Kanbula National Forest Park.  Beautiful huh? Wait till you see the lake! We spent the whole day hiking so I’ll just share the amazing views I got to see! Me in front of wild yaks! After our 2 hour hike, we piled back in the van and returned to the hotel.  However, on the way…

So as I was looking through my pictures of this day and I could not remember what I did!  Why did I take so few pictures! And then I remembered.  This was the day that I got horribly sick because of the elevation. The day started off okay.  We were visiting Ta’er Monastery and had…

Today we traveled far outside the city to visit a small ethnic village of the Tus. The Tus are 1 of the 56 officially recognized minorities of China.  This small village (and the surrounding area) has the highest density of Tus in all of China!  They welcomed us in by giving us these white silk…

The Grand Mosque in Xining is one of the four most important mosques in all of China.  My roommate, Rafannah, is Muslim and gave us a brief history of Islam while explaining the significant parts of the mosque. Muslims will come to this mosque 5 times a day to pray.  About 1,000 people will come…

The next few blog posts will share what I did everyday while in Qinghai province.  I had a wonderful time and hope you enjoy the pictures! It was only a two hour plane ride from Beijing to Qinghai province.  We all quickly unpacked our bags at the hotel and went out to explore the “small…

Tomorrow morning, I will be taking a plane from Beijing to Qinghai with my program.  Qinghai is a province in Northwestern China.  We will have nine days to explore this beautiful region of China.  Qinghai is also located within the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Wikipedia says the average elevation of Qinghai is 9,800 ft.  So I may…

Over the past two days, I’ve seen that I have some really great friends at BLCU.  Yesterday I met with my language partner and she introduced me to her friend.  While my language partner helped me with my Chinese, I helped her friend with her English.  We were both learning and had a lot of…

I’m not much of a bargainer.  I get uncomfortable haggling.  I feel bad, my face gets pink, and (as described by my roommate) I look like I might cry.  It’s just not my personality to get aggressive, play games, and be demanding.  However, I gave it my best shot yesterday.  Located down the street from…

The Summer Palace. What an amazing place! This was the Emperor’s palace during the summer (pretty obvious, right?) because it is located directly along the beautiful Kunming Lake.  Although it is almost October, it was still pretty warm in Beijing.  The breeze instantly cooled you off though.   Unfortunately, today was not a good air…

On Thursday, my Foreign Policy class took a field trip to China’s National Museum.  This museum located across the street from Tian’anmen Square is filled with China’s history from ancient times to the present day.  The building itself is massive.  I’ve never seen a building this large in my life.  I couldn’t even get the…