My first impressions of Chengdu are not great. My very first: I couldn’t see anything. Grey-out. It’s been raining a bit. Big, industrial. Cheap taxis. Bigger hostel/guesthouse operation than I’d like to stay in, too. Guess I’ll see the pandas and some temples and move on to other things.
I might have graduated recently, but I can’t find anyone to confirm it. I hope I graduated. I’m done with exams now, too, and I should be done with undergraduate education entirely. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do between now and the 12th. There are some nice domestic airfares in China, and […]
This past week: WVU had an interesting presidential selection process, with some overly credulous reporting from Charleston newspapers and some academic drama. One embarrassing article quoted three students in a row favoring the BOG-favored lobbyist candidate (and new President), Garrison. It didn’t mention the connections these three have to each other or to Garrison, but […]
On Sunday, I walked. A lot. I still have a relatively minor but annoyingly placed blister to prove it. First I took the 20 minute walk and the subway to Tian’anmen Square where I forked over the RMB to go into the Forbidden City. It was big and impressive and all—and I liked the garden—but […]
A quick note on the Great Firewall’s practical implications for travelers: blogspot is out. Wikipedia (but not Wikitravel) is out. Gmail and my unheard-of blog are fine, at least until this post. Bloglines is working, which lets me read my friends’ blogspot blogs. Google News works, but most links from it don’t. Youtube works: take […]
I haven’t been keeping very good track of happenings here, so I’ll dump some to this page before I lose more. Yesterday I took a ridiculously cheap Y1.5 bus to the Summer Palace (the new one, not the burned one) which is more of an outdoor attraction. Fortunately, I’ve found myself in a spell of […]
A short departure from NYU (my last post) is Beijing. My flights back over were moderately delayed but otherwise passable, a sure sign that I’ve crossed the Pacific too much (three times, but once might have been enough). I got back late on Monday night, barely made it to campus before the public transport switched […]
Today I went through passport control six times without leaving the country. Such is China. I took the 10:15 ferry from Tuen Mun (!!!) to Zhuhai. This company wants to go to Macau, but Stanley HO doesn’t like the idea of not controlling part of each ferry company landing in Macau (in addition to the […]
My mentioning of Yangshuo and Guilin has only served to get together a group of other exchange students to go there at times when I can’t miss class. Oops. I’ve read that it can brown out a bit in the winter, so that scenery may need to wait for spring. This leaves me with two […]
