Last Friday Five Course Meal!

Last Friday one of my school's had a five course dinner at a French restaurant. I am so lucky that I have had such nice food lately (however, my bank account is feeling it!).

Last Wednesday Five Course Meal!

My old supervisor, Miyuki, invited me to a dinner last Wednesday night. It was at this really cute small Italian place right here in Bando! Yummy, it was so good!

Thoughts about China

China was great. I didn't really know what to expect when I went there. Actually, I kind of expected it to be a lot like Japan, only ten or twenty years behind. Maybe it is? But honestly China was way different than I imagined. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend going. It was the best vacation I have ever been on. I am not sure if it was because of China, the food, or just the people I met, but it was great!

The Great Wall!

Our final journey in China was to see The Great Wall. Our hostel told us about an eight kilometer hike, with transportation. We signed up! We went with Dan, Eva and James, some people we met at the hostel. The hike was hard! Going up and down, I barely kept up. But I can now say I did and I am proud of myself. We took a cable car to get up and a zip line over a lake to get to the bottom. It was so fun!

Beijing-the Forbidden City!

The next day Rob and I went to the Forbidden City. It was so hot that day, and we were tired from the night before. So it was hard to get through it. Still, I am so glad we went. It was an amazing place!

Beijing-the best part!

The last part of our trip we were in Beijing. We stayed at a hostel there and met the coolest people! Since Rob and I had separated for a few days (I went to Shanghai, he stayed in Qingdao) we met up at the hostel. Rob had already met some people and thirty minutes after I showed up we were out on the town! First we went to this market area that has strange food. We tried fried scorpion, grasshopper, starfish and baby chickens. Then we moved on to this nice local out door restaurant. One of our new friends, Young, spoke Mandarin. We were so thankful for him because without him we wouldn't have gone to these local places! Next we moved on to this bar area. It seemed touristy, but actually had many locals and Chinese tourists as well. Good times!

Shanghai

I didn't spend too much time in Shanghai. I only went there to meet up with a friend. It was smoggy when I tried getting a picture of the skyline. I did get to go to a museum in People's Square. That was nice.