eXL Dance Performance

My friends and I, but mostly thanks to Harley (extreme heart in planning anything and everything) organized a hip hop dance group of local and exchange students at the beginning of the semester. We practiced 2 nights a week, sometimes on weekends too, for the whole semester to prepare for our performance on this past Friday, May 8th at the Cultural Exchange Showcase (a variety of talents from around the world)... which was a 2-hour show also organized by Harley! Haha.

Here is the video from our show! Hope you like it! (If you watch carefully at 5:48, I got kicked in the face going up into the freeze.. hard hahah)

SB: 1st Stop, Xi'an, China

I had never really heard of Xi'an before this trip, so I had no idea what to expect. Our flight from Shenzhen took about 2 hours (with a meal). It wasn't too painful to find out youth hostel in the city, and we were happy to see that it was a lot nicer and cooler than we expected. It was a really old building and it was intensely decorated on the inside. We slept in the basement, and I shared a room with 2 other girls, Hawra and Jasmine. Everything about the hostel was great, except one MAJOR problem.

There was a cat (or 2 at one point) living in the vents above all of our rooms. Every night, the cats would run, fight, scream (have you ever heard a cat scream?? Well I have now.), hiss, tumble, screech ALL night long. It was the worst thing of my life. The cat was mostly above our room the whole time, but all the other people down the hall said they heard it all night too. Hawra was using the bathroom earlier in the evening when suddenly the ceiling light fixture was kicked out by this devil-cat, and it almost fell on her. So now we had a wide opening for any rabid animal to come tumbling down into our room. Great.

After the first sleepless night, we informed the front desk staff of the hostel, but our attempts to clearly convey "cat in ceiling" failed. And I'm sure it would have been an unbelievable story to someone who COULD understand English. So of course, it was still there the next night, screaming and wailing its face off. Jasmine and I decided to booby-trap our vent and see if we could get the cat to fall through when it stepped on the vent covering (and yes, then releasing this wild and furious lion into our room..).
After setting up a camera to film the room while we left for dinner, we came back terrified of the possibility of this thing being in or room or having torn apart our stuff in its rage. But no, it was still in the ceiling. Every night we stayed in Xi'an.

Despite all the drama with the cat, Xi'an was fun. There were night markets and day markets, and the main site we visited was the Army of Terracotta Warriors. There are over 6000 life-size soldiers and horses that guard the tomb of the first emperor Qin Shi Huang
Another touristy attraction we saw in Xi-an was the Huaqing Pool, or ancient natural hot springs. The pools served as private hot baths for emperors during the Tang dynasty. This area was really pretty and we enjoyed walking around the gardens and pools. I may or may not have received a curse from ancient emperors from climbing over the barrier fence and climbing down into the hot spring pool to collect as many Chinese coins as I could. There's a video.



We also saw the Banpo Neolithic Village, which is remains from supposedly 6000 years ago.. I don't know.. but it was still pretty neat. We traveled about 2 hours out of the civilized city into the much more shady and underdeveloped areas... where the stares from the locals quickly changed from ones of facination to ones of sheer surprise that we were spotted in such an area. That was a bad sign right away. But we ended up being safe, and by the time we got to the village site, it had actually just closed. Harley used his average Mandarin skills and above-average persuasive skills to get us all in. So we had the whole park/museum to ourselves. We saw old mud huts and burial sites. More interesting than it sounds though!


We also went up in the Bell Tower and Drum Tower, which each had a great view of the traffic down below. Others got a much better video than I did.. but here's just a sample:



In the Bell Tower, we by chance caught the musical show they do every day.

Spring Break - China

I just returned from an incredible 11-day spring break tour of mainland China. 1200 pictures and videos later, I have a million stories to tell. First of all, a group of 12 exchange students (10 Americans, 1 Swedish, and 1 Finnish) went on the trip. Our itinerary looked like this: MTR from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, China, flight to Xian, flight to Hefei, 7-hour train to Huang Shan, 3-hour bus to Shanghai, flight back to Shenzhen.

Each city we traveled too was completely different from the others, so it was really neat to see a bunch of different places.

Here is a picture of almost all of our group in front of our hostel in Xian! (minus Ari and Sophia)

Just for Mamita :)

List of Foods I Have Eaten in the Past Week:

• Cow Stomach
• Ox Tail
  
• Chicken Feet
• Pork Cartilage
• Pig Ear
• Goose
• Duck
• Oyster Omelets
  
• Beef Tendons
• Prawn Chips
• Red Bean Soup
• Eel
• Tapioca soup with coconut milk
• Ramen Noodles
  

Mosquito Pond

There have been construction crews right outside of the dorms every morning (VERY early) working to clean out the entire pond that sits between Hall IV and Hall VI.. a pond that the locals call "Mosquito Pond" and other names that embody its grossness and smell. Apparently. I didn't notice if it smelled or not before they started draining it, but it was definitely solid brown. On good days you could see the poor koi fish in it. A local told me they didn't take the fish out before they drained it either :(

So after the pond was completely drained, they brought in dump trucks and loaders to shovel out all the muck and mud that was at the bottom. I think the whole project took about 3 weeks but was still not quite finished.

We enjoyed a monsoon today, all day.

I Need to Learn to Bring My Camera Everywhere

So of all the bizarre things that happen on campus at the most obscure times, yesterday there was a full-out fashion show with a runway and wedding gowns and evening gowns in the middle of campus. I stood and watched about 15 minutes of the elaborate display of tiny models (which were students) carefully walking in these enormous dresses and then as soon as they stepped backstage we could see them sprint off to go change, heels and all, with someone carrying their train behind them.

My friend Harley and I stood in disbelief at the whole ordeal, and we were both angry we didn't have cameras or something because how could we even explain this to friends back home?? Still not completely sure of the whole purpose of the show, but it was put on by the Accounting Society Cabinet called "Accent," so I think all the models were accounting students and all the dresses were sponsored by different companies and there was a vote for the best one at the end of the show. I had to go to class...

So after a month into the semester, I am still unable to completely explain or understand the extent of student involvement here. So I will do my best to explain what I got the privilege to experience (and if it sounds weird or confusing, then it was to me as well.. but I promise I am not exagerrating anything).

There are a ton of student organizations that do so much work for their groups. The first weeks of school were called "Promotion Period," where each "nominated cabinet" of the groups built enormous displays (practically parade floats) at which they stood every day to promote their group. For the Fourster Army (Hall IV's student cabinet), they built a huge army tank and marched all around campus in their green suits, rubber boots, guns, and helmets, chanting different things.

Rosa, Yi, and me with two of the 20 Fourster members. One of their many green outfits (green plastic pants). The best was big furry green onesies decorated to the Fourster theme. Again, so much time involved in making these costumes for each day.

Every other student group had something similar or even more ridiculous. The atrium of campus was filled with screaming and chanting every single day from these students passing out free food and prizes and folders and promoting their group. Every day it got more and more ridiculous as it got closer to the "polling dates" where students voted for the groups? Still don't fully understand how the polling worked.. but okay.



One day that I actually had my camera on me but I didn't take nearly enough pictures to do the whole scene justice.



Here is one of the chants going. Still have no idea of what Chinese words are being yelled out, but I got the hand motions down:
I found out from various sources that these students neither sleep nor go to any of their classes for at least the first 2-3 weeks because they are up all night either making crazy supplies for the next day, or having meetings, or practicing their cheers and chants outside.. it usually STARTS at midnight and goes well into the night.. 3 or 4am. I have learned every night to fall asleep to the soothing Cantonese shouts. They also get up well before 6am, if they even slept at all, to get back onto campus for the next day's festivities of promoting. And there was never a lull in the day where the groups weren't out there. Someone also told me that they rotated shifts of guarding the tank, so it was never left unattended throughout the day and night.

They organize all this events like hall breakfasts, vodka nights, pub nights.... I have no idea. So talk about something consuming your life! I thought my job this summer with Orientation was tough!

Just when we thought it was winding down about the 3rd week in, the yelling in the atrium was a constant roar of battling violently choerographed cheers and stomping back and forth among the groups, and then suddenly all at the same time. I took a video on my phone of it as I dodged through the madness on my effort to get to class.. but I think others got much better video of it.
Here are just a couple that I found from this year that are pretty good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXMUQTSZOjM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDyNTbZFX3Q&feature=related

What they say, I will probably never know, but it is so unbelievable how intense it was.

Although some of the groups are past their polling dates and have begun coming to class, Fourster and the Accounting Society are still at it every night and day. So fun, but I have talked to many of the local students about and they are absolutely exhausted and they are all sick. :( Then they ask us if we do anything like this at our schools.. lol.