i've been meaning to update, as i feel i always am. however i have been trying my best to savor every last second of communism i can, seeing as that i only have seven days left in this crazy country they call china. it is an understatement in saying that i am not ready to leave. i've become so accustomed to the whole communist lifestyle :). i'm going to miss my daily routines more than anything. the homemade dumplings right out of west gate and the man who always helps us with our chinese. i'm going to miss the crazy asians at the silk market trying to overcharge me for trinkets i definitely do not need. i'm going to miss sitting in the basement lounge at 3:00 am in the morning with my chinese class doing everything but studying and ordering mcdonald's delivery, yes at 3:00 am in the morning. i'm not ready to go. most all i'm going to miss the great friends i seem to have made here. its going to be weird not seeing them every day, banging on their doors, raiding their food stashes, fighting with them etc. china has been one of the best experiences of my life and i am so thankful for the people i got to share it with.
so its been about a month, and nothing TOO exciting has happened. except for the fact that EVERYTHING here is exciting!!!!!! i can't believe how fast this semester has gone. i feel like the silk road trip was just yesterday. a few weeks ago a bunch of my friends and i went to go see harry potter 7 at midnight! which means we got to see it 12 hours before all you americans :) HAH! it was in english with chinese subtitles, it was great. i also spent my first thanksgiving away from my family! i'm not big on thanksgiving food, but its one of my favorite breaks because my whole family always gets together at my cousins' house in connecticut and its very relaxing. christmas is always lots of driving up and down the northeast and craziness, but thanksgiving is very laidback and fun. and my grandmother always makes the best stringbeans! so i was a little nervous spending a family holiday in a foreign country without my family, however i was able to spend it with my new family, and it was one of the best thanksgivings yet! sounds cheesy, but my friends here have become family. there was a thanksgiving banquet thrown for us at a hotel, food was decent, desert was yummy! and afterwards i spent the night at smugglers playing drinking games. it was very laid back, we reminisced about china memories and talked about what we missed about america. it was a great thanksgiving. i'm so thankful for all my friends here who made my thanksgiving away from home one of the best thanksgivings i've ever had. its crazy to think that was two weeks ago. it feels like forever.
my classes ended a week ago, except for chinese of course. i have chinese class right up until the day i leave! you may think gross, but i love my chinese class more than anything. i've never had more fun at 8:00 in the morning. 我要我的老师和我的同学！(i love my teacher and my classmates!) we have a blast. and my teacher is hysterical and jokes around with us, in chinese obviously. i never thought i'd admit it, but i'm really going to miss chinese class. ALOT! i have four final papers and a chinese final. not too bad. except for the fact that i'm the world's biggest procrastinator. so hopefully i'll be able to get some work done this weekend, fingers crossed. however i'm more interested in soaking in as much china as i can before i leave.
the past couple of weeks i've been doing some major touristy shopping and picking up souvenirs and gifts for the few lucky people at home who will be receiving them ;) we visited qianmien, the shopping center behind tiananmen. i got lots of fun chinesey stuff. we also visited wangfujing. aka bug street. they have touristy vendors selling souvenirs and they sell bugs, to eat! we saw fried scorpions, tarantulas, snakes, seahorses, starfish, and a bunch of other gross stuff. i ate a little baby scorpion and then a big black one. i don't know why i thought they would be good, but they weren't. they were crunchy and disgusting and gross. the other day mariana and i finally visited the olympic park. it was cool! we got to see it at night and during the day time, which was cool. but the coolest thing every was the water park! they created a water park inside the olympic water cube!! it was really cool. it was pretty small and they only had a few rides, but definitely worth it. how many people can say they went water parking in the olympic water cube? well, i know i can :)
this is my last full weekend in beijing, and so far so great. like usual. tonight will be my last saturday in china :( bahhhhhhh. i'm definitely not ready to go, but what better way to spend it than a beijing pub crawl?! and one that starts at 4:00?! whaaaaa wish me luck!!
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