06/23/08

So I just got back from traveling with my brother Jon.  It was really good to see him again, and we had a really good time.  I was planning on posting pictures, and writing something really long.  Then I found out that my Stat final is on Wednesday instead of Friday.  So I'll give you the short version, and then hit the books:  First we spent three days seeing the sights in Shanghai.  Then we took an overnight train to Beijing, where we spent another three days.  After that, we took yet another overnight train to Xi'an, where we spent (you guessed it) another three days.  Finally, we flew back to Shanghai for a day and a half, and Jon left today (Monday).

Here's the list of Unesco World Heritage Sites that we saw:  the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Great Wall, and last but not least the Terra-cotta Warriors.  All of that with a few more museums and such squeezed in between.  Not bad for a ten day excursion.

I know it's a poor excuse for a blog post, but I'll be home two weeks from thursday.  And I'd be happy to show you my pictures after that.

06/12/2008

So, here's the news:

Right now my brother is on a plane and on his way here to visit me. So I'm pretty excited about that. If all goes according to plan, we'll be spending three days each in Shanghai, Beijing, and Xi'an. Should be fun.

I spent this past weekend in Nanjing. Good times.

Four weeks from today I'll be home. Hard to believe.

That's all I've got for now.

5/12/2008

Here's a recap of the past month:

I did travel anywhere after Beijing.

School kept me really busy.

I started a new class three weeks ago.

I had two finals last week.


So, not much excitement. But now that the first set of classes are finished, I can try to do some more tourism.

Beijing

"You are not a real man if you haven't climbed the Great Wall"

-Mao Zedong

So as you can guess from the title, I just got back from a weekend in Beijing. Here's what happened:

Thursday, April 4th:

We left for the train station at around 7:30 a.m., and left the station at 10:30.

The train ride to Beijing was 10 hours long, but the train was nice so it wasn't too bad.

When we arrived, we checked into the hostel and got some food near the station.

Friday, April 5th:

We hired a driver and left for the Simatai Great Wall at around 8:00 a.m. Beijing has three areas of the Great Wall that are set up for tourists. Simatai is the most strenuous, and apparently also the least crowded. It took us two hours to get there, but it was definitely worth the long drive.

This is the Simatai section of the Great Wall seen from the parking lot.

The first step of the hike up the Great Wall is taking the path they made to get from the parking lot to the wall itself. The wall you can see in this picture isn't the wall, it's just the way they decorated the tourist path to make it fit the theme.

This is the view from the lowest tower in the Simatai area. If you look closely you can see the path we took up to the wall about half way up on the right side of the picture. We went down to the lowest tower so we could get a better look at the river, and the wall on the other side. After taking pictures and admiring the scenery, we turned around, climbed back up all those steps and kept walking uphill past the entrance.

Here you can see the view from the third tower. It's the one in the upper right-hand corner of the previous picture. One of the things I didn't really think about when I decided to go to the Great Wall was the amount of steps involved. I knew it went through some hills, but I didn't really think about what that meant. Well, as you can see, there are a lot of steps and they're really steep in some sections.

Here's the view from about half way up. At this point we started to get a feel for how big the wall really is.

When we reached the last tower, the way was roped off because the path was too dangerous. So, we had to turn around and hike all the way back down.

On the way back we got stuck in a traffic jam because of an accident. If you look closely, you'll notice that the left lane has cars facing both directions. Yep, that's China. So we turned around and went to a little restaurant by the side of the road to wait for the highway to clear. The food was good, including the fish that they took out of a pond with a net, and killed by throwing it on the ground several times. In the end, the two hour drive took us about five. But I did get a nice nap, so it wasn't so bad.

In the evening we went to Wanfujing, which is a famous street in Beijing that has a lot of stores, and street vendors selling exotic food.

Saturday, April 6th:

We started the day off by driving past the "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium. It was really hard to see because there was a lot of fog, but we passed by it a few times and I managed to get a good look at it.

After that, we went to the Summer Palace. It was really crowded because of the holiday weekend, and it seemed like every time I wanted to take a picture of something, some old lady would pose for a picture in front of it. But aside from all that, it was still impressive.

The palace is built on a hill next to a big lake, and is pretty much one big garden with some buildings for the emperor to live in.

I think the most amazing part was the detail in the paintings on the buildings.

After spending a few hours at the Summer Palace, we went to a river valley about two hours away from the city. After realizing that there wasn't anything very fun to do in the town, we crossed the river and hiked a trail that runs up along the cliff face. The view was good, and we got to see mountain goats in their natural habitat.

Finally, we returned to Beijing and had some Beijing Kaoya (Roast Duck). It was good, but not really better than any other duck I've had.

Sunday, April 7th:

We started by going to the forbidden city.

Where should I start? The name Forbidden "City" isn't an exaggeration. The place is huge. I've heard people who have been to the Louvre say it's so big that after while you get tired of seeing paintings, no matter how good they are. I think you can get "Louvre Syndrome" in the Forbidden City. There are so many amazing buildings, with so much intricate detail in the architecture and decoration, that after a while each new building is "just another building."

But it's still impressive (I feel like I've used that word a lot, but I can't come up with a better one).

I took a lot of pictures, and I don't really know how best to describe the city here.

There are a lot of courtyards and small back alleys, and there's also a big garden inside.

If you want to hear more about it, call me when I get back and we can sit down and go through all the pictures.

Next, we went to the "Temple of Heaven." This one was painted in a style similar to the Summer Palace, but the thing that makes it unique is that it's circular. I've seen a lot of temples and pagodas since coming to China, but they've all been square or octagonal, except for this one.

Finally, we ended the trip by going to the "Lama Temple." Apparently it's one of the top ten temples in China. I don't know how they rank them, but it did have nice buildings. Although I have to admit that since it was my third set of ancient Chinese buildings in one day, I wasn't as impressed as I could have been. And I don't like the smell of incense.

On Sunday night, we took a sleeper train back to Shanghai and arrived at 7:30 a.m.

So over all, it was a good weekend. And it was about time for me to go to one of the more well known spots in China.

04/01/2008

I know I haven't posted in a while, but you're not missing much.  Classes have been keeping me busy, and something has come up every weekend to keep me from travelling anywhere.  But this weekend that's all about to change.  They're changing the holiday calendar here in China this year.  So instead of giving us a whole week off in May, they're giving us several shorter holidays.  This Friday is the first one.  So since none of us have class on Thursday either, we'll be leaving in the morning to spend 3 days in Beijing.  It's nice to finally be planning a trip to one of those places that everybody's going to ask me about when I mention I've been to China.  I'll post pictures when I get back.

In other news:  I'm not sure if it's just because of the Olympics or if there's some other reason, but over the last week a lot of websites have been "unblocked" in China.  A few examples are:  Wikipedia, BBC News, and Blogspot.  So that means that I don't have to be tricky about my comment reading anymore.

Two Weeks Later

If anybody's wondering why I've gone so long without posting anything, here's my answer:

The yellow pencil is new (obviously). I started the blue one on Wednesday night of last week, and this picture was taken the next night at 2 a.m. (So that's an indirect way of saying I've been a little busy.)

But now it's probably about time for me to update this thing, so here we go:

As I said in the last post, I started class two weeks ago. Right now I'm taking 4 classes: Automatic Control, Aerodynamics, Intro to Engineering Materials, Global Design Project.

Automatic Control: I had a lot of catching up to do in this class. The prerequisite that I took for this class didn't cover everything that was covered in the Chinese prerequisite class. So I had to a little over a week to catch up on 5 chapters that they were reviewing at the beginning of the class. I'm caught up now, but the class is kind of boring.

Aerodynamics: I didn't have as much catching up to do in this class. They use the same book that I used for Fluid Mechanics and would be using for Aerodynamics at Purdue, and they covered the same material. But I did have to finish 4 homework assignments in a week. The best thing about this class is that the professor's English is good enough that he can do more than just read the lecture slides.

Intro to Engineering Materials: So far it's been really easy, but most of the people taking it here are freshmen, so they don't understand much and it makes the pace really slow.

Global Design Project: We're doing a design project with the Chinese students who'll be going to Purdue next semester. So here's what it is: we're designing a toy robotic crab. So as an Aero, the actual project has nothing to do with anything. But it'll be a good opportunity to get some experience in teamwork and the design process. And let's face it, if we pull it off it'll be pretty cool.

So that's the rundown of my classes. I've found out that it's easier to get around the city from here than I thought, but classes have been keeping me pretty busy.

And I almost forgot to mention that I've started taking Chinese classes twice a week. I figure it's kind of pathetic to live in China for six months and not learn any Chinese, so I'm giving that a shot.

Class

I started class today, and I have to admit: it was nice to finally have something that I was required to do. I only had one class, and it was the one that they said would definitely not be taught in English. Well, surprise surprise, the professor took one look at me, and started teaching in English with an occasional lapse back into Chinese. So even though I probably could have made it since the slides and the book are both in English, I'm pretty happy about how things turned out. Now if the sight of four people who can't speak Chinese can get them to teach MT004 in English (that's MSE230 for anybody from Purdue) I should be set.

In other news, I finally found a sneaky way to read my comments.