Updated Blog!

Hi Guys-

I know I haven’t updated this in FORVER. We left Vietnam on the 24^th, and arrived in Hong Kong on the 26^th, and just got back on the ship yesterday, and arrive in Taiwan tomorrow. Everything has been packed in, and it’s been really busy on the ship trying to get assignments done in one day. First of all Vietnam and  China were fabulous. I spent all of my time in Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City. My roommate Sarah and her childhood best friend Melissa had their mom’s fly in for the SAS Parents trip. I spent my first day in Vietnam with the four of them, and we had sooo much fun. We went to the Pagoda, which was interesting. There was a turtle sanctuary there, with hundreds of turtles swimming. And I got to see baby turtles that were smaller than my fingers, which was soo cute. We went shopping after, and went to this really nice dinner. I spent the next three days doing a little sight seeing and LOTS of shopping. I took the term “shop til you drop”  to heart. There were so many cool markets, and I started to get pretty good at bargaining. We also took motor taxis everywhere, which was my favorite part of HCMC. My friend Liz and I bought fun wigs for our bald heads and we wore them out later that night, which was really fun. Hmm…what else is Vietnam…

We ate a ton of really good food. I had Pho, and loved it. And we had lots of spring rolls and some crazy things like ostrich.

The weather was really hot in Vietnam….I lucked out with my new haircut, which kept me from melting in the sun.

Vietnam was a nice break for me from the crazy filled trips I’ve been doing in other countries. It was nice to take a break and do shopping and get to know the locals for a couple of days.

On to China

We arrive in Hong Kong on Saturday the 26^th. We had one day free before our trip with the China guide began. We didn’t have plans for Hong Kong, and started walking around a little bit. After getting a map, we saw Mickey ears on it, and there was no question about our plans for the rest of the day. Catherine and I pretty much forced our group of friends to make our way to Disneyland Hong Kong, which was like the best day ever. It looked like Disneyland, but didn’t have as many rides. We went on Space mountain, and walked around the park all day. They had the tea cups (my favorite), and amazing fireworks. It felt so weird to see Disney in China, but we loved it so much. We stayed until it closed at 8pm, and then made our way back toward the ship. We went to a nice restaurant for dinner, and got back to the ship around midnight. We still had to pack for our trip that left next morning for Beijing. I had gotten a new Northface backpacking backpack while we were in Vietnam, which was so nice to have for this trip. We had to pack 6 days worth of clothes, a lot of it being jackets and sweatshirts for the Great Wall. We left around 10 am to make our flight to Beijing. We got there around 5pm with about 90 other Semester at Sea students. The China Guide piled us into buses and brought us to our hotel in Beijing. We had the night free, so we walked around our hotel to a night market, and went to dinner at this restaurant. No one spoke any English, so we had no idea what we were ordering. These are always the hardest to make sure about my food allergy to nuts, but Catherine always does an awesome job of finding a picture of a peanut, showing it to the waiter, pretending to put it into her mouth, and then dropping to the floor like she’s dying. The waiters always look at her like she’s crazy, but I haven’t eaten anything with nuts yet so I guess it’s working! We only have one more international stop before I can say I’ve made it around the world without having an allergic reaction. Maybe I’ll take a video of Catherine’s little “scene” and put it on so you can understand how ridiculous and funny it is to watch.

            We left at 8am the next morning to do sightseeing. We went to the Forbidden City, which was so much bigger than I had imagined. Very cool to see. We also went to Tiananmen Square (KK I made a video for you with Tenacious D karate songJ) After that we went to a silk market, where a lot of us bought warm clothes for the Great Wall. I got a really warm Northface jacket, which pretty much saved my life. I also bought a Panda Hat that I am seriously in love with. Our entire group of thirty ended up buying panda hats too. The three groups of thirty each had a name, and we became the Panda group. We had a 2.5 hour drive to the great wall, and it was dark by the time we got there. We had dinner and then got sleeping bags and a mat from the company before beginning the 15 minute hike up to where we would be sleeping on the wall. We were right on the border of Chinese side and the Mongolian side, and actually slept on the Mongolian side, which I think is so awesome. The night on the Great Wall was one of the best nights of my life. And definitely the coldest. It was below freezing, and all we had were our sleeping bags and clothes on the stone wall. It was so surreal being up there. My friends Melissa and John hiked up with me away from where we were sleeping, and we stayed up there talking and constantly reminding eachother that we were sitting on the Great Wall of China. I was so cold that I got maybe an hour of sleep that night. Luckily we woke up early to start hiking, which warmed me up. The wall has some really steep parts, and it took us about an hour to hike to 15 towers. There were Mongolian women walking with us, and one of them grabbed my arm and started pulling me up and down steps, which was funny at first. Then I realized about half way through that she was going to ask me to buy something from her as soon as we got there. She was funny though and kept me entertained during some of the scarier parts when my fear of heights kicked in. We took lots of pictures on the wall, which I’ll try to upload in Taiwan. We had some of the most spectacular views ever from that hike on the Great Wall, and I think it was the best 24 hours of the trip.

   After the wall, we got back onto the bus and went back to Beijing. We spent our last day in Beijing at the Panda exhibit, where I got even more Panda gear. I just love them sooo much. We also went to a Tea house, where these women showed us all different kinds of tea, and we got to try them. It was like a big tea party, and the place was so cool. They had all these different mugs that changed colors when hot water was poured into them. We also went to lunch in the same area with the family of _______, the famous Kung Fu fighter. The family was also good friends with Jackie Chan, and they had pictures of them together in their house. They taught us how to make dumplings, and then we ate lunch in their house.

     We had a sleeper train that night to go to Xi An (prounounced Chee Awwn). The sleeper trains were actually really fun. It was like a big party filled with students. We were on it from 7pm until 8am, and got picked up by a new guide in Xi An. We went directly to the Terracotta Warriors, which was so awesome to see. They were founded in 1974 I believe, by 12 farmers. We actually got to meet one of the founders, and get pictures and a book signed by him. If you have time, google Terracotta Warriors so you can learn a little bit about it. It was so awesome to see, and we actually watched as some of the warriors were still being dug up. It was amazing. After the Terracotta warriors, we went to the city wall, and we rented bikes and rode the entire 8 mile perimeter of the wall, with the city down below us. It was so beautiful and a good end to our trip. Melissa, Sarah and I took our time riding around the wall, and stopped to take pictures of the ridiculous amounts of people down below. We went straight from the wall to the train station, where we had another sleeper train to Shanghai. We arrived in Shanghai in the morning, and got back to the ship by 8am. We couldn’t get off the ship until we were cleared by immigration, so we started exploring Shanghai around 1pm. Catherine and I found a Dunkin Donuts, which was like a dream come true. We have been in Donut withdrawals since Ghana I think, so it was nice to sit there for a little while and also get to skype with our parents. We went around for a coulpe of hours, and then had to get back on the ship before On Ship time!

We are currently stopped right off of the Ryukyu Island chain south of Japan, because we cannot go directly to Taiwan from China due to political tension between them. The islands are really gorgeous- I wish we could get off for the day and visit them, but we’re making our way to Taiwan and will get in tonight. So far I don’t have any plans for Taiwan, but it’s supposed to rain while we’re there so we’re hoping we’ll still be able to visit beaches.