Wuzhen Trip & A Bit of FOMO

This weekend the school arranged a trip with other exchange students to Wuzhen, a canal town 2.5 hour ride away. I only ended up getting 2 hours of sleep, so I was super tired and passed out during the bus ride. 

As for the town, I guess I'll describe it as a less decorative version of Lijiang. It is definitely still very touristy and the prices do reflect that. We kind of just walked around.

We went to this cafe to sit down and just relax for a bit. I ordered a vanilla milkshake for 30¥ but it tasted just like milk wtf D: It wasn't even like the right consistency. 

Walked around some shops and there was this small toy-music shop and they had the prettiest carousels ever D: I was pretty tempted to get one because there was this super pretty pink one, but it was just a bit too big and it was also like 430¥  :(

Umm there was an "incident" when we returned to Shanghai though. Maybe it wasn't meant to be malicious, but.. still quite fucked up. Basically most of the people from my program went to Wuzhen (10 of us) and when we got back to Shanghai, they all went to get dinner together, except they didn't invite me or my friend (we were sitting together on the bus). We only found out because after getting off the bus, we saw them all going the other direction to get dinner. Not only that, but before we got off, my friend's roommate had given her a bag of things she purchased and asked her to bring it back to the room first. So if "everyone" was going to get dinner, why is it assumed that she was going back first..? Ehh? To make matters worse, they all came back with takeout to eat at my friend's place >_> Which is SO awkward and just awful >:(

It's not even a matter of being cliquey either because the WHOLE group went, so it's not like a few of them decided to get dinner together afterwards.

Later that night, they all went out to the Bund to see it at night. It's definitely like a very common activity to do, but it's like.. last time when I was going to go I invited some of them to go but we ended up not going because it was raining. But then this time they didn't even bother to extend the invitation back. It wasn't too out of the way either because we exchanged conversations like, "Oh where are you going?"

Ugh.

How Can I Say No to Hello Kitty?

Especially in China when they are able to throw Hello Kitty onto every other thing. So far, I think I've been pretty good with not spending money frivolously just because "I can." When you convert it back to USD, a lot of things in China are cheap, but if you think about it, it's all relative to an average person's standard of living. So yeah, things could be only $1-2 more expensive, but is it really necessary?

Even so... there are times when I cave in:

My guilty pleasure. 

I think this is kind of self explanatory haha. Do I actually need a new cup? Nahh, but Hello Kitty! And the tissues though... it's really all just the packaging with the same plain tissue inside, but I thought it was cool to have a tissue pack of each of the horoscope signs. Oh the gimmicks of their marketing strategy :(

I dunno how to make this post any less pointless than it is LOL maybe I just wanted to show off my Hello Kitty cup and tissues :D So I'll just go before I waste anymore of your time :P Until next time!

First Day of Class

Yesterday was the first day of the official semester. Although Chinese class started last week, all other electives didn’t begin until this week. It was much more tiring than expected. 

On Sunday, I woke up feeling a bit sick and felt sluggish all day and had a sore throat :( I took a nap during the day, but it didn’t really go away. I also ended up staying up until 4:00AM studying plus an hour on Skype :X

Come Monday morning, I woke up feeling much better after taking this Chinese medicine. I went to Chinese class and I think I nailed my dictation for once :X I’ve been doing pretty bad on all the other ones and making simple mistakes. I even wrote 年 wrong WTF. 

After class, I went to Walmart to pick up some groceries since I’m pretty much all out. I’ve been cooking since coming back from Yunnan and only ate out twice, once for a snack and another because I think we were too lazy to cook..? Came back and made beef and pepper udon. It was a bit too mushy though.

Then had a marketing class at 3:20-6:00.. ehhh marks the first time falling asleep in class this semester. It was mainly an intro to the class though, like what’ll happen over the semester and such…as far as I know.

Next class was at 6:30-9:00.. My first night class. It wasn’t too bad, but it was another introduction to the course. Turns out this girl from my program is also taking these two classes with me. But suddenly, during our break, this girl had a seizure because she’s epileptic. O_O Never seen that happen before.. 

Finally got out of class and had to make dinner once I got back. Didn’t even finish everything until 11:00PM.. Ahhh!! I feel like half my week will be like this too, with having three night classes + internship, so once things pick up I’ll be super tired all the time :X I’m already tired and classes haven’t even started assigning work yet..

Overall, I actually expected my class sizes to be smaller like.. <10 students but they were all pretty packed with at least 30-50 students.

My third class starts today so hopefully it's not too bad. Until next time! 

Lijiang, Yunnan: Black Dragon Pool

Sunday afternoon we were going to Yunnan for a week. Our flight was at 4:30PM but because of air traffic, it was delayed and didn't take off until 7:00PM. 

They gave us food to make up for it, which was nice because I don't think airlines in the States does that. 

Dinner on the plane. 

There was soo much empty room on the plane so after a while I just went to the back to get a whole row to myself and to sleep in :D 

When we arrived in Lijiang, the airport was so gross and had bugs all over the ground!!

We stayed at Zen Garden Hotel (瑞和园) Our room was sooo nice and they had bomb sunflower seed cookies. They offered free wifi. 

The next day, we had breakfast at the hotel before walking through Old Town to go to Black Dragon Pool (黑龙潭公园), and it's like a scenic garden and you can see the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (玉龙雪山) from there.

I wore rain boots because I thought it'd rain, but it turned out to be a nice warm day >_< So my feet were a bit too toasty.

I thought the Black Dragon Pool was a very nice and relaxing place.

Visited the Museum of Naxi Dongba Culture:

Dongba hieroglyphics 

The Dongba, who is basically like a religious figure-priest guy

Had lunch with the group:

After that, we headed back to the hotel to rest for a bit then explored the city! We were staying in the Old Town of Lijiang, so we just walked around that. I think it all ends up being a big circle, but every shop looks the same, so it was hard to tell where I was. Most shops sold handmade silver and scarves, and bargaining exists here as well. 

Saved a stray(?) dog who was sort of stuck 

I ended up buying a skirt and two scarves.

Dinner was on our own tonight and we were all given 50¥. We went to this Naxi hotpot place and I wasn't a big fan of the hotpot we had... They were huge too and we were nowhere close to finishing it because we didn't like it so much. Wasn't worth the 50¥.

After dinner, we walked around town a bit more before returning back to the hotel.