Touristy things

So last weekend (or the weekend before last, however you're counting) I went to Tian'an men and the forbidden City, it was kind of a whirlwind, but I got to take some pictures.
My roomate Vera, me and Caitlin from New York on the Square that picture of Mao is incredibly huge upclose.

for street crossing to be safer they have underground passages for pedestrians which I thought was really cool.

The Forbidden City is really pretty and old, but rather funny smelling, maybe it was all the people.

More pictures of here (and of the acrobats) will be posted on facebook soon.

But remember:
hey the sign says please, you should follow it.

Zhong Guo Peng You

So today I made my first Chinese friend. Sarah and Caitlin have been making Chinese friends because people come up to them and are like "oooh, you're American please be my language partner/friend!" But I have the problem of looking like everyone else so I have to be proactive in my Chinese friend making.

In the cafeteria when it is busy and you manage to get a table all to yourself other people sit with you for lack of space. And that's fine, but they completely ignore you too. Today I decided to put an end to that and when a guy sat down at my table I tapped him on the arm and basically said, "Excuse me I'm from the States and am looking for Chinese friends." Sounds pathetic and desperate yes, but he took pity on me I guess and we talked and exchanged phone numbers and walked around a bit. It was all very exciting.

<3Annie

Everybody meet

This is Edward, I bought him at IKEA. Yes he is named after who you think it is... no I hadn't read the second book yet. He is happily living in my window (hopefully I haven't killed him yet).

Acrobats

So there is a program here where they get to go to a bunch of free kind of touristy attractions and they don't do a head count or anything so if you know about it, you can tag along. So about last week or so I got to tag along to a Chinese acrobatic show
They do the sickest things, like they do one thing, like stand on a bike which is "ooh, thats hard and kind of cool" but then they put fourteen people on one bike and its just like holy crap. Or they have people with Chinese yo-yos which are fun but then they like stand on each others shoulders and pass the yo-yo's around...

So this girl is balancing a lot of things on her hands and feet, later she balanced one on all four appendages and her mouth, but I didn't get a good picture of that one
This is a guy on a balance board, holding a thing on his shoulders that have two girls hanging off of it, and then another guy on a balance board on top of him, flipping cups from the end of the board onto his head, observe:

Of course that was "only" when he was on one balance board thing

Guy jugguling on the outside of the wheel of death.
All these girls are spinning four plates in their hands while on each others shoulders, while doing the splits.
Then they balaanced this one thing on this girls shoulder which had four girls on it all spinning plates...

But wait there is MORE

That funny circular blur is a little girl flipping rapidly around and around and around, the thing behind her is a man pretending to be an ostrich.

Amazing bicycle feats.

Zefron

So on Saturday I met Naomi who is from California
She also happened to graduate from the same High School as Zac Efron. Which the nerd in me is very excited about. Although she didn't really like him and he has an air of superiority about it, which I find easy to believe. But she also said he does indeed have very pretty blue eyes, was decent in acting in all the school productions, And that he was cuter in Middle school.

Also please note the "Fuck" randomly written on the wall behind Naomi at the restaurant we were at.

Olympics

While I missed the regular olympics here in China, all the olympic stuff was still up and I got to see some of the Paraolympics happening. Sarah actually got to see the ping pong championships which I'm completely jealous of, but you know.
This is the building that Olympic ping pong took place, yet it is right on my campus, but I wasn't allowed in it, unless I bought a ticket. Although supposedly tickets were not expensive. But I did get to see some other stuff.

the closed down the street and part of campus for a marathon/ just a race. Which was unfortunate because it was the same day as our placement test results were posted so we had to leave campus (which is gated in) and loop around and enter through a different gate. Because of the streets being closed everyone was walking/biking on the sidewalk and it looked like this:
Keep in Mind Sarah and I were walking in the opposite direction of all these people.

But here are some pictures of the runners



I have also been driven by bus past the phoenix nest two times and let me tell you even from a distance the structure is so incredibly pretty
<3 more on everything soon

Forgive me

I'm totally being lazy and not keeping up with my blog posts but here is a teaser on what I'm planning on posting soon:

-- Chinese acrobats (so cool!)
-- I went to a club for the first time last saturday
-- my classes that have just started
-- how small and dirty my dormitory/ the rest of Beijing seems to be

Peace Love and Fair trade,
Annie

Blargh Blog

So these are my complaining blogs... today because of the time difference in China my card kept on getting denied and they put a hold on it. And because it denied the card the ATM ate the card and wouldn't give it back to me. So when I went to get help they kept my card and said that I needed my passport to get it back. However, yesterday I surrendered my passport to police to obtain a residence permit which costs 460 rmb money I didn't have because all the stupid random fees that occur in the China.

SO passportless I can't get my debit card back. and the Bank was like "oh we only hold cards for like 4 days. I don't get my passport back until the 7th of October. So then I was talking to the teller lady (this was all in Chinese by the way) trying to explain to here why I didn't have my passport, trying to get her to accept my Drivers License instead, which she wouldn't. and I started crying in the middle of the Agriculture Bank of China....

so cross your fingers with me that they won't throw away my card until I am able to get my passport back. In the mean time I have no idear what i'm supposed to do for money I already owe Sarah the residence permit money that she lent me...

Grrrr and this was all before noon today.

yes boys and girls

There is an Olympic sport for trampoline

Ready, Set, Don't Go!

So because of April (and you know I love you but I was curious) I really wondered what the German crowd thought of Tokio Hotel (for those of you who don't know it is this German band that we saw live in St. Paul back in august)


and I've heard from a few people that Tokio Hotel was not well received in Germany so I had to ask here were the responses.

Matt: Laughed very loudly, and said, "I did not come all the way to China to get asked questions about Tokio Hotel!" and "Basically if you are over the age of 16 or not a female and especially if you have a younger sister you hate them."

Johan: Covered his ears and went, "No, No, NO!"

Bierret (sorry if I spelled your name wrong): said, "I hate them, they are so weird!" and "If I had a child I would not let them go see Tokio Hotel in Concert!"A picture of Bierret and I for proof I suppose...

<3 Annie

East Meets West, but whose is best?

So when I first was going to study abroad I applied to go to Shanghai because there is supposedly a very big culture clash for East and West and that's the type of thing that really interests me. However I didn't have to go there because there is a really cool mix here on campus. Sarah and I walked around the older part the other day which is full of really pretty buildings and ponds and is all in all very aesthetically pleasing.




There is also this giant pagoda type thing that actually only used to be a water tower and is now merely symbolic, it is very pretty.
the only bad thing about have such a senic area of campus is a shit ton of bugs, I have three bites (possibly four) on my right foot alone =(

I'll be uploading more campus scenery photos as well as everything else on facebook, so keep a look out!

Formating

So the formatting on that last post is really shitty...

I apologize for that, I tried fixing it a little bit ago and totally failed. the story you can follow the pictures reasonably easily though. I'll do better on the next one, promise, but for now it is bedtime.

Annie

rig-a-jig-jig and away we go

So apparently Vox is blocked here in China, so I can't use that blog and instead I must create a new one...

I started my journey at a lovely 4:30 am on Sept 9th to go to CWA with all my bags.








Sadly Esme did not want to be stuffed into a suitcase for 14 hours =(. I arrived for my flight which was for 6:00 am and at that early in the morning no one is really at the airport observe:











If you look carefully there is one person in that picture see if you can find him.

Our plane took off just as the sun was rising

















And I landed 45 min later in Chicago just as the Sun was Rising
And then spent 6 or so hours in the Chicago airport. this Tunnel rivals Minnesota's on cool factor it actually might be better because it's more rainbowy.











I didn't get a window seat on the long flight, but I tried to take some pictures, these were over Siberia
















The Beijing airport is huge and very clean. it is also full of lines (we had to wait in one to get a taxi) which thankfully moved very fast.

Because the Olympics just happened and the para olympics are currently happening the Taxi ride to Peking University was full of olympic stuff












They also had these great Public Service announcement signs, we passed two "Don't Drink and Drive!" a "Don't follow too close!" a "Don't drive tired!" and a "Don't litter!"











The first night it turns out we couldn't move into the dorms early like we were told and instead had to run around and find a hotel, which was super frantic, and a horrible experience I'm really glad that Sarah was with me to experience it.









So now I'm all moved in and had orientation and finally got the internet up in my room, which is nice. Even though I have to pay for it, but I guess I don't know what I was expecting, but on that all later, right now it is late and I am tired.

<3 you all (except for Jason who I <2),

Annie