Month: November 2016

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay in my post, my family was visiting! It was really nice to have them here, and I even got to do some things I hadn’t yet done in Spain! We went to the Alhambra, ate lots of good food, and went to some beautiful churches. We also saw a flamenco show, which I really liked! The dancers, singers, and musicians all have so much passion when they are performing! My family just left this morning, but I already miss them!

It was fun to have Thanksgiving here, even though it was very different than our usual routine. My program had a Thanksgiving dinner together in a restaurant. Although it wasn’t a traditional meal, it was very nice to spend time together. I definitely missed stuffing though (because it’s my favorite food)!

Last weekend, I got to go to Córdoba with my program. The mezquita there is AMAZING, it’s huge! It our final trip for the program, and it was nice to spend some time with friends!

Now I have five days of classes, and then I will be going on another trip (to London and Prague). It’s super hard to believe that I only have about 20ish days left here! It’s actually kind of terrifying, because I really love being here and I’ll definitely miss the friends that I’ve made.

I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving and ate plenty of turkey for me!

Love,

Bix

This week was by far the most chaotic in China so far! It was my last week of classes so I had my final exam in Chinese, celebrated Thanksgiving with all my friends, and now I am traveling for the next week and a half. For Thanksgiving, I used my teacher’s toaster oven to bake an apple, blueberry, and pecan pie. We also had turkey and sweet potatoes, so it was an authentic Thanksgiving meal. I am now in Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan province. It is the 7th largest city in China with 14.43 million people and is known for its hot pot and Giant Panda research centers. Hot pot consists of a simmering metal pot of stock at the center of the dining table. While the hot pot is kept simmering, ingredients are placed into the pot and are cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leaf vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, and tofu. The giant panda’s diet is primarily herbivorous, consisting almost exclusively of bamboo. However, the giant panda still has the digestive system of a carnivore. Pandas are born with sterile intestines, and require bacteria obtained from their mother’s feces to digest vegetation. They eat about 25% of their body weight in bamboo per day! Gifts of giant pandas to American and Japanese zoos formed an important part of the diplomacy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the 1970s, as it marked some of the first cultural exchanges between the PRC and the West. This practice has been termed “panda diplomacy”. At the research center, they also had the unrelated Red Panda. The red panda is quite adaptable to living in captivity, and is common in zoos worldwide. The one we saw was so comfortable with humans that he climbed under the fence ran across the side walk and into the next captivity, not really sure if the researchers are aware its fencing needs to be reinforced. I am in Chengdu for a few more days before I head to Shanghai for a week!

在前！

Elizabeth

The toaster oven I used to bake pies.

Thanksgiving day pies!

Thanksgiving meal!

The river across from my hostel in Chengdu.

Eating some hot pot.

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding

 

Pandas!

 

And more pandas..

 

Pandas eating bamboo.

 

More pandas eating bamboo.

        

A sleeping panda and an eating panda.

A selfie with a panda.

The red panda that escaped!

 

The days just keep going by faster and faster. The beginning of the week consisted of my normal class schedule. I can definitely tell my Chinese is improving by great lengths. On Thursday I went with my program director and some friends to get a traditional Chinese massage. It was an hour and a half full body massage for the equivalent of 10 U.S. dollars! That night I also went to the longest running English Corner in Kunming. English Corner is where people of all ages can come to speak and improve their English with one other. The English Corner I went to was a minute walk from my apartment and it has been running for 40 years. It was great because I could speak with people in Chinese and they would reply in English so we both could get some practice in. On Friday instead of regular class, we went to one of our Professor’s house and learned how to make 饺子(dumplings) from scratch! We made so many both fried and boiled, I couldn’t believe how simple it actually is to make them. Later that day I did a 2k in my apartment on the erg. I definitely have a lot of work to do in order to be in peak shape this spring, but it’s pretty neat to have the chance to test myself while in China! On Saturday my landlord took my friend and I to Kunming’s Wholesale tea market. Her friend owns a tea house so we got to taste many varieties of tea including, Pu’er tea, black tea, and green tea. The tea culture in China is fascinating and I’m hoping I can bring some of it back with me to the states. On Sunday I went out to dinner with my host family and my host sister’s friends to celebrate her 12^th birthday. We had a delicious meal and ate an exquisite cake decorated like a succulent garden. This week is my last week of classes then I will be traveling for a week and a half. I can’t believe how fast everything seems to be flying by!

再见！

魏伊俐 (WeiYiLi)

 

So many 饺子!

My living room is just the right size to fit an erg!

The Wholesale Tea Market has over 5,000 vendors!

Celebrating Betty’s 12th birthday!