Ice Lantern and Hockey!

So this past weekend was pretty amazing! We got to go to the Harbin Ice and Snow World (Ice Lantern), which was FREEZING! but amazing nonetheless. Earlier that day my friend Cooper and I went to 中央大街 (Zhong Yang Da Jie) which is a really famous area known especially for its Russian architecture and history. I'll take pictures later, promise! At Zhong Yang I bought these cotton surgical masks that all the Chinese wear to protect their nose and mouth from the freezing cold. You can buy plain old white ones or get more stylish ones, I obviously opted for the more stylish ones...that's just how I roll. Here's a pic of the ones I bought.

One is black and white (in case I'm going some where formal duh!) and the other is my everyday 口罩(kou zhao or surgical mask) which is lime green and has little pigs on it. :)

Now, back to the Ice Lantern Festival! Although I was surrounded by ice and snow, and my camera had a battery life of 2 mins before it would freeze and refuse to work, it was a lot of fun. I got to slide down these ice chutes (which I hurt my back on but I'll be fine...), I got to see 5+ story buildings and designs carved out of ice and snow, and (most importantly) I got to hold a REAL arctic fox haha! For the low price of 15 kuai (it was originally 20 but I told him I'd only do it for 15...I'm sure I still got ripped off...welcome to China) The pic is below! Jealous? I know you are! :] The three pics below are me (notice the surgical mask on my face?) and Cooper in front of one of the ice sculptures, the other is a dark one of me in front a gigantic snow sculpture, I wanted you guys to see just how humongous these snow scultpures were! The last is of me dancing on a block of ice to techno music! The Chinese had a good laugh at that!

So yesterday I got to attend an ice hockey game! America vs Russia woo! Apparently, Russian ice hockey players go straight to the pros after high school and THEN got to college...strange...so the average age of the Russian players was 28 whereas our guys' was 20. Needless to say, the Russians beat us 8-0..which is actually pretty good seeing as they beat the other 2 teams they played 12-0 and 14-0 (these are hockey scores!). All in all though I had a good time. It just so happpened that a couple of my friends were at the game too so we got together and cheered for the Americans and booed the Russians. Harbin has a HUGE Russian population so there were yells for Ruskisya! all over the place. My friends and I actually ended up being filmed yelling SUCKS! after the Russians would yell. Classy I know. Don't worry, the Russians were reciprocating and it was all in good fun. Although we did get a little nervous we would be shanked by broken vodka bottles a few times...but all is well. :] If the men's U.S. team beats Japan tomorrow we'll be in the semi-finals! Hopefully I can get a ticket to see that too...

Well, other than that I've just been keeping up with my studying. Seeing as the only extra-curriculars offered by CET were cooking (which got filled up before I could sign up), Chinese radical etymolgy (BORING!), calligraphy (I've already made that mistake, bleh) and Chinese Kung fu (I wanted to do it but no one else signed up and you need at least 3 other people)...I will not be partaking in any CET extra-curricular fun. :[ Instead, I'm going to try and find a gym and take a martial arts class, something I think would be suited more towards what I'm interested in. I'll keep you all informed on what I finally end up doing! Thanks for reading!

Zai Jian!

Jessie :]

Ice Ice Baby!

Well, I finally had my one-on-one class. Yeah. I wasn't sure whether to scream or cry. Maybe it was because I was tired, or maybe it was because she was talking at an unnaturally fast speed but after class my head hurt like a bitch. I'm not too excited about that class anymore, but I'm going to try and stay optimistic about it...after all, it's only WEEK ONE! It's been snowing like crazy the past day or so which makes for some slippery situations. I haven't completely fallen on my face yet, but I'm pretty sure I've created some new dance moves. I'll have to try 'em out in the clubs and see how it goes. Haha! Speaking of clubs... word on the street is that all the bars are closed until March 1st due the University winter games....oh well... speaking of the winter games... (read below)

So apparently Harbin is hosting the 24th University Winter Games! yay! Which means that college students from all over the world (America, Slovakia, Estonia, Australia etc etc.) are here in Harbin competing in various winter activities. Soooo I'm pretty excited to announce that I bought an ice hockey ticket! It's the U.S. vs Russia (Rocky 4-esque) and it was the LAST 100 kuai ticket!! woo-hoo! I'm in the 5th row so maybe I can catch a tooth for a keepsake or something! Not to go all Hannibal Lector on you or anything....;) I'd love to see the snowboarding competition but it's at a ski resort called Yabuli so I'd have to take a bus (3 hours) or train to get there. :( I'm gonna try and see if I can get a group together and possibly go...but we'll see. I'm pretty pumped for the hockey game tho! :D

This weekend we're all going to see the Harbin Ice Lantern Festival and going to eat hot pot. Should be a pretty exciting time, if I don't freeze to death that is. Our RA here told us that one of the guys' lithium battery in his camera froze while he was there...so I'm guessing it'll be pretty cold, esp being surrounded by ice and all. Hmmm....

Well that's all for now. I'll let you guys know how the weekend and hockey game goes!

Zai Jian!

Jessie

Not so bad...

So I'm sitting in my favorite little coffee shop right out of the west gate from campus. The coffee is a bit on the expensive side, for China at least...but the internet is free and the atmosphere is good. I'm currently listening to "Sexual Healing" and thinking if I should give the Chinese guy to my left a little wink...hmmm. ;) Maybe some other time, seeing as we've already been warned about Russian prostitutes.

I had my first 1 on 2 class today! It wasn't too bad besides coming to the harsh realization that my tones suck horribly. :) yay! My teacher is really nice and the 1 on 2 class work isn't too bad. I have my newspaper reading class in about 20 mins, I'm a little nervous but we'll see how it goes. They can't kill you on the first day!...they save that for day 2.

I had a sorta crappy morning trying to use my computer. My favorite little coffee shop doesn't open til 10 (which I didn't know). I assumed it opened at the ass crack of dawn like everything else in china...so I entered a shady wang ba (internet bar) to find a little old woman behind the desk. I told her I only needed 20 mins which she scoffed at and started talking really fast shaking her head. Finally, she held up two fingers signalling it would be 2 kuai. Whatevs. Then I couldn't figure out how to work the computer and she got mad that she had to help me. Stupid laowai. Oh well. It made me a little upset but then I told myself atleast I don't work in a wangba and I felt a little better. I've heard the dong bei ren (northeastern chinese) have a pretty bad temper...so I guess this is my practice if I ever want to live in NYC. :)

Well, I'm gonna study a little more before my class. Thanks for reading and the comments! I miss you guys!

Zai Jian,

Bu Jie Xi

In Harbin!

So we all got into Harbin yesterday by train. The train ride was amazing and super comfortable, I slept like a baby. When we woke up we looked out the window and saw snow everywhere juuuust like Christmas morning. Fuuun! But then we found out that our train had been delayed 2 hours in Shenyang because of the snow. Oh well. When I did get off the train in Harbin it was super freaking cold. There's really not much you can do to prepare yourself for just how cold Harbin really is...unless you take cold showers for like 5 weeks prior to coming here. It's only been a day but my lips are already chapped, and I forgot to pack my long underwear in my carry on so it's been a bit cold.

Yesterday Cooper, Richard and I all decided to explore Harbin a little bit on our own. We started walking and within 5 minutes I couldn't feel my face and pretty soon none of us couldn't even form words. It was pretty funny but secretly we were all dying a little on the inside. We kept popping into little shops along the way for a reprieve from the weather. One such shop was loaded with weird "health foods" such as bear bile and some form of frog capsules that are supposed to be good for something...who knows.

We had the writing and speaking tests already. The writing wasn't too bad but I know I could've done better. Oh well... My speaking test went pretty good...I kept the two women who interviewed me laughing and they said my tones were good. Since today is Valentines day they asked what I normally do. I told them since I don't have a boyfriend I just watch movies, eat and cry. They thought that was pretty funny....little did they know I wasn't joking... :|....haha! Well, I'm supposed to meet my Chinese roommate tonight so that should be interesting. I went with some of the guys to the Sky bar last night to talk to some people. It was fun, there were some Americans there and I talked to a Chinese girl for awhile...my head hurt from that so I'm kind of freaking out about the whole roommate thing...it'll probably get better tho. All the CET students are trying to speak as much English as possible before the language pledge begins Sunday, so we all had a nice intellectual conversation about Obama, the economic situation, racism and I gave my spiel about how I hate affirmative action and everyone was pretty enlightened... :) haha!

I'm kinda freaking out about the language pledge, especially since my jokes aren't funny in Chinese. :( A bunch of the students have already said they're going to be sad when the language pledge starts because I won't be able to joke as much...sadness. :( Oh well, we'll see how everything goes...I'm gonna play on the computer a little and continue sipping my coconut coffee, wasn't the best choice I've made so far. Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes, it really meant a lot! :)

Zai Jian

Jessie

I'm in China!!

Hello everyone!

I finally made it to China and I'm doing pretty good. I got the nerve to ask the flight attendant for a beer, but only after I made sure we had passed the International Date Line. Haha I was so nervous, I had my passport out and everything in case she carded me...which she didn't. :) yay! So I basically get to chill in Beijing for a couple of days until I head out to Harbin with the rest of my classmates. Who are all super cool by the way, and most of them didn't study anything before the trip which made me feel a whoooooole lot better. Nobody wants to be the weakest link...nobody...lin laoshi taught us that. ;)

So my 21st was good and chill. I'm pretty tired so I don't think I could do anything else but eat and wander around a little bit. I'm really excited for the program, especially after talking to some of the people that were in Harbin last semester. It's definitely not going to be the scary place that I had nightmares about....hopefully...it is, I'll be sure to be a pessimistic ass on my blog so everyone will know. yay! Well, I gotta go, I'll talk to you guys later! Be sure to Skype! :)

Zai Jian!

Jessie