October Vacation

This is an ancient sun dial at the old Forbidden City.

Chinese weddings. i saw a lot of them in front of hotels.

yup, Dairy Queen in China. the blizzards taste the same, by the way.

I am no expert, but I am pretty sure this is not the Latin translation.

My friend, Jane. I forget her Chinese name.

corn, corn, corn. and lots of it.

mushrooms and peppers in great quantity

very vicious guard dog, no seriously, don't mess with him.

these are red tomitilla like things. no idea, but they tasted fine.

some really cool looking squash

lots and lots of bok choy.

So, vacation was awesome. We did not end up going to Si Chuan, instead we went to Shenyang in northern China. It was about an 8 1/2 hour car ride. Shenyang is home to the imperial palace of the Ming dynasty before the Forbidden City was the imperial palace for the Qing dynasty in Beijing. It also hosted the preliminary soccer games for the Olympics. Shenyang is a small city compared to Beijing, but then again so are most cities. While in Shenyang, we met up with my host father's cousins. We travelled with them to the village where their family is from about 2 hours outside of Shenyang. We saw some distant relatives who all kept giving more and more food to take home. They were all really nice. Their gardens were amazing, especially the squash. They grow a lot of bok choy and store it for the winter because they can't get fresh vegetables in the winter. They also don't eat a lot of meat because it is difficult to store and expensive, so they have huge gardens. We visited the family grave site, which was situated behind a corn field. It was pretty cool to see a couple of generations of graves, but what I thought was really cool was I found a praying mantis situated on one of the graves. I am sure this has some sort of significance. The next day we drove for 3 hours to a mountain famous for its beauty, especially in the fall when the leaves are turning color. Unfortunately, since it has been unseasonably warm here the trees haven't turned color yet, but the scenery was awesome nonetheless. We ended up going on a hike, which was more than anyone had really bargained for. We all thought we were just going to look at the scenery, and it turned into a 5 hour hike. I was thrilled, but my family a little less so. This mountain is a huge tourist attraction though. The hike probably would have been much shorter if we didn't spend most of it behind other people. It was pretty ridiculous. I don't think any of these people bargained for a hike either. On the last day of vacation, we visited the old Forbidden City. It is much much smaller than the one in Beijing, but the architecture is really cool. A lot of tourists here also, and I was probably the only foreigner there, something one little Chinese girl couldn't help but point out. I don't think she thought I could understand her though.
So during the October holiday, there are apparently many Chinese weddings. And they all seem to be in front of hotels with big red blow up arches. And they all are really early. I would get up in the morning and there would have already been three weddings in front of the hotel we were staying in. also at the hotel they had a buffet breakfast that advertised 'western' style as well as Chinese style breakfast. the 'western' style breakfast included fried chicken and french fries. It is nice to know what kind of impression we make on the world.
one of my host family's friends daughter, Jane, was really nice. she is 11 and speaks a little English. her father kept trying to get her to practice her English with me. She kept calling me Ms. Liu (my chinese last name) i kept trying to get her to call me Stephanie, but eventually I just gave up. She and I talked on the hike, but our limited language skills limited our conversation a little. Her English is about as good as my Chinese. I did find out that she doesn't have any time to just be a kid because of all the homework she has. She is only 11! she said she doesn't have any time to watch TV or read a book because she has to do her homework. she can't even practice the piano every day. but anyway we had a good conversation in our broken english/chinese.
So thats my vacation. I had a blast and got to see different parts of China. By the way, there are a lot of corn fields here, sometime I felt like we were driving through Kansas, but at much higher speeds. The drivers here have no fear and the speed limit is regarded as a suggestion, not so much a rule. i tried not to watch.
So after my week vacation I have a week of school to look forward to. I have a big Chinese test on Tuesday. our teacher promised we wouldn't have any homework, but he didn't say anything about a test.
hope everyone over there is doing well,
Stephanie