我太忙了！！！ (I'm too busy!!!)

Hi everyone!!

Sorry for the delay in posting here. I actually got my own wifi here now so the internet is a bit better so I don't have any excuses besides the fact that I am super busy these days. I'm a little disappointed with myself because not only do I want to share my stories of Beijing with all of you, but I also want to have them for me to look back at, and I just feel like there are not enough hours in a day to write about the things that I have been doing lately. Also despite the good internet, the pictures still take FOREVER to upload, but I will try again in another photo post shortly. Also I will try to add tons on Facebook since I have a lot of photos already.

So what have I been up to??

I left off on the Saturday I was going with Vince and Amy to climb a mountain. That was a fun day. First they took me to have breakfast in the dinning hall before we left. I ate a weird tofu soup thing that I didn't like, something called  油条 (you tiao) , and baozi. The we headed for the west of Beijing to the Black Stone Mountain (I think that was the name, but honestly I'm not so sure about it...). We had to drive a long time and Amy was getting car sick, and I wasn't feeling the best either. Vince was driving and it was very congested traffic on the freeway so we had to stop and go a lot. We finally got to the mountain and I used the bathroom before climbing. I was so shocked in there man!!! I walked in and saw some woman squating at the holes, NO DOORS, NO PRIVACY, SO STINKY!!!! hahahaha it was very strange to me, but I had to pee. Took me like 2 minutes to finally go because I was hoping no one is looking at me. It's actually funny to me now, but before I was not laughing as I was squatting over a hole with some old ladies around holding my pack of pocket tissues.. hahaha. I got out of there quick and then we went up the mountain. I saw some goats there, they were cute but they pooped everywhere, little jelly bean pellets. We chatted and climbed up the mountain, and when we got to the top we took some photos. I thought it was really cool even though the pollution was covering the city a bit, but honestly the air wasn't that bad. It was also a warm day. I can't imagine mountain climbing in Maine in February with only a sweater, but man even on the top of the mountain there was only one tiny piece of snow! This place is crazy. Okay well let me see if I can add a photo here in this post, what a miracle it would be....

Oh!!!! Well would you looky here!!! It went almost as fast as a turtle as opposed to a snail! Yeah, that's my on the mountain top with Beijing behind me. I also took photos wit Vince and Amy but I will not add those ones because I just need to write this before I get too lazy! So after the photos we made our way down the mountain and then Vince wanted to take me to a restaurant that serves "delicacies". Don't listen to a Chinese person when they use this word. It means "food that Americans are going to hate with a passion because it's so out of this world because it's insides of animals and yucky bean/tofu mixtures with weird sauce". Just beware!!!!! So yes, I tried everything, which included sheep stomach and pig intestines... They were all very terrible. So after this time of Vince eating almost everything and even Amy didn't eat many of them because she didn't really like it like Vince does. After we went and I got some chicken elsewhere which was good. :) Then we went to a place called 后海 (hou hai), which is a little place near a small pond with bars and food stands that young people like to go to on the weekends. So it was just the afternoon and we went into a little bar and got hot chocolate and listened to a girl playing some music which we were chatting for a few hours. Then it got later and Vince took up home. I really had a lot of fun though, I felt like I made some great friends, they both are so nice and helpful to me. Okay here is a photo of my day which is from Amy:

hahahah look at me suffering through this jelly soup thing!!!! hahhahaha. Oh, and Amy! <3 

So that was Saturday, what happened on Sunday...? I don't even remember man!! .................... I'm really thinking about this. What did I do..??? Oh!!! It was the lantern festival. I don't know what I did during the day, but at night I went with a woman named Loraine, also a professor in UMF and we went to see the lanterns on the street for the festival. Here is a photo:

Yeah look at those lanterns man! I thought they were really cool and I have tons of photos, but this is the only one I will include here. So we just walked and talked and saw the lanterns and took photos with Chinese people, which is a bit odd. They just come and say, "hello, can we have picture with you???". hahaha aww man. Also there were a lot of fireworks/firecrackers booming everywhere. We almost walked on firecrackers! And when I went back in my room at 11pm there were girls outside shooting some off outside the window. I could see them so well man! But I had to go to bed so I could go to class in the morning. 

Now sorry, I am going to stop this here, but I promise to write another post later to continue the story. Right now I will go to the dinning hall for dinner with some Americans. :)) So bye!!