Ahhh…..familiar places (not quite familiar faces).  I arrived into Tokyo an hour early so I took a leisurely stroll around the international terminal, for old times sakes that is.  Looks basically the same, except that in the summer it was really hot because I don’t think that it is air conditioned so now that it is winter the temperature inside is much more pleasant.

It’s basically 3:30am on the East Coast so I am exhausted, I probably slept for a sum total of 1 hour on the previous 14 hour flight from New York to Tokyo.  For some reason it was just a bad flight.  There wasn’t really any turbulence (and the people next to me didn’t try to talk to me, thank goodness!) but for some reason I just couldn’t get comfortable, either my legs hurt or my neck hurt or something, I’m just really really glad to be off that plane.  I think I’m so tired that I’ll definitely be able to sleep on this last leg of my flight to Hong Kong, I think it’s only a 3 hour flight (only???).  Luckily in Hong Kong my hotel is at the airport so I’ll be right to bed, no emailing or blogging until Monday (your Sunday).

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

I’m off on another Chinese adventure, this time to document the Christmas festivities in China.  I’m not sure what to expect, the factory is opened and I don’t think places shut down like in the US because I don’t think that most Chinese people celebrate Christmas.  I wonder if I’ll meet a ton of Jewish people?  We all seem to eat Chinese food on Christmas so it’s a natural progression, at least I think so

I’m blogging from the JFK airport (shoutout to Jamie and David who met me here last time I had a four hour layover) where I only have to wait about an hour for my connecting flight to Tokyo and then to Hong Kong.  They just announced that the flight is oversold (so much for my chances of being upgraded ) but they are asking for people to get on a different flight instead…hrmmmm…I wonder what they’ll give me…..Nahh, I don’t think any other flight would get me to China in time.  I was lucky enough to get upgraded on my flight from Atlanta to JFK, what are the perks?  Eating Rice Chex, a bagel, and fruit for breakfast.

I’m not going to have much free time on this trip and won’t be staying over any free days (weekends) so I’ll try my best to keep up with the blog but probably won’t be sharing my every meal with you like last time.  I’m a little dissapointed in myself because I didn’t learn much new Chinese before this trip, I really wanted to beef up my conversational skills but I was slammed with work and school these last few weeks.  Maybe I’ll study on the plane?  Although if you’ve ever been around me while I’m studying Chinese I think you’ll agree that  passengers sitting next to me on the plane won’t be too thrilled

Well, I’m off to find a neck pillow in case I get stuck in a barely reclining seat for 14 hours.  I’ll updated everyone from Tokyo or Hong Kong at somepoint tomorrow, if I have a long enough layover.

Avi

We woke up at 4:30am and went to the airport to get our flight to Xi’an. Our luggage was so heavy and overweight we had to pay a heavy luggage fee. We are definitely looking foward to paying that another 2 more times for our other flights We definitely slept the whole flight. Our new tour guide and driver picked us upand drove us to see the Terra-cotta army. It was really very interesting to see all the soldiers, horses and other clay artifacts that had been dug up. They call it the 8th wonder of the world. The story is pretty crazy… a farmer was digging a well and he came across a head and arm. He thought it was a ghost and was really scared. He was actually at the museum and signed our book that we bought. Avi was very excited. He even bought a little soldier figurine made out of the same material the sodliers were formed from. Then we went to lunch at the most delicious chinese buffet. It was inside a gorgeous chinese theater. The food was really good, even for a pseudovegetarian. Then we went to the jade factory. We saw how jade is actually carved into beautiful sculptures and jewerly. Jade is so gorgeous, I woud have loved to buy some nice piece but it was sooooo expensive. Then we went to a temple and pagoda. It was very interesting to see the temple since I had never seen anything like it. We weren’t allowed to take pictures. We wanted to see some munks but they werent available to us   At this point of the day, I was really tired and I think our tour guide was made that I kept yawning. I felt kind of bad but I couldnt help it. He took us to our hotel which is byfar the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in my whole life. The bathroom is huge!!! Its about the same size as the room itself which is large. We went out for our last dinner in China at a Japanese restaurant, believe it or not. We thought its probably a good idea not to have any crazy chinese food before we get on a long flight home tomorrow. We had so much fun at the restaurant because the servers spoke absolutely no english at all. We had to get out our chinese/english dictionary and we were both laughing so hard. We called our tour guide to have him speak to our server to tell her that we wanted to buy a restaurant t-shirt since it was really awesome. They got the manager on the phone and everything. It was sooo funny!! We didnt end up getting a t-shirt but we got a good laugh. We took a taxi back to our hotel for one dollar, no joke. Taxis are so cheap, its so crazy. We are now packing up our stuff and soooooo ready to head home tomorrow. We will fly to Shanghai in the morning and then to ATL at 3pm. Hope you have enjoyed our blog! We have had fun keeping everyone up to date with our travels! Tsai jian!!!

Sunday we went to the Great Wall in the morning. It started raining but we when we got there the rain had stopped. The weather was pretty nice…not too hot and a little breezy. The only thing that was a little sucky was that it was really overcast, foggy and cloudy so our pictures that we took are not that great . The way our tour guide took us was a part of the great wall that there are two ways to go up. We took the hard way up because it was less crowded. We hiked all the way to the highest part that would allow visitors to go. It was amazing!!! It is definitely breathtaking! It wasnt as challenging as the hike that we did in Israel but it was pretty difficult. After the great wall, we went to the cloisenne factory where we watched them make really cool chinese designed pottery/vases/plates.  Then we went to the old city, Hutong. It was a little sketchy because the area was really OLD and kind of dirty. We had a tour of the old city in a petticab. We took a really cute picture. We stopped at a typical family’s home and got a tour of his house. It was the smallest, oldest house I had ever seen. We met Mr. Lu who explained and showed pictures of his oldest son who is the world champion in Kung Fu fighting. It was really pretty cool. He had an entire display of weapons and we all posed with each one in our kung fu stance. It was awesome. We were going to go back to the hotel but we told our driver and tour guide to just drop us off at the Silk Street Market, like we hadnt shopped enough yet. Ofcourse we bought more stuff for really good deals. Bargaining is such a science. I am seriously the best bargainer ever. Its actually an art not a science . We had pizza for dinner next to the mall. It was probably the greasiest pizza ever but it was pretty good. Then we went back to the hotel and packed up all of our stuff. We have bought so much stuff that it really is very tricky trying to get it to all fit.

On Friday, Avi took his final exam in the morning. When he got back to the hotel, we packed up our stuff and had lunch.   Jia Wei met us and 6 of Avi’s friends and we took 3 taxis back to the “cheap” marketplace. Jia Wei called our “tour guide” from last time who had tremendously helped me on Tuesday to find alot of great knockoffs. We walked around and found so much more good stuff. Our friends were very impressed! It was pretty entertaining watching everyone bargain with the people. We all walked out with some serious amounts of good deals. At 4:30pm we rushed back to the hotel and grabbed our luggage. We went to the airport and had dinner. Our plane was super big and I fell right asleep when we boarded. When we got to Beijing, our tour guide named May picked us up from the airport and we all fell asleep on the way to our new hotel. We have our own personal driver in our own personal minivan. It was airconditioning!!! wahooo!! Our hotel is magnificent. But there are a couple weird things. For example, the bathroom has glass walls so you can see into the bathroom from all angles of the room. The funniest part is that Avi’s friends who are traveling with us, Kevin and Utku are sharing a room together and they freaked out once they saw that. We finally figured out that there is a button to press for a shade to roll down. Another weird thing is that the shower is not only see thru but there are only 3 walls surrounding it. The fourth “wall” of the shower is the opening to the bathtub…very strange.

Saturday morning, we met May in the lobby. We went to Tienamen Square and the Forbidden City. Both are extremely big and there were a ton of people. The weather was very hot!!! We went to lunch at this special place that I think they only bring tours to. It was upstairs of a very nice building and downstairs was a place to learn about pearls and ofcourse a pearl shop. They showed us an oyster and we opened it up. It had about 10 pearls inside one little oyster. It was pretty awesome. I tried on several pearl necklaces, earrings, rings, bracelets, etc. I found a necklace and earrings that were gorgeous but the price was not what I wanted to spend. I started to walk out and the sales lady followed me and asked me what price I would be willing to pay. I told her $150 and she agreed!!! I got a magnificent good qualitynecklace and matching pearl earrings for such a good deal, it was a steal! We then went to the silk factory which was very interesting. We saw how silk comes from the silkworm and then how it is made into comforters, pillows and other silk stuff. It was awesome. Ofcourse we had to buy some silk bedding because it was so cheap. We were exhausted after our first day in Beijing. We came back to the hotel and showered and got dressed for dinner. We met one of Utku’s chinese friends who took us to this restaurant for hot pot. It was delicious. It is kind of like fondu except better. I ofcourse got veggies and they were really good. We made our own homemade dipping sauces. Then we came back to the hotel and went to bed. Sunday we are going to the great wall of China. We are really excited!!!!!!!!!!

Thursday I went to the zoo with one of Avi’s classmates’ fiances. The zoo was ofcourse different then what I was expecting. We first saw the elephant show…it was hilarious! You could have your picture taken on the elephants trunk but I decided that it probably wouldnt be a good idea. (Avi told me later that he would have definitely done that). We walked around the zoo and there was a dog exhibit. It was really depressing. They had dogs in cages and they all looked really dirty and sad. It seems like they dont take very good care of the animals. We decided to go the nicer area for lunch. We took a taxi to Xintiandi which is where the french concession is and there are really nice shops. We had lunch at pizza express. It was sooooooooo delicious and I was very happy! We walked around the area for a while and then took the taxi back to the hotel just in time for Avi to come back from class. As a group, we all went to a ferry boat tour on the river. It was really beautiful to see the skyline all lit up. We took some pretty good pictures. Then we walked to a pub down the street. The food was not very good so I was pretty disappointed. I think I had potato wedges for dinner…mmm. We came back to the hotel and went to sleep. Avi has his final exam on Friday morning and then we will do some shopping and fly to Beijing Friday night. Hopefully we will be able to blog and post some pictures.

Yesterday was Wednesday and I went to school with Avi. I thought learning about business in China might be interesting, considering I had nothing else to do (Jai Wei had plans with some of his friends). Class was very boring so I doodled all over my note packet. After class, we walked to the Fudan University bookstore and we all bought t-shirts for about $5 US (everything is super cheap here). Then we went to the Chinese circus. It was AMAZING!!!!!! The things that the acrobats did were so ridiculous- some of it I couldnt even watch. They had 8 motorized bikes circling around inside this metal caged globe, each going about 100miles per hour. It was incredible. We were very impressed. Right after the circus, we went to a kareoke bar. It was very different than we all were expecting. We had our own private room with a big tv screen and a kareoke box with 2 microphones. We had sooooooooooo much fun!!!! We were there for about 3 hours. I will try to post some pictures of our kareoke fun but it will be hard to choose because I took so many funny pics.

Today (Tuesday) Jai Wei picked me up and we went to Nanjing Rd. This is a very long road with tons of malls right next to each other. I think we walked into all 15 malls. These malls all had really nice shops. Everything was pretty expensive. We went into some stores that had Chinese candy and some weird foods, like dried ducks hanging from the ceiling…it was disgusting, I had to take a picture. We walked so much today, so I came back to the hotel and took a nap until Avi got home from school. Avi and I went with his classmates to get 2 hour Traditional Chinese massages for $30 (cant beat that). It was a very interesting experience. There were 5 of us in a room getting massaged at the same time. The massage was pretty uncomfortable. The lady I had kept poking me with her fingers and jabbing her elbows into my back. She kept asking if it was ok and I would tell her “a little softer please” and she would just laugh. It was quite humourous. She also massaged my butt, I felt a little violated. I thought I was the only one who thought it was a little too hard but apparently everyone agreed once we left the place that it was pretty uncomfortable but I think Avi enjoyed it. We went to eat at the restaurant next door: Belaggio Cafe. It was your typical Chinese food so ofcourse I ate veggies . Avi split a dessert with his friend and it looked super nasty so I had to take a picture. It was beans mixed with condensed milk and placed on a shaved ice tower. I couldnt believe that they ate it but they said it was pretty good. Thats it for today. Enjoy the pics!

Monday was Avi’s first day of school. It was my first day to do some serious shopping and I sure came out with some serious goodies!! Jai Wei and his mom picked me up from the hotel room and took me to some “secret” shopping area to find some good knockoffs. As soon as our taxi arrived, a man started talking to Jia Wei and then we followed this strange man. I was really nervous. He took us to an underground “mall” where I found some good stuff. I bargained with them and Jia Wei helped me so much. I have found that the Chinese people are soo nice. Even the strange man that we followed stayed with us the whole time and kept running around and bringing me different things to look at. When I was done spending my “monopoly money” (chinese money really does look like it), the strange man got a taxi for us and I was taken back to our hotel. When Avi got back from his class, his friends and I went back to the French Concession which is where we went Sunday night. This is the most westernized and nicest area I have seen in China thus far. They have really cute shops, bars and restaurants. We ate at a tapas restaurant and the food was pretty normal which was fine with me! We came back to the hotel and went to bed early because Avi had to be up early for school on Tuesday.

We went to Pearl Tower with Jia Wei and his mom. We went to the top and looked out at the city just like the Empire State Building (as noted before).