lauren is in china (suzhou to be exact) @laurenisinchina - Tumblr Blog

Let’s Start From the Beginning

Link to the very first post and very first day of China:

http://laurenisinchina.tumblr.com/page/12

Day 110, Sunday 12/21/14:

Well study abroad is over. The four months in China have gone by so fast; I can’t believe that finals are over, all of our trips are done, our bags packed, and our dorm rooms empty. First Aimee, then Stella, then Brandon, and now Victoria and me. Tyler is the last man standing, first to arrive, last to leave.

It’s been real China; although our time is over we will always have those memories.

#day 110 #last day in china #goodbye china

Day 109, Saturday 12/20/14:

We have come full circle. Our study abroad started off rocky and now it is ending rocky. Dear lord.

Victoria and I have enough luggage to sustain a family of four for several weeks. What we thought was going to be the hardest part about moving out turned out to be the easiest. Living on the sixth floor with no elevator certainly has its disadvantages. Although our legs are nice and toned now, it did not prepare us to haul our suitcases down all those stairs. Thankfully Steph came over to help us. We also had to make the journey from our dorms to the front gate, which is a good 10-minute walk. Also thought that was going to be a pain, but with Steph’s help it went super smooth. What did turn out to be a huge hassle (that we thought would go fine) was everything after that point. And by everything, I mean EVERYTHING.

Because we had so much luggage, we needed two taxis for the three of us (Victoria, Tyler, and me). Hailing two down was fine, what was not fine was trying to fit everything into the taxis. We were running back and forth between the two trying to get everything in, while cars were honking because the taxis were blocking traffic. In turn the taxi drivers were grumpy because we took so long.

So after an awkward taxi ride with a grumpy driver we arrived only to be missing Tyler who got into the second taxi. He had been dropped off at the actual long distance bus station while we got dropped off at the train station next to it. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if we had known that. Instead we spent the next 30 minuets freaking out because we couldn’t find him, and his China number had no minuets so there was no way of calling or texting him. Finally he put in his American SIM card and we were able to figure everything out.

Getting to Tyler was a whole other adventure. Because Victoria and I had so many suitcases it was impossible for us to carry them down the stairs without leaving some unattended. So we decided to go into the train station and take its escalator down then exit and cross the street to the bus station (can you believe they had no elevators). Going down the escalator was fine, getting out of the building was a whole different story. They had this metal revolving door thing that only fit one person at a time. I tried to go through with one of my suitcases and got stuck…

Luckily these nice workers were watching us and opened up one of the barricades for us to go through. Finally we met up with Tyler and boarded the bus, but not without accidentally sending one of my suitcases tumbling down the escalator.

We had so many suitcases that I had to take two of them, plus two smaller carry on bags down the escalator. I wasn’t able to figure out how to get both all the bags and myself on at the same time, so I figured I would send one suitcase down the escalator by itself. At this point the lady working there was directing me to an elevator, but I was like “nah, I got this.” So I placed it one of the steps and off it went! It was fine for the first five seconds, but as soon as the step behind it started to form it knocked over my bag and down the escalator it went…

At least Tyler was there at the bottom to catch it and none of the wheels broke.

#goodbye suzhou #suzhou university

Pictures of our dorm room! Don’t mind the mess, we were packing.

#suzhou university #dorm room

Day 108, Friday 12/19/14:

Victoria and I’s last adventure around Suzhou.

#day 108 #last adventure #suzhou

Bye bye Brandon!

#bye brandon

Campus continued...

#suzhou #day 108 #suzhou university #shi quan jie

Day 108, Friday 12/19/14:

Some photos of campus.

#day 108 #suzhou university #suzhou

Official Class Picture!

Here it is everybody. 3.4′s official class picture.

#official class picture #class 3.4

Beijing Day 5, Wednesday 12/17/14:

Snake and Spider

So while we were out getting dinner, we stumbled across these two ladies. They were tourist from America and they had just bought a deep fried spider and snake to try.

Side note: these insects were super expensive! It was 80 Yuan for one!

Well they got freaked out and ended up offering them to us without trying any. We decided to take them up on their offer because if you saw my note earlier, these things were super expensive and there was no way we were going to spend almost $14 on one. These ladies turned out to be so nice. We convinced them to try the snake and spider with us. The one that bought the snake agreed pretty easily, so we all had a little bit of it. The one with the spider was a little harder to convince. In the end we all broke off a little piece of its leg (yuck) and had our first taste of spider. They were happy that they got up the courage to try some and we were happy that we didn’t have to spend 80 Yuan.

So what did snake and spider taste like? Nothing, they both tasted like deep fried oil. The hardest part about eating them was having to break off a piece of that spider’s leg.

#beijing #snake and spider #deep fried snake #deep fried spider

Beijing Day 5, Wednesday 12/17/14:

Today was our last day in Beijing, tomorrow we go home early early in the morning. We decided to go back to the pearl market since Tyler missed it the first day and eat Peaking duck since we are here in Beijing. The concierge recommended that we go to this restaurant on Wangfujing not too far away. It was pretty good, so good job concierge! Spent the night wandering around the food street with all the insects for eating.

#beijing #peking duck