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)

Past few weeks

I haven't posted anything in a while, but the past few weeks have been quite eventful. Here are some of the big things that happened:

• I'm still dating someone, and he's pretty wonderful. New relationships are the best!
• My new iPod broke. Luckily, I called Apple customer service and they sent me a brand new one in less than a week. Talk about great customer service! - well I guess better customer service would have been if they sold me a product that never broke in the first place, but whatever.
• My office computer had a "fatal hard drive error" and I lost most of my files :( That was a sad day.
• My friend/coworker and I bought tickets to go to China during winter vacation! We'll be there from Dec. 23 - Jan. 4. I'm so excited!!
• I injured some muscles in my back pretty badly a week or so ago and spent literally 4 whole days laying on my back because I couldn't move at all without being in agonizing pain. Thank goodness for Icy Hot, Doan's, and Motrin.
• I impulsively drove for nearly 2 hours to Foxwoods Casino at 10pm last night with one of my friends. I love slot machines, especially the Wheel of Fortune game!!! But unfortunately, they love me too, and I lost all the money I played with.

At any rate, things have been really good lately. I've made some big changes, and much to my surprise, I've actually become really glad that I stayed here and didn't take the job in San Francisco. Dare I say it, I'm actually pretty happy here now.

Sushi Lesson

Today, two of my friends took me to my favorite restaurant for the sushi lesson that they got me for my birthday. It was so much fun, and making sushi is definately more difficult than it looks. Well, making sushi is actually very easy. Making sushi that actually looks good and is appetizing on the other hand is really difficult.

At any rate, I got to actually go behind the counter and wear a chef's shirt and make all of the sushi that me and my friends ordered. We had tuna and salmon sashimi, edamome, spicy tuna rolls, spicy yellow tail rolls, tiger eye rolls, and dragon eel rolls.

It was so much food and I wasn't sure that I could even eat it all. But it was so delicious and I managed to finish it. (well, Amy had a few pieces to help me out too haha)

After lunch, the owner made me a special banana dessert with a candle in it for my birthday. It was so delicious, and was covered in this sugar and butter sauce. And as we all know, sugar and butter are two of my favorite things!

I'm so full now, but this was so much fun! What a great present!

There's nothing quite like...

... a really great first date.

Two Sites You Should Know About

There are two websites that I've discovered recently that are really awesome and worth sharing.

The first is Post Secret. For those of you that may not have heard about it, Post Secret began as an art project that allowed people to annonymously share personal and intimate secrets through postcards. It has since grown and become very popular. There are several books available where you can look at the postcards and the secrets. You can also go to http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ to see some of the postcards/secrets as well. Some of them are really creative, some are really moving, and others are just really strange. But, it's defintely worth checking out.



The other website that I want to share is KIVA.ORG. KIVA is an online community that matches people in developing nations that are in need of small loans to develop and expand their businesses, with sponsors in developed nations. KIVA is not about giving donations. Rather, KIVA utilizes the micro loan concept made popular by Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Prize for his work with the concept in Bangladesh. Sponsors are able to browse through the profiles and business plans of all of the people requesting loans, and then help fund one or more people with contributions as low as $25. The loans are generally repaid monthly with repayment terms of 6-12 months. I think that this is a really easy way to make a big difference in a family's life, so check it out.