nelahozeves castle

nelahozeves castle, originally uploaded by Nazoox.

Christmas has arrived after a week spent travelling around Prague and nearby. My parents and I made it out to this castle, in the town where Dvorak was born, and saw the plethora of paintings that the Lobkovic family has inside. Another day was spent travelling to Brno, an interesting town, with good pizza, but a technical museum that made absolutely no sense to someone with no knowledge of Czech. We've been to a number of museums, and of course cafes. We even saw Don Giovanni performed with huge wooden puppets, but being in Italian, I didn't quite understand that either. Last night we had a large dinner where we ate carp, the tradition in Czech being to buy a fresh carp, keep it alive in your bathtub for a few days and then to eat it on Christmas Eve. Today we're off to see the Magic Flute and repack our bags according to new airline weight limits. Coming tomorrow - my return to the United States, flying to New York to see my relatives for a few days.

praguein' around

praguein' around, originally uploaded by Nazoox.

I managed to spend all of my Ren Men Bi in Beijing, since I didn't take out too much, and I had to pay a deposit on my room keys. However, I did win $7 in a game of pool, which ended up going toward paying Andrew back for beer and Starbucks money (I really only went there for the first time on my last day in Beijing). I also discovered that the one cd I had bought, Malcolm Middleton, was not the greatest ever, leaving me with little to do on my plane trip to Prague, via Moscow, which was about 11 hours of no movies of any kind. After paying too much money on overweight fees, and overdrawing my bank account, I managed to get on my plane and met an interesting Danish guy, who let me listen to his iPod, using my chinese headphone splitter. Now, Im here in Prague, haning out with my parents and enjoying the snow that just began to fall when I got here. I'll be around enjoying the beautiful city and it's beer until December 26th, when we head off to New York.

gorge stretch

gorge stretch, originally uploaded by Nazoox.

Following our graduation, Aaron (my roommate) and I decided to take a trip to a warmer area in the south of China. We caught a flight on Saturday down to Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province. We immediately caught a sleeper bus to a smaller city, Lijiang in the north, which was easy enough since people came up to us the second our taxi stopped at the bus station and asked us if we wanted to go there. After ditching our stuff in the morning, we walked around Lijiang and then rented some bikes, travelling outside of town to some areas distinctly Naxi, the minority in the area. That night we saw a Naxi concert, which was really interesting, hearing traditional instruments, which the Naxi people had to hide during the Cultural Revolution, like the Baisha, and one man sand such a haunting song about asking a woman to marry him, that it's still stuck in my head.
The next day we caught a bus in the morning further north to Leaping Tiger Gorge, where we hiked around all day. We agreed to ride horses for about 7 kilometers in the morning, and I gave Aaron's horseman some Texan hot sauce. We then hiked for another five hours or so, and made it to Walnut Garden, to a hostel with only two other people. We ate even more delicious food (this area had delightful cuisine) and watched the sunrise over the gorge in the morning. Then we crammed into a truck with a bunch of other guys and got a ride back to the town of Qiaotou, where we caught our ride back to Lijiang, and then to Dali, another town, further south. There we wandered around, drank some decent local beer, even enjoying one pineapple beer, meanwhile Aaron bought tons of gifts. I stared out the window at the beautiful Erhai Hu, as we rode nearby to a small Bai village (the minority of that area) and participated in their tea ceremony and watched a performance of their marriage rituals. That night, following the eating of many many circular breads, which were particular to the area, we caught an overnight back to Kunming and I flew back to Beijing on that Thursday morning.

one hundred percent

one hundred percent, originally uploaded by Nazoox.

I just graduated my program, which called for a little bit of dancing on that pool table there. But, it's okay. Pretty much everyone else in that bar was also from my program so I didnt embarass myself anymore than I did when I wore a miniskirt during the skit we did for our final oral exam. So, now I'm packing everything away, storing two bags here and then heading south to the area of Yunnan, which is supposed to be a very culturally diverse section of China. Plane tickets? Check. Im out of here.

houhai dinner

houhai dinner, originally uploaded by Nazoox.

So, I'm into the last week here, nearing the end of my studies abroad. I apologize for the lack of posts recently, partly due to my laziness and partly because my computer seems to be against working too hard. Friday, ACC organized a trip out to an orphanage for children with parents in jail, which was interesting, although I didn't experience too much other than a teacher talking to us a lot. Then last weekend, I tried to fit in some final travels around Beijing. We went out to the Military Museum, which had a lot of tanks and planes and Communist propaganda versions of history, but it was all in chinese so I didn't quite understand. Then we went out to Beijing University and Tsinghua University, which were very interesting, but incredibly cold. We did find some ice on some of the ponds there. Then we went to a market by the Beijing Zoo (which is supposed to be very bad), and found absolutely nothing interesting. I'm now planning for my travels starting after we graduate. I will hopefully be going down south to Yunnan for a week with my roommate Aaron.

Shidu (Ten Crossings)

shidu bridge, originally uploaded by Nazoox.

Last weekend, I again escaped Beijing and went out to Shidu ("Ten Crossings"). We caught the train with about 5 minutes to spare - luckily a lady helped us, who ended up offering to have us stay at her house (turns out that's her job - finding confused travellers and hosting them at her home). Saturday, we gave in to going to a commercialized area since we had no other choice, so seeing no other ways to get across their river and into the mountians, we paid four dollars and sang the Indiana Jones theme song as we ran across the bridge and shook it with all of our might. We hiked around a bit - there were no more vendors or anything, since it's already too cold, but we did find a huge paper-mache Shiva (I think), which we climbed up, carefully avoiding the recently used paint brushes and buckets. Then Ben managed to climb this tree and knock down some strange orange fruit - tasted kind of pumpkin-like? After a lot of searching, we found a spot for our tent and started cooking some food on Wills' new stove. We heated up some fried rice we couldn't finish at lunch, and added some water to our new mashed up fruit, which tasted surprisingly good. Sadly, we were discovered by the people who worked there. They hiked out with flashlights and eventually spotted our tent, telling us we couldn't sleep there because they have man-eating cougars. So, we eventually gave in and packed up our stuff. We stayed in some rooms behind a restaurant, and in the morning there was frost on the ground, so I'm assuming it would have been quite cold, but I still wish we had gotten to give it a shot. Now I'm back at class, with a presentation to give on my report about Beijing's pollution, a Thanksgiving dinner to help cook, and a Saturday night magic performance to prepare. Hopefully I won't end up making any too embarassing mistakes.

shanghai night lights

shanghai night lights, originally uploaded by Nazoox.

For our second break, we took at trip out to Shanghai, skipping class from Wednesday to Friday. We took off Tuesday evening, and after an evening of playing cards, got in Wednesday morning, rushing off to the Shanghai Museum. That place was pretty cool, but I breezed through it in about two hours, after which my roommate and I, along with Mei Na (I dont know her English name) wandered around Shanghai. We managed to find the French district (even though it never reached more that ten percent French in population), which was interesting enough, and still ended up eating Chinese food. We then found a bar where no one else was dancing and later met up with some other ACC students. I even met an Argentinian who spoke very good Chinese. He gave me a card for a good Mexican restaurant, but I never made it there. The next day, ACC arranged a trip out to Xitang, a water village, with many bridges and interesting sites. We ate lunch on the water, in a boat, which didn't rock too much while we were eating. On the way back, our driver knew a shortcut to miss the traffic, but the road ended up being under construction. Our ride lasted 4 hours, instead of 2. The next morning, Aaron and I got up at 5 to run, and then took a train out to Hang Zhou, famous for its huge lake. It rained for a few hours while we were there, but we managed to take a private boat out and see an island or two. That night we found a hip-hop bar, which even had a Chinese rapper inside (rapping in Chinese and English) - very peculiar. On Saturday, Aaron and I found Lu Xun's house (a very famous Chinese writer and calligrapher), which was pretty plain. Nearby we found a restaurant, and I accidentally ordered a chicken plate that included chicken feet. On Aaron's insistence I tried to eat it, but my stomach would not allow it. Afterwards we found the Lu Xun Park, where there used to be a sign saying "No Chinese, no dogs allowed" (at least according to Lonely Planet). This place seemed to demonstrate every aspect of Chinese culture I had encountered. There were older people singing old propaganda songs from the 70's, guys fishing with long bamboo poles, older women dancing with fans, the ridiculous Chinese althetic facilities (which I still haven't photographed), and of course the juxtaposed carnival-like ride that every big park has (from bumper cars to boat rides). So, following a nap break, we caught a train and made it back to Beijing with a well-rounded experience.