In the Hostel

Xian and Hua Shan Trip

Blogging on the Great Wall of China

Korea Trip Possibility

if we go to korea, it may be 5 ppl plus my korean friend (host)
[8:32:44 PM] Nick Choy: since she lives just outside of seoul, i would suggest she stay with us in the hotel and we pitch in to pay for her accommodation?
[8:33:51 PM] Nick Choy: by her estimates, i think it's about 300,000 WON per night for two hotel rooms ($270 USD), so divided by 5, that would be like $54 USD per person per night ... this is just rough estimate... going in middle of may

I guess the korea trip will be in middle of may and not next weekend! His korean friend will bring us around.

Oh btw, funny story, i told nick that i heard the mongolia desert trip "blew chunks" and he took it literally and said "buy a mask!" and he thought that i meant that the desert will blow chunks of sand in your face so you can wear goggles to protect yourself HAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAHAA I laughed sooooooo hard omg. HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAAH SOO LIKE JON. (can you add this to my blog)?

Day of expensive food

This morning, me and Nick went to eat lunch at Pyro Pizza. It's soooo expensive! Basically, we had a medium pizza where half was hawaiian and half was bbq chicken. A medium was 89 kuai! It just tasted like normal pizza, nothing special. Then afterwards, we wandered this tent place in WuDaoKou where people sold random things (street vendors all under one tent). One stand sold salamanders, koi fish and baby turtles. All the other vendors sold shirts for 5 kuai and random things like chop sticks and dried goods (raisins, dates, etc).


We didn't buy anything. After that, we went to McDonalds to get ice cream! Here, you can choose 5 different flavored cones: vanilla, grape, strawberry, mocha, and melon! It would be a regular vanilla cone with swirls of a certain color to indicate your flavor. It is just 5 kuai here, but they are yummy. Then we went to the bank. Nick took pictures of me on the big rock in front of our classroom building at the east gate. After that, we each went back to our dorms and my one hour nap turned into a 3 hour nap...ahh!


Oh btw, my classmate, Erin (american korean from oregon) bought a bunny!! She got it for 30 kuai (soooo cheap!) right outside the west gate. There are random people on bikes who sell animals outside the west and east gate haha. I don't know how she is going to hide it from the people who clean the rooms...


I also asked her what she's planning to do with it after she leaves in 3 months and she said she doesn't know (how sad...)!

So I slept from 3-6pm, woke up and then I was going to start my homework when I got a phone call from my classmates, Kim Hyun Wook! He asked if i wanted to go eat korean with him and his friend so I gladly accepted! It was just a 10 min walk from my dorm to the restaurant.
Oh and also, he arranged a hangout for tomorrow night to go to a theater near Wang fu jing to watch a chinese play. Apparantly, this is the most popular play in Beijing right now, so I decided to go. Tickets are going to be 100 kuai. Hopefully, everyone will go! It will be Kim, Me, Nick, Kyoko, Kyoko's friend, and Jennifer! It is supposed to rain tomorrow...but I'll still go anyways haha.


8:15pm I just came back from dinner with Kim Hyun Wook (korean classmate), and he brought his friend! I knew his friend because he sat behind me in class but decided to switch to B class haha. We went to this korean place above Li Xian Sheng on the 4th floor in Wu Dao Kou. It was called like "Tan tan Ya ya?" something like that. They wanted to pay. They explained to me that the elders when you go out to eat have to pay or else they lose face haha. I think the bill was a little less than 250 kuai, which is still really cheap considering what food we had!


They ordered this "cao niu rou" which cooked over a flame and then the waitress would cut off the meat for us. It was really tender and juicy, really good, even though im not a big beef fan, but this was really good. Than we had this pumpkin soup! That was very sweet and they told me that they don't add sugar to it and it is just the sugar from the pumpkin itself. Then we had this sour cold noodle dish. That was very good too. It tasted a lot like the cold noodles that we order back at home. During the meal, they kept drinking some kind of rice wine thing, and they poured me half a shot. I took a sip and it wasn't as bad as the others I've had before back at home, so then I just poured the rest of it in my coca cola. No effects!! So now, I am going to start homework. I have two 200 word essays that are due on Monday. In addition, I have to memorize the entire dialogue from lesson one for the lime green book class...i still don't know what that class is called, but it encompasses all classes.

Woohoo! Great Wall MuTianYu on Wednesday with my class at 8am!!!

Video Blog #6

Sorry about this, I had my camera flipped sideways

Things are looking better

Today I went to the UCenter to eat with my classmates for lunch and the old korean guy wanted to pay for ALL OF US. The total was 280 kuai BAHAHA. we were all ready to pay separately and had the money ready and all, then hes like, "wo qing ke!" and everyone didnt want him to pay but he fought for it. Then he asked how much it was and the fu wu yuan was like "280 kuai" and hes like "wow, wei shen me na me guei!". We went to that bird cage restaurant upstairs on the 5th floor and its actually Si Chuan food. Of course, i wanted to try their spicy noodles and omg it was SOOO SPicy. Enough so that it made me full after 3 bites, then the Korean guy was like "oh we can switch it for you!" but if course i dont want him to pay for another one so he gave me all the dumplings and he took the spicy noodles for himself instead.

Lunch was fun today. We had 10 people and while we were walking to the UCenter, the old korean guy and another japanese girl walked all the way to the subway because he thought that we were going to take the subway to another korean place! And everyone else went to the mall and then the two on the bikes went somewhere and it was chaotic haha. Then FINALLY everyone came to the mall and it worked out fine. Then after food, me and Jennifer wanted to walk the mall, and Nick and Erin wanted to get bubble tea downstairs at Happy Lemon. Mine was this roasted soga bean thing?? It was basically just normal milk tea with bubbles BUT! the odd thing was that after drinking it, my mouth is getting kind of numb...weird. It was 7 kuai.

After that, me and Jennifer went in the mall, Erin and Nick went back to the dorms. So the converses at UCenter are 295 Kuai. I was just checking out the prices so i can compare when i go and buy the fake ones at YiFu mall. Then there was also a shoe store across the street so i went to check it out there and they charge 88 kuai haha! That means that if i go to YiFu mall, i shouldnt be paying over 88 kuai because since this shoe store was across the mall and closer to campus AND it was its own shop, it HAS to be more expensive. I probably should only be paying 60 kuai or less at YiFu mall for the same pair of shoes. If i go to YiFu mall today, i will bargain for 45 kuai, then ill prob actually pay like 50 or 55 for them i guess... so like 7 or 8 US Dollars? HEHE!

Oh and at UCenter, i went to Watson's and got shampoo....blue colored Herbal Essences. I got it but i cant read the chinese and i just assumed that one is shampoo and the other is conditioner because they were the opposite shapes (which is what herbal essences usually does to differentiate their shampoos and conditioners). Hopefully i got the right one!

Oh btw, funny story, i was walking to my dorm and then i was gonna put my key onto the door. Then! To my left, an Italian girl from my class comes out! ANd im like "HEY arent you in my class???" and turns out that her bf lives next door to me and she lives down the hall haha! So i said if the hw is hard or something, we should get together and figure it out.

Soo im washing my clothes right now. ughhhh so lazy to get a cafeteria card. If i go to YiFu mall after my laundry is done, then i guess i can try to find the place to get a cafeteria card because it should be on the way. AH today is sooo warm. It feels like 60!

Video Blog #5

Sorry about this, I had my camera flipped sideways






My class c13


Left to right: Kyoko(Japan), Me, Sun(Korea), Jennifer(France), Nick(Australia), Korean dude?(Korea)