ni hao men.

i got a good laugh out of this while in touring the tsingtao...

dugfindsnemo — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 06:56:00 +0800

i got a good laugh out of this while in touring the tsingtao brewery in qingdao, china back in november 2011. china is obviously not located in north america.

quick recap.

dugfindsnemo — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:51:00 +0800

Two quarters and one summer session have past and now I am finally writing my concluding post about study abroad adventure in Beijing,China. Though I spent most of my time in Beijing, I also went to other parts of China, such as Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Qingdao (Tsingdao). My friends have been posting some photos from China lately so I decided that now is a good time to write about the fun experiences I had last fall.

One of the coolest things that happened was I made friends with a lot of international students. I did not focus on just the Americans, even though becoming friends with Americans was really easy. It was pretty easy to becoming friends with others in my Chinese Reading 1 and Chinese Speaking 1 classes because those two classes had a maximum of 15 students. A good majority of the students in Chinese Reading 1 was enrolled in Chinese Speaking 1. I was enrolled in Level 1 Chinese because I did not know how to speak Mandarin. The friends I had helped me in both classes and I was very thankful. If they did not help me with my Chinese, I do not know how I would have survived. Studying abroad helped be aware of cultures, other than the American culture. I learned a lot about German and Japanese culture. While learning about their culture, my American friends and I informed them of the American holidays that happened to be from September to December. We celebrated Halloween, as well as American Thanksgiving (with a Chinese twist). The restaurants do not really serve turkey, so we settled for Peking duck. I still communicate with a lot of the people I met via Facebook and email.

Beijing, China has so many cool places to visit, such as the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden Palace, and the Summer Palace. I visited most of the touristy spots in China. A lot of the places were there for over 1000 years, which is a complete 180 from the United States. United States is so modern while China is very cultural. I went to the Summer Palace twice during my 4 month stay. Once during the fall and once during the winter. When I went in the fall, the sun was shining and the view of the palace was clear magnificent. When I went in the winter, it just happened to be snowing that day. It was between 10-15 degrees fahrenheit that day. Since it was that cold, the lake froze over therefore, a lot of people, including me, walked on it. It was truly a once in a lifetime experience since it does not get that cold here in Southern California.

Lastly, the food was cheap and delicious. The food at restaurants was delicious; the cafeteria food was manageable. It could’ve been better but I did not complain because I paid less that 2 USD for a good variety of food. And it was not fast food. During my stay in China, I did miss food from America, such as M&Ms and In-N-Out. I did end up buying at least 5 bags of M&Ms in a span on a couple of days. Choosing which types of food to order was one of the biggest problems because I did not want to order anything with mystery meat. It was ridiculously hard during the first weeks I was in China because I could not read Chinese. After 10 Chinese lessons, I was slowly getting the hang of it. I was able to ask the servers “what is in the dish?” and “what kind of meat is this?”

China was a great magical experience. I made friends with people from all around the world, I learned Chinese from an intensive language program, and I got to explore a lot of the landmarks in China. Learning Chinese in China was hard, but I did learn a lot everyday. Since everything was taught in Chinese and not a lot of people in China know English, it kind of forces you to learn and keep up. If I was learning Chinese in the States, I do not think I would have learned as much. I learned how to live on my own for 4 months without a lot of help from my parents. I did some things I never thought I would ever do, such as eat scorpion and eating at relying on public transportation and my handy bike. Back home, I drive everywhere, so not being able to drive in China was such a weird feeling. And with that, I will end this post with some of my favorite photos from Fall 2011, Beijing, China.

Olympic Park Water Cube.

Summer Palace in the Fall.

Summer Palace in the Winter.

Friends Chilling in My (Empty) Room the Night Before Move-Out.

Move-Out (Come With 2 Baggages, Leave With 4).

the mcdonalds of my university. just look at this. oh, and the...

dugfindsnemo — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:56:27 +0800

the mcdonalds of my university. just look at this. oh, and the ketchup isnt ketchup. its like tomato paste and sugar.

this is how i dry my socks, y’all. yea, i wear mismatched...

dugfindsnemo — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:51:00 +0800

this is how i dry my socks, y’all. yea, i wear mismatched socks. no big deal.

shanghai day2

dugfindsnemo — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 17:35:45 +0800

this is a long overdue post. so it will be short because i’m too lazy at the moment.

on the second day, we went to people’s park. there were people doing some taichi and people chitchatting. it was a lovely park. the thing about this park that stands out the most out of all the parks is that this park, is like those online dating sites. the only difference is is that the profiles of people are printed/written on paper and then hung on string. there are no names, just a description of the person and a contact number. it’s pretty funny, in my opinion. parents would post an ad up for their son/daughter so their son/daughter can get married. take a look, this is ridiculous.

this lady is writing down some “notes.”

fast forward a couple of hours… elisa, tristan and i ended up at a seafood buffet. the buffet was heaven. we each had 4/5 plates of seafood/meat and 2/3 plates of fruit/dessert. yes, i was full for about 7ish hours.

after that, we went to calligraphy street and then headed to the train station to go back to beijing..

happy thanksgiving

dugfindsnemo — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 22:03:06 +0800

before i continue on with the shanghai photos, i just want to say happy thanksgiving. since i’m not home in california with my family, i celebrated thanksgiving with some of my friends. here in beijing, we celebrated thanksgiving by eating peking duck, and it was delicious. our cab driver didn’t know where the restaurant was located, so he dropped us off at some corner and told us to find it. awesome, huh? after wandering around for a good 10 minutes in the cold, we took another cab to get to the restaurant because it was too cold to walk any further. after chilling in the cab for a few minutes, we arrived at our destination.

check out the duck, we got 3 of them. (this is just half of one duck)

and our food (this was the first part of the food, i got too lazy to get a picture of all the food, i was really hungry)

now that thanksgiving is over, you know what this means? it’s time for christmas music.

shanghai - day one (part 2)

dugfindsnemo — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 22:31:35 +0800

the restrooms at yuyuan market place displays how long the person has been inside the stall. quite embarrassing if you ask me. i saw a time of 5+ minutes, but i couldn’t get a photo of it. it was already weird that i took a photo in the restroom, so it would be even more awkward to take another photo in there.

after eating dinner at the marketplace, we headed back to the river to take the underwater tram back to the other side of the huangpu river. it was time to go to the oriental pearl tower. it’s quite pretty.

we went up 300 something meters and we got to see a magnificent view of shanghai.

hey look, it’s me. im on top of the buildings.

and that concludes our first day in shanghai.

shanghai - day one (part 1)

dugfindsnemo — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 22:21:00 +0800

this past weekend, november18-20, our group visited the wonderful area of shanghai. we took the bullet train there. it took around 5 hours to get from beijing to shanghai. we arrived friday night at 11ish. we got to the hotel, and after complaining about our rooms to the reception, we finally left to eat “dinner.” we ended up at this bar called woodstock. we played pool and foosball until the food arrived.

this is woodstock, it is seriously located by another bar named asian angels bar.

we left the bar at 2 in the morning and headed back to the hotel to sleep. in the morning, we took a casual walk to the huangpu river. on the way there, we saw many buildings, the view would have been better if the rain clouds were not in the way.

we were on some circular bridge.

next stop, the other side of the huangpu river. instead of taking a ferry, we took this underwater tunnel. we were inside a small tram and the tunnel was a light show. at the other side, it looked like we were in europe, not china. just look at the buildings.

i even saw a sightseeing bus, which reminded me of those hollywood sightseeing buses.

we spent some time at nanjing road pedestrian street. that street was full of little shops and brand name stores. i even saw a hollister (im not sure if it’s a real or fake). after that, we went to the yuyuan market area. this marketplace looked very chinese. this market was full of shops that sold souvenirs and food at a cheap price.

tumblr would not let me upload anymore photos… soo.. onto part 2.

thai food.

dugfindsnemo — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:49:35 +0800

yesterday (11-15-2011), tristan and i went to zhongguancun for dinner. we ended up at this lovely thai restaurant called Banana Leaf.

we got to eat on a “boat.” *cue “i’m on a boat” by the lonely island*

tristan being a badass.

green curry with beef. yumm.

assorted mushrooms and rice noodles. i think.

and lastly, squid with some sort of chili sauce/paste. and it was delicious.

the prices were fairly moderate. we split the bill and it came out to 81.5 yuan (or 15usd) per person. overall, dinner was “beautiful” and delicious. i was full the entire night (which is rare, because i usually have a midnight snack before i sleep).

safe welding.

dugfindsnemo — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:24:00 +0800

it was a smoggy/foggy day today, therefore, tristan and i couldn’t go visit the temple of heaven. well, another reason was we got too lazy to go. in the end, we decided to go grab some dinner, and guess what we saw on the way to the restaurant??? some people doing some welding, and we both thought something like “that’s safe.” oh, china.

happy 2 months.

dugfindsnemo — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:09:00 +0800

last week, my friends and i decided to celebrate our first two months in china by buying a cake from tous les jours. tous les jours is a pretty fancy bakery.

they even make totoro bread.

moving on.. we were not there for the bread. we were there for the cake. we ended up buying a green tea cake(we’re in china, so why not?) and number 2 candle for the special occasion. the cake came out to be around 20usd, which in my opinion is moderately cheap.

the “2” candle fell apart 10 seconds after lighting it. the bakery gave us these spiffy candles, we got like 10 of them.

this isnt related to my adventures… moving on.. im kinda...

dugfindsnemo — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 02:19:03 +0800

this isnt related to my adventures… moving on.. im kinda excited to see the hunger games.

it’s pretty normal to see a sign by the elevator saying...

dugfindsnemo — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:18:22 +0800

it’s pretty normal to see a sign by the elevator saying that there is no hot water for a couple of days. now this sign was posted this past weekend, and i had to take a picture. it took me forever to understand it since i can barely read chinese. i am pretty sure the receptionists google translated the chinese to english, therefore the english makes no sense whatsoever. i was told to go to another building just to take a shower. pretty lame. as of now, the hot water works and i finally have hot hot water (hooray!), rather than lukewarm water. and, the water pressure is finally decent.

whoa.

dugfindsnemo — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:41:36 +0800

i’ve been in beijing for exactly two months already. time is flying… two more months here and then back to sunny socal.

fail moment of the day.

dugfindsnemo — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 13:56:30 +0800

instead of taking a 10-ish minutes walk to get back to the dorm, my friends and i took a cab back. we are that cool.

whoa. i havent updated in a while. i’ll post some photos sometime this week. just give me some...

dugfindsnemo — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:19:51 +0800

whoa. i havent updated in a while. i’ll post some photos sometime this week. just give me some time to study/cram.

chengdu research base of giant panda breeding. the pandas are so...

dugfindsnemo — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:13:00 +0800

they just dont stop eating.

red panda!

they so cuuute.

chengdu research base of giant panda breeding.

the pandas are so cute. i just wish i had 1000rmb with me so i can hold a panda. on the other hand, i learned a lot about pandas. this is way better than going to the zoo. i got to see at least 20 pandas, compared to the 2-3 pandas i would see when i go to zoos.

the photo with the five pandas: they are not copulating. dont worry.

huanglong. isnt it purrrty? it took a cable car and an hour-ish...

dugfindsnemo — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:40:26 +0800

huanglong. isnt it purrrty? it took a cable car and an hour-ish walk to arrive at the upper lake and another 3 hour walk to reach the exit. i was 4600meters above sea level. i almost passed out. crazy, huh?

pandas at the chengdu panda research base in china. they are so...

dugfindsnemo — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:12:00 +0800

pandas at the chengdu panda research base in china. they are so cute.

jiuzhaigou: a national park located in south western china. it...

dugfindsnemo — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:33:00 +0800

jiuzhaigou: a national park located in south western china. it was so beautiful. this park is magical. the lakes are amazing and on top of that, i was able to breathe in fresh air. it was kind of cold since i didnt really pack mountain wear. also, the restrooms were westernized. yes, i was one happy camper.