If you were like the many who thought that I was done, you’re wrong. I need to conclude the gargantuan endeavor that is this blog with one final post. I’ve been back in the United States for about a week and a half now, and I’ve begun packing and preparing for my return to the University of California, San Diego. Workload permitting, I’ll edit over this whole blog so it flows like a novel, consolidating posts where necessary and refitting everything so it works, more than partially so that I can relive the experience that I am so missing, and know that I will continue to be nostalgic of for the foreseeable future.
And if because of the reverse-chronological format of blogs you arrive at this post first, I encourage you to start at the beginning four months back. Though I’m biased, I think it’s worth it.
Des Amis, Des Ennemis
I have this nasty habit of getting sick in some way or another before entering a new environment. So before heading off to Hong Kong, I happened to be going through the usual. It kept me going to the bathroom in short and my head was persistently and consistently hot. Thinking there was the possibility of getting quarantined, I can’t say I filled out the health declaration form truthfully, and I self-medicated to get me through the lines should they take my temperature.
Showing how much I knew, since Hong Kong just gave sick people respiratory masks and advisory literature but nothing more, I entered the cab on the way over marveling at the sheer number of bridges on surface roads that there were and the lights of Central, only to be nearly shocked at the superficial condition of buildings outside of the tourist drag.
I was sick and I get sick in such situations because of my nervousness and I know it. I didn’t know who my roommate would be, how cliquish the locals would be, how accepting my fellow exchange students would be of the contrast between my national origins and my ethnic roots. All I could tell myself was that it would all work out and that whatever happens happens.
And as I’m blessed time and time again, through privilege and circumstance, everything worked out better than I could have ever assumed. Out of my perceived adversity, though profoundly false, I guess I could say that I became a stronger person in my first learning experience of my four-month exploration.
I guess I’m a naturally shy and soft-spoken individual. Though I do enjoy the company of others on a regular basis, I also enjoy my own company alone, reading a book, writing (this blog), and much less often watching television. For some reason I had a hunch that I would be the second case more often than not. That’s not to say that I can’t have fun, because in new situations I turn up social butterfly mode and go with it until I have at least a few good friends.
And more than a few good friends I got. They weren’t exactly the friends I was hoping for, being that I wanted to immerse myself in Hong Kong and its locals, but in some ways making friends with other international students gave me a better world view, especially an Anglophone world view, rather than just a Hong Kong- or Chinese-centered one.
Of my friends, of course some were better than others; for a few we parted ways over personality, never ideology. So I guess I’ll go bad news first.
My luck with roommates varies a lot over time. I know he doesn’t read this blog, so in this conclusion, I have few qualms about describing our dealings, especially keeping him in anonymity (at least from those who don’t know him).
He happened to have come from Illinois, the same state where I can say my parents are from (having been educated there, met there, married there, and lived there for a long time). That’s not to say that he’s like my parents though, because he turned out not to be in so many ways.
In being cordial we were good friends for the first month and a half. Though it sounds corny, this was what I like to call the honeymoon period—that being before people fully get to know each other and personalities fully materialize. Things that were so minor to me during the honeymoon period, such as his perceived need to get a girlfriend right then and there in the first two weeks, and his staying up way late to play video games only to complain of exhaustion and boredom during the day began to really annoy me.
In addition, his preconceptions of me came out one by one, one by one revealing themselves to be more specifically misconceptions. For one, he kept insisting that both my parents are from China, to which I had to remind him that my father’s from Detroit and my mother is originally from Hong Kong and immigrated mid-childhood. It followed that during a discussion about learning languages he believed that I speak Mandarin natively, as taught to me by my parents. I had to remind him that my father is a natural-born American and that my mother is from Hong Kong (where they overwhelmingly speak Cantonese over both Mandarin and English), to which I told him he should be able to speak standard German, since he claimed Austrian roots.
And I’m no saint, but on the other hand many of my hunches about him turned out to be true. For one, he whined a lot about not having enough money, though he blew it like no other, spending plenty on drinking and partying. And when he found out that I don’t get financial aid from the government, he assumed that I’m from a rich family, thereafter pointing to expensive sportscars and telling me to buy them for him. The cherry on top was the rigid attitude that he had to all things world. He described his disdain for Islam Week at HKU and described the locals in terms he should have thought twice about before saying to me and my Asian self. In his intelligence, he managed to tell his mom about me in not-so-excellent terms with me in the room. He assumed since I had my earphones in that I wasn’t listening when in reality he should have saved it for later, when I wasn’t present.
It all culminated towards the end of reading week, when after landing at the airport from our group trip to Beijing, he said that had to get off the plane to go meet his friends, with the implication that we were not his friends as denoted by his overly forward tone.
That friend turned out to be a “girlfriend” located an hour’s ferry away in Macau who he probably met on the Internet. In earlier weeks, he would browse the personals section of Craigslist in his boredom, telling me about them while I was trying to study. I ended up disappearing to the library more often than not to study or at least get away from him and he ended up disconnecting from the group and disappearing to Macau nearly every weekend to go see her. That’s not to say I assumed their relationship was one of convenience, because I know how he described her to some of my other friends.
And on the upswing, throughout the whole semester, his opposition to picking up a few words of Cantonese became quite irksome. Yeah, others were like that too, since it’s plenty evident that it’s not hard to get by in Hong Kong on English alone, but with him, it fit his personality in such a way that could only be described in American English-only campaigns by many of the uneducated too lazy to press number “1” or “2” on their phones when prompted.
This isn’t to say that we weren’t friendly though, being that we had to be as we were roommates and all. We parted ways on the appropriate note. He packed away all the People’s Liberation Army “Commie” hats at Mao Zedong quote books for his friends and had be chuckle at the appropriate time. I told him he gets cheap thrills from that stuff. He said it was for his friends. I modified my statement to say that he and his friends get cheap thrills from that stuff. He also was trying to figure out how to pack away a rolled poster for his right-wing father that featured Obama morphed into Mao. He thought I was laughing with him at the witty piece of art. I was laughing at him since he couldn’t get it into his backs without crushing it, putting about thirty folds in it. And as much as I can disagree or even hate someone, defiling someone’s image simply isn’t constructive and if you have to lead with your emotions than you aren’t going to get anywhere (or haven’t gotten anywhere).
And in another falling out, this friend happens to read my blog instead of updating his own (October, November, and December all went down without a single word). This is the friend who I described as not understanding face (in the universal sense) and social relationships that I used as an example in my Traditional Chinese society class.
All of a few hours after my post went on screen he called me during class. I hung up on him since I was in class, so he texted me describing how sorry he was and how he wanted to start anew. I forgot about it by the end of the day, so he ended up sending me a message on Facebook telling me that I defamed him to the point where I should remove and retract my statements. I told him that he was in the wrong, and since it would be sufficiently difficult to figure out that it was him (though the lack of a name and a face), and because I presented my writing as my opinion and not as undisputable fact that in no way could my statements be construed as libel (which he incorrectly termed slander). In addition, he had no career of which to speak to ruin, no would anyone care about what I say about him. I told him that those people who figure out that I was talking about him already have opinions formed of him, and that my little post wouldn’t shift things one way or the other.
With nothing good to say to him and knowing that he had nothing good to say to me, we avoided each other until the last few days. We were cordial and did not mention the disagreement we had.
Later, I was told that he doesn’t like me. I replied to her that I don’t really care. What happened happened and it had gotten to the point where I practically brushed it off my shoulder.
And for the good news, most of the people that I met were genuine and open-minded. I found myself discussing contemporary issues with them and debating the past (often over coffee). I found good travel buddies after thinking for the first few weeks that I should probably find some tours to take me travelling.
Though it seems that I sold them short in this conclusion, I described much of what we all went through in nearly all of my previous posts, from travels to classes and simple cultural differences.
Seeing all of them go was in itself the end of this Study Abroad chapter in my life, since they were more than there for all of it—they were an integral part of it. I plan to stay in contact of course, and who knows?—maybe we’ll have a Hong Kong reunion in a decade’s time.
Lectures and Tutorials
It may just be because I belong to this system, but I can’t describe fully how much I appreciate the liberal arts education. Something also must be said about learning in the common language rather than the elite language.
But first things first: liberal arts as a type and theory in methods of education has a different meaning to the general public and American university students than in the international higher education community, especially along the Anglophone front. Here, we like to think as liberal arts as primarily and often exclusively referring to those institutions of higher learning termed liberal arts colleges. Names aside, this distinction is made primarily to distinguish them from research universities—the difference having less to do with what is liberal arts and more with how big the student population is, how many students there are per class, and what the professors do during their free time.
Liberal arts colleges aim to boast more intimate student experiences, with students being able to learn better through a more Socratic classroom environment with the format more along the lines of a pseudo-discussion rather than a rote lecture in which only the (doctored) professor talks.
On the other hand there are the research universities, where professors teach large lectures with much of the grading being left to teaching assistants, often graduate students, allowing them to research with the time leftover (though often research comes before teaching). In this sense, students have to work at getting to know their professors, most notably by taking advantage of office hours. Misconceptions about research universities stem from that basis—that because lecture halls regularly encompass three hundred students, they cannot be nearly as effective as liberal arts colleges.
In my opinion, people should choose what works better for them rather than just thinking that liberal arts colleges are just better or worse. I know two things: that both formats work well for me, with me myself preferring the anonymity that a large lecture hall can afford me, and also that out of the fourteen or so classes that I have taken thus far at UCSD, most have had less than seventy students, with my smallest class having around ten. I believe that the value of what you get out of anything is what you put in, meaning that it’s irrelevant which format, whether it be large lectures or small discussions, you choose, insofar as you take full advantage of the resources at hand.
But American public definitions aside, what is really meant by attaining a liberal arts education is not the methods in which you met you ends, but rather what you get out of it. As I understand it, without consulting any literature on the matter, the liberal arts education is one of breadth, notwithstanding continuing depth, meaning that you should come out of college understanding not only your subject, but also other subjects—not necessarily all of them, but of those that you do, at least their basis or even some finer points, or in other words, well-roundedness. The theory behind this is that by getting a good depth of feel for more of what our universe of knowledge is about, you can produce more profound critical thought on your own discipline, seeing material in a more comprehensive manner if you will.
In this sense, American universities and colleges are all based in liberal arts, since all have general education requirements of sorts to gain breadth {as well as to keep accreditation). You can contrast this with vocational schools, which, being more skill-based, teach you what you need to know for your future job with much less emphasis on critical thought.
In other countries, higher education is often somewhere in between liberal arts institutions and vocational schools. In Hong Kong for example, general education is advertised by the university as something for personal enjoyment rather than as a requirement. So in this sense, breadth is more an optional asset rather than a requirement for graduation.
Of course, there are pros and cons. Using the simple comparison between the American education system and that of Hong Kong, graduates from American universities and colleges come out as highly skilled in terms of critical thought, or more pragmatically put—problem solving. Graduates from Hong Kong universities will come out with more specific knowledge on the specific fields that they’ve trained for.
So automatically, one would compare the two and ask which one is better. On top of the fact that I just got back from Hong Kong, I compare the two because of their similar economies. Hong Kong’s is based on the service sector, largely in finance, with much industrial manufacturing having gone to nearby Guangdong Province in Mainland China. That of the United States is going in that direction, with (industrial) jobs going overseas because of cheaper labor in places like China. As such, Americans are finding it more and more necessary to upgrade their educations with children now being expected to go to college or likely end up in a dead-end job.
So which system of higher education is better? Though I’ve tried to fully express my viewpoint in earlier posts and very simply stated my ardent appreciation of the system I happen to be in, I’m not going to delve into that again here, because then I’ll end up going into dollars and cents, and past subsistence (including security), I’ve never felt like happiness or the meaning of life were embedded in numbers of any sort.
The second point of contention that I intend to mention is the language of instruction. Hong Kong, having been a British Crown Colony for the vast majority of its successful history, tends to over-idealize and overestimate its colonial heritage. As such, much emphasis is placed on English-language education, with the appropriate policies being in place and in action in the territory’s major universities, of course including the one that I attended on exchange.
Before coming to Hong Kong, I read in the pamphlet that the school sent me to help me find my way upon arrival that though classes are all in English, the local students speak to each other in Cantonese. I took a double take at the sentence, knowing that there is generally the tendency to prefer speaking in the language with which one is most comfortable in. It was in a sense of what was to come, because the pamphlet was correct as expected.
While I fully believe in language rights, certain things about Hong Kong local students weren’t quite clicking as I was hoping. The pamphlet itself used funny English. It had funny constructions, odd prepositions, and “the” before nearly every noun, whether it needed it or not. I assumed that the way the pamphlet was written simply reflected the variety of English used in Hong Kong. I don’t think this was an unreasonable assumption at all. It is well known that especially since English has such large geographic spread, there are bound to be vast differences in various technical usages of certain words and even different grammatical features. For example, a British English speaker would say, “at weekends,” whereas an American English speaker would say, “on weekends.”
As I would find out, it’s hard to classify Hong Kong English as a true variety of English. This is because the differences in word usage between Hong Kong English and American English were anything but consistent (and hence not predictable and not easy to internalize). When Hong Kong English speakers would say something, it seemed often that any preposition could go in conjunction with any verb, and because of that, it took a great deal of effort during my entire stay there (meaning it didn’t get any easier) to understand what people were saying.
Their lack of English skills was in large created by the fact that they don't speak English with each other, and based on what I have heard and witnessed, that they seem to subconsciously view English as a hindrance to their educations despite its advantage in their futures. The reason I say that is because during a floor meeting at Lee Hysan Hall, the students conducted all their business in Cantonese despite the presence of non-Cantonese speakers. This meant that instead of everyone switching to English (which they are all expected to be able to speak), they had one member translate for those who could not understand. It seems as though if they had more practice, they would either get their prepositions correct or at least consistent.
I say this to mean that everyone should speak English properly, like many Americans would have it be, just that in a school that boasts English as its language of instruction, it might be good as a student to get to speaking well a consistent variety of the language if not an already existing standard.
This isn’t to say that everyone was a bad English speaker, for I’m sure there are. What I mean is that overall, the local student population needed dearly to refine their English-language abilities.
What this meant for my classes was that in my opinion they were largely diluted. Ask me what I learned in class and I’ll tell you I’d rather talk about my travels. Professors had to speak slowly so that students understand. This meant that in the fourteen-week semester (my quarters at UCSD are ten weeks), I feel I learned less than back in California during a significantly shorter term.
La Gran Obra de Arte
I know I’m not the first in using my passport as a something of a symbol of my travels, but I’m going to do it anyways. Doing so is popular because such a representation is apt. After all, that little booklet accompanied me all along the way.
The original sections of that little booklet were completely full by the end. If you recall, by mid-November, it readily became clear that my passport book was filling up with stamps. Since Hong Kong and Mainland China have separate immigration schemes, the fact that I did a lot of frequent traveling to the mainland meant that most of those stamps were red rectangles and ovals. Under advice online from the Department of State, I ventured over to the consulate-general to have more pages added to lessen the likelihood of being turned away when going through immigration. Unfortunately, none of those pages were actually used since no one wanted to be the first to stamp on those pages, being that they are a different color from the rest of the booklet. Instead, they took the liberty of being economical and went backwards the booklet, stamping wherever they could find a corner here and there.
Most know of the pride I take in my passport, and the fact that I will have to get a new one soon means that this one, once invalidated, will likely find its way into a bank vault somewhere (though probably not). I may be one of the few who do this, but I like to exhibit my passport when people ask about my travels. The fact of the matter is half of them are asking to be polite more than out of interest, so handing over my passport to them for the first time gives them something physical to match with the various stories wandering around my brain. I know that I’m not the best storyteller in speech, and I don’t deny that there is always room for improvement in my writing.
Before going to Hong Kong, I had been to China for the first time in my life on a two-week tour of some of the major sights. Prior to that trip, my international travels consisted of one road trip to Canada from Ohio with my aunt and uncle in Dayton. Back then you didn’t need passports to re-enter the United States through that border—just American birth certificates or American naturalization certificates plus identification. Even now with passport control, the United States doesn’t stamp Canadians (I’m pretty sure) and Canada doesn’t stamp Americans (I’m certain).
I went through Canada again at the end of an Alaskan cruise, having been routed through Vancouver. But the bottom line is that I got my passport first for my trip to China. I used it again for going to the Schengen Area when my family and I toured Paris and much of Italy. This means that in the first three years of having my passport, the first two pages were used: one with my Chinese visa and one with immigration stamps.
Applying for my Hong Kong student visa through the university and receiving my new full-page sticker made me pretty happy despite the fact that it was one of the ugliest pieces of paper ever designed. It made me realize both the definite fact that I was going to be going on a long trip and that that trip was happening soon.
And as visas go, I had to get one more to enter Mainland China, for which I applied and received in Hong Kong. The process reaffirmed my nationality in the fact that my visa cost over $1000 HKD when most other people in line paid less than $300 for exactly the same piece of paper.
And on my multiple-entry visa, I got most of my passport stamps. On exchange, I went to Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Guilin, crossing the border between Hong Kong and Mainland China twelve more times. Other trips that I made were to Macau and Taipei. Outside of Greater China though, I only made one trip—to Phuket, Thailand. I genuinely intended to get to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and Tokyo, had it not been for the increased costs in traveling alone, and I’m confident that had I stayed for the entire year, I would have gone to Vietnam and Cambodia as well.
I guess it’s difficult for me, especially as an American, to say that I'm not well traveled. Because although the farthest trip I made when I was under 10 was from northern Los Angeles to San Diego and my first plane trip happened the summer right before September 11, 2001, it’s hard for me to claim such a statement in the present. The fact of the matter is that not only have I gone to New York state and back through thirty states, but also my passport has become the great work of art that it now is.
With my internalization of the fiction that is nationality, I understand that talking about my passport in such a manner can be construed as a double-edged sword, but because it’s recorded the majority of my travels in such a succinct yet unique way, it serves me more as a momento and a souvenir rather than a document proving my citizenship.
Dollars, Yuan, Baht, and Those Unsung Heroes
In planning this conclusion, I initially intended to list out the costs of my study to Hong Kong. I’ve decided as of now though to stop short of this. I will say that after making my final summations the number is not small, or at least not nearly as small as I would have expected.
I consider my lifestyle comfortable, perhaps upper-middle class, but not lavish or particularly elitist. My travels were much of the expense. Encouraged my mother in words and parental financial assistance, I found myself going somewhere nearly every other weekend. In short, traveling outside of Hong Kong added up to about 40% of my total expenses.
However, my biggest single purchase came in the form of a digital single-lens reflex camera, which, being on sale, I splurged about 9% of my total expenses on. I got a Nikon D90, which sits at the top of the mid-range section, right under professional.
It cost me so much that in a very stable, rational matter I assure you I just about didn’t hand over my debit card to my salesperson. After the fact, I lamented for weeks about how much I paid for it, comparing it to how much money I would have spent on more trips and such, how much it costs to free a modern slave, how many times over I could have paid off my friend’s library late fees.
Since I did study abroad rather than just travel abroad, I should probably mention how much I paid for my education abroad. At just over 30% of my total expenses, tuition was about $4000 USD, paid to the Regents of the University of California. I actually don’t know how much it costs to go to the University of Hong Kong because since the University of California sends as many students to the University of Hong Kong as the University of Hong Kong sends the University of California (under the exchange program), students pay their home institutions. This means that the amount that I paid was about equivalent to how much as semester would have cost at Berkeley or UC Merced.
And herein I start my thanks. At the urging of my father, I applied for a $500 USD-scholarship at UCSD (with multiple recipients). This is one of the very few merit-based scholarships that don’t look at financial need. I happened to get this scholarship (for whom I have no idea who to thank) and it was automatically transferred to my EAP program in a miracle of the bureaucracy that feeds into UCSD Finance office.
For the longest time I had no clue where the $500 came from in my EAP financial accounting. I assumed it was a glitch in the system. When I had to pay a bill to UCSD though for a Programs Abroad Office administrative fee, I saw the two register lines devoted to this scholarship (receipt and subsequent transfer). So to whatever committee or person thereof that I got this scholarship from I owe my first thanks.
My second thanks goes off to the Programs Abroad Office here at UCSD, the staff of which (save one particular advisor for the Global Seminars Program) were all extremely nice and helpful. They, along with the system-wide Education Abroad Program office helped me and all the exchange students sift through all the paperwork involved. Especially regarding immigration-department paperwork for Hong Kong students, these two offices, along with the Center for Student Development and Resources (CEDAR) pushed all my paperwork through the bureaucracy of Hong Kong immigration.
If memory serves me right, I had to submit about ten forms through the offices. The two big forms were the application to the University of Hong Kong after my acceptance to the program which took me the better part of an hour to fill out in English and my student visa application that in all its thirty pages was divided into parts “A” through “K” with every letter in between.
Of course, my greatest thanks go to the financiers of this expedition and my support crew, both of whom happen to be my family. As cliché as it sounds, my family has always been there for me, if not emotionality at least in person, and without them it is clear that at my age, and especially because of my financial viability, that this trip would not have gone as far as it did. Without their assistance and their blessing, I would not have had the ability to jet around East Asia. I also acknowledge that while my parents pay for much of what I do so that they have a controlling interest in what I do, it is always for my own good if not for the good of the family.
And in this sense of family, there is one thing left of my heritage that I think is not only important but also incredibly moral. I vow never in my life to ever just send them off to a nursing home. The fact of the matter is that while I’m told I was an easy infant to take care of, the amount of good that my brother and I brought to their lives in constituting a family is offset by the negatives, such as opportunity cost in careers lost, significantly long periods of sleep deprivation, and financial well being. At one point in my mid-teens, my parents noticed I was drinking expensive lactose-free milk at such an alarming rate that I equated the situation with water being flushed down a toilet. But ultimately from a moral perspective, it would just be wrong to cast off one’s parents in their time of need.
Honestly though, I can’t say that it’s only because of my heritage that I aim to espouse such a principle in my conscience. My parents have always struck the right balance between being imposing and controlling to the point where I’m led in the right direction and laissez-faire to the point were I could find the right direction by myself. Because of that, not only have I never had an intense period of rebellion, whether it be in middle school, high school, or right after leaving the nest, but also my parents are the two people who I’m most open with, whether or not they would like to believe it.
And though friends don’t usually get mentioned in such a context, I feel I owe thanks to my friends both at UCSD and at HKU who gave me first-hand support. From my friends at UCSD, their interest in the normalized craziness of what I was doing have a certain kind of value to this endeavor that, while kind of superficial, made me enjoy the whole thing that much more. And my friends at HKU, who came to the territory as disoriented as me helped pull me through all the changes set in front of us, though many of us came from different backgrounds, different homes per se. I guess it was through diversity that we aided each other in perceived adversity and because of the lot of them that I went from missing California then to missing Hong Kong now.
If you haven’t slipped into beta mode yet, you probably realize that I gave you enough information to figure out how much I spent in acceptable detail. I just didn’t want to throw numbers around for people to preoccupy themselves with.
In the Quest
This blog itself had an interesting role in my experience abroad. Though I had no intentions of telling anyone about my blog because I wanted to have the freedom of conscience in a sense to write whatever I wanted to write on it, word leaked. I could blame Facebook for not allowing me (at least at the time) to promote my blog to friends back home at the exclusion of new friends in Hong Kong—but that would be somewhat irrelevant.
In this age of social media, I knew what I was getting myself into by starting a blog for the whole thing rather than just writing my thoughts down into a physical journal. And therein lies a paradox in my said motivations in writing a blog rather than a traditional journal.
I have said a few times that in all my writing I write for myself. And it’s true. So the paradox that seems to be lies in the fact that I write for myself yet I publish it on the World Wide Web for the whole world to see. Now I wouldn’t be publishing it online for others to read in my own self-interest.
Actually I would. Let me explain. I write for myself in the sense that most directly I write for my own purposes—say so I may be able to read this when I’m old and crumbling. I also write for myself in the sense that ultimate benefit will come to me. This isn’t to say that you lot who have read my blog won’t get anything out of it—just that by you reading it I get some ultimate benefit, often in addition to yourselves.
This works on two levels. I talked about how on a superficial level seeing that other people take interest in what I’m doing gives me satisfaction in the sense that what I’m doing is worth something rather than in the sense that now I can become popular. On the higher level, me publishing what I have to offer (in a sense) puts something out there for everyone, including people to whom I have no connection, to comment on. This means ultimately that as I get older and mature into a career, I will have mileage posts to speak of about my life. From there not only will I able to reflect upon my past, but also what other people have to say about my past. For all my uncertainty in life, this blog is staying on the Internet.
To me, this means that this blog can prove more interactive and in a sense provide advantages over traditional publishing. Taking a step back, I write papers for class ultimately because I need to get a good grade on it to a good grade point average to go to a good graduate school and establish a solid career in which I will hopefully be able to do meaningful work. These papers are unlike a blog though in that there are only a few people who will ever read them.
Because of my inhibitions about my work, I am and have always been hesitant about putting it out in the open for everyone to view. But because of the fact that blogs and the Internet come off in my subconscious as quite anonymous, I have few qualms about putting nearly everything about my experience out there on the web.
And honestly, it’s nice not having any editors past yourself. I’m ultimately going to have to go over this monstrosity of over well one hundred ten thousand words (a mid-size novel) to make it flow. My photos that I have put in separate posts out of convenience could be integrated into my text, ultimately reducing the number of posts (currently one hundred forty-six), which I’ll make look more like chapters, yet increase the number of words in smoothing everything over.
As for the style of my narration, I wrote everything descriptive in the past because everything of substance happened in the past. In terms of flow, I understand this blog to be more formal-sounding than most. I have also been told that I write like I speak, which meant close to nothing to me since I think the best writing is genuine thought, regardless of research. My conventions I wrote in my native dialect without regard to Standard American English (except in orthography). This means that the overwhelming majority of grammatical mistakes you seem to find are actually perfectly fine in my eyes. If you see few and far between in the way of weird words and odd grammatical constructions, it means that you and I have more in common than you may outwardly imagine. Bottom line is that my balance between sheer informality and stringent formality strikes a tone of authenticity in myself from which you can gauge yourselves.
After the Quest
I go to UCSD, but when I was applying to Harvard I wrote for one of my essays something I entitled “The Last Prologue.” Obviously it either wasn’t enough to get me accepted or it was enough to get me rejected, but either way I mean the title as a way to see how I positioned myself in my surroundings.
You could say that immaturely, I felt like my childhood was kind of a prologue to me real life, which would begin when I became an adult. The first time I doubted this conviction came the day I turned 18 and felt nothing different. In my newfound adulthood I was no different than the day before, and at that moment I thought in a different way how there are so many young people who have wisdom beyond their age and so many old people who lack the years that they possess.
I don’t mean maturity in playful banter. In this regard arrogant people would be classified as immature. Ultimately though, if my childhood of eighteen years was my prequel, then my old age lasting a few decades, say from retirement, would be my afterword, my conclusion, and my epilogue beginning with my death. In my reformed mindset, I feel that since to call old age an afterword would be unfair, to call childhood a prologue would be nonsensical.
I now firmly believe that one’s life is the entirety of one’s life. So though there’s no getting rid of your past, for the rest of your life there is always opportunity for maturity.
In the same regard, I will be graduating college within a year and a half. It could even be as soon as fifteen months, each month of which I am confident will fly by whether I want it to or not. Before studying abroad, I’ve gone through my childhood and the various levels of education in the public school system. I’ve worked in a few very small jobs as a tutor and as a translation assistant and I’ve also sat on a large non-profit’s Board of Directors. After studying abroad, I’ve lived and studied outside the country. I’ve felt lost in translation but not as lost as some people. I’ve discovered that I’m a dual national. Most notably yet most simply though, I’ve advanced one term in my university career and became a more mature, open-minded individual in the process.
People like to say that the journey is the destination in that what you learn is in the journey. I would like to modify this to say that the journey is but after. I have learned so much my studying abroad, but I know that as much as I have learned and will have learned by the time I, say, turn 50, there will always be more to learn. Hence, the journey is after, and in that sense, you’re always in a journey, since the day after tomorrow is but tomorrow come today’s tomorrow.
And so in the title I refrain from calling this the last post, because though this is indeed my last post to this blog, in no way is it my last bit of writing. And though it’s usually uttered in a different context, it’s always the case that when one door closes, another one opens, even if it’s not the one you planned for.
So out of college in less than a year and a half, what’s my next door to open?
After the Quest
Showing posts with label traveling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label traveling. Show all posts
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Nanjing: My Mandarin
Knowing how big this world is on foot, not that it’s any smaller by motorized transportation, I’m always worried about getting lost—especially in different countries. To this effect, I always try to learn the language(s) of where I’m going, so that I’m at least able to ask for directions. To this effect, I tried to make sure I knew enough Italian when going though Italy, though hearing my accent they would always switch into English on me. And in Paris, my French, while admittedly rusty, was sufficiently fluent to get us to where we wanted to go.
So in China, I’ve been quite pleased with my Mandarin skills, because I have found that while studying abroad, my travels have improved my Mandarin just as much as my Cantonese despite the fact that in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the primary language of 95% of the population.
So going around in Beijing I recall thinking that I practiced my Mandarin a lot—and I did; however, it was very localized. It was mostly all for haggling, because I knew that there’s what I like to call an “English fee” for foreigners. When it came to the important stuff though, I found that my friend who speaks much more Mandarin with much better aptitude than me did all the talking. And it worked well—we got what we needed, and again it worked in Guilin.
Nanjing was a different case in that I was traveling in a group where I spoke the most Mandarin. I figured that it would be an experience, especially since I kept telling myself and others that I would have really had trouble going around Beijing (and again in Guilin) with my level of Mandarin.
At the train ticket counter in Shenzhen I had to buy one person a ticket to Guilin, and the guy at the ticket counter found my Mandarin so bad that he asked me if I speak English in English instead seeing that I was struggling. I didn’t even try in Cantonese because I know my Cantonese is worse and from previous experience, most of the ticket people don’t operate in Cantonese.
As foreign languages go, my speaking proficiency from highest to lowest goes: Spanish, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, Japanese, and Latin. On a side note, someone asked me if I conducted a conversation in Cantonese, which I laughed at, sarcastically saying that one semester of Cantonese for Foreign Learners did me so well that I could now speak it better than Mandarin.
Needless to say, my Mandarin is still way better than my Cantonese. And because I have treated Mandarin and Cantonese as such similar languages over the years, I’ve been going through sorting out the finer points of Cantonese that I totally misunderstood before taking classes.
For example, when talking about actions, soeng2 (想) in Cantonese would correspond more to yào (要) in Mandarin whereas jiu5 (要) in Cantonese would correspond to xūyào (需要) in Mandarin, with the sets meaning to want and to need, respectively. Xiǎng (想) in Mandarin means to think.
Back at the train counter in Shenzhen, I was buying the groups tickets this time to got to Shanghai South Station (上海南火车站/上海南火車站), later taking a high-speed train to Nanjing. Unlike the other time, I was able to get through the whole process in Mandarin alone. I also understood enough to grasp that we could only buy train tickets back in Shanghai.
And at Shanghai South Station, buying tickets for my two friends went even faster and even smoother. I managed to get them two hard sleepers for the way back.
The rest of the trip went along the same lines. I managed to be understood and to understand. Since Beijing and since Chinese school when in was in elementary school, I’ve come a long way.
So in China, I’ve been quite pleased with my Mandarin skills, because I have found that while studying abroad, my travels have improved my Mandarin just as much as my Cantonese despite the fact that in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the primary language of 95% of the population.
So going around in Beijing I recall thinking that I practiced my Mandarin a lot—and I did; however, it was very localized. It was mostly all for haggling, because I knew that there’s what I like to call an “English fee” for foreigners. When it came to the important stuff though, I found that my friend who speaks much more Mandarin with much better aptitude than me did all the talking. And it worked well—we got what we needed, and again it worked in Guilin.
Nanjing was a different case in that I was traveling in a group where I spoke the most Mandarin. I figured that it would be an experience, especially since I kept telling myself and others that I would have really had trouble going around Beijing (and again in Guilin) with my level of Mandarin.
At the train ticket counter in Shenzhen I had to buy one person a ticket to Guilin, and the guy at the ticket counter found my Mandarin so bad that he asked me if I speak English in English instead seeing that I was struggling. I didn’t even try in Cantonese because I know my Cantonese is worse and from previous experience, most of the ticket people don’t operate in Cantonese.
As foreign languages go, my speaking proficiency from highest to lowest goes: Spanish, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, Japanese, and Latin. On a side note, someone asked me if I conducted a conversation in Cantonese, which I laughed at, sarcastically saying that one semester of Cantonese for Foreign Learners did me so well that I could now speak it better than Mandarin.
Needless to say, my Mandarin is still way better than my Cantonese. And because I have treated Mandarin and Cantonese as such similar languages over the years, I’ve been going through sorting out the finer points of Cantonese that I totally misunderstood before taking classes.
For example, when talking about actions, soeng2 (想) in Cantonese would correspond more to yào (要) in Mandarin whereas jiu5 (要) in Cantonese would correspond to xūyào (需要) in Mandarin, with the sets meaning to want and to need, respectively. Xiǎng (想) in Mandarin means to think.
Back at the train counter in Shenzhen, I was buying the groups tickets this time to got to Shanghai South Station (上海南火车站/上海南火車站), later taking a high-speed train to Nanjing. Unlike the other time, I was able to get through the whole process in Mandarin alone. I also understood enough to grasp that we could only buy train tickets back in Shanghai.
And at Shanghai South Station, buying tickets for my two friends went even faster and even smoother. I managed to get them two hard sleepers for the way back.
The rest of the trip went along the same lines. I managed to be understood and to understand. Since Beijing and since Chinese school when in was in elementary school, I’ve come a long way.
Nanjing: Purple Mountain
Our first and only full day at Nanjing saw us starting out at Purple Mountain (紫金山). With Nanjing as one of the historic capitals of China, serving at times under the Ming Dynasty and under the Republic, Purple Mountain is located towards the east of the old city (as determined by city walls), and houses the mausoleums of the early Ming emperors as well as that of Sun Yat-sen.
Well, we saw both. Nanjing's public light rail system is not as developed as more major Chinese cities, though a second line is being built and more are under planning, so we took a taxi to the base of the mountain, seeing that we had no idea how to work the buses, less read the bus stop signs.
From the taxi, we walked out to the entrance gate to the mausoleum of the first Ming emperor. The entrance fee was ¥70 CNY, less 20% with student discount if you read the signs. I read the signs but my friends didn't. Going to the mausoleum was a bit of a walk, though the crisp air, albeit quite cold during the late fall/early winter, presented a change from Hong Kong, and the escape to nature presented an escape from the city.
The first Ming Emperor's tomb was large and complex. Noticeable to me is the fact that the walls were painted pink rather than the traditional red. After seeing the Forbidden City in Beijing, along with plenty of other classic Chinese architecture, the complex seemed more large than interesting.
After walking halfway through the park, we approached the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. Apparently, this is one of the few places in Mainland China where you can still see the Kuomintang symbol (white sun on blue background) so prominently displayed. I had my picture taken by the vendors. They used their digital point-and-shoots rather than the big single-lens reflex cameras that I expected.
Sun Yat-sen is something of a hero here, which is understandable if you know his role in the establishment of modern China. I've been to no fewer that four memorials dedicated to him in four different cities. The first was the Sun Yat-sen Museum here in Hong Kong that Black Castle Tours took us to the weekend between the first and second weeks of instruction here. It was his Hong Kong residence turned into a museum of his comprehensive history and the founding of the Republic of China. The second was the Sun Yat-sen Memorial in Taipei, which was a big gray building with an orange roof that paled in impressiveness in comparison with the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial also in Taipei. The third was of the same name in Guangzhou. It had a large courtyard in front and a statue in his likeness, but we decided not to go inside because of the cost.
This fourth one that I went to in Nanjing was both a museum and a mausoleum. While it was not impressive like the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial in Taipei was by sheer size, it was impressive in the sheer walk it took to get there. I walked at a decent pace for a good ten minutes to get through the first gate, at which point there were stairs going all the way up. Though it was a long walk up, the views from the top were impressive.
Behind the memorial to Sun Yat-sen was his coffin place into the ground with a circular viewing area around it. It's like Napoleon's tomb in Paris, except much less grand, white, and surrounded by one level of viewing instead of two.
Continuing on in the day, we headed off to the Gate of China (中华门/中華門), which was just that--a gate. It was well restored though and decked out with Ming-Dynasty flags and porcelain Ming Dynasty guards. It formed part of the old city wall of Nanjing, of which much remains.
Along the way I introduced my friends to the sugarcoated seedy red fruits that I do not know the name of. They were being sold by street vendors at the intersection one of the major universities in Nanjing. It was so good to them that they wanted more on the way back. But when we got there, we saw the guy we first bought them from running away across the street. Then we could see why. The police came and take the other street vendor's goods away from her, throwing them into the back of the truck. There was no force used and no charges pressed, just quick and clean action.
No we still wanted the fruit candy things, so we crossed the street and found the guy who had gone and hid. He went into an alley and was sticking his head out looking for the police. We waited for him to come back out with his food to sell, and we pounced on the opportunity to buy some. Apparently he was frightened, but it all turned out okay with everybody getting what they wanted.
Next was Confucius temple (夫子庙/夫子廟), which I directed us to more for the neighborhood then the actual temple, which we didn’t end up going into. In this neighborhood was most noticeably a large shopping area full of hagglers and cotton candy (which my friends insisted calling candy floss, which I imagined was sugary dental floss that dissolved in your mouth).
The area was also notable for being the regional location for the civil servant examinations back in the day. Nanjing (南京) is capital of Jiangsu (江苏/江蘇) province, which includes the notable city of Suzhou (苏州/蘇州), which I visited two years ago. Not far away is Hangzhou (杭州), another literati gathering point famous for its scenery, which I visited on the same trip in 2007. This examination center was where these gentlemen would have received their qualifications after a long examination and subsequently been inducted into the bureaucracy.
This particular Confucius Temple was not particularly well known though. Since there was an entrance fee, a statue of Confucius in the entry court was obscured by a tasteful barrier so that you can’t see inside without paying.
To end the day, and the bulk of the trip, we had dinner at Papa Johns (来到棒!约翰), which like Pizza Hut, is a lot fancier in China (and apparently much of the rest of the world) than in the United States, where it’s just pizza delivery and take-out.
Well, we saw both. Nanjing's public light rail system is not as developed as more major Chinese cities, though a second line is being built and more are under planning, so we took a taxi to the base of the mountain, seeing that we had no idea how to work the buses, less read the bus stop signs.
From the taxi, we walked out to the entrance gate to the mausoleum of the first Ming emperor. The entrance fee was ¥70 CNY, less 20% with student discount if you read the signs. I read the signs but my friends didn't. Going to the mausoleum was a bit of a walk, though the crisp air, albeit quite cold during the late fall/early winter, presented a change from Hong Kong, and the escape to nature presented an escape from the city.
The first Ming Emperor's tomb was large and complex. Noticeable to me is the fact that the walls were painted pink rather than the traditional red. After seeing the Forbidden City in Beijing, along with plenty of other classic Chinese architecture, the complex seemed more large than interesting.
After walking halfway through the park, we approached the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. Apparently, this is one of the few places in Mainland China where you can still see the Kuomintang symbol (white sun on blue background) so prominently displayed. I had my picture taken by the vendors. They used their digital point-and-shoots rather than the big single-lens reflex cameras that I expected.
Sun Yat-sen is something of a hero here, which is understandable if you know his role in the establishment of modern China. I've been to no fewer that four memorials dedicated to him in four different cities. The first was the Sun Yat-sen Museum here in Hong Kong that Black Castle Tours took us to the weekend between the first and second weeks of instruction here. It was his Hong Kong residence turned into a museum of his comprehensive history and the founding of the Republic of China. The second was the Sun Yat-sen Memorial in Taipei, which was a big gray building with an orange roof that paled in impressiveness in comparison with the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial also in Taipei. The third was of the same name in Guangzhou. It had a large courtyard in front and a statue in his likeness, but we decided not to go inside because of the cost.
This fourth one that I went to in Nanjing was both a museum and a mausoleum. While it was not impressive like the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial in Taipei was by sheer size, it was impressive in the sheer walk it took to get there. I walked at a decent pace for a good ten minutes to get through the first gate, at which point there were stairs going all the way up. Though it was a long walk up, the views from the top were impressive.
Behind the memorial to Sun Yat-sen was his coffin place into the ground with a circular viewing area around it. It's like Napoleon's tomb in Paris, except much less grand, white, and surrounded by one level of viewing instead of two.
Continuing on in the day, we headed off to the Gate of China (中华门/中華門), which was just that--a gate. It was well restored though and decked out with Ming-Dynasty flags and porcelain Ming Dynasty guards. It formed part of the old city wall of Nanjing, of which much remains.
Along the way I introduced my friends to the sugarcoated seedy red fruits that I do not know the name of. They were being sold by street vendors at the intersection one of the major universities in Nanjing. It was so good to them that they wanted more on the way back. But when we got there, we saw the guy we first bought them from running away across the street. Then we could see why. The police came and take the other street vendor's goods away from her, throwing them into the back of the truck. There was no force used and no charges pressed, just quick and clean action.
No we still wanted the fruit candy things, so we crossed the street and found the guy who had gone and hid. He went into an alley and was sticking his head out looking for the police. We waited for him to come back out with his food to sell, and we pounced on the opportunity to buy some. Apparently he was frightened, but it all turned out okay with everybody getting what they wanted.
Next was Confucius temple (夫子庙/夫子廟), which I directed us to more for the neighborhood then the actual temple, which we didn’t end up going into. In this neighborhood was most noticeably a large shopping area full of hagglers and cotton candy (which my friends insisted calling candy floss, which I imagined was sugary dental floss that dissolved in your mouth).
The area was also notable for being the regional location for the civil servant examinations back in the day. Nanjing (南京) is capital of Jiangsu (江苏/江蘇) province, which includes the notable city of Suzhou (苏州/蘇州), which I visited two years ago. Not far away is Hangzhou (杭州), another literati gathering point famous for its scenery, which I visited on the same trip in 2007. This examination center was where these gentlemen would have received their qualifications after a long examination and subsequently been inducted into the bureaucracy.
This particular Confucius Temple was not particularly well known though. Since there was an entrance fee, a statue of Confucius in the entry court was obscured by a tasteful barrier so that you can’t see inside without paying.
To end the day, and the bulk of the trip, we had dinner at Papa Johns (来到棒!约翰), which like Pizza Hut, is a lot fancier in China (and apparently much of the rest of the world) than in the United States, where it’s just pizza delivery and take-out.
Friday, December 11, 2009
The Trips that Never Happened
I thought I was going to go out with a bang. To end my stay here, I was going to travel around—to Singapore, Japan, and South Korea to be exact. Despite my intentions though, I won’t be going to any of them in the near future, and while I’m a little saddened, I know I’ll get over there some day.
It came down to a lack of earlier planning and the fact that I would have been traveling by myself. I was highly advised by my parents not to travel alone, because it’s always good to have at least one traveling companion for safety, even if you speak the language. (English and Mandarin for Singapore—yes, Japanese I could brush up on, South Korea I would have been relying on hoping to find English speakers.) I understood my parents concerns, but I wanted to go for it at least once. I heard that traveling alone is an experience like no other, and similar to studying abroad, I wanted to make this experience my own.
The ultimate reason why it didn’t work out was because of money. Because I hadn’t planned earlier, the prices were all inflated for the holidays. Because I was to be traveling alone, accommodation priced for two was little cheaper for one. One of the major services that I’ve been using, Cathay Pacific Holidays, doesn’t even allow for single travelers to book because all their prices are worked out for parties of two.
I looked into a weeklong trip to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Hotel and flight alone would have cost me $700 USD. For just $300 dollars more, I could have brought along two more people. So in the end, I decided that in order to spend money in a more sensible manner, I would postpone these trips indefinitely. After all, I’m most definitely coming back to East Asia sometime.
It came down to a lack of earlier planning and the fact that I would have been traveling by myself. I was highly advised by my parents not to travel alone, because it’s always good to have at least one traveling companion for safety, even if you speak the language. (English and Mandarin for Singapore—yes, Japanese I could brush up on, South Korea I would have been relying on hoping to find English speakers.) I understood my parents concerns, but I wanted to go for it at least once. I heard that traveling alone is an experience like no other, and similar to studying abroad, I wanted to make this experience my own.
The ultimate reason why it didn’t work out was because of money. Because I hadn’t planned earlier, the prices were all inflated for the holidays. Because I was to be traveling alone, accommodation priced for two was little cheaper for one. One of the major services that I’ve been using, Cathay Pacific Holidays, doesn’t even allow for single travelers to book because all their prices are worked out for parties of two.
I looked into a weeklong trip to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Hotel and flight alone would have cost me $700 USD. For just $300 dollars more, I could have brought along two more people. So in the end, I decided that in order to spend money in a more sensible manner, I would postpone these trips indefinitely. After all, I’m most definitely coming back to East Asia sometime.
The Penultimate Capital, Part 1
The Eighteen-Hour Train Ride
Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall (侵華日軍南京大屠殺遇難同胞紀念館)
Purple Mountain (紫金山)
Monday, November 30, 2009
Phuket: Expats and Australians
The second day we had to wake up way early. We had scheduled a boat tour stopping at three places the day before. I’m still not completely sure where we ended up going, but it was definitely worth the money and the devotion of one full day.
At something like 7:40 a.m. we pushed ourselves out of the hotel’s front door. There, after a five-minute wait, came a minibus to pick us up and transport us to the boat dock on the other side of the island. Along the way, the bus gradually filled up to the brim with passengers from other hotels as well.
We got to the dock to find crowds of people there. It kind of reminded me of my hometown—it was 80% white, which, while not necessarily a bad thing, was definitely unexpected.
Snooping around and listening to the noise, it became clear that a great deal of them were Australian. There were some French and English people, but the Australians were so prevalent that one of my friends who is Australian herself told me that their stereotypical accent was annoying. I have often had the same sentiment as of late, I’ve noticed. Copious amounts of the word “like,” in conjunction with rising intonation at the end of every sentence—“They talk in questions!”—has really begun to irk me.
The boat that we loaded onto had three decks—the lowest and cheapest, the middle V.I.P. section, and the upper deck not reserved. As expected, the crowds flocked up to the upper deck, for the views, for the air, for whatever. We claimed the cheap seats that we were meant to claim, which was fine, because there was plenty of open space on the middle deck for fresh air and water viewing—or so I thought.
We arrived at the first stop about half an hour after disembarking. With white-sand beaches, there were plenty of lawn chairs (that turned out to cost money, so we moved), and colorful fish to go around. To get off the boat, we had to get onto smaller (motorized) boats to get to shore.
One of my friends bought bread for the fish (that they were selling onboard), and she shared it with us. Like little kids, we threw the bread into the water and watched the fish converge. I started with small niblets that were consumed quickly, but I ended up submerging the rest of my piece in the water, allowing the fish to take hits at it while I still held the other side.
My friends proceeded to have drinks out of pineapples while I consumed a can of Coke. They then posed with the tops on their heads like hats. The weather wasn’t overly sunny. In fact, it was more overcast in nature, and it seemed like it was going to rain.
I know that I have trouble with weather. I complain in rain, I know, and whine when the temperature is less than 60 degrees. The thing is that I have trouble predicting weather as well. The first time it rained while I was in Hong Kong, I stepped out of the front door of the hall with a short-sleeved shirt, short pants, and flip-flops. That day, I slipped twice, and bought an umbrella. The next day I slipped again and waterlogged my right foot in a wet shoe. At least the second day I had a sweater. In planning for Taipei, I figured that since the temperature said 29 degrees Celsius, I wouldn’t have to worry about rain. Wow, was I wrong. The first two days it poured like I’d not seen in a long time. There, I bought another umbrella (this time plaid). I guess in California, it has to be under a certain temperature to start raining, and if it’s about to rain, the temperature will first drop.
And it started to rain when we were back on the big boat, going from the first destination to the second. (The first I can’t remember the name; the second Maya Bay). All the people lounged on the upmost deck started coming down, and I had the pleasure of informing them that the seats around me were taken. When it stopped raining between the second destination and the third (Maya Bay and Phi Phi Island), they selfishly went right back up to their undeserved seats.
Also, sitting down on the boat took longer than necessary, specifically and definitely because people filing on wanted to get their hands on the buffet onboard before sitting down. They just couldn’t sit down and allow everyone else to sit down so that the boat could start going before they crowded the buffet trays. Oh well.
Maya Bay was amazing. With sheer cliffs surrounding the bay, except for one private beach area, the water was deep. The tour came with snorkeling equipment, so we went snorkeling around the bay, diving and encountering fish. The water was cold (though not as bad as my parents’ pool) and the fish remained systematically unfriendly, but the experience was amazing. I had snorkeled before, the latest that I can remember being in La Jolla Cove (near UCSD).
I also learned about some sea critters that I had no knowledge of. In the water, it felt like I was getting pinched all over, but not by fingers. My Australian friend enlightened me to the fact that those were sea lice, and that she has them back home. Apparently, I could feel only around a quarter of the bites plaguing me.
Between the second and third destinations, there was about an hour of travel time. Getting seasick inside, we headed out to the deck. The spacious room seemingly apparent earlier in the trip seemed to disappear under the crowds—and by crowds, there couldn’t’ve been more than fifteen people on the bow of the vessel. The three-to-four person benches were being occupied by but a few (large and) inconsiderate people. To onlookers, they gave haughty looks, like they deserved those seats. And maybe they did deserve those seats, because the four of us got a deal on that daytrip. The price advertised for the day was ฿2200 THB per person ($66 USD), but when the four of us asked for a discount (because the travel agents give them out left and right), they quoted for the four of us just ฿3600 total, or ฿900 per person ($27 USD). In short, anyone who didn’t ask for a discount got gypped. We resorted to standing along the edge of the boat with plenty of fresh air but not seats.
The last stop on that trip was a town on Phi Phi Island. It was most definitely a tourist town, but walking through it, hawkers weren’t nearly as aggressive back on Phuket Island. They only started if you walked into their shop, having of course shown interest.
Wondering what I bought in Thailand, then? Well I bought a few postcards to send back home, but also I got a few novelty-type t-shirts. One said Red Bull (as in the energy drink brand) in Thai along with the iconic logo. Originally, Red Bull is from Thailand and its English name is a direct translation from the Thai name กระทิงแดง, and not the other way around. The other was a Coca-Cola t-shirt in Thai. My friend going to India said that if she found an iconic logo in a foreign language on a t-shirt, she would post me one.
The town was more peaceful and quiet than Patong Beach, and when we went exploring, we ended up on a different beachfront and had to retrace our steps to get back to the proper beach (and eventually the boat). Along the way were multiple companies offering diving and scuba certification. If I had free time and unrestricted money, I would do that.
The journey back to the dock on Phuket Island was an hour and forty-five minutes. This was followed by a cramped minibus ride back to Patong Beach, with me keeping my knees firmly touching so that I was not nudging the guy on my left and so that I didn’t hit the gearshift on the right. (The driver sat on my right, as the country drives on the left for the most part).
That was a tiring day and a tiring night. We went through many more markets and I found myself buying like 24 fl. oz. of Thai tea from the neighborhood 7-Eleven. Going through the markets was much more fun than going through markets in Hong Kong and Mainland China because the semblance of those places (such as Stanley Market on the south side of Hong Kong Island) to Chinatowns back home (I’ve been to those of Los Angeles—Chinatown and Monterey Park, San Francisco, and Chicago), is quite high. However, in Thailand, the merchandise and the approach to salesmanship were so different.
That night, I did little studying. The next day, we flew back to Hong Kong. After the same minibus ride, we arrived at the small airport to find lines flying like rat-tails out of the entrances. After waiting and entering the building, we realized that it was because they do security checks upon entrance into the building, rather than after check-in, as I’ve seen in all other airports.
I ended up studying less than imagined on the plane because I was super tired. Though the test went alright, I wondered a mere day earlier what was with the plane that I was on. The airplane (an Airbus I believe) was billowing steam from the joints between the overhead compartments and the walls and ceiling. It became more disconcerting as it became so noticeable that people began taking pictures of it as it obscured the ceiling. Eventually it subsided and I was never so glad to land as I was during that flight.
It’s a shame that I didn’t get to travel more outside of Greater China, this trip has made me realize. No matter how much Taiwan tries to act independent and no matter how much Hong Kongers look down at Mainland Chinese habits, the fact of the matter is that the places are so much more similar to each other than to other east Asian countries, and for that I feel I’m missing out.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
At something like 7:40 a.m. we pushed ourselves out of the hotel’s front door. There, after a five-minute wait, came a minibus to pick us up and transport us to the boat dock on the other side of the island. Along the way, the bus gradually filled up to the brim with passengers from other hotels as well.
We got to the dock to find crowds of people there. It kind of reminded me of my hometown—it was 80% white, which, while not necessarily a bad thing, was definitely unexpected.
Snooping around and listening to the noise, it became clear that a great deal of them were Australian. There were some French and English people, but the Australians were so prevalent that one of my friends who is Australian herself told me that their stereotypical accent was annoying. I have often had the same sentiment as of late, I’ve noticed. Copious amounts of the word “like,” in conjunction with rising intonation at the end of every sentence—“They talk in questions!”—has really begun to irk me.
The boat that we loaded onto had three decks—the lowest and cheapest, the middle V.I.P. section, and the upper deck not reserved. As expected, the crowds flocked up to the upper deck, for the views, for the air, for whatever. We claimed the cheap seats that we were meant to claim, which was fine, because there was plenty of open space on the middle deck for fresh air and water viewing—or so I thought.
We arrived at the first stop about half an hour after disembarking. With white-sand beaches, there were plenty of lawn chairs (that turned out to cost money, so we moved), and colorful fish to go around. To get off the boat, we had to get onto smaller (motorized) boats to get to shore.
One of my friends bought bread for the fish (that they were selling onboard), and she shared it with us. Like little kids, we threw the bread into the water and watched the fish converge. I started with small niblets that were consumed quickly, but I ended up submerging the rest of my piece in the water, allowing the fish to take hits at it while I still held the other side.
My friends proceeded to have drinks out of pineapples while I consumed a can of Coke. They then posed with the tops on their heads like hats. The weather wasn’t overly sunny. In fact, it was more overcast in nature, and it seemed like it was going to rain.
I know that I have trouble with weather. I complain in rain, I know, and whine when the temperature is less than 60 degrees. The thing is that I have trouble predicting weather as well. The first time it rained while I was in Hong Kong, I stepped out of the front door of the hall with a short-sleeved shirt, short pants, and flip-flops. That day, I slipped twice, and bought an umbrella. The next day I slipped again and waterlogged my right foot in a wet shoe. At least the second day I had a sweater. In planning for Taipei, I figured that since the temperature said 29 degrees Celsius, I wouldn’t have to worry about rain. Wow, was I wrong. The first two days it poured like I’d not seen in a long time. There, I bought another umbrella (this time plaid). I guess in California, it has to be under a certain temperature to start raining, and if it’s about to rain, the temperature will first drop.
And it started to rain when we were back on the big boat, going from the first destination to the second. (The first I can’t remember the name; the second Maya Bay). All the people lounged on the upmost deck started coming down, and I had the pleasure of informing them that the seats around me were taken. When it stopped raining between the second destination and the third (Maya Bay and Phi Phi Island), they selfishly went right back up to their undeserved seats.
Also, sitting down on the boat took longer than necessary, specifically and definitely because people filing on wanted to get their hands on the buffet onboard before sitting down. They just couldn’t sit down and allow everyone else to sit down so that the boat could start going before they crowded the buffet trays. Oh well.
Maya Bay was amazing. With sheer cliffs surrounding the bay, except for one private beach area, the water was deep. The tour came with snorkeling equipment, so we went snorkeling around the bay, diving and encountering fish. The water was cold (though not as bad as my parents’ pool) and the fish remained systematically unfriendly, but the experience was amazing. I had snorkeled before, the latest that I can remember being in La Jolla Cove (near UCSD).
I also learned about some sea critters that I had no knowledge of. In the water, it felt like I was getting pinched all over, but not by fingers. My Australian friend enlightened me to the fact that those were sea lice, and that she has them back home. Apparently, I could feel only around a quarter of the bites plaguing me.
Between the second and third destinations, there was about an hour of travel time. Getting seasick inside, we headed out to the deck. The spacious room seemingly apparent earlier in the trip seemed to disappear under the crowds—and by crowds, there couldn’t’ve been more than fifteen people on the bow of the vessel. The three-to-four person benches were being occupied by but a few (large and) inconsiderate people. To onlookers, they gave haughty looks, like they deserved those seats. And maybe they did deserve those seats, because the four of us got a deal on that daytrip. The price advertised for the day was ฿2200 THB per person ($66 USD), but when the four of us asked for a discount (because the travel agents give them out left and right), they quoted for the four of us just ฿3600 total, or ฿900 per person ($27 USD). In short, anyone who didn’t ask for a discount got gypped. We resorted to standing along the edge of the boat with plenty of fresh air but not seats.
The last stop on that trip was a town on Phi Phi Island. It was most definitely a tourist town, but walking through it, hawkers weren’t nearly as aggressive back on Phuket Island. They only started if you walked into their shop, having of course shown interest.
Wondering what I bought in Thailand, then? Well I bought a few postcards to send back home, but also I got a few novelty-type t-shirts. One said Red Bull (as in the energy drink brand) in Thai along with the iconic logo. Originally, Red Bull is from Thailand and its English name is a direct translation from the Thai name กระทิงแดง, and not the other way around. The other was a Coca-Cola t-shirt in Thai. My friend going to India said that if she found an iconic logo in a foreign language on a t-shirt, she would post me one.
The town was more peaceful and quiet than Patong Beach, and when we went exploring, we ended up on a different beachfront and had to retrace our steps to get back to the proper beach (and eventually the boat). Along the way were multiple companies offering diving and scuba certification. If I had free time and unrestricted money, I would do that.
The journey back to the dock on Phuket Island was an hour and forty-five minutes. This was followed by a cramped minibus ride back to Patong Beach, with me keeping my knees firmly touching so that I was not nudging the guy on my left and so that I didn’t hit the gearshift on the right. (The driver sat on my right, as the country drives on the left for the most part).
That was a tiring day and a tiring night. We went through many more markets and I found myself buying like 24 fl. oz. of Thai tea from the neighborhood 7-Eleven. Going through the markets was much more fun than going through markets in Hong Kong and Mainland China because the semblance of those places (such as Stanley Market on the south side of Hong Kong Island) to Chinatowns back home (I’ve been to those of Los Angeles—Chinatown and Monterey Park, San Francisco, and Chicago), is quite high. However, in Thailand, the merchandise and the approach to salesmanship were so different.
That night, I did little studying. The next day, we flew back to Hong Kong. After the same minibus ride, we arrived at the small airport to find lines flying like rat-tails out of the entrances. After waiting and entering the building, we realized that it was because they do security checks upon entrance into the building, rather than after check-in, as I’ve seen in all other airports.
I ended up studying less than imagined on the plane because I was super tired. Though the test went alright, I wondered a mere day earlier what was with the plane that I was on. The airplane (an Airbus I believe) was billowing steam from the joints between the overhead compartments and the walls and ceiling. It became more disconcerting as it became so noticeable that people began taking pictures of it as it obscured the ceiling. Eventually it subsided and I was never so glad to land as I was during that flight.
It’s a shame that I didn’t get to travel more outside of Greater China, this trip has made me realize. No matter how much Taiwan tries to act independent and no matter how much Hong Kongers look down at Mainland Chinese habits, the fact of the matter is that the places are so much more similar to each other than to other east Asian countries, and for that I feel I’m missing out.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Phuket: Pad Thai and Elephants
As of late, I’ve had to focus my time and effort into my studies, so my blogging has unfortunately not been as frequent as I like. As a result, I’ve begun to fall behind again.
Now two weekends ago, we managed to make our way over to Phuket, Thailand (ภูเก็ต). The name isn’t pronounced as crudely as it looks. As I was enlightened, the “h” in Phuket (as well as in “Thai”) denotes aspiration, think puff of air, rather than an “f” (or “th”) sound in conjunction with the “p” (or “t”). As such the “Ph” at the beginning as “p” like at the beginning of the word “pin.” Glad we got that one straightened out.
Secondly, Phuket is an island, according to my research. Telling my friends though was an uphill battle, as I had to contend with faulty logic in convincing them—example of which include: “I don’t think it’s an island because I don’t think it’s an island;” “But there’s buses going to Phuket”—ever heard of bridges?; and my favorite, “It doesn’t look like it on the flight map”—well I’m sorry, but small islands aren’t worth drawing as separate from the mainland when covered by a dot and lines—does Singapore look like an island on the flight map? As I would later find out, that friend didn’t know Singapore’s land mass consists of one main island and a number of smaller ones. And Australia is smaller than China, but only by about two million square kilometers. Cool.
Well we landed after four hours of flying from Hong Kong (I remember five hours from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.), and went through immigration. Like in Taiwan, the officers stapled our departure cards to our passports, but we went through without a hitch.
On the other side, I pointed out the stand of tourist maps saying “Welcome to Phuket Island” in English and when we went up to the taxi counter to get transportation to our hotel about an hour away at Patong Beach (หาดป่าตอง), there was a map clear as day showing the island formation. Without rubbing it too much into their faces, I gave them haughty looks for fun as they looked away in shame, realizing that their (faulty) logic had been to no avail.
We ended up in a minibus (smaller than Hong Kong minibuses) to Patong Beach and our lodging, the Patong Swiss Hotel. The whole ride was in the dark, but from what I could see (mostly buildings), it became obvious that we weren’t in China anymore. The funny thing was that this was the first time on the whole trip that we (myself included) had been outside Greater China. As I’ve just recently figured out, this was to be my last trip outside Greater China before going back to California.
The thing is, though, that despite the fact that we were in a foreign foreign country, there was more English on signs and in general than Thai (which by the way is quite aesthetically pleasing). Our minibus stopped midway at a storefront to collect our tickets, and after politely refusing their tours and excursions, I got back onto the bus.
Arriving at the Patong Swiss Hotel, I was exhausted. By this time, it was about 1:00 a.m. Hong Kong Time and about midnight local time. Ready to lie down, we checked in to find that they had given us just two beds for our five-person reservation. One person got sick though before the trip, so we arrived as four. So the first night we ended up sharing beds, though the next morning we were given two bigger rooms (and me my own bed). Like in Guilin, the showers were without curtains, which only meant to me that the cleaners would have more work (though I tried hard not to get water everywhere).
That first night, I studied for my Fine Arts final, which was to take place the day after we got back to Hong Kong. The rest of them went out exploring Patong Beach nightlife.
The first morning, I woke up in a rut. It was quite hot and humid (though admittedly not as bad as my first weeks in Hong Kong), and we had just come from sub-75 degree temperatures back in the SAR.
After getting ready, we went out the front door, and much to my amazement, the beach lay right across the (two-lane) street from the hotel. I hadn’t noticed it at all the night before! I guess I forgot that my friend booked us a beachfront hotel.
We walked a couple blocks along that street. What was expected were the large volumes of shops selling merchandise, particularly knock-off brands. What wasn’t expected was the large number of expats there—and I say expats rather than tourists because most men were hand in hand with Thai women (though I remain open to the interpretation that many of them could just be escort). It was odd to see such a large expat population, but on the other hand it wasn’t unreasonable since they, along with the large numbers of European and Australian tourists present, were the reason for all the English signage.
Walking by, the hawkers try to grab your attention—and they do it much better than in Mainland China and definitely better than in Hong Kong, where they don’t even attempt. There, they understood the value of the relationship in business. Rather than pulling you in by listing off their merchandise, they’d start by “Hello, where are you from?” or “My you’re handsome,” or something to that effect. I personally got a lot of “你好s.” One of my American friends who speaks Cantonese answered back: “I speak Cantonese” in English, to which I laughed.
We got breakfast at one of the many done-up venues. I got some authentic Pad Thai, which was delicious, and some (real?) Thai Tea, which tasted more like cold milk than anything else.
This is the only trip that I took this term that I didn’t really take to get any historical culture out of—no sightseeing, more fun I suppose (though I enjoy sightseeing).
So that day we actually got to ride (Asian) elephants. It cost ฿500 Thai Baht for a half hour (฿33 Baht = $1 USD), so that was like $15 USD. The experience wasn’t really like I’d imagined. I’ve ridden on horseback on multiple occasions (and my fair share of carnival ponies when I was under three feet tall), but never an elephant.
There was a platform to mount them that was a good ten feet in the air. Getting on was intimidating, as you were to step onto the elephant’s back to get into the seat secured on the elephant. The guide sat right behind its head, on its neck with his feet touching the elephant’s ears. To move left, the guide would shake the elephant’s left ear with his left foot, and to move right, the guide would shake the elephant’s right year with his right foot.
The whole thing made us feel oddly sad for the elephants, and remembering back the horses, I remember having similar sentiments, only to cast them off by saying that we aren’t the first to do this.
We were taking all over a muddy trail. The barefooted guide dismounted the elephant halfway and took pictures of us, this led the elephant back to the base with voice commands. At one point, the elephant began to make a wrong turn, and the guide hit its right leg hard with a sickle-looking rod, making a vicious sound and making us wonder what was going on.
I guess we couldn’t help but to feel sorry for the elephants. I guess you could hope that at least they are well taken care of and fed properly. As we dismounted the elephants, one put its trunk up on the platform. My friends petted it, thanking him (or her) for his (or her) service. I guess I was too busy taking photos, because as I reached my hand out after putting my camera away, it retracted its trunk and went on its way.
The rest of the day we went around the shops and played a modified (and more intense) form of Jenga at a bar. At night, we got Mexican food. Right after, I went back to the hotel to keep studying for my Asian Art History class.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Now two weekends ago, we managed to make our way over to Phuket, Thailand (ภูเก็ต). The name isn’t pronounced as crudely as it looks. As I was enlightened, the “h” in Phuket (as well as in “Thai”) denotes aspiration, think puff of air, rather than an “f” (or “th”) sound in conjunction with the “p” (or “t”). As such the “Ph” at the beginning as “p” like at the beginning of the word “pin.” Glad we got that one straightened out.
Secondly, Phuket is an island, according to my research. Telling my friends though was an uphill battle, as I had to contend with faulty logic in convincing them—example of which include: “I don’t think it’s an island because I don’t think it’s an island;” “But there’s buses going to Phuket”—ever heard of bridges?; and my favorite, “It doesn’t look like it on the flight map”—well I’m sorry, but small islands aren’t worth drawing as separate from the mainland when covered by a dot and lines—does Singapore look like an island on the flight map? As I would later find out, that friend didn’t know Singapore’s land mass consists of one main island and a number of smaller ones. And Australia is smaller than China, but only by about two million square kilometers. Cool.
Well we landed after four hours of flying from Hong Kong (I remember five hours from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.), and went through immigration. Like in Taiwan, the officers stapled our departure cards to our passports, but we went through without a hitch.
On the other side, I pointed out the stand of tourist maps saying “Welcome to Phuket Island” in English and when we went up to the taxi counter to get transportation to our hotel about an hour away at Patong Beach (หาดป่าตอง), there was a map clear as day showing the island formation. Without rubbing it too much into their faces, I gave them haughty looks for fun as they looked away in shame, realizing that their (faulty) logic had been to no avail.
We ended up in a minibus (smaller than Hong Kong minibuses) to Patong Beach and our lodging, the Patong Swiss Hotel. The whole ride was in the dark, but from what I could see (mostly buildings), it became obvious that we weren’t in China anymore. The funny thing was that this was the first time on the whole trip that we (myself included) had been outside Greater China. As I’ve just recently figured out, this was to be my last trip outside Greater China before going back to California.
The thing is, though, that despite the fact that we were in a foreign foreign country, there was more English on signs and in general than Thai (which by the way is quite aesthetically pleasing). Our minibus stopped midway at a storefront to collect our tickets, and after politely refusing their tours and excursions, I got back onto the bus.
Arriving at the Patong Swiss Hotel, I was exhausted. By this time, it was about 1:00 a.m. Hong Kong Time and about midnight local time. Ready to lie down, we checked in to find that they had given us just two beds for our five-person reservation. One person got sick though before the trip, so we arrived as four. So the first night we ended up sharing beds, though the next morning we were given two bigger rooms (and me my own bed). Like in Guilin, the showers were without curtains, which only meant to me that the cleaners would have more work (though I tried hard not to get water everywhere).
That first night, I studied for my Fine Arts final, which was to take place the day after we got back to Hong Kong. The rest of them went out exploring Patong Beach nightlife.
The first morning, I woke up in a rut. It was quite hot and humid (though admittedly not as bad as my first weeks in Hong Kong), and we had just come from sub-75 degree temperatures back in the SAR.
After getting ready, we went out the front door, and much to my amazement, the beach lay right across the (two-lane) street from the hotel. I hadn’t noticed it at all the night before! I guess I forgot that my friend booked us a beachfront hotel.
We walked a couple blocks along that street. What was expected were the large volumes of shops selling merchandise, particularly knock-off brands. What wasn’t expected was the large number of expats there—and I say expats rather than tourists because most men were hand in hand with Thai women (though I remain open to the interpretation that many of them could just be escort). It was odd to see such a large expat population, but on the other hand it wasn’t unreasonable since they, along with the large numbers of European and Australian tourists present, were the reason for all the English signage.
Walking by, the hawkers try to grab your attention—and they do it much better than in Mainland China and definitely better than in Hong Kong, where they don’t even attempt. There, they understood the value of the relationship in business. Rather than pulling you in by listing off their merchandise, they’d start by “Hello, where are you from?” or “My you’re handsome,” or something to that effect. I personally got a lot of “你好s.” One of my American friends who speaks Cantonese answered back: “I speak Cantonese” in English, to which I laughed.
We got breakfast at one of the many done-up venues. I got some authentic Pad Thai, which was delicious, and some (real?) Thai Tea, which tasted more like cold milk than anything else.
This is the only trip that I took this term that I didn’t really take to get any historical culture out of—no sightseeing, more fun I suppose (though I enjoy sightseeing).
So that day we actually got to ride (Asian) elephants. It cost ฿500 Thai Baht for a half hour (฿33 Baht = $1 USD), so that was like $15 USD. The experience wasn’t really like I’d imagined. I’ve ridden on horseback on multiple occasions (and my fair share of carnival ponies when I was under three feet tall), but never an elephant.
There was a platform to mount them that was a good ten feet in the air. Getting on was intimidating, as you were to step onto the elephant’s back to get into the seat secured on the elephant. The guide sat right behind its head, on its neck with his feet touching the elephant’s ears. To move left, the guide would shake the elephant’s left ear with his left foot, and to move right, the guide would shake the elephant’s right year with his right foot.
The whole thing made us feel oddly sad for the elephants, and remembering back the horses, I remember having similar sentiments, only to cast them off by saying that we aren’t the first to do this.
We were taking all over a muddy trail. The barefooted guide dismounted the elephant halfway and took pictures of us, this led the elephant back to the base with voice commands. At one point, the elephant began to make a wrong turn, and the guide hit its right leg hard with a sickle-looking rod, making a vicious sound and making us wonder what was going on.
I guess we couldn’t help but to feel sorry for the elephants. I guess you could hope that at least they are well taken care of and fed properly. As we dismounted the elephants, one put its trunk up on the platform. My friends petted it, thanking him (or her) for his (or her) service. I guess I was too busy taking photos, because as I reached my hand out after putting my camera away, it retracted its trunk and went on its way.
The rest of the day we went around the shops and played a modified (and more intense) form of Jenga at a bar. At night, we got Mexican food. Right after, I went back to the hotel to keep studying for my Asian Art History class.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Finals (Three) Week(s)
I can’t believe this term is starting to come to an end. It’s now been just over three months since I arrived here (confused) in late August. That means that I have just under a month left here, so I figured I’d sum up my plans for the remainder of my stay.
Believe it or not, classes have begun to end. One of my classes is completely finished—I took my final for it yesterday. One more will be all over after a group presentation next Monday. The third will end with a final examination on Thursday of revision week.
This week is actually the last week of instruction. My lectures have started ending one by one and I’ve harbored mixed feelings about my classes ending, but that’s for a later post. I still have two classes next Monday though, because the instructors wanted to make up for the fact that classes began on a Tuesday. I don’t mind; I’ll be here then.
This weekend will the first in a while that I’m not planning on going somewhere outside of Hong Kong. I’ve got work to do, with four more finals to study for a research paper due the end of revision week. It’ll be nice and quiet here.
After revision week though comes the official period for final examinations. Granted, I’ll only have three (as one’s already taken and the other two are likewise scheduled prematurely). Back at UCSD, finals take up one week. That week is appropriately named finals week, and occurs immediately after instruction stops. We have no revision week and little time to revise in between finals.
Here’s different. It’s partly to blame I suppose on it being on semesters rather than quarters here, but finals week is actually three weeks here. (Okay, in actuality it’s two, but it feels like three to me.)
If you remember from when I registered that we wouldn’t receive our timeslots and venues for finals until mid-November, that time has come. While I would have hoped for them to be grouped together, preferably at the start, they all turned out to be spread out. I have one on December 8, one on December 14, and one on December 18. I leave back for the States on the 21st.
In no way do I plan to use all those gaps for studying. I want to keep travelling! To this effect, I’m going to go to Nanjing from December 4th to the 8th. And in the other gaps, I’m still negotiating where to go and what to do. No worries though—it’ll be good.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Believe it or not, classes have begun to end. One of my classes is completely finished—I took my final for it yesterday. One more will be all over after a group presentation next Monday. The third will end with a final examination on Thursday of revision week.
This week is actually the last week of instruction. My lectures have started ending one by one and I’ve harbored mixed feelings about my classes ending, but that’s for a later post. I still have two classes next Monday though, because the instructors wanted to make up for the fact that classes began on a Tuesday. I don’t mind; I’ll be here then.
This weekend will the first in a while that I’m not planning on going somewhere outside of Hong Kong. I’ve got work to do, with four more finals to study for a research paper due the end of revision week. It’ll be nice and quiet here.
After revision week though comes the official period for final examinations. Granted, I’ll only have three (as one’s already taken and the other two are likewise scheduled prematurely). Back at UCSD, finals take up one week. That week is appropriately named finals week, and occurs immediately after instruction stops. We have no revision week and little time to revise in between finals.
Here’s different. It’s partly to blame I suppose on it being on semesters rather than quarters here, but finals week is actually three weeks here. (Okay, in actuality it’s two, but it feels like three to me.)
If you remember from when I registered that we wouldn’t receive our timeslots and venues for finals until mid-November, that time has come. While I would have hoped for them to be grouped together, preferably at the start, they all turned out to be spread out. I have one on December 8, one on December 14, and one on December 18. I leave back for the States on the 21st.
In no way do I plan to use all those gaps for studying. I want to keep travelling! To this effect, I’m going to go to Nanjing from December 4th to the 8th. And in the other gaps, I’m still negotiating where to go and what to do. No worries though—it’ll be good.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
The Storm that Passed without a Fight
Yeah, I’ve been traveling a lot, I know. This latter half of the semester, I’ve been jetting off to different cities, with my last conquest being Phuket, Thailand, four hours away. There is less than a month left, and though deadlines are looming and finals are approaching, I remain calm and look forward to a few more excursions before my departure back to the States.
It’s funny how people think that something has to give for something else to happen—and it’s true. It’s like you can’t be in two places at once (not yet, though I believe not ever), or how matter can’t just disappear. The funny thing then is that people don’t realize that there’s no need to give because there already is so much give—and by give I mean time, of course.
Back at UCSD, the normal course load is about four classes. The minimum is three to be a full-time student. I took five—and there’s a couple reasons for that. The first quarter, I took the standard four. I was bored out of my mind. I caught up with many different television shows (including the nine-season Scrubs and the now-ten-season CSI) and at the end of the year I took to reading a lot.
Because of my boredom, I decided why not take an extra class? I can handle it well and I’ll graduate earlier and spend less of my parents’ money on my education. After all, the UCSD levies tuition against all full-time students equally, regardless of actual credit hours. And after that happened, I was still bored. I started a blog for my upcoming study abroad trip and started brainstorming ideas for extended prose.
Here is not all that different. Each class that I attend here is about three hours per week in duration, except Cantonese, which is about two. Add it all up and I go to class 17 hours per week. With studying, it probably works out to 48 academically-focused hours. A seven-day week is 168 hours long. I sleep off around 56 of those. So 168 minus 56 minus 48 leaves me with 64 spare hours per week.
Last weekend, the Thailand trip lasted about three full days—that’s 72 hours, and two of the three nights I spent studying for my Fine Arts final that I got over with yesterday.
So the time is there—it’s just how you use it, I suppose. I found that working on deadlines early, getting projects done a few days before they’re due (at a minimum) keeps me at rest. That way if I find something (fun) to do, I can easily be spontaneous. Last week, I turned in an essay due Friday at 7:00 p.m. on Monday at 9:00 a.m. The professor hadn’t even given the department office instructions to collect it yet.
I found out that I hate procrastination, and it’s been keeping me afloat ever since I discovered this little preference of mine. At UCSD it was the same way. My first quarter, I had a paper due week eight of the term. The week before, we were to do a peer review in tutorial/section, so I finished it in the middle of week six. I found that my paper was the only one in the class that was really able to be peer-reviewed, so nearly everybody read it. Cool.
So that’s how I do what I do—good ol’ hard work—and it really works. But that’s just one side of the coin. The other is the realization of many of us here—where does the time go at home?
I know the answer for my own situation. It drains into the tube (though my computer functions as my television). I don’t mind reading—in fact, I really like reading, but the television usage can go down. That would renew my spare time.
The funny thing is that while I’ve seen more of the United States than the average American (by means of a thirty-state road trip when I just got my driver’s license in 2006), there is still so much that I’ve never seen. I would struggle to say that I’ve been to New England. I’ve still not been to New York City. I’ve been to many, many national capitals now, yet my own isn’t on that list. Most sad (though common) is that I’ve not been thirty miles south of UCSD. Admittedly, there’s a current travel warning from the Department of State advising travel to Mexican border areas because of recent increases in drug-related violence, but the fact that I can’t say that I’m not well traveled makes it pathetic that I’ve never been to Mexico.
I’ve been to Canada quite a few times, actually, which can be construed as ironic seeing as Mexico is but thirty miles south and Canada is more than a thousand miles north. So I’ve made a personal pact to see more around North America (and South America), time, money, and parent permitting. (Though that’s not to say I wouldn’t love to travel some more with my family).
We’ll see where life takes me when I get back to California.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
It’s funny how people think that something has to give for something else to happen—and it’s true. It’s like you can’t be in two places at once (not yet, though I believe not ever), or how matter can’t just disappear. The funny thing then is that people don’t realize that there’s no need to give because there already is so much give—and by give I mean time, of course.
Back at UCSD, the normal course load is about four classes. The minimum is three to be a full-time student. I took five—and there’s a couple reasons for that. The first quarter, I took the standard four. I was bored out of my mind. I caught up with many different television shows (including the nine-season Scrubs and the now-ten-season CSI) and at the end of the year I took to reading a lot.
Because of my boredom, I decided why not take an extra class? I can handle it well and I’ll graduate earlier and spend less of my parents’ money on my education. After all, the UCSD levies tuition against all full-time students equally, regardless of actual credit hours. And after that happened, I was still bored. I started a blog for my upcoming study abroad trip and started brainstorming ideas for extended prose.
Here is not all that different. Each class that I attend here is about three hours per week in duration, except Cantonese, which is about two. Add it all up and I go to class 17 hours per week. With studying, it probably works out to 48 academically-focused hours. A seven-day week is 168 hours long. I sleep off around 56 of those. So 168 minus 56 minus 48 leaves me with 64 spare hours per week.
Last weekend, the Thailand trip lasted about three full days—that’s 72 hours, and two of the three nights I spent studying for my Fine Arts final that I got over with yesterday.
So the time is there—it’s just how you use it, I suppose. I found that working on deadlines early, getting projects done a few days before they’re due (at a minimum) keeps me at rest. That way if I find something (fun) to do, I can easily be spontaneous. Last week, I turned in an essay due Friday at 7:00 p.m. on Monday at 9:00 a.m. The professor hadn’t even given the department office instructions to collect it yet.
I found out that I hate procrastination, and it’s been keeping me afloat ever since I discovered this little preference of mine. At UCSD it was the same way. My first quarter, I had a paper due week eight of the term. The week before, we were to do a peer review in tutorial/section, so I finished it in the middle of week six. I found that my paper was the only one in the class that was really able to be peer-reviewed, so nearly everybody read it. Cool.
So that’s how I do what I do—good ol’ hard work—and it really works. But that’s just one side of the coin. The other is the realization of many of us here—where does the time go at home?
I know the answer for my own situation. It drains into the tube (though my computer functions as my television). I don’t mind reading—in fact, I really like reading, but the television usage can go down. That would renew my spare time.
The funny thing is that while I’ve seen more of the United States than the average American (by means of a thirty-state road trip when I just got my driver’s license in 2006), there is still so much that I’ve never seen. I would struggle to say that I’ve been to New England. I’ve still not been to New York City. I’ve been to many, many national capitals now, yet my own isn’t on that list. Most sad (though common) is that I’ve not been thirty miles south of UCSD. Admittedly, there’s a current travel warning from the Department of State advising travel to Mexican border areas because of recent increases in drug-related violence, but the fact that I can’t say that I’m not well traveled makes it pathetic that I’ve never been to Mexico.
I’ve been to Canada quite a few times, actually, which can be construed as ironic seeing as Mexico is but thirty miles south and Canada is more than a thousand miles north. So I’ve made a personal pact to see more around North America (and South America), time, money, and parent permitting. (Though that’s not to say I wouldn’t love to travel some more with my family).
We’ll see where life takes me when I get back to California.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Guilin: Everything but Seven Star
The second day started off really early. Our group was now half what it was yesterday (six versus three), but only two of us managed to get up when we decided. We had a Li River cruise to get to with a shuttle bus picking us up at 8:10 a.m., so in order to get out onto the street and get breakfast before then, we decided to be out the door by 6:30, meaning we had to be awake by 6:00.
It was cold in the morning with the air as fresh as ever. We walked a few blocks down the main street and turned into that sidestreet where we went before to get Guilin noodles once more--and once again, they were quite good. By the time we finished, it was still early, with about an hour and a half to go before needing to get back to the hotel.
I guess Guilin Riverside Hotel is pretty centrally located in the city. One of the main symbols of the city, Elephant Trunk Hill (象鼻山) was just a few main streets to the east, so we headed out there. used in many a Chinese movie, this rock formation is unique in that its face has a large hole in it, so that one side looks like an elephant and the other side looks like its trunk.
My friend couldn't see it, but in my opinon, it's like observing constellations--just take it as it is and know that it's not bad to have just a bit of imagination. If you recall, water levels are low at the moment in Guilin, so Elephant Trunk Hill wasn't quite like the pictures. And in a ploy to make more money, viewing spots along the city streets have been blocked by copious amounts of foliage, so the entrance fee of ¥30 CNY per person to the viewing areas within the park becomes imperative.
This entrance fee is by land I guess, because as we were walking to the gate, we got offered by one of the many, many people looking for money a boat ride to see Elephant Trunk Hill from the river. And at ¥30 for the two of us, so ¥15 each, it was a good deal.
The boat that we were taken on had a flat bamboo bottom and was powered by a loud motor. Set up for passengers were simple chairs on the deck. He dropped us off and waited for us on an island in the middle of the river as we took pictures--and that's all we could do without entering the park--take pictures.
Heading back to the hotel, we saw our friend who had just woken up. He was heading over to the Guilin noodles place for breakfast as well and looked like he was going to make it well in time for the shuttle bus to the Li River Cruise.
On the shuttle bus, we met a couple from San Francisco. They were in the process of travelling all around the central and east Asia. Already they had gone to Azerbaijan and some other places that I can't remember. They came in through China along the historic Silk Road and explored several communities around Urumqi in Xianjiang. Already they had been exploring China for a month or two and had a month or two left until arriving in India where they had family.
We happened to book the English tour, which meant that the hour-long bus ride to where the boat was docked, somewhere down the river, was narrated by an English-speaking tour guide. Ours was named Eda in English, though everyone called her Shopping, since her Chinese name was something like Sha-ping in Pinyin.
She gave us some history behind Guilin and explained to us some of the ethnic minorities. One of which, for an extra price, we were going to see.
Our boat sat around one hundred people, with the upper deck for viewing and VIPs with a third level opened mid-way through the cruise for additional viewing. The seats were organized linearly on either side of rectangular tables on either side of the boat. There were eight seats per table.
The boat ride lasted about four hours as we went from near Guilin to Yangshuo, a tourist town. The water leve was noticeably low, for as a majority of the journey the bed of the river was visible from above. In addition, the river was crowded with boats full of tourists much like ours, and for the majority of the cruise we were riding the tail of the boat in front of us.
Though the weather was sunny, it seemed that there was a haze in the air that distorted the iconic mountains. Looking back through my photos, it's prettier now that when I was actually there. Along the cruise, we saw various named sights such as Nine Horses and Five Finger Hill, as well as the scene on the ¥20 CNY bill whose name I can't remember.
Just like on land, people (on boats) were trying to sell us stuff. The would dock alongside the moving larger boats and advertise their goods. People could open their windows on the main deck to buy stuff. People like me on the upper deck could reach down to grab some goods. I bought a fruit from a guy on a small bamboo boat. It cost me ¥5 and when I bought it he took out his big cleaver and cut off much of the thick skin surrounding what I was to discover was a highly seedy, albeit ripe and sweet, citrus fruit.
Check out the pictures of the Li River cruise for more on that. Most of the pictures speak for themselves.Oh and there were lots of animals to be seen from the boat.
Arriving in Yangshuo, we were bombarded with hawkers. For the next part of the tour, we were to meet half an hour later on the other side of the town at the Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sha-ping had to make sure we met in front of the correct one, because half a block further was a look-alike KFC. During that half-hour, we strolled around the town. It was noticeably done up and had a variety of ATMs as well as a McDonald's with a private pond. I ended up buying a piece of rice put into a vial and decorated into jewelry. What was so special about this grain of rice was that the guy was able to write my whole name on it.
As the second part of the tour came around, I realized how glad I was to have stayed for the extra day. The first stop was a rural village way outside the city. They had just about finished harvesting their rice and as such their rice patties had grounded stubs of what remained in the fields instead of flooded terraces.
We were shown onto a historic bridge that was built by a scholar in memory of someone in a story I can't quite remember. From there we could see Lion's Head Mountain, which from the right angle took very little imagination to see. Also on the bridge, we were away from boat traffic, meaning the water was calm enough to get the reflections of the mountains in the water.
Heading back to the bus, the tour guide Sha-ping bought us tangarines that were quite sweet. While I was eating mine, I found myself having to get out of the way as a farmer with two bulls came through. My two friends didn't feel anything special about it they say, because one's been in Iranian villages and one's been in many a Taishan village. I, however, saw something in it than they did because it was just so different and so much more charming than anything I'd ever been to, seen, or done.
Continuing on, we went to see one of the ethnic minorities. It was obviously there for the tourists, as many members of these ethnic minorities live urban lives. Many are not discernable from Han members of society. I can't find the official name for these people, but Sha-ping kept referring to them as the Drum people.
This leg of the trip entailed a bamboo boat ride (four for our group to be exact). They had the same single layer of bamboo keeping us afloat, and with the river being so shallow, the people maneuvering the boats weren't so much rowing as pushing the boat with a long piece of bamboo making contact with the riverbed. After asking, we were allowed to try our hand at it, and, as expected, it required a lot of upper body strength to propel and a lot of practice to steer accurately.
As part of the entertainment, a woman from the Drum people sang serenading songs on the boats. According to Sha-ping, they have a courtship tradition in which young men and young women sing to each other, at which point the young woman gives the young man this ball-shaped ornament (for lack of a more precise word) to be worn around the neck. Our entertainer had five to give away as souvenirs, and to get one, one of my friends serenaded her with the old Iranian national anthem, which was anything but romantic.
Down on the other side of the lake, we alighted. Farmers had their water oxen out for us to intereact with. (I heard some people on the Li River cruise call them 水牛.) After a little walk to get there (and some pictures of the scenery), we were given bits of lettuce to feed them. After making sure than no cow was going to charge me (the animals were all quite docile) and seeing that other people were doing it as well without issue, I tried approaching one of the calves to feed a piece of lettuce to. After the third calf turned my piece of lettuce away, the farmer informed me in Chinese (I don't remember his exact words) that I can't feed it to the calves because they only drink milk. It made sense.
So I fed it to a bull, and my friend attempted to get a picture of me doing it, though neither the bull nor I was in the picture in any reasonable form. I settled on petting a calf, for which I got a few decent pictures. In short, they weren't as soft as I would have imagined.
Heading back, we were given a demonstration of the fisher using pelicans to catch fish. In case you don't know, the fisherman puts a tie around the pelican's neck (it doesn't appear to hurt it) and it goes diving for fish. It catches them in its mouth but finds itself unable to swallow it. As a reward, the farmer gives the pelican smaller fish that it can fit through its reduced esophagus.
I later had a small discussion with some people about the ethics behind exploiting an animal for such pursuits. Though I didn't think it was completely moral per say (and I'd like to go vegetarian when I get back to UCSD), I compared it similarly to using dogs for hunting, also saying that people do much worse things to animals that exploit them much further, putting them in much more danger.
After we got back to shore, we were taken back to Guilin. From there, we walked to the train station, along the way enjoying a lot of street food.
I guess it's regrettable that we missed seeing Seven Star Park, which is one of the main things that Guilin is known for. But what we saw instead I think made the whole trip worth it. And the sisters the day before told us that if you go to Reed Flute Cave, Seven Star Park is just bigger and worse. I'd say that Guilin was my favorite trip so far in this study abroad experience.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
It was cold in the morning with the air as fresh as ever. We walked a few blocks down the main street and turned into that sidestreet where we went before to get Guilin noodles once more--and once again, they were quite good. By the time we finished, it was still early, with about an hour and a half to go before needing to get back to the hotel.
I guess Guilin Riverside Hotel is pretty centrally located in the city. One of the main symbols of the city, Elephant Trunk Hill (象鼻山) was just a few main streets to the east, so we headed out there. used in many a Chinese movie, this rock formation is unique in that its face has a large hole in it, so that one side looks like an elephant and the other side looks like its trunk.
My friend couldn't see it, but in my opinon, it's like observing constellations--just take it as it is and know that it's not bad to have just a bit of imagination. If you recall, water levels are low at the moment in Guilin, so Elephant Trunk Hill wasn't quite like the pictures. And in a ploy to make more money, viewing spots along the city streets have been blocked by copious amounts of foliage, so the entrance fee of ¥30 CNY per person to the viewing areas within the park becomes imperative.
This entrance fee is by land I guess, because as we were walking to the gate, we got offered by one of the many, many people looking for money a boat ride to see Elephant Trunk Hill from the river. And at ¥30 for the two of us, so ¥15 each, it was a good deal.
The boat that we were taken on had a flat bamboo bottom and was powered by a loud motor. Set up for passengers were simple chairs on the deck. He dropped us off and waited for us on an island in the middle of the river as we took pictures--and that's all we could do without entering the park--take pictures.
Heading back to the hotel, we saw our friend who had just woken up. He was heading over to the Guilin noodles place for breakfast as well and looked like he was going to make it well in time for the shuttle bus to the Li River Cruise.
On the shuttle bus, we met a couple from San Francisco. They were in the process of travelling all around the central and east Asia. Already they had gone to Azerbaijan and some other places that I can't remember. They came in through China along the historic Silk Road and explored several communities around Urumqi in Xianjiang. Already they had been exploring China for a month or two and had a month or two left until arriving in India where they had family.
We happened to book the English tour, which meant that the hour-long bus ride to where the boat was docked, somewhere down the river, was narrated by an English-speaking tour guide. Ours was named Eda in English, though everyone called her Shopping, since her Chinese name was something like Sha-ping in Pinyin.
She gave us some history behind Guilin and explained to us some of the ethnic minorities. One of which, for an extra price, we were going to see.
Our boat sat around one hundred people, with the upper deck for viewing and VIPs with a third level opened mid-way through the cruise for additional viewing. The seats were organized linearly on either side of rectangular tables on either side of the boat. There were eight seats per table.
The boat ride lasted about four hours as we went from near Guilin to Yangshuo, a tourist town. The water leve was noticeably low, for as a majority of the journey the bed of the river was visible from above. In addition, the river was crowded with boats full of tourists much like ours, and for the majority of the cruise we were riding the tail of the boat in front of us.
Though the weather was sunny, it seemed that there was a haze in the air that distorted the iconic mountains. Looking back through my photos, it's prettier now that when I was actually there. Along the cruise, we saw various named sights such as Nine Horses and Five Finger Hill, as well as the scene on the ¥20 CNY bill whose name I can't remember.
Just like on land, people (on boats) were trying to sell us stuff. The would dock alongside the moving larger boats and advertise their goods. People could open their windows on the main deck to buy stuff. People like me on the upper deck could reach down to grab some goods. I bought a fruit from a guy on a small bamboo boat. It cost me ¥5 and when I bought it he took out his big cleaver and cut off much of the thick skin surrounding what I was to discover was a highly seedy, albeit ripe and sweet, citrus fruit.
Check out the pictures of the Li River cruise for more on that. Most of the pictures speak for themselves.Oh and there were lots of animals to be seen from the boat.
Arriving in Yangshuo, we were bombarded with hawkers. For the next part of the tour, we were to meet half an hour later on the other side of the town at the Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sha-ping had to make sure we met in front of the correct one, because half a block further was a look-alike KFC. During that half-hour, we strolled around the town. It was noticeably done up and had a variety of ATMs as well as a McDonald's with a private pond. I ended up buying a piece of rice put into a vial and decorated into jewelry. What was so special about this grain of rice was that the guy was able to write my whole name on it.
As the second part of the tour came around, I realized how glad I was to have stayed for the extra day. The first stop was a rural village way outside the city. They had just about finished harvesting their rice and as such their rice patties had grounded stubs of what remained in the fields instead of flooded terraces.
We were shown onto a historic bridge that was built by a scholar in memory of someone in a story I can't quite remember. From there we could see Lion's Head Mountain, which from the right angle took very little imagination to see. Also on the bridge, we were away from boat traffic, meaning the water was calm enough to get the reflections of the mountains in the water.
Heading back to the bus, the tour guide Sha-ping bought us tangarines that were quite sweet. While I was eating mine, I found myself having to get out of the way as a farmer with two bulls came through. My two friends didn't feel anything special about it they say, because one's been in Iranian villages and one's been in many a Taishan village. I, however, saw something in it than they did because it was just so different and so much more charming than anything I'd ever been to, seen, or done.
Continuing on, we went to see one of the ethnic minorities. It was obviously there for the tourists, as many members of these ethnic minorities live urban lives. Many are not discernable from Han members of society. I can't find the official name for these people, but Sha-ping kept referring to them as the Drum people.
This leg of the trip entailed a bamboo boat ride (four for our group to be exact). They had the same single layer of bamboo keeping us afloat, and with the river being so shallow, the people maneuvering the boats weren't so much rowing as pushing the boat with a long piece of bamboo making contact with the riverbed. After asking, we were allowed to try our hand at it, and, as expected, it required a lot of upper body strength to propel and a lot of practice to steer accurately.
As part of the entertainment, a woman from the Drum people sang serenading songs on the boats. According to Sha-ping, they have a courtship tradition in which young men and young women sing to each other, at which point the young woman gives the young man this ball-shaped ornament (for lack of a more precise word) to be worn around the neck. Our entertainer had five to give away as souvenirs, and to get one, one of my friends serenaded her with the old Iranian national anthem, which was anything but romantic.
Down on the other side of the lake, we alighted. Farmers had their water oxen out for us to intereact with. (I heard some people on the Li River cruise call them 水牛.) After a little walk to get there (and some pictures of the scenery), we were given bits of lettuce to feed them. After making sure than no cow was going to charge me (the animals were all quite docile) and seeing that other people were doing it as well without issue, I tried approaching one of the calves to feed a piece of lettuce to. After the third calf turned my piece of lettuce away, the farmer informed me in Chinese (I don't remember his exact words) that I can't feed it to the calves because they only drink milk. It made sense.
So I fed it to a bull, and my friend attempted to get a picture of me doing it, though neither the bull nor I was in the picture in any reasonable form. I settled on petting a calf, for which I got a few decent pictures. In short, they weren't as soft as I would have imagined.
Heading back, we were given a demonstration of the fisher using pelicans to catch fish. In case you don't know, the fisherman puts a tie around the pelican's neck (it doesn't appear to hurt it) and it goes diving for fish. It catches them in its mouth but finds itself unable to swallow it. As a reward, the farmer gives the pelican smaller fish that it can fit through its reduced esophagus.
I later had a small discussion with some people about the ethics behind exploiting an animal for such pursuits. Though I didn't think it was completely moral per say (and I'd like to go vegetarian when I get back to UCSD), I compared it similarly to using dogs for hunting, also saying that people do much worse things to animals that exploit them much further, putting them in much more danger.
After we got back to shore, we were taken back to Guilin. From there, we walked to the train station, along the way enjoying a lot of street food.
I guess it's regrettable that we missed seeing Seven Star Park, which is one of the main things that Guilin is known for. But what we saw instead I think made the whole trip worth it. And the sisters the day before told us that if you go to Reed Flute Cave, Seven Star Park is just bigger and worse. I'd say that Guilin was my favorite trip so far in this study abroad experience.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
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