thing we saw on our way to the waiting area.

The first thing we saw on our way to the waiting area.

A fake but real life size aircraft carrier

A fake but life-sized aircraft carrier

We give about 40 mintues to explore the inside of the Aircraft carrier which had lots of lifesized planes, tanks, helicopters, and other military equipment you can see more of the pictures from the trip on my web album. We quickly learned that this park is also used for military training for teenagers and young adults (my guess ages 16-22 range). Apparently military training is mandatory for all Chinese people to particpate in at some point in their life. The military training seemed very different then what one might expect. Everything seemed to be really relaxed. The instructors which lead groups of about 20 or so people seemed to be only loosly keeping them in check, and there was lots of gigglying and joking around it seemed.

Girls making a joke during training

Girls making a joke during training

There was also a large group of what must have been elementary school children and we got the rock star treatment again. One student would see us and then they would quickly nudge their friends next to them and point. They seemed to be very entertained with the foreigners at hand. The 35 minutes was pretty fun and the ship had a lot of cool things to see. I also was able to make my mother proud  by ordering a cold beer at 10:30 in the morning.

After our free time we met and were told the rules of the game.

We were split into teams of 5 students each. Each team had around 3 U of M students and 2 JI students. We were given a park map and a list of 8 areas that we had to visit. At each area there would be a student there waiting for us and we would have to pass a task. If we successfully passed the task we would get a gold token, and if not we would get a black token. The first two teams to successfully pass all of the challenges and make it back to the main gate first would win a prize.

Map of Oriental Green Boat Park

Map of Oriental Green Boat Park (click for full size)

The challenges included the following items (in the order that my group did them)

  • Wisdom Avenue: We were given a paper with pictures of statues. We had to find the statues from many different sculptures on the avenue and write down their names.
  • Knowledge Seeking Island: Each group was given a number. They had to search the island for pieces of paper that had a trivial clue on it. Then they had to figure out what it was refering to.
  • The Lawn: Where the groups ate a 20 minute Chinese lunch.
  • Fun Bridges: (My favorite area.) There were many obsticle bridges that went from one side of moat to the other side with a net underneath. Each group had to get their team acroos various bridges without falling into the water.  One group had a student that didn’t quite make it across the bridge and ended up getting soaked.
  • Hero’s Road: (My second favorite area.) This was a very large obsticle course that the group had to pass. It included doing things like climbing over a large wooden wall with the aid of a rope.
  • Maize Route: The group had to get through a maize made out of bushes.
  • Super Market: The groups were given a sheet with a list of items on them. You then had to go into the market and find the price for each item.
  • Chinese Restaurant: This part of the park had many different buliding that were named for a specific country. You were given a piece of paper with a specific countries building, then you had to find the building and take a picture of it.
View at the end of Wisdom Avenue

View at the end of Wisdom Avenue

My group started off kind of casually, but as we arrived at lunch we met another group and a rivalry was created. We got more into the game as the day went on. Eventually we were jogging occasionally between events, and we always tried to do each task as quickly as possible.

I am not going to lie to you… I love scavenger hunts, and I got really into this one. This was probably my favorite activity of the trip thus far. It didn’t hurt that my group ended up winning the hunt, beating the group we met at lunch by about two or three minutes (out of a few hour scavenger hunt). Eventually all of the groups made it back to the start, while we waited we ate some dinner (McDonalds), and relaxed for a bit, and played hacky sack.

When the last group got back, we were given our prize which was a gift card for karaoke for 400 RMB (not bad considering my bike costs 200 RMB). We then had about three hours to go around the park on our own. I went back to the fun bridges and the hero’s road. There was a ton of bridges that I didn’t get a chance to do try when doing the treasure hunt. I wanted to make sure I did every single one. There was one bridge that I really thought I was going to end up in the water on, but was able to pull it off in the end. The second run of hero’s path was a lot fun also. We made sure to hit all of the obstacles and made some more up for ourselves that were probably not naturally intended to be part of the course.  Then headed back to the main gate in rented bike carts having a race along the way.

Overall it was a great day. The park was absurdly gorgeous and it just had a lot of things to do. It was the kind of place that I think my brother, dad, myself, and Mallory would love. Some students didn’t seem to enjoy it as much, but I think it was really what you made of it. The only thing I can see being a problem was that the park was HUGE, and some of the tasks were pretty physically demanding. I think it pushed a lot of students pass the points that they normally go, and was a very good workout.

Most students fell asleep within the first five minutes of the trip back to campus

Most students fell asleep within the first five minutes of the trip back to campus

After we got back to campus, a group of us decided to use the card that we had just won and went to a Karyoke place. Apparently Karyoke is huge in China, and there are places to embarrass yourself singing everywhere. We had about 14 of us, got our own private room (as everyone does), a few drinks and started singing away. If you know me, you know I don’t sing, but last night everyone sung. It was just a nice cap to and awesome day. I also ended up making some Chinese friends there. It was a little rough since we both spoke basically none of the others language but it was a good time. (Check the web album for pics)

The start of the night... we were just getting warmed up.

The start of the night... we were just getting warmed up.

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A Normal Day…

May 11, 2009 · Filed under General Life · Tagged , , ,

Today was the first day that seemed to be routine. I finally feel like I am getting into somewhat a groove. I still have some problems to solve such as finding a solution to the incredible heat here so I don’t have to change clothes throughout the day (although we do have AC in our room) and finding a CBC atm.

I woke up went to class, came back took a nap, and went to the soccer field with my 7 dollar pair of total90′s. A didn’t take a picture of them until after I wore them and the field here just destroys shoes. They were originally white. The temperature cools off quite considerably at night and the weather was nice for soccer. It took me awhile to get in a game, but I eventually got in one. I played a bit better today, and started things off with a pretty nice goal from probably 20 yards out. I was very disappointed in my conditioning though and it will takShoese a while for me to recover from this 5 week cold that just won’t go away. (I am still coughing, but have decided I am well enough to start training again.)

After soccer I poked around and juggled with a few guys and then went for a 3 mile run on the track. I am still amazed with all of the activities around the soccer field and track area. As I mentioned before there are people doing the three leg race in groups of around 8 (which I guess is a Chinese tradition of some sort),practicing dancing, running, playing catch with a baseball, soccer,there were guys walking around with ping pong paddles but I have no idea what they were doing, older women walking around the track backwards, and people practicing random drills. It is just a very lively area.

The other amazing thing about this area is that it does not really shut down with the sun going down. Some people will still do things such as soccer in the dark. This is especially true of the people playing basketball. Basketball is even more popular than soccer among the students and there are still a few games going on hours after the sun has ceased to be seen.

I ended up finding a new restaurant on campus since I missed the canteen hours for a late dinner after soccer. It took me a long time to order since you actually had to say what you wanted and you couldn’t just point. I was determined to eat there though since the food looked very good. The cuisine consisted of mainly meat and some vegetables such as broccoli kabob style on wooden sticks, all heavily spiced. Eventually I called my roommate who can speak Chinese decently and found a random student and handed her the phone. The girls here seem to really get a kick out of me struggling to do simple things such as order food. She helped me order some food that contained chicken as per my request.

There was a young girl who seemed to be in charge of the little restaurant and would shout orders very loudly and with a slightly angry tone when the orders were ready, but when my order was ready she brought it out to me myself. There are some definite perks to being a foreigner here.

After dinner I ran into a group of students from Purdue who had arrived on Campus yesterday. They were not engineers and were only here for 10 days only and said they didn’t really have a real course but still would end up with 3 credits. They were very intent on finding a place to drink on campus so we didn’t talk too long, but there is a chance that our groups may go out together this weekend.

That pretty much wrapped up the main points of the day. Fill in the gaps with studying and laundry and you have my Monday.

On a side note: I added some pictures to the Shanghai Day tour from my roommates camera. There are some pretty good pictures including more of the cute kids who wanted to take pictures with us.

The Pictures can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/Tom.J.McCurdy

or www.tinyurl.com/b0otpics for short.

Kids wanting to take pictures with me

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You Play Soccer?

May 11, 2009 · Filed under Food, General Life · Tagged , , , , ,

This morning… (by morning I mean about 1:00pm) I woke up and rushed for some breakfast before our scheduled U of M Welcome Party. I know we have only been here a week, but it seems to be much much longer and the idea of a welcome party seemed a bit odd for everyone even though this is the first weekend after arriving.

Lunch at the Canteen was only serving fried rice. Rumor was that there was not going to be any food provided at the welcome party so I had a large helping of rice and one of the drinks that is a cross between milk and a drinkable yogurt to get some calcium. I then got my first experience in a new mode of transportation that is very popular here… riding on the back of someone’s bike.

Bikes are the main form of transportation for all students here meaning there are loads of bikes everywhere. Between classes you are basically playing a game of frogger to cross the street. Most of the bikes are somewhat old, single speed, and have a flat grate like structure on the back over the rear tire. Students will use this back grate as a seat and peddle each other around campus. I got to ride on one from the canteen to our welcome party location and i must say it was quite fun, and quite an ab workout.

Just as I arrived at the party on my bike I finished my large drink (which is incredibly filling) and see that there are all sorts of food there for us to eat. :(

Events started off with a few quick questions from the staff about our experiences thus far. Basically the general opinion was that everyone was having a great time, especially when it came to going out at night. We then participated in a series of games involving the University of Michigan students and their buddies.

I have not talked about the buddy system very much because my buddy has been gone since he helped me carry my bags into my room,but I will review it for a second. Basically every Michigan student was given a buddy that is suppose to help them adjust to life in Shanghai and the university. The system was designed to help us have a source for help with problems no matter when they might occur. They also come with us on trips and help introduce us to various parts of the city. Overall I would say the system has worked amazingly. The Chinese students always seem willing to help us in every way possible for the most part. The only real problem I have heard about with buddies is with mine who has been busy with exams and student government elections and hasn’t had much time to hang out. (After starting the classes here I can see how one might be short on time)

The games were pretty fun and most of the group seemed to enjoy the start. One game had participants tie one leg to a partner in a three leg race fashion with a balloon tied to each ankle. You then tried to pop the balloons of the other teams.

After the introduction and games we had different stations that we go to to participate in various activities. One station had games related to the use of chop sticks and marbles, another station was set up so you could write your name in Chinese with paint, and the final station was could be described as similar to a hacky sack juggling station. So of course I went straight to the juggling station.

The juggling station used what is most easily described as a shuttle cock in badminton which was designed to be kicked. The students started to explain how it worked and I gave it a shot. They were very impressed with my first attempt as I ended up getting around ten or so. They became very excited when I started to get more, and by the end of the day my score of 92 was enough for me to win the competition by a fair margin. (The Chinese students participated in the juggling contest too) I ended up getting approached by quite a few people throughout the day asking me about my soccer experience and telling me that I was very good at the game. I also won an odd stuff animal that the girls here seem to really like. On a curious side note apparently the name of this particular stuff animal is very similar to a very dirty Chinese phrase.

After the games we were treated to food, a tia chi lesson, and some music by a Chinese student band playing American music. The band was actually quite good, and I found it odd that they were able tosing without a Chinese accent.

Overall the party was fun and I am continually impressed with how much effort is put in to making us feel welcome here.

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