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 :]