Halfway

I don't even know where to begin. I haven't updated in a while because I had midterms last week. Which meant that I had to:
Write a 1200 word speech
Memorize it
Write three 800 word speeches
Memorize them
Write four essays
Take a four hour long test

The speeches and test occurred on the same day- Thursday. At 11:30 Thursday night, we boarded a six-hour long "overnight" train to Datong in Shanxi province. I thought it couldn't get creepier than an overnight from Krakow to Budapest, but apparently, it can....and it does....thousands of times each night in this beautifully... chaotic country.

We arrived in Datong way too early in the morning, ate breakfast in our hotel, and commenced a full day of site seeing. I was so tired that I wanted to die, but with a little help from Oreos and Amy's Ipod, I made it through. Datong itself is kind of a piece of shit, as it is surrounded by coal mines, and it's population is so disgustingly small (aka 1 million-ish). The sights near the city, however, are wonderful.

We first went to a thousand-year-old timber pagoda. If you can't read the fine print of this sign, it says "a small match may destroy a thousand-ear-old timber pagoda." Wouldn't you feel like such an asshole? After the wooden pagoda visit we went to see the hanging monasteries- also very old.

Oh yeah, after all of that, we climbed a flipping mountain. It was so worth it though- not because of the joy of reaching the top, or whatever romantic thing I'm supposed to say, but because their was a drag queen singing and dancing on a stage at the foot of the mountain. He quickly became my hero.





The second day of site seeing included "the grottoes" (aka really old shrines carved into caves). We met some Tibetan kids there and had lollipops and watermelon popsicles. We also saw some pretty big Buddhas. One of the best experiences of the trip, however, was that night's dinner. Lidan, Hupeng, Jieming, Shafa, and I went to Datong's "a mosta famurse hot pot restaurant." Our waitress was the Chinese Sharon Osbourne. No joke. She went ape shit when we wouldn't let her sneakily order bird claws and pigs feet for our pots! Then she demanded that we take a picture of her.... which I thought was weird because we used my camera, and so she will never ever see the picture that she made us take. But maybe she knew I would post it for all of you to enjoy:

About an hour after this picture was taken, we got back on an overnight train and arrived in Beijing at five in the morning. Life has returned to school and breathing only. Hopefully I'll have something to update about soon!

-Megan