Moskowing!

Busy busy busy! That's what I've been lately! So let's see, yesterday we headed off to the Kremlin and the Armory Museum. The museum had tons of cool stuff from massive carriages to dresses from the 18th century. No photos were allowed inside but this website did a good job of covering the highlights. It was a lot to take in and a lot to listen too (our tour guide was what I like to call a talker). It was a prettier day so I was able to take lots of pictures. Here are a few of them.

Inside the Kremlin. This is the Palace and the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Cathedral Square

Close up of the Palace

Cathedral of the Annunciation in Cathedral Square and its nine golden domes

Beautiful door

Broke bell. The broken part weighs 11 tons! Ouch!

Inside the Kremlin

Candy Land Castle!

I mean.... St Basil Cathedral

Red Square - Christmas version

Detour to Moscow

So after just about 24 hours of travel (5.5 hours on a train to Beijing, 8 hours hanging out in Beijing, 7.5 hour flight to Moscow, and 2 hours of travel to Moscow downtown because I was deliriously tired), I finally made it to Moscow! I checked in to my hostel, took my sleeping mask that I got on my flight, and passed out for 4 hours. I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to face the city. I had about 8 hours until my mom’s flight arrived so I went to explore a bit and get some delicious Russian food. Oddly enough, I ended up at a sushi restaurant but hey, don’t judge! Also, I ended up, unknowingly, walking by and seeing some of Moscow’s most famous sites including Red Square, the Kremlin, this fancy grocery store, Pushkin Park, and Moscow’s equivalent of Michigan Ave, Tverskaya. Oops, my bad! :O

Old clunker train that takes you to downtown Moscow from airport.

Pushkin Square

Red Square

Fabulous grocery store. I got some cheese!!

The next day we all woke up jetlagged and disoriented and headed off to Yaroslavl, one of Russia’s oldest historically preserved towns. We did some touring and some eating and we stayed at pretty much the cutest hotel in the world! The second day in Yaroslavl we went to see a children’s play of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Even though it was in Russian (mom translated a bit for me) the story was pretty self explanatory and it was just beyond adorable. I’m sad kids in America don’t get to experience such treasures. O and to top it off, all of us got a present: a huge box full of candy! Russia is awesome! After our play, we headed off to sleigh rides! We got driven around an adorable neighborhood full of cutesy houses. Dream come true. Ride in a one horse open sleigh…check! And last but not least, we ended the day with going to a matrioshka workshop. Matrioshkas are those Russian dolls that have one inside the other. Anyways, we met a matrioshka master and we got to paint our own. Let’s just say that our dolls were just fabulous! Hahah

Sitting in the theater waiting

The seven dwarfs in Hello Kitty pajamas

Santa Claus comes and saves the day. I think this was Snow White holiday edition...

Snow White and her Prince

Ice fishing. Our hotel was on the river so this was the view from our balcony.

Checking in

Our hotel

Famous monument on the 1000 bill

At the icon museum in the monastery

Cute church

Handmade statuettes

More beautiful churches

Locks of love

View of two rivers meeting.

Famous statue and beautiful church

Calling Santa!!!!

Our painted matrioshkas!

And last but not least, today we took a bus tour around Moscow. It was a cloudy and rainy so I didn’t take many pictures. And since we are going back to Red Square tomorrow, I’ll try taking pictures again!

So overall Moscow is ultra great! I had no idea what to expect but this place is seriously cool. The food is heavenly, the architecture is so different from anything I’ve ever seen, and all the activities we have planned are so fun. The people could be a bit friendlier and it would be fun to speak the language, but I get buy. Moscow rock on!

Qingdao

Here are some late coming pictures from our trip to Qingdao for the Beer Festival. Below you will find the hostel that we stayed at in the old part of town, an old pagoda, and then beer street and the beer brewery.

Bingma Yong Warriors

To tell you the honest truth, I think our group was a bit underwhelmed about the warriors. It just didn't seem as big of a deal as initially described. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we saw them, but I think we had more fun trying on different hats in the long skinny street full of merchants trying to sell us stuff. As of right now, the Great Wall is still my favorite.

Rated R - for nudity

Sorry for the delay in this post, as I was traveling before and then when I got home to ZZ, I didn’t have internet. I know I’ve kept you in suspense long enough! Hahah.

Anyways, while in Shanghai with Mom, Jim, Brandon and I decided to go to a Chinese Spa. Sounds fabulous, doesn’t it! Well it was great, but it was different. Here’s how our experience went down. We arrived and they took our shoes and gave us rubber sandals. This shoe swap was for many reasons, but I think the main one being so you can’t leave without paying. We were also given wrist bands with a number on it. At that point, we were split up and went into our designated locker rooms (if you want Brandon’s version of what happened and how he liked hanging out with Jim, just ask him) In the locker rooms you basically lock up all of your things and strip. Haha no shyness here. Then you walk into the shower area where you rinse off. Then you proceed to the scrub area. Here you have a few choices of treatments, but I went and stuck with the most basic one: a body scrub with a milk bath and a cucumber mask. I was told to lay down on my back on one of maybe six tables in the room (still very much naked at this point) and the lady attendant haphazardly threw a towel on me in the general direction of what I would have wanted covered. She then covered my face in cucumber mush (it felt nice). Then came the best part. She basically started scrubbing my entire body with this mitt that felt kind of like a soft velcro material. She scrubbed every inch of my body and then I flipped over and she did the same to my back. Side bar, you know when you get sunburnt and peel. The skin comes off in flakes or if you rub it, it comes off in kind of a dark skin roll? Well, as I was getting off the table after being scrubbed, the entire table I was laying on was covered in that type of skin roll. Hahah noooo I’m not dirty but she basically scrubbed tons of layers off of my skin! I have to say my skin was baby smooth for days! It felt amazing!

Anyways, that’s the most exciting part of the shower room part. After that you just go hang out in the steam room or sauna or one of the six hot pools. Then you shower and go back to the locker room to change and dry your hair etc. Well, upon entering the locker room again, we went into the towel room where they dried us off as we just stand there. Hahah it was interesting. I kinda felt like a baby.  And of course we were handed disposable panties and a Hawaiian, floral, bright and obnoxious miu miu (aka pajamas) and slippers. After getting dressed (I have to mention that while I was blow drying my hair, I saw a Chinese lady blow dry… ummm her downstairs if you will :o), we went upstairs to meet the boys who had just gone through a similar experience and were dressed in equally attractive Hawaiian getups. We had dinner and then proceeded upstairs again for the spa portion of the experience. Upstairs there was a whole room full of loungey spa chairs where we sat down and ordered spa treatments off a menu. Mine was a full body Chinese massage so I got led into a private room. The guy I got was definitely rough and he had me doing yoga and all sorts of funny things I can’t really describe in a post. But it was still a very typical massage. My mom got a food massage and a manicure. The two boys just took a nap.

One thing I want to point out about this place is that it is open approximately 21 or 22 hours a day. They close at some random hour (lunch time I think) for a few hours and that’s it. So basically if you ever have a long layover and don’t want to get a hotel, you can just show up at a spa and get spa treatments for hours on end. They do not push you out or yell at you for sleeping (as the boys did). You can order dinner there and just hang out and relax. They have pool table and arcade games and every spa chair has a tv. It’s literally heaven! I think we stayed about 3 or 4 hours. I don’t remember since it’s really easy to lose track of time. And you also don’t need money on you at all (the beautiful miu mius don’t really have pockets anyways) since they charge everything to the number on your wrist. You just pay as you leave and pick up your shoes. How’s that for a spa experience!

Prepare for some ramblings

We've been in China for about 4 days now and it's just been go go go the whole time. After arriving in Zhengzhou (to be referred to as ZZ from now on) late night and getting made fun of for having so much luggage, we were showed to our new home for the next year. It is an apartment complex across the street from our school. Between jet lag, tireness, shock of a new place, and a bunch of other things working against me, the apartment wasn't exactly what I was expecting. First impression was not good, but I think that we will make it work and make it much homier later. It just needs a few basics. I will go into more detail and provide pics about the apartment later.

The next day we had three Chinese ladies drives us around town kind of unsuccessfully. Long story short, I think we drove around for a total of three hours and got one thing accomplished: going to the police station to register. Since that was something that had to be done within 24 hours of arrival, I guess it's a good thing we got that done at least. We'll have tons more administrative things to do when we get back.

In the am on the 4th we took the high speed 5 hour train to Beijing. It was actually a very good experience. We had leg room galor and it was a relatively painless ride. Next time we'll know to bring food. Also, the train is on time to the T. I think we even left a minute early. I know I'll be taking that train again many times in the future so I'm glad is a painless experience.

After getting off of the train we were finally in Beijing! I honestly cannot explain to you the sheer size of the buildings around you. If you think you've ever felt small, well try imagining feeling even smaller than that. The train station itself was massive. Even using the word massive doesn't seem to do it justice. I was simply HUGE!

Since my mom was already in Bejing, we went straight to the tea shop with all of our stuff. We show up in the middle of a puppet show and mid lunch. It was like hit the ground running here in Beijing. My traveling group for the next few days are going to be : Me (behind the camera), Brandon, Jim, Mom (Julie), JinLan, and Mr. Chen. Mr. Chen has been the best host ever! He orders every meal for us and hires cars for us and has planned our entire time in Beijing to the T!

So far I have eaten: dumplings, peking pork wrapped in a sort of pancake, peking duck, all sorts of duck parts (heart, liver, feet, soup), jelly fish salad and much more. I passed on the duck brain. It's all relatively good, but doesn't always hit the spot. At least I won't go hungry.

duck heart

The closest plate is duck liver, then the one to the left is a jelly fish salad, then the far back one is duck feet. The tall green one is a spinach christmass tree.

Right after lunch, we went to the Temple of Heaven. For after dinner drinks we went to this lake (Back Sea -  the emperor apparently named all bodies of water a sea) that was surrounded by bars. It was a total tourist trap like in Mexico where bars try to lure you in. But it was really pretty since there were boats on the lake with lit up lanterns. And since all the bars were covered in neon lights and stuff, it was very colorful and very pleasing to the eyes.

Today was the Great wall, and tomorrow we go shopping in the am and off to Shanghai we go! O yea we also saw the Bird's nest from the 2008 Olympics!

I have so much more to say, but I only have two hours to nap and shower before the Bejing Opera tonight, that my post is quick, snappy and lacking details. But we're alive and having fun!

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