Surprise!

Last night, at midnight, we surprised Manwei for his 19th birthday, which is today, was awesome. We might have woken him up, and I had to get up early today so my god am I tired (and I was already sick)but the delicious cake was worth it, my stomach always leads my decision making somehow. Ugh I hope I get better though, getting serious about my study now, finally. Anyway, Happy Birthday Manwei!

:)

Spent most of today studying in my room, so here's my favourite painting from the exhibition yesterday. Upstairs was the main attraction, the exhibition from Francesca Mitterand (as if that will mean anything to anyone) but downstairs there was a whole collection of children's paintings. Some gems :)

The high life

A friend got a text message from a lady she met in a bar months ago, inviting her to an open art exhibition yesterday afternoon. It was free, but totally fancy, free drinks and wine (we arrived too late for the food). Fantastic opportunity for networking, where I met the son of one of the Kuomintang's ambassadors and current Sino-European investment guru, who said he'd keep us in touch for future events. Like I said, China makes you feel lucky



Welcome hall of the main building of Tsinghua, on our way to the welcome meeting for all the foreign students, of which there are over 2,000 here at any one time. Not much of a story to tell, but a nice picture :)

Beijing Nights #1

First night out in Beijing! First day I arrived, met some people who said come out, and I did, and didn't get home until 3am I think. Much randomness yet to come I hope, but still determined to study hard dammit!

Typical campus scene, this is outside the main campus supermarket in the shopping district. There are in total about 100,000 people who live within the bounds of Tsinghua University



The first week I was here, I basically spent sorting stuff out, such a hassle. Had to find a phone, buy a bike, get my accomodation sorted, unpack... seemingly endless tasks, which I'm still finishing nearly two weeks later. The campus is huge! Don't know what I would do without a bike. This is the front gate of the school, which has expanded way beyond this point but still very cool. One of the best things about arriving here is everyone is new, so everyone wants to meet everyone else. The two guys here are Kyun (from Korea) and Kevin (from France) and I'd say that we're already great friends, there isn't much I wouldn't tell these guys, we hang out a fair bit. I rarely eat a meal alone because someone always wants to catch up and since we all go to the same dining halls, we may as well

It was *this* cold

The next day, I  left at 7am from the town near Changbaishan, spent 4 hours on a bus followed by 23 hours on a train to get back to Beijing at 11.30am on Tuesday the 14th. I was slightly hungover actually, because I got taken out for dinner by my two friends, one of whom knew a girl who he went to school with in this town, and his Dad took all of us out and bought us all baijiu and beer (again, lucky!) The trip was fairly boring, so here's a cool photo: after climbing the mountain, ChenZhen and I decided to swim in a bathhouse, which uses water heated entirely by natural springs on the mountain. There was one outside pool, and after spending 5 minutes out of it, my hair froze!

There And Back Again, A Hobbit's Tale

I'd decided that after getting back from skiing, I'd go on a trip to Changbaishan, a mountain that an Iranian recommended to me, but I had very little idea of how to get there and back. Amazingly, as I walked back into the hostel to get my bags to go, two Chinese guys said they were going there too, and basically became my tour guides for the next couple of days. I'm finding that China has a way of making you feel really lucky, seems like this kind of thing happens all the time. As you can see, Changbaishan was worth visiting. The photo seems like a postcard I guess, but it's hard to make a frozen lake filling an extinct crater at 2700m of altitude not look cliched. Those mountains in the distance: North Korea. I forgot to bring a gold ring and hurl it into the lake. The rest of the mountain was brilliant, with typical snow-covered scenery everywhere. I'll probably upload some of those on boring days here in Beijing. Feeling pretty good at this stage, not necessarily about my Chinese but enjoying myself anyways.

First time skiing: lots of firsts

I've already been in Beijing for a week, but I'm determined to keep this blog relatively up-to-date. I just had my first lessons today, and they were really, really hard, so it's nice to reflect on the simpler times. Snow! And skiing for the first time in my life, lots of firsts on this trip. My instructor only spoke Chinese obviously, but we still managed to make progress, and by the end I was pretty comfortably making my way down the slope without hitting anyone, it was pretty crowded. I think I actually most enjoyed taking a break and going for a walk in the woods

Water, water everywhere...



Got to the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival at like 3pm, and heard it was better at night, so had to hang around for two and a half hours in the freezing cold for it to get dark. Luckily, a nice lady running a Korean place in the food court gave me free hot water to sit over. Waiting was worth it, there were huge buildings sculpted entirely of ice several stories tall, which someone told me before and I actually thought they were exaggerating. Above is a scene from Romeo and Juliet.

I spent a couple of days in Beijing, mostly sleeping and booking tickets, so I'll just skip to the interesting stuff. Two days after arriving, I left for Harbin, a town in Northern China near the Russian border, nto far from Vladivostok (sp?); maximum of -10 during the day. It's famous for street ice scupltures, as you can see ^^ I was doubting whether it would be worth leaving early to fit this trip north in, doubting a lot really, but I was pretty excited by this stage :) 

Arrival



Finally arrived in Beijing after a huge build-up and 24 hours of travel. Finally found a cheap place to stay, met my room mate Matt, and this is the scene we were greeted by when we went looking for a place to eat, the Lantern Festival having been the day before. Good first day