Christmas in China

After much searching, we finally found someone taller than Mark in China.

Yum, scorpion.

Mark liked the scorpion, but wouldn't eat it until I did. But, he liked it in the end. He's still alive, anyway.

We couldn't resist trying the frog. Didn't taste too bad, but then again, it was fried.

Thank you, everyone, for the massive amounts of chocolate I received.

Aunt Mary Ann and I are trying to find my apartment building in a mini Beijing model. A much harder task than you would think. Even the model was huge.

The famous CCTV building in miniature.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! Christmas was awesome in Beijing. My aunt Mary Ann and brother Mark visited Beijing from Cleveland. They got here last friday in time for the SYA holiday party and left yesterday afternoon. I had an awesome week with them here in Beijing.
Well, i rounded last week off with 5 finals, which went wonderfully as far as i can tell, but i won't really know until i go back, so i will enjoy my happy ignorance until then.
So, on Saturday, we went to the great wall with Julia's family. Turned out to be a little cold, but not too bad until it started to get windy. I really enjoyed getting out of the city for a few hours, no pollution, less people, and a nice relaxing day. In the afternoon, we went to the Ming tombs to soak up some more history. In the evening, we had a wonderful dinner together with my host family.
On sunday, the weather was really really cold and windy, making walking around outside pretty hard, but we did it anyway. We walked around a few parks and unfroze over lunch. In the afternoon, we went to 798, the art district. We saw a couple of really cool little galleries, but the best park was the Dior exhibit. The clothes were interesting enough, but the exhibit was really really weird. Lots of flashing lights and wall to wall mirrors. We left a little disoriented, but it was a pretty cool exhibit nonetheless.
On monday and tuesday, Mary Ann worked, and Mark and I had the city to ourselves. Don't worry, we were good. Despite the draw of bars and tatto parlors, we explored a few temples, including the Lama temple, the Confucius temple, and the Temple of Heaven. Seriously. Anyway, getting around the subway during the day was fun. Unlike my previous experience in cleveland, the subway comes regularly and was not completely empty. We had a good time trying to figure out the most round about and inconvenient way to get anywhere, to amusing results.
for the rest of the week, we did the usual sightseeing in Beijing, the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, and Wanfujing night market. The night market was fun as usual. I got Mark to eat some pretty good stuff, although he still complains to this day about the stinky tofu i made him eat. sticky tofo is basically tofu fermented underground for awhile then fried up and served, like all good fried things, on a stick. yummy. mark thought so anyway. he ate the scorpion, snake, and shark, but the tofu was the thing that got to him. we also went to a market and bargained for christmas presents. we all had a great time, Mary Ann is an expert bargiainer and mark mad e agood start. all the shopkeepers were pretty surprised that i spoke chinese and gave me a "discount" because of it. huh, right.
on friday, we went to the Urban Planning Expedition. we eventually got there even after my poor map reading skills got us pretty lost. they had a couple pretty coold exhibits, but the best was a mini model of beijing. i spent a lot of time trying to find my apartment. it was pretty cool to see the city laid out in front of me, i got a much better appreciation for how big the city really is because the model was not even the whole city.
i was sad on saturday to see them go back to Cleveland. i still have a whole week of vacation to bum around Beijing by myself.
miss you all,
Stephanie