New video series!

It's really hard for me to make this a blog that isn't exclusively about food. China has so many unique foods and flavors that I know I won't be able to find back home, most of it has been aMMMazing, and some of it has been.... a good experience. I'll make these videos as often as I can (no promises as to how man I upload with the wifi here being what it is, but I'll try to put up as much as a I can)

For my first culinary adventure I decided to be healthy and try a some fruit: http://youtu.be/_WJogJrg2R0 (you also get to meet my roommate LaiLai)

Life at the dorm

Check out this video of what dorm life is like for a foreign student on Shaanxi Normal University's campus: http://youtu.be/wVWF7bO_3Fs

Our resident director said that for the average chinese student at SNU, there are 7 or 8 people to a room and that there is no bathroom. They have to walk outside everytime they want to take a shower! The foreign dorms are a lot more upscale as you can see.

Leaving Beijing

It's been a week since I left Beijing (and updated this blog) and arrived in Xi'an. Here's a very brief look into what my last two days in Beijing were like:

On my first full day in Beijing, The Alliance staff gave us a health and safety briefing followed by a tour of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Then we went to a street that is known for selling exotic foods like starfish, seahorses, and scorpions to name a few.

The next day we took a bicycle rickshaw through a traditional Hutong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutong) and ate a meal that one of the locals cooked for us! Then we needed to go to the train station to get on our overnight train that would take us to Xi'an.

Sorry there are no pics, the wifi is too slow for them to upload :(