August 17-21

In the picture: Me, Jessica, Becca, Andrew, Leah
These are some of my closest friends here. In Beijing Becca and Jessica were roommates, so Andrew and I would join up with them and we went on a bunch of adventures. Once we got our placements, unfortunately those two got placed in Long Gang which is almost as far away from my placement as you can get. But we're still making it work and finding ways to see each other. Andrew, Leah and I got placed in Xili together and have been spending pretty much every day together exploring the city. I was really happy to find such great people.


The hotel was up in the mountains of Luohu, one of the districts of Shenzhen. In Beijing, and then in Shenzhen, Jessica, a friend of mine, and I would take morning walks before our day started. We wanted to explore as much of the areas we were in as possible so as to take advantage of being in China. This was on one of our morning strolls to the lake beside the hotel.


The Chinese architecture and interior design is often very creative or futuristic. They are a lot more risky with their buildings and decorations. This was the roof of the dining area in the hotel.


On the 17th, we all boarded a train in Beijing and a little over 24 hours later arrived in Shenzhen, our new home. The train ride was actually a lot of fun. We had three cars that members from our group had been placed in. A couple of my friends and I ended up in one of the cars without many other Americans in it, it was one of the Chinese family cars. How Chinese trains work is that there are little sections and in each section there are two sets of three bunks that are one right on top of the other. The highest bunk is the cheapest so all of the us that got put in the family car were on the top bunks. We made friends with the Chinese people below us and ended up having a great time teaching them some English words and having them teach us some Mandarin words. We also had this little Chinese girl latch on to us, so we taught her how to play Go Fish and we played it for awhile using Mandarin words. Then we arrived in Shenzhen and got transported to a new hotel that included three free meals a day and what we would consider five star hotel rooms. There were a number of people that were given villas or large suites, one even had two stories and an elevator in it.


This is the Forbidden City in Beijing. It was previously an imperial palace but is now a Palace Museum with a range of exhibits about different parts of the lives of ancient dynasties. It sits in the heart of Beijing across from Tiananmen Square. We were able to see one exhibit about the celebration of one Emperor's birthday. Every year people from all over would send him exquisite gifts. His sons would provide him with new bowls and vases. Then there would be a meal that included forty courses. In the museum there was a display of the emperor's table setting. He had very specific items, like certain vases and center pieces, that had to accompany the forty dishes. At another part of the museum our teacher informed us of some of the specifications on architecture that ancient China had. All around the city, as well as in other historic sites we had visited, the frames of the door rose above the ground by almost a foot so that to pass through a door you had to step over the frame. This was to designate importance of the household. The higher your door frame was the more important in society you were. Also, only the imperial family could use dragons or phoenixes in their architecture. If anyone built a higher door step or added these creatures to their own homes when they were not supposed to they would have been killed.