Revisiting Beijing Language Culture University (BLCU)

I think this post is more of an update for all the friends that I made at BLCU and me reminiscing about the time that I lived in Beijing for a semester 5 years ago. First of all...how the heck did 5 years go by so quickly? Although I know that at no point in my life will I ever be able to relive the times I had with all the same people together in Beijing but it doesn't mean I miss them any less, we had a great time getting to know each other and exploring China and running into trouble in Beijing.

So in the morning today we got up and took the subway to Wu Dao Kou station which is closest to BLCU. Not much has changed except that there is no more construction and the roads are fully paved without human sized potholes anymore

The U center has about twice as many restaurants and the grocery store downstairs is packed with a new food court and twice as many grocery aisles as I remember.

We walked down the street to go visit my old campus and I noticed a new building on the side, my first thought was, oh one of the schools must have built this after I left thinking it was a different campus. Then I realized this was MY school.

This is now the general office, classroom, and cafeteria. It was so huge and very nice inside. There are now 3 floors of food to eat, 1st is how it used to be with the cafeteria, 2nd was the multiple restaurants you can get food from, 3rd is the sit down and cafe area with a super nice study area as well.

Nathan and Stafan, I can't believe this guy is still here...

We grabbed lunch at the cafeteria and got all this food for 10 kuai, so less than $1.50

I was happy to see my old dorm #4 was still standing too.

The school was celebrating it's 50th anniversary and many parts were under construction, but I wasn't sure exactly for what.

After that we walked all the way to Zhong Guan Cun, for those who are familiar with the area, yah that's a super long way to walk. It took us about an hour and a half to walk there and once we arrived, I found out they opened a brand new subway station there - -''

We spent the rest of the afternoon browsing the electronic market and walked around one of the department stores called Carrefour. At the end, we decided to get haircuts because at home I have a vietnamese guy who cuts my hair and barely speaks English.

Today we walked soooo much, I was ready to pass out and sleep on the subway station ground. It was great to visit the campus and it makes me feel like trying to figure out a way to come back to beijing for school or work

Getting to Beijing

It's kind of funny celebrating my birthday in China while everyone is in a timezone 14 hours behind, it felt my birthday lasted a super long time.

I didn't really have much of a chance to write up a blog post yesterday with all the crazy stuff that happened so I just did a picture blog instead. Yes, it raises a lot of questions like "Why is that shiba dog trying to catch a bus?" but I figured it would be fun to just post pictures without context.

I'll just do our very long day in bulletpoints

• Stayed up until 3am packing Kimberly's stuff
• Took all the stuff we weren't taking on our trip to our uncle's place for safekeeping and left at 5am so 2 hours of sleep
• Got to the airport way early but Orbitz messed up my reservation and the ticket desk wouldn't let us check in because we didn't have middle names on the reservation, had to call Orbitz to fix it, China Eastern Air charged me $150 to add the names, Orbitz said they'll pay me back, whole process took over an hour
• Had a layover in Ningbo airport, I realized I should have looked up where Ningbo was, spent the entire layover just wondering where we were.
• Got fed lunch and dinner on 2-2hour long flights which was awesome, suck it United Airlines
• Got to Beijing, took the subway to where our hostel was, wandered around dark hutongs for almost an hour before giving up and getting a taxi to take us

Right now we're staying at the Happy Dragon Hostel, we arrived here last night around 10:30 and so far it's good, It's definitely not the Hyatt but the beds are warm and the shower is hot. Cost about $30 a night for the both of us. 

I didn't take any pictures yesterday so here's a creeper picture of me and my favorite actress/singer Charlene Choi from when I was in high school. 

China blocks Blogger and Facebook so I won't be blogging as frequently anymore for the next week until we get to Seoul next Thursday.  Today's plan is to go visit my old school campus, do some shopping, and try to not freeze our butts off in 3 degree weather. Maybe if I think of it in Kelvin, it'll make me feel warmer.

A story in pictures

Today I felt like punching someone in the mouth and then throwing up

It's been a VERY long day...I shall explain.

Started out with shopping for some extra warm clothes for the next leg of the trip. The plan was to go buy it and then head to the Macau ferry but on our way to shop. Kimberly forgot her passport so we had to backtrack to pick it up.

On the way to the ferry I got a chance to get some freshly made takoyaki mmm so good, in Minneapolis I can get 6 for $5 during happy hour. Here, it was 6 for $3.

The ferry tide round trip cost about $40usd and it took an hour to get to Macau. Weather was nice and I didn't really have any expectations out of the day trip except get some treats from the world famous bakery.

I felt like the longer we were in the market square, the more annoyed I got with people in general hence the need to want to punch people in the mouth hole. More and more people kept pushing and shoving me (even old ladies) but the Minnesota nice in me continued to apologize when SOMEONE ELSE walked into me until at almost the end of the day, I just about had enough of these shenanigans.

By that time we were getting close to the time that the Grand lisboa buffet opened. Because of how popular it is, Kimberly made a reservation over a month ago for us.

They had so much food and it was all delicious. We were there for 2 hours and I had to take a few time outs to recover. Some of my favorites were salmon sashimi, fresh steamed shrimp they kept in a tank, hand pulled noodles, and the bread pudding which had apples and raisins inside.

Right now I'm on the ferry ride home and I'm about to pass out because of how much food I ate and how much walking we did.

Wandering around HK (Recap of yesterday)

I fell dead asleep last night at 8 and I just woke up and its about 4am, what better time than now to blog I guess.

Yesterday I only got around 1 hour of sleep total. Woke up around 6:30 and wandered around looking for a strong wifi signal. I feel like sometimes my phone is like those sticks they used in olden times to find water, but in my case, an open wifi signal just because I'm walking around just staring at it trying to connect to something and hope it's unlocked and free to use.
Found a Starbucks to hang out in for 2 hours and then went back to bug Kimberly and grab breakfast.

We didn't really have much of an agenda yesterday, just had to make sure we got to our uncle's place to spend some time with our cousins who we haven't seen as a full group in at least 15 years.

Kimberly needed winter gloves and where else to get them than H&M...seriously, I spend enough time at that store with Joanna and now that I'm in HK I get the "privilege" of visiting their store here.

I think I heard that hk was trying to break some kind of world record related to parades because many of the streets were blocked off and hundreds of people were dressed in lion dance outfits.

Got to my uncle's place in shatin in the afternoon and got to meet my cousin rosemary's kids and her husband Josh. I love babies ^_^

It was great seeing our dad's side of the family, I am glad for Facebook's ability to keep us updated with each other even though we physically haven't seen each other in so long.

So up to the time we had to get ready to leave, my energy levels were fine but at 6ish my brain started shutting down. Immediately forgetting what I was about to say, slurring my words, and just zoning out. We promised my grandparents that we would have dinner with them so we had to go.

By the time we got back to TST, I was completely fried and exhausted but we had to still get dinner. We went out for hot pot and this is the first time I had an individual hot pot which was so good. Lots of food for less than $8 and quite healthy too. For those that don't know, the way you do it is that you have a boiling pot of soup in front of you and just raw meats, noodles, and veggies, and you just cook it yourself. The food was great but I barely had enough energy to keep my head up.

Today the plan is to go to maccau. I've never been and I've only heard good things. Kimberly made a reservation over a month ago at the Grand Lisboa buffet which is like one of the world's largest buffets. I'm glad we're walking so much with all the food we're eating otherwise I'll come back looking a little heavier :p

The second sleep deprivation fully kicked in

7pm.I'm tired.Going to bed

Starting 2013 with an anticlimactic non-bang

I really don't know any other way to write the title, I'll explain.

When i arrived to the airport, it turned out that i had to get myself to my grandparents place because Kimberly wasn't able to in time.
It took an hour and nothing short of a miracle  to get me to my destination in tsim sha tsui because i had only street names from Kimberly and i had to piece from memory how to get there from last year.
*edit: I wanted to add that I checked my pedometer when I arrived and I only walked a total of 2 miles to get from my house in Bloomington to my family's place in HK, neat.**

Grabbed a quick dinner with my grandparents and we were out to celebrate the new year. My cousins invited us to a gathering on the hong kong side right on the harbor so i was crazy excited to experience a true new year celebration.
The party was in a public area on the roof of a mall and it was PACKED. Imagine the busiest club you've been to  or even the minnesota state fair and double the amount of people. That's how bad people were crammed next to each other. As the night wore on, the floor got increasingly sticky and people started clumsily dancing on tables,chairs, and benches which resulted in a lot of glasses and bottles smashing on the floor.

When it came time to the count down, i basically  fought my way to the balcony area to take some unforgettable photos (i even brought my tripod with). I set up my shot, I stood ready...3....2....1...and nothing. Everyone was anticipating this giant explosion of colors and lights but nothing was happening. Turns out the only place that was showing fireworks was the hong kong side, which was where we were and we were facing the kowloon side

At the end of the night i did have good time but i cant help but feel like i missed out on something big :/

I got back to the apartment at 3am, its almost 4 and i'm wide awake. Although I'm staying at my family's place with my sister, the first night of every trip for me has always been the hardest and most lonely feeling because I have nothing else to do but try to get out of my own head and force myself to sleep..good night