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Montana Summer & China Plans

// August 21st, 2010 // No Comments » // China, Chinese, Dancing, Travel, Uncategorized

Wow the summer is going by fast! I cannot believe that I took my big road trip to Montreal 2 months ago! I guess I’ve just been having such a good summer I never realized that it is almost over. Since returning from my road trip to Montreal, I have spent the majority of my time working near Livingston, Montana, as an off-road driving instructor driving and working on H1 Hummers. It is not the job I would have ever guessed I would be working after graduation, but it has been the most fun and well-paying job I have had. The job itself is already pretty great – I’m outside all day, I work with people, and I drive Hummers on the side of a mountain.  But the best part by far is that I have been living in the northern Rockies all summer!On my days off I go hiking, camping, fishing, shooting – if it’s outdoors, you name it and I’ve probably done it this summer. Since I have never been out west, it’s been an invaluable opportunity to experience some of the best the western US has to offer.

Another great feature of my job in Montana is that every month I get a week off and my company flies me anywhere I want to go in the US, so I have been able to attend a couple dance events here and there as well.  The first I attended was “Hot Mess” in Philadelphia on July 9-11, 2010.  True to the name, Hot Mess was one of the hottest weekends of the summer in Philly and the focus of the event was all fast dancing, accentuating the messiness.  Nonetheless, it was one of the most fun events I have attended in a long time and it was a good to finally work on my fast dancing, which has always been a week point for me.  The second event I attended was “Southern Belle Swing Bash” in Atlanta on August 13-15, 2010.  Another fantastic event by Michael and Jaya of Asheville, NC, SBSB was an event made specifically for follows.  All of the workshops were for follows only, and as a result leads were invited to join for free as long as we volunteered to help with the workshops.  I felt guilty for not having to pay for the event because it was so much fun for leads!  Besides the wonderful company I enjoyed staying with all weekend and the countless dances, I also competed in the open Jack & Jill and actually made it to the finals (check out my videos page to see the finals warm up dance).  While I did not place in the top 3,  it was my first time in a finals competition for a lindy hop J&J and I learned a lot from it.  Hopefully there will be more to come in the future!

Since the summer is coming closer to an end, I have already begun planning my next trip to China.  I will be flying out on October 12 to Shanghai to attend the first ever international swing dancing event there called “Swing Out Shanghai.”  When I lived there two years ago, the ideas for the event started to emerge, and now in the middle of the Shanghai World Expo the event will finally be held.  One of the best parts about it is we will actually perform on stage at the World Expo, making history for the whole world to see. After a few weeks in Shanghai, I will move to Taipei in Taiwan to begin a long and concentrated study of Mandarin.  All of my previous trips to China limited me to only 3 months of study at a time – just enough to get somewhere and then forget it.  This time, with the help of a 3 month scholarship by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, I will spend 6 months studying, giving me the much needed time to hopefully make some large strides with the language.  I will return home May 24, 2011.  It will be a long adventure, but I am confident that the investment I will make in Taiwan will be well worth it later in life, if not for the language skills, then for the life experiences I will encounter.

Korea is Fancy

// August 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // China, Dancing, Harbin, Korea, Travel

Wow did the last few weeks fly by or what! I’m now writing from Korea and I didn’t even have time to mention that I left China! So here’s what happened:

July 25:  Went to the Tiger Park in Harbin – got some great photos of tigers that I’ll post soon.
August 4:  Final exam in Chinese classes, closing ceremonies that afternoon/evening (I somehow got all A’s!).
August 5:  Took a train all day to Beijing, arrive at 7:30 pm and meet up with Josh (swing dancer in Beijing). Hung out with Josh and other dancers, spent the night at Josh’s.
August 6:  Flight to Seoul at 1:45 pm, arrive at 4:45 pm. Took a bus to Hapjeong station and was met by my friend Miyeoung. Stay at her place that night.
August 7:  Train to Pusan, dance in Pusan that night.
August 7 – 9:  Pusan swing festival! Dancing all night, all day.
August 9:  Train back to Seoul, dance that night in Seoul.

Now I’m back in Seoul. Even though I have been in Korea for about 4 days, today is really my first chance to go out and explore the city on my own, and I am about to go do that. So far my first impressions of Korea are that it is incredibly clean, nice, and fancy. The roads are kept in perfect shape and people actually drive inside the lanes. Seoul is one of the cleanest cities I’ve ever been to (for a city of this size). There is not one piece of trash on the road and all the buildings are spotless.
My biggest impression is simply that Korea is fancy. It’s become a running joke with my friends here that whenever I see something that surprises me they always say, “Yeah I know. It’s Korea. It’s fancy.” For example, McDonald’s uses hard plastic cups and washes them to reduce waste – it’s fancy. You can pick up a wireless internet signal just about anywhere – it’s fancy. There was a giant Starcraft gaming competition on the beach in Pusan – it’s fancy. Well, that last one maybe was not “fancy,” but I did witness it. A crowd of at least 2,000 people all sat in chairs watching two computer geeks battle it out in a Starcraft match on the beach. Two huge jumbo-trans projected the game while two announcers called the game play-by-play. It was like a football match but with computer games instead of athletes. Anyway, those are my first impressions of Korea. Now I’m going to go exploring and see what else I can find.

Tour of Dongbei (North East China)

// July 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // China, Dalian, Harbin, Travel

I just got back from a week of touring through some of the most famous parts of North Eastern China (the region known as “dongbei” or “东北”) so I thought I’d write down all I did in the past 7 days. Here it goes:

Friday, July 3, 2009
Friday night we all got on a night train to Dalian. Being the third time the whole group has traveled by train, I think we’re starting to get the hang of it. Things went smoothly and we had another night of singing songs and playing cards into the night at 140 km/hr.

Saturday, July 4, 2009
Saturday morning we arrived in Dalian. After breakfast at a Chinese fast food joint, we got on a bus to Jinshetan, which is about an hour northeast of Dalian.  So I was pretty bummed when I found out that we weren’t actually staying in Dalian, my old home town from last year. In Jinshetan, we went swimming at the beach, then in the afternoon everyone went to an amusement park. I still don’t really understand the decision to spend our time this way – both the beach and amusement park you can do in the States, and I felt it would have been a much better decision to actually stay in Dalian and see the city. Regardless, we had a good time at the beach, and then I took a train with a classmate back to Dalian to see my friends from the previous summer. We only got to hang out for a few hours, but it was great to see them again. That night we headed back to Jinshetan and celebrated the 4th of July with everyone. We had a huge fire and cooked hotdogs and smores on sticks. In the distance we saw a bunch of other fireworks going off, and it was comforting to know other Americans were in the town.

Sunday, July 5, 2009
We didn’t do a whole lot on Sunday. In the morning we took a bus out to a shipping port where we waited for about an hour to board our boat to Yantai. We spent the rest of the day riding the boat. It was a smooth ride and we got the VIP room with card tables, so it was a pretty sweet deal. In the afternoon I spent about 2 hours talking with some of our teachers in Chinese and had some wonderful conversations, taking notes all along the way.

Monday, July 6, 2009
We traveled to the Penglai Fortress the next morning where we learned about the Penglai mirage and about the Legends of the 8 Immortals. We took a motor boat ride in the afternoon and hiked the side of a small mountain to a temple. The weather was particularly hot that afternoon and a lot of people ended the day with red necks, myself included, but the view from the top was worth it.  That night we boarded another night train to Yanzhou.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tuesday morning we woke up in Yanzhou then took a bus to Qufu and spent the morning touring Confucius’s home. In the afternoon we went to Mencius’s home, one of Confucius’s most famous students. I took a lot of photos of the two areas, both which were rather large sort of parks filled with trees and ancient Chinese buildings. I wish I knew more about the history of the places because after a while everything started to look the same, and I could not distinguish the significance of one temple over the other. That night we had a delicious dinner, complete with scorpions as a local delight.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The next morning we took a bus to the Ling Yan Buddhist Temple near Mount Tai. It is said that if you go to Mount Tai but you don’t go to the Ling Yan Temple, then you haven’t actually gone to Mount Tai. I wrote my name in English and Chinese in a book in one of the temples which is said to bring good fortune. The temple was gorgeous, but the weather didn’t necessarily agree. Just before lunch, the rain started to pour, and it didn’t let up for most of the day. That afternoon, we all put on ponchos and began the hike up the 1500 meter tall Mount Tai. We took a bus half way up then walked for about an hour literally inside a rain cloud up seemingly never-ending stairs. At the top, some people got lost because you couldn’t see more than 10 ft in front of yourself. We were supposed to get up the next morning around 4:00 to see the sunrise, but the fog was just too bad.

Thursday, July 9, 2009
The next morning we broke up into two groups. One hiked all the way back down the mountain. The other group, the one I went with, stayed at the top for the morning, and it turned out to be a good decision. Around 10:00 am, the fog dissipated and we found ourselves looking down at clouds and up at beautiful blue skies. The photos don’t even come close to capturing the awe of that morning. It turned out the bad weather the day before was a blessing because the cable car was not working and no Chinese tourists were able to come up. We ended up with the entire top of the mountain to ourselves. That afternoon, the cable cars began working again and we rode them down to the buses. After Mount Tai, we went to Larry’s home village (Larry was one of our guides). The small town had set up a huge celebration for us, and we were placed at tables in the center of about 400 Chinese villagers in front of a stage. For the rest of the day, we watched the local townspeople perform on stage, and we even got a chance to go on stage and sing a few songs. The warmth from that small town was perhaps the most incredible part of the whole trip.

Friday, July 10, 2009
We spent the night a very nice hotel and spa, then the next morning went to Pu Songling’s Liquan Spring where we saw his gravesite and visited a haunted house. Pu Songling was a famous Chinese writer, sort of like a Chinese Hemmingway. The haunted house was similar to most haunted houses in the States, with very fake looking stuff inside, but this house was a bit more graphic than ones I have been to before (for example, a naked man clenching to a glowing hot steel column as torture for his sins). That afternoon we headed to the airport where we found that our flight was delayed several hours. We finally left around 7:30 pm and arrived back in Harbin around 9:00 pm.

All in all, the week was a great experience and a nice break from classes. There were definitely some flaws in planning, and it seemed like we spent way too much of our time on a bus or a train or waiting, but I think the good outweighed the bad. Going to Mount Tai and Larry’s village alone were two amazing experiences I would probably never have the opportunity to do on my own. I posted a bunch of photos from the trip in 4 separate albums, so check them out it you’d like on my photos page or on my flickr account. Now I’m looking forward to only 4 weeks left here in Harbin. I can’t believe how quickly this program is going by, but it’s been awesome so far.

Trip to Inner Mongolia (内蒙古)

// June 27th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // China, Harbin, Travel

Well, I’ve been so busy that before I had a chance to write about Harbin, we went on a trip to Inner Mongolia. I’ll have to write about Harbin another time. The trip was from June 19 to 21, 2009. We traveled by train and bus and visited many sites during our two days in the region. I guess I’ll just take you through the events one by one.

Friday night we all met in the lobby downstairs then took a bus to the train station. We boarded the train around 9:00 pm, and then Max and I promptly began writing songs in Chinese with the help of Jay’s guitar. Within 5 minutes we had a tune down and performed it, which resulted in a rather continuous flow of singing every song anyone knew until the wee hours of the morning. The train was a blast, although I think we definitely annoyed some people trying to get some sleep.

We arriving early in the morning in a city called 海拉尔 (hailaer) and were immediately welcomed by our tour company, “Flying Tourism Co. Ltd China, Harbin” (飞场旅游) who gave us yellow tourism hats with the company logo on it and a white silk-like scarf. We then went to a buffet style breakfast restaurant that had traditional food from the area. Most memorable for me was the milk tea that sort of had a flavor of butter, milk, and very light coffee. After breakfast, we went to 海拉尔战争纪念园 (Hailaer War Memorial). The building is an old Japanese Base that has been converted into a museum, and inside was some very disturbing facts about what the Japanese did to the Chinese. Oddly enough, there was a shooting range at the end (which some students tried out) and a blue screen where you could stand and look like you were flying over the city (a little out of place for a war memorial if you ask me, but eh, it was fun).

After the war memorial we went to a Mongolian tourist facility that is run by local Mongolians and set up as a traditional Mongolian festival house. There was one main tent and several smaller surrounding ones. When we arrived, we were greeted by the Mongolians and each took a celebratory shot of 白酒 (bai jiu). After the ceremony, we went to the back of the facility where the animals were kept and rode horses (well, not by ourselves, but it was still cool to get to ride one even with a guy in front guiding). Several of us, including me, rode the camel ride for 30 kuai (about $4.20, and totally worth it – definitely the highlight of the day). You don’t realize how high those animals stand until you get on one, and they make the strangest noise I’ve ever heard an animal make (kind of like those things from Star Wars that Luke kills and crawls inside to survive in the cold). During lunch, we ate traditional Mongolian food, which included among other things some incredibly delicious lamb. They bring it to you as just a plate of lamb chunks then you grab a piece and cut off what you want with a knife. During lunch, the Mongolians had a small show where they sung songs and played the “Morin khuur” (sort of a Mongolian cello with a horse head carved in the nut at the top). In Chinese it is known as the matouqin (马头琴). They say that when it is played, the horses outside cry.

After lunch, we got back on the bus to head on to Inner Mongolia. We took a pit stop for a group photo, and after the photo a few people started running towards the hill in the distance (I still don’t know what sparked this). Eventually everyone joined in and we ended up running a least a mile out into the field. From there all you could see for miles was a beautiful rolling prairie. I took a bunch of photos in an attempt to capture the exact photo from the Microsoft desktop screen.

We then rode the bus for about an hour until we came upon a traditional Mongolian home on the side of the road. We all got out and started chatting with the family that lived there. Surprisingly, their Mandarin was incredibly clear and we could understand most of what they said. I went inside one of the 3 tents and found several more students chatting with an older woman. She said she was 60 and had 4 daughters that lived in the city. She was a lovely lady and welcomed us to have some milk tea and crackers that were sort of like a dried cheese. Outside they had a small wind turbine and inside under the TV was a bunch of car batteries and parts of a CPU that converted and stored the electricity. I was pretty impressed to see such a rather advanced set up functioning in such a poor environment.

We rode on for about another hour and a half until we arrived in 内蒙古 (Inner Mongolia) and went to our hotel. Everyone was pretty beat, and I ended up playing cards then going to bed. The next morning we rode out to 呼伦湖 (Hu Lun Lake) which turned out to be a huge dried up area with 4-Wheelers and a Dune Buggy, so we drove them around and got covered in mud for the morning. After the morning fun, we headed to the final destination of our trip – the Russian border. When we first arrived, we were told we would have 15 minutes to walk around and take photos from about 300 yards out, then would have to leave. After about 20 minutes of walking around, we were finally allowed to get closer and actually go inside the Chinese-side main building. Afterwards we went down the rode to a huge courtyard that was filled with human-size Babushkas all around one gigantic Babushka in the middle. The Babushkas were all painted with different people and places (mostly famous Americans). After about 30 minutes of hanging out there, we got back on the buses and headed for the hotel. We grabbed some quick dinner then went to the train station for our long ride back to Harbin. It was about a 12 hour ride through the night, and then we had the morning to sleep and prepare for afternoon classes. It was an event-packed weekend, but one heck of a good time.

Back in Beijing

// June 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // China, Travel

I can’t believe it but I’m back in Beijing.  Just a few hours ago we got off the plane and boarded a bus to the Sleepy Inn Hostel in Beijing.  We’ll be staying here for the next two nights before we head over to Harbin by train.  It’s so surreal!  I feel like I just left China yesterday and here I am back walking around Bohai lake, which I just did last July.  So far the summer is off to a great start!