HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!
I need to apologize for such a late blog post... we have been in China for the past ten days touring, and the firewall has been ridiculous. It was a nice break from facebook, but it also meant no blogging for me! And now I have to catch y'all up on one of the most eventful touring weeks of Global. Where to start?

Okay, I'll just start in the beginning of China. We flew to Shanghai from Hong Kong and let me tell you, it was a weather SHOCK. It was freezing! Most of my time spent in China, I wore three layers of pants, two layers of socks, and at LEAST four layers of shirts/jackets/coats. Plus scarves, mittens, gloves, hat, etc. Freezing! We stayed at the East China Normal University and met up with some St. Olaf students who had been studying there for the semester--they took us to a bar nearby and introduced us to some of their friends. We also had our first meal, and I'm not sure if their intention was to freak us out but we were pretty unsure about what half of the things were on our plates! Most of our meals in China were in the form of a round table with a lazy susan in the middle that had about 20 dishes placed on it throughout the meal for us to spin and choose from. Our first meal had some normal food, but we also tried cow stomach, fermented meat, soup with baby eel in it, and lotus root stuffed with rice. Talk about culture shock! I was experimental with all this food in the first few days but after a while I got a little sick of it. ANYWAY, our first full day there we visited a museum to see many of the pieces that we had studied in our Hong Kong Chinese art course, which was pretty interesting. On Christmas Eve we traveled to Suzhou for a day to walk through the famous Chinese gardens there. They were striking--very different from American gardens in that there are absolutely no flowers, but a lot of grass and gigantic rocks that are put together to look like mountains. You can even walk through these mini "mountain ranges." There are also beautiful pagodas, small buildings, and ponds. We had Christmas eve dinner that night at a hotel by the campus and I missed my family a LOT, as did everyone else. The next day was Christmas, obviously. It was definitely a Christmas to remember, partly because it was in China but mostly because it was my first Christmas away from my family. We read aloud emails from our parents about Christmas  memories and there were definitely some tears, but our professors did their best to provide a nice little Christmas celebration for us. We had a tiny tree, a secret santa gift exchange, Christmas cookies with hot cocoa, and special engraved Global necklaces from our professors! We also sang some impromptu Christmas carols, which was hilarious but surprisingly good. That night I skyped my family and they pretended I was with them by taking pictures with me, sitting me on the couch, and opening their stockings in front of me. It was such a blessing and I'm glad they shared that with me.

The next day we took the high speed train (305 km/hour! WOW!) to Tai'an, a town I'd never heard of and ended up not knowing much about even after we left. Pretty much all we did there was climb a mountain with a temple on the top (I actually didn't even make it to the top--too cold!) and watch the movie Mulan. The next day we visited Qufu, the town where Confucius lived, and saw a temple, Confucius' family  mansion, and his grave. All very cold and to be honest, I don't remember learning much because it was so darn hard to understand ANYTHING our guide said.

Next, to Beijing! THIS was my favorite part, and there was so much to tour here that we stayed a full five days. I heard that we only saw about 1/6th of all the sights there are to see in Beijing. First we visited Tiananmen Square and saw all of the Chinese propoganda. I thought of my cousin Tommy when we were there because I kept thinking that he'd been in this very spot in the summer! We visited the Forbidden City and saw the emperor's residential quarters as well as the Hall of Supreme Harmony or whatever it's called. There were so many halls, I've lost track. After lunch we saw the Temple of Heaven, a huge round pagoda that the emperor visited once a year to pray to heaven for blessings and to re-receive his command to still be emperor...funny how he always got the "okay" to stay emperor every year...

The next day was one of my favorites in China. We climbed the GREAT WALL! Woohoo! It was a blast but also pretty treacherous. There was ice all the way up and I definitely almost went down a couple of times. The views of the mountains surrounding us were absolutely gorgeous, and it wasn't too crowded because it's off-season. At the very top there was a watchtower with a huge platform and although we don't think it was allowed, we climbed on top to be at  the TIP-TOP of the wall. There were no guardrails and the wind was blowing so hard we thought we'd fall off! But it was quite a thrill. It made me want to tour everywhere during off-season because you get to do stupid, crazy things like that when there aren't as many people around ;) After the amazing Wall, we trekked on over to the Olympic Village, which I was super excited about. We saw the Water Cube where Michael Phelps got his gold medals and half of the building has been converted into a giant water park. Unfortunately we all forgot our swimsuits. The Bird's Nest was right across from the Water Cube so we visited that next, and since the top of the arena is open it was freezing inside, in fact it was so cold that they had set up sledding and cross-country skiing inside, and they were in the process of building a giant ice castle! The entire arena was filled with snow. Good use of all that space in the winter, I guess! That night we ate Peking duck--my first time--and I literally stuffed myself. It was one of the most delicious birds I've ever eaten. Then after stuffing myself THERE we decided to go to Haagen Dasz. Now it wasn't just ANY old Haagen Dasz ice cream place...it was a RESTAURANT. So I ordered a Belgian Blossom which was a gigantic ball of pure chocolate (as big as my head) filled with 8 scoops of ice cream, on a bed of chocolate shavings. They pour melted chocolate on it to crack it open. We could not finish and I swear I was in a sugar coma the rest of the night.

The next day we visited the Summer Palace, smashed some ice on the lake like little kids, and drank tea at a fancy teahouse. Then it was New Year's Eve, and this is one night I will never forget. New Year's eve day was pretty interesting; we did a lot of hikes and made our way through a couple of parks, then got pulled in a pedicab to a 'hutong,' a preserved neighborhood from Imperial times, to see a 350-year old house that is still inhabited. The family there was very nice and the husband was a professional artist, so some people bought his paintings. China has kept these neighborhoods intact and they've had to restore some of the houses, but that just means thickening the walls and adding plumbing, heating, and electricity. Otherwise they are intact, which is amazing. Now, New Year's Eve was actually INSANE. We started out calmly by eating Korean barbecue (you grill your own meal right in front of you). Then we headed to the Summer Palace, where we'd gotten special invitations from the Chinese government to attend their first ever New Year's eve show there. We were told it was going to be China's equivalent of the ball-drop in Times Square. It was pretty exclusive, people were almost tackling our tour guide for his extra tickets and we had to rush in before they tried to get OURS. Once there, we got free backpacks with mittens, hats, scarves, earmuffs, balloons, and light-up pins to wear and we were taken to a stage/platform they had set up on the ice. Pretty soon we realized we were probably the only American tourists there, and the paparazzi figured this out as well because they went CRAZY on us. They had us posing for pictures constantly, and whenever we did ANYTHING cute (smile, hug, put on our light-up 2013 glasses) they would be in our faces snapping pictures. When the opening ceremony began, I must have been standing in the right place at the right time because all of a sudden I watched some officials pass in front of me and stand on my left, and I was told they were the senior deputy and the mayor of Beijing. They were on my left and to my right was a pretty lady with a microphone. I noticed a camera right in front of us and realized I was on national and international television, an American tourist standing right between the officials of Beijing and the host for the night! I smiled dumbly and held a huge balloon and didn't know what to do as they started the night's celebrations. Then later I was interviewed by a reporter asking me to make a new year's wish. The show in itself was pretty cool, with lasers and singers, and our group got overexcited at the new year which brought the paparazzi back to us. We felt like celebrities and it was absolutely CRAZY. A really fun experience though! We were wired the rest of the night!

Thankfully, New Year's day was free for us to relax and sleep off our previous night's excitement, and the next day we flew to Seoul! Now we are here and we're pretty much just in the orientation stage, and the most exciting thing so far is that we received free Yonsei University sweatshirts. More to come!

Sorry for the super long blog post!