The Blog That Almost Wasn't

Today was an adventure!!!

We got up medium early and had a huge breakfast at the hotel. After that, we took a taxi to the long distance bus station here in Chengdu. Buying tickets and getting on the bus was a mini adventure by itself, but the bus ride itself was really smooth and enjoyable and it only took us 2 hours to get to Leshan.

As we got off the bus in Leshan, a woman approached us offering to take us to see the Giant Buddha in her pedicab for only 15 Yuan. This seemed fair enough and we had mostly recovered from our pedicab adventure the night before, so we agreed and hopped in. This ride was much better than the one last night, but when we got there, the woman totally scammed us and said she wanted 50 Yuan, not 15. What a rip off - but whatever.

From there, we took a (barely floating and definately unsafe) boat on the river to see the Giant Buddha, and well...it was giant. It's the world's largest Buddha, and it was quite impressive. I'm a bit of a Buddha connosieur and have seen a ton of Buddha statues in my time, so it takes a lot to impress me. This one was definately worth the trip! After that, we had the option to go across the river and climb the hundreds of steps to the top of the Buddha, but that seemed like a lot of work and neither of us really felt like it, so we decided to take another long distance bus from Leshan to Jianjiang.


Getting on the bus to Jianjiang was much less confusing since we had already done it once, and the bus ride was only about 45 minutes. When we got there, we took a pedicab operated by an older man to the 1,000 Buddha Cliffs. According to my guide book, there are well over 1,000 Buddhas carved into the cliffs in this area. However, it's not a very well known tourist destination.

It was kind of a long trip to the cliffs, and at several points, I wasn't sure if our driver was going to be able to make it the whole trip. But, he eventually got us there and even offered to wait for us to take us back to the bus station when we were finished. This was a huge relief, since the place was kind of in the middle of nowhere and there were no taxis (or cars) in sight. In fact, Jianjiang is super small and there were hardly any cars period.

At any rate, we had to walk along this really narrow street to the entrance which was lined with small shops, dogs, and chickens casually walking around. It was pretty surreal. Once we got there, we saw 5 Buddha carvings but then took a turn onto a path near a sign that said "entrance." We assumed this was the way to see the other 995 Buddhas, but it turned out to be just a path up to the top of a really steep mountain. And when I say steep, I mean STEEP. I was so tired by the time I got to the top, but the views were amazing and I even got to see a cute little bunny.

Once we got down to the bottom, we got back on the main path and eventually found all the other Buddhas, which were pretty breathtaking. There were just sooooo many!!!


According to my guide book, the last bus left Jianjiang for Leshan at 5:30, but this turned out to be totally wrong!!! When we got to the bus station at about 5:05 to buy our tickets, the woman said we couldn't. She (and everyone else there) didn't speak English, and she was quite rude. Despite the language barrier, I could understand that she was telling us that we couldn't take the last bus to Leshan or to Chengdu!!!

I was totally confused and a little worried because this place is super small and I doubt there were any hotels we could have stayed at. In fact, I suspect that most of the houses didn't even have electricity! Luckily, I went up to the counter again hoping the answer would be different this time, and a woman helped us out. She spoke a lot of Chinese, made a few phone calls, and took us to the street where she put us on a minibus to who knows where!

I wasn't sure where we were going or why, but I was about 35% certain that she the minibus was heading for a place called Emei Shan about an hour away, and that we could take the last bus to Chengdu from there. At least, this was what I hoped.

The bus was a surreal experience. For starters, I am pretty sure that none of the people on the bus had ever seen a westerner before and they were all quite fascinated with us. They were so excited to see the American money I had in my wallet when I went to pay for the ticket and ended up passing it around and talking about it for a good 5 minutes. It was like show and tell haha. Add to this that nearly the entire trip was on unpaved back roads, and there was a tv in the front of the bus with a karaoke machine!!! It was just one of those things you had to see to believe!

When we got to Emei Shan bus station, we ran inside and bought tickets for the last bus (7pm) back to Chengdu. We made it with only 13 minutes to spare!! Just a little more traffic and we would have been stuck there over night!

Needless to say, today was quite an adventure. However, it was one of my favorite days so far of the entire trip. I got to climb on rocks (again!), see some really cool stuff, see great countryside scenery, and go on several bus/minibus adventures - what could be better!

Tonight is going to be pretty chill since we are both so tired, even though it is New Year's Eve. We had dinner at a fast food place called Dico's, which was so so (mainly because my chicken was so raw that it was pink). Tomorrow is a public holiday here, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything will still be open so that we can see a few more sights in Chengdu before we fly to Xi'an tomorrow afternoon.

Chengdu: Home of the Panda!

Today was our first full day in Chengdu, and it was a great one!!

We got a slow start to the day since we were both really tired from our late flight the night before. But, eventually we made our plans and headed out.

Our first stop via taxi was the Chengdu Giant Panda Research and Breeding Center, which was soooo amazing. We got to see so many pandas and red pandas, and they were all so cute. The red pandas were definately my favorite and I totally would keep one as a pet if I could haha. We had read that there is a place where you can hold the pandas while getting your picture taken, but after looking around for some time, we couldn't find it and gave up. Oh well.

After that, we took a taxi back to our hotel and decided to go to Wuhou Temple. It's really hard to get a taxi around dinner time here for some reason, so I eventually convinced Katie to take a bicycle operated rickshaw with me. I flagged one down and hopped in, assuming we were in for a peaceful stroll through Chengdu. Boy was I wrong though! It was the most stressful and scary thing of our trip so far. I literally thought we were going to be hit by cars, buses, and motorcyles at least 5 times every minute!

Eventually we made it there, but it had already closed. However, there is this cool restored shopping district which was decorated in so many beautiful red lanterns called Jinli Lu. We walked around there, and it was super cool. We also had our first try at eating food from the street vendors! I had some rice cooked in a pineapple, which was delicious, and some spicy fried vegetables, which were so so.

After that, we walked down the street and ate at a hot pot restuarant. Chengdu is famous for its super spicy food, particularly the hot pot, so I was very anxious to try it. The menu was entirely in Chinese, so we basically had to order exclusively by pointing at food at other people's tables, and using our fingers to show how many we wanted. We said we wanted it only medium spicy, but it was by far the spiciest thing I have ever tasted!!! I could only even eat a little bit of it, though it was delicious. The best part is that the whole meal, including 3 huges bottles of beer, was only 84 Yuan or about 11 USD for both of us!!!

Chengdu is such a beautiful city, and there is such a good mix of old and new here. Shanghai is someplace that I could totally live in, but after only one day, Chengdu is someplace that I absolutely want to live in. There's just something really special about it that's impossible to put into words. I just really love it here.

Tonight is going to be an early night for us since we have a busy and early day tomorrow, with short trips to several temples and parks, and a long distance bus ride to Leshan to see the largest Buddha statue in the entire world! I hope it will be another great day!!

"Good Tea Makes Good Friends"

Today was a very interesting day to say the least. We checked out of our hotel around noon and each went around to explore some more of Shanghai before our evening flight to Chengdu. My plan was to walk along Nanjing Street, take the underwater sightseeing tunnel across the river, visit the Chinese Sex and Culture Museum, Pearl Tower, and Shanghai Museum. Ambitious, but I knew my way around pretty well, so I didn't think there would be any problems...

Nanjing Street was nice, and very different during the day than at night, and I even bought a new coat (mainly just because I had packed my coat in my suitcase thinking it would be warm, only to find out that it was a good bit colder than yesterday.) After that, I made it the underwater sightseeing tunnel without any problems, and headed across the river. The tunnel takes you under the river in little tram cars and the whole tunnel is illuminated to look like several different environments. While I'm sure they built it with the greatest of intentions, it mostly just seemed like a really slow and low tech version of Disney's Space Mountain haha.

Once on the other side, I searched with map in hand for nearly an hour trying to find the Chinese Sex and Culture Museum. Eventually I found it, or at least where it used to be - it appears that they demolished the building and are building a new high-rise at the site. Oh well...

After that, I walked around and took some pictures of the Pearl Tower and then took the tunnel back to the other side to go to the Shanghai Museum. This turned out to be quite a hike, but there was plenty of nice scenery, so I didn't mind. Finally, after about 45 minutes of walking, I reached the entrance to the museum and got my camera out to take a picture of it. However, as I did that, four Chinese people came up to me and asked me to take their photo, which I happily did. After taking their photo, we chatted for a bit, and it turns out that they are from Chengdu and one of them is an English teacher there. They were all very nice and they suggested that I probably wouldn't like the museum very much and offered to let me go with them to a Chinese tea house for a traditional tea ceremony.

This seemed like an excellent opportunity, so I happily accepted. The tea ceremony was quite cool and I was really impressed by all the tradition that is associated with it. We got to try six different teas and the man (Peter) interpretted the whole thing for me. We laughed and exchanged stories and had an overall great time. I liked the tea so much that I bought some (in a really fancy box). Actually, we all did. However, it turned out to be insanely expensive, so I spent way more of my travel budget than I was hoping to today. Oh well...

Once we finished the tea ceremony, we exchanged contact information and I headed to the hotel to meet Katie and then to the airport for my flight to Chengdu. I'm really excited to be here in Chengdu, since I've heard so much about it from my students. We have a pretty fluid itinerary here, but two definate highlights include a trip to see the baby giant pandas and a trip to see the world's tallest Buddha statue in Leshan. I'm so excited!!

I LOVE Shanghai!!

Today was our first full day in Shanghai, and after a day of exploring, all I can say is that I love this city!!!

I started the day a little late since we didn't get settled into our hotel until about 1:15am last night. After taking a shower and planning out my day, I headed out. My first stop was the Jade Buddha Temple, which was totally awesome. Well, the Buddha statue itself was only so-so (I've seen so many amazing Buddha statues in Thailand that it takes a lot for a statue to impress me at this point), but the grounds of the temple were amazing. There were tons of bonzai shaped trees and wandering alleyways, and the whole place was decorated with red lanterns and ribbons for the upcoming new year.

It was a little crowded, but nowhere near as bad as it would be if we went during the real tourist season. Most of the crowd was actually Chinese people going to worship there - there were very few tourists, so it still had a relaxing feel. I just love going to temples of all kind. It's just such a spiritual feeling for me.

There were of course the usual pushy sales people there, but it didn't seem to be quite as bad as at the places we went in Beijing.

After I finished there, I walked around for a while in that area and saw something that I haven't seen at all since I've arrived in China: blue skys!! It is also much warmer here than in Beijing so it was much more enjoyable to explore here. I probably didn't even need a jacket - just a sweater would have been fine.

The area was full of little shops and restaurants, and I ended up eating at a noodle place that had pretty good food. I ate soo much!! (it's hard to tell what things I'm ordering are side dishes and what are main dishes, so I am constantly ordering way too much) After that, I found a grocery store and bought some cool snacks and food items, and then took a cab to the Yuyuan park/shopping area.

This place was just awesome! It's part shopping mall and part park. But the shopping area was just amazing to walk around in, as it was all constructed to appear like a Chinese temple. The park was even more breathtaking and was pretty free from tourists which made it quite relaxing. I took a ton of pictures!!

After that, I walked around some more. I won't say I got lost, since you can't get lost if you don't have a destination in mind. But I definately had no idea where I was haha. After a while though, I was able to get a general idea of where I was and decided to walk down to this area called the Bund near the river for dinner and sight seeing.

Somehow however, I ended up at the docks. And since I was there, I decided to take a cruise of the river. It was so awesome! The sun had already set, so all of the buildings in the bund and the skyscrapers were lit up, including the famous Pearl TV Tower. It was pretty breathtaking, and I felt really lucky to have accidentally stumbled upon this opportunity. Once again, I took a ton of pictures! (302 to be exact haha)

After the cruise was over, I realized that the boat dropped us off at a totally different spot than where I had got on it. I really had no idea of where I was and tried unsucessfully to get a taxi. So, I got out my map and realized that I wasn't really that far from my hotel, so I decided to walk and grab something to eat on the way back.

Well, not only did I find the hotel, but I also found this Las Vegas Strip-esque street just a block away that is essentially a huge neon light-filled open air shopping market. There were so many neon sights that I thought I was in Tokyo haha. I walked around there, grabbed something to eat, and then came back to the hotel to have a swim and a steam. I am so relaxed now!

Today was probably my favorite day of the trip so far. Not only did I see some pretty amazing things, but I also travelled by myself all day, so I got to do exactly what I wanted to do and at my own pace - I am totally a solo traveller! Shanghai is so different than Beijing (or at the least the parts that I saw of it). Parts are wildly modern, but other parts right next door seem centuries old and full of tradition and history. Things seem more orderly here, the driving is less insane, and there is definately less polution. I like this place a lot!

What a great day!

(Tomorrow, I will explore some more in Shanghai and then fly to Chengdu in the evening. I only hope that tomorrow is half as good as today was!)

Summer Palace

Today was our last full day in Beijing, but we were both still pretty tired from hiking on the Great Wall yesterday, so we decided to have a leisurely morning in the hotel and then head to the Summer Palace for the afternoon.

It was sad to leave the Ritz Carlton - I miss it already haha. But after we checked out, we went to a Japanese noodle restaurant for lunch. (I had miso soup, curry pork, and some chocolate covered/stuffed frozen strawberries - all very delicous) From there, we caught a taxi and headed to the Summer Palace, which was a good 45 minutes away.

Unlike most of the cab drivers we've encountered, this guy was actually really friendly and tried really hard to chat with us in English for a while. Of course, this turned out to be all a ploy to get us to hire him to be our guide/interpreter for the day...sigh. The constant pushy sales tactics here geared for tourists are really off-putting. In fact, as I got out of the taxi at the Summer Palace, I was immediately accosted by three men trying to sell me souveniers - one even put a souvenier hat on my head and tried to make me buy it!

Anyway, upon first impression, the Summer Palace didn't seem like anything too special. But boy was I wrong! It turns out that it is this HUGE park filled with amazing structures, trees that are hundreds of years old, ancient ruins, and a gigantic lake! It was definately a highlight of our trip so far. I especially liked the parts of the grounds that had all of these awesome pagoda like structures built into the side of a rocky mountain that we actually got to hike and climb. I think I somehow wandered someplace I wasn't supposed to also and ended up surrounded by these treacherous ruins of former structures that were destroyed during the anglo-french invasion, on this cliff overlooking a snow/ice filled riverbed. There was nobody else there, and it was just the perfect chance to spend some time out in nature. It made me really happy :) It was sort of an oasis from the craziness that is happening all around it in Beijing.

Unfortunately, Katie and I had our first big fight today, and it was a real doozie! While normally I wouldn't describe myself as the most macho of guys, every once in a while I guess I get a big burst of testosterone or something that makes me want to do really manly things like paint houses, watch sports, drink beer, and build things. And it turns out that today was one of those days. As soon as I saw all the rocks and hills and ruins, I became like a 7 year old boy and just wanted to run around and play on them - and I did. This made Katie pretty mad :(

In reality, we've both just spent too much time together during the past week so little things are starting to get on each other's nerves. Plus, I'm sure that the culture shock isn't helping either. Eh...we were bound to fight eventually haha.

Anyway, after we were done with that, we had a few more taxi adventures while trying to find a place to eat dinner and ended up only having time to quickly grab some McDonalds. Then we headed to the airport and took our flight (which was delayed for 2 hours) to Shanghai.

The flight was pretty nice (and short) and a woman and little girl sat next to me that spoke decent English and wanted to chat with me, which was a delight and definately helped pass the time.

Our hotel in Shanghai is pretty nice, but it definately isn't the Ritz Carlton haha. Actually, it almost wasn't even our hotel, since the taxi driver accidentally dropped us off at a totally different hotel haha.

Tomorrow, we will explore Shanghai (seperately) and I hope it will be a really fun day. Here are some pictures of the Summer Palace:

Country Road, Take Me Home...

I woke up this morning and was thinking about how cool it was to go to the Great Wall yesterday. I also was thinking of all of the quite country roads that we drove on to get there and it made me think about how nice it would be to live in a quiet place like that. People were riding their bicycles everywhere and there were children playing and dogs barking and a feeling of general happiness in the faces of the people we passed.

It seems that no matter how old I get, I still can not balance my desire to lead a quiet and simple life like that or to have a super stressful and successful career. Even now, when I have found what I think to be the perfect career for me and am quite happy with how things are going in my life, there's still a huge part of me that just wants to pack up and go be a farmer on my friend's green tea farm in Japan. I really wish I could just take a peek about 25 years into the future and see which path I finally end up choosing, so I could just go ahead and do it now and stop always feeling so conflicted about it haha.

Sigh...

Good News!

Today marks day 7 that Katie and I have spent together on our trip, and we haven't killed each other yet!! In fact, we have been getting along quite well and haven't even had our first big fight yet. (we almost had a little one on Tuesday night, but I think we both quickly realized it would have been a bad idea.) When we are at work and we get on each other's nerves, we can just close the door between our two offices, but since we are sharing the same hotel rooms here, closing the door only keeps us together longer haha.

Beijing, Day 2: Great Wall MADNESS!!!

Today was quite an adventure!! We booked a private car/driver and English speaking tour guide last night to take us to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall today. We thought we booked it for a great price, but boy did we end up paying for it today!!

Our guide "Sofie" picked us up at our hotel around 10am and took us to the car parked across the street. We should have known when we saw the light blue piece of crap 1970s car that this was a bad idea. But, we decided to be brave and got in anyway. (FYI, the seats were lined with floral patio furniture cushions!)

Once we got in the car, our guide made small talk with us (Katie wanted no part of that), but it was quickly evident that "English speaking" really meant only that she had memorized a few key facts about Beijing in English. Oh well - no big deal. We told her that we wanted to go to Mutianyu and to the Ming Tombs (which she arranged last night), but she said that first we would go to some Jade gallery and then to Mutianyu, and then to the Ming Tombs only if there is time.

We were a little annoyed by this, since we figured that the Jade gallery was going to be some tourist trap where foreigners were heavily pressured to buy overpriced souveniers - and we were totally right! We arrived at the gallery and were told that she had arranged for us to have a special English speaking guide. However, this really meant that we had an English speaking sales woman. I was a good sport though and listened to the sales pitch and browsed around for a bit before telling our guide that we were ready to go. BUT....

When we told her that we wanted to go, she said "No. You can't go yet." WHAT??? I asked for clarification and she told us to keep shopping and that the car wouldn't be back for another 35 minutes. (This was a lie - the car was in the parking lot the whole time) Katie and I didn't quite know what to do - we were basically being held there against our will and attacked by high pressure sales ladies everywhere we turned. We weren't sure if we had to buy something to leave or what was going on.

Finally, after the super long 35 minutes had passed, we went back to our guide and told her again that we wanted to leave. She begrudgingly took us outside of the store and sure enough, there was the car- in the same spot it was before!

Thank goodness - we were finally free!

Anyway, with that adventure over, we were totally skeptical about getting back in the car - but we were kind of in the middle of nowhere and had no choice. So, we got in and headed to the Great Wall.

This would have been fine if the driver didn't drive at like 100mph and if traffic rules actually existed in Beijing. Seriously, driving here is just so crazy that words don't come close to explaining it. Driving is literally like playing a game of frogger, with bikes and people and cars coming at you from all sides. Lanes are also suggestions only too...with upwards of 2.5 cars or more squeezing in to one lane at a time! I was about ready to hurl from car sickness by the time we got there.

But, we finally got there, and boy was it worth it! We told our guide that she could wait in the car, and we headed up to the top. It's really high up, so we had to take this delapidated ski lift to get up there (made complicated by the fact that there were no English directions about what to do). We were pretty sure that we were going to fall off and plummet to our death, but we eventually made it to the top.

Walking along the Great Wall is definately one of the high points of my entire life! It was one of those surreal moments when I had to pause and say "whoa! we are actually standing on the Great Wall of China - how cool is that!!" Parts of the walk were quite a hike - and soo steep! (I put pictures below)

We walked around for about an hour and a half and took lots of pictures, and then had to take a luge down to the bottom! Total count so far of how many times we almost died today:

1. Crazy driver in the death trap of a car
2. Being held captive against our will at the Jade Gallery
3. Almost plummeting off of the ski lift
4. Almost falling on the steep steps of the Great Wall (times 8)
5. Taking the luge of death to bottom

But, we weren't almost dying yet! We still had the drive back! (during which, the car stalled twice, and the battery light kept coming on!)

Our guide at this point told us that there wasn't time to go to the Ming Tombs (which we were totally okay with) but that we could go to see the Olympic buildings. So, we said okay, and our guide took off like a maniac down the highway!! We literally came within inches of hitting small animals, small children, bikes, adults, and many other cars about every 5 minutes. Katie and I just kept looking at each other in pure terror!

Finally, our guide pointed out the Olympic stadium on the side of the highway (which we could barely even see because of the incredible amount of smog and polution in the air) and we thought that was it. BUT no...to our amazement, the driver actually stopped on the side of the highway and made us to get out next to the crazy cars to take pictures! We thought we going to be roadkill!

Anyway, after that near death experience, we told them to just take us home as fast as possible. I've never been so happy to see a hotel in my entire life!!!! (or to be out of a car) We payed the driver and headed inside.

The rest of the night has been pretty low key and has been totally geared at helping us recover from the craziness of the day. We went to a Japanese restaurant and had sushi, went to Starbucks to get coffee, and then came back to the hotel so Katie could get a pedicure and I could go for a swim/steam/sauna/massage. After all that, I feel so relaxed now, and I never want to leave this hotel! The Ritz Carlton is by far the best hotel I've ever stayed at, and if I had my way, I would cancel the rest of our trip plans and just stay here and get massages all day haha!

But, tomorrow, we are heading to the Summer Palace, and then leaving Beijing and heading to Shanghai. Hopefully tomorrow will be less of a harrowing experience than today was!

Here are some pics:

Beijing, Day 1

Today was our first full day in Beijing, and it was a busy day at that! We started off pretty early, since neither of us slept late due to the time difference, and headed downstairs for breakfast. The breakfast at the hotel was so delicious, and consisted of dim sum, pastries, fruits, and western style breakfast items.

Our first stop of the day was the Forbidden City, and it's definately named that for a reason - because it's GIGANTIC like a mini city. We spent several hours wandering around there and checking out all the buildings and gardens. Each building has a name, such as the Hall of Cumulative Purity - but the names seem to have nothing to do with what is actually inside of the buildings. The whole place was amazing, and after walking around for so long there, my feet are killing me!! Oh - one really strange/interesting thing is that several Chinese people actually came up and asked to take pictures WITH me!

After that, we walked to Tianeman Square and took some pictures and got approached by about a zillion tour guides trying to sell us tours to the Great Wall (which we are going to do tomorrow). I didn't mind talking with them, but some of them were annoyingly pushy.

Once we finished there, we searched for a really long time for a place to eat lunch and eventually found a little restaurant a few blocks away. This was our first time eating at a restaurant in the city, so we were both a little nervous. But ultimately, it was totally fine and we ordered without any problems. In fact, the waitresses were all giddy and acting like school girls actually fighting to get to take my order. Apparently I am hot stuff here in China - who knew?!

For lunch, I had a pretty interesting meal:

• rice
• steamed pumpkin cakes
• candied potato wedges
• donkey and scallion stir fry

Yep...I ate DONKEY for lunch!!! It was actually quite tasty too! (It kind of freaked Katie out a little though haha) Lunch made me think of the Donkey from Shrek haha

Once we finished lunch, I had my first terrifying experience in the super gross public restrooms here, and then we took a taxi to the Temple of Heaven. By the time we got there, the temple buildings were already closed, but we were still allowed to go into the huge park and look at the outside of them.

By this point in the day, we were both pretty tired and it was getting quite cold, so this was fine for us. The grounds were amazing and filled with these strange bendy trees, which looked so eerie in the fog/smog. We walked around and saw most of the sights, but as the sun quickly set, we suddenly found ourselves completely in the dark in the spooky woods in China! To be honest, it was more than a little creepy, and we hauled ass to get out of there as quickly as possible, and then took a taxi back to our hotel. The whole thing made me think of the spooky forest from Harry Potter haha.

We are both pretty tired at this point, so I don't know that we'll do too much tonight, but so far, we are having a great time and haven't gotten on each other's nerves too bad yet. Beijing is a cool place so far despite the terrible smog and the traffic rules that seem to be more of suggestions here and make even riding in a taxi a near death experience. In fact, the language barrier hasn't even been that bad!

Anyway, here are some pictures from today:

Christmas in Beijing

I'm in China!!!!

Getting here was quite a journey - 13.5 hours to be exact. And Air China definately didn't impress me either.

At this point in my life, I consider myself to be a seasoned traveller, and I've flown on most of the major transpacific carriers. Because of this, I go into these long haul flights with pretty high expectations - most of which Air China didn't meet. Don't get me wrong, the flight was fine and the food wasn't too bad. It just wasn't great either. There were no tv screens in the back of the seats, which is pretty standard now on flights of this length, and the flight attendents were a little rude at times and were really stingy with the drinks.

I miss Japan Airlines!!!!

It wasn't all bad though: There was a really hot male flight attendant in my section! :)

So, eye candy aside, everything is going pretty well here so far. We went through customs and immigration fine, and made it to our hotel with hardly any problems. Speaking of our hotel, it is freaking amazing!! I've never stayed at a Ritz-Carlton before, but I can easily see what all the hype is about. Some room highlights include:

• All marble bathroom complete with TV
• Frosted glass shower/toilet area that you just have to see to believe
• Huge bathtub with spa kit
• Huge flat screen tv
• The most comfortable bed ever
• Fresh flowers
• Chocolate truffles on the bed
• Curtains that are operated by remote control!

It's just amazing, and will definately be one of the high points of the trip. However, after getting up to the room, it suddenly dawned on me that Katie and I are going to be together basically 24 hours a day for the next two weeks with little to no privacy! I think it'll be fine, but I tend to be a pretty private person, and getting alone time is important to me - so we'll have to see how it goes.

Anyway, tomorrow is our first full day of sight seeing. I can't really remember where it is that we are going exactly, but I'll write about it and post pictures tomorrow night. (the language barrier is already an issue, so tomorrow should be interesting. I keep wanting to speak Japanese to everyone - I really wish I learned more than just how to say hello and thank you in Mandarin haha)

Oh yeah, and it's Christmas here now - so merry Christmas everyone.

Cheers!

Snow, China, and a New Tattoo!

Wow – it’s been a long time since I’ve posted a blog! I have some pretty cool things to share though…

I guess the first piece of excitement is that over the past few days, I’ve seen more snow than I have ever seen in my entire life. We got nearly 2 feet of snow in less than a week!!! Most everything is still covered in a ton of snow and it looks really pretty – but winter doesn’t even officially start until Friday!

The next piece of exciting news is that as of Friday afternoon, I am officially on vacation until January 6th!!! AND, I’m not just wasting the time here in Worcester – I’m going on a 14 day adventure trip to China!!!!!!! I’m traveling with my friend/coworker Katie, and we are going to Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Leshan, Xi’an, and Luoyuang! Best of all, we are staying in the Ritz Carlton while we are there!!!!! I can’t wait!

The final piece of excitement happened today – just a few hours ago to be specific. As those of you that read my blog frequently or know me well know, the past year since I’ve come home from Japan has been really difficult for me. I’ve struggled with everything from depression, to regretting my decision to come home, to confusion over what type of job I should be doing, to dating difficulties, to general unhappiness with several aspects of my life here in Worcester. But, after a lot of reflection and hard work, I can finally say that I’ve made me peace with the whole experience and am in a very good and happy place in my life now.

To bring closure to everything and to mark this milestone in my life, I decided to commemorate the occasion by getting a new tattoo – my 4th and largest. I originally had the appointment scheduled for the actual anniversary date – last Thursday, but it got rescheduled to today because of all the snow last week. My appointment this afternoon lasted nearly 6 hours, and hurt like a ******, but it was all worth it. And the finished product, a half sleeve on my left arm, is totally awesome. Here are some pictures of it. (my arm is still really swollen and red – I’ll post better pictures when it’s all healed up)