I got to meet "Merry" from the Lord of the Rings after waiting in an airplane for almost 24 hours!

9/16

Time to go…or maybe not. We left our hostel and crammed who was leaving (about half of us stayed in China for a while longer, those who have already graduated) in a van and went to the airport.
Okay, this is where the real fun began.
We got on the plane at about 11:15 China time. We were SUPPOSED to leave at 11:30. So first one of the pilots emergency oxygen masks was missing and there was not one extra one on any other plane or in the entire airport. So they had one rush flown in from some place else. This took a couple hours.
Next there were some sick people on the plane and no doctors onboard to help them. So they had to get more doctors (and I found out later were supposed to take the plane away from the airport but refused to so the “punished” the American crew by making us all wait for the rest of the planes at the airport to leave). People became very pissed and restless by about the third or fourth hour onboard, but I actually was okay. I kept myself entertained with music, computer and cards. It was funny how ridiculous the whole situation was.
So next they had to get about half the people who left the plane back on board, which took another good hour or so. Then the our crew was over their limit in working hours for the day so they had to go find another crew off another plane to take us back. They eventually found a plane going to D.C., cancelled that flight because we had more people than they did, and the D.C. crew came to deal with hundreds of pissed as hell passengers (their lucky day). Speaking of which, the flight number was UA 888 CA 8888. All 8’s and in China, 8 is a lucky number meaning wealth. But if time was money, we were bankrupt. It was so ironic and even before we boarded the flight I thought to myself, “All these eights, I bet we’ll have bad luck instead of good.” God I hate it when I’m right.
So, new crew, passengers back on, it’s about 5-5:30 China time. Now they gotta check out the entire plane for safety and get some luggage back on and off for the people returning back and the people not returning back.
Then there was one more thing I think… what was it… I can’t remember right now and that’s actually fine with me. Guess what time we ended up leaving… If you guessed 6 you’re wrong, if you guess 7 you’re wrong. 7:40pm, China time. We weighted in one little area for over 8 hours. We sat parked at the Beijing airport and didn’t move for an entire working day.
So naturally our flight from San Fran back to Eugene was totally screwed. We traveled back in time and finally arrived 10.5 hours later at San Francisco about 3:30 pm Pacific standard time. We got home even before we left.
More long waiting in line to get our new flights.
Something really cool did turn out of it all. As I was finally checking my bags for a 9:20 pm flight back to Eugene I saw Dominic Monaghan (“Merry”, one of the hobbits from the Lord of the Rings movies). I went up to him and spoke with him for a bit, got my picture with him and was on my way. He was on his way to LA for business.
The airline gave us $15 for some dinner in the airport. I ate pepperoni pizza (awesome to have again) and some Kettle chips. I read a magazine, worked on some blogs, then got on the flight. And the UO girls soccer team was there coming back from some games at Salt Lake City.
The hour flight home felt lightning quick compared to the rest of the day. It’s good to be home. :)

A dollar saved is 7.5 yuan not spent on Chinese stuff.

9/15

Onto the largest market I’ve ever seen. If you wanted something Chinese, this was the place to come. It was like our Saturday market times 50. Needless to say I spent almost the rest of my money there and I got some really neat stuff to bring back home. (and I bought another bag so that I could get it all back!).
After I figured I had spent too much (actually it wasn’t too much but it sounded like a lot in Yuan) I went back to the hostel to finish up my final project to be shown at 4 to the group.
The project turned out fantastic. I did three time lapses of the last three places we had been. The Great Wall, Forbidden City, and Temple of Heaven. I was actually very pleased with how it turned out. I’m sure I’ll do another time lapse problem in the future.
On a side not I realize there are a lot of mistakes and typos in this blog. Some are mine but some are screwed up translations cause I posted many of these blogs on the Chinese version of blogspot.com, so that’s my excuse for that…
After the projects were shown we went to get some world famous Peking duck (awesome!)
After dinner we went to a Chinese show at a tea house. It was really cool. There were impressionists, kung fu artists, and shadow puppets. Very entertaining stuff.
Then we packed up and got ready to leave the next day.

Temple of Heaven... and I bought a sword.

9/14

Today we went to the Temple of Heaven. It was a rainy day but Tim, Jen and I still decided we would rent bikes and ride there. It was about a 45 minute ride from our hostel to the temple. The rain wasn’t coming down too hard so it was really fun.
The temple was very beautiful. I must give it its due even though the great wall and the forbidden city completely blew it out of the water. But it was a nice tour till about noon then we went back to the hostel for lunch and had a free day for the rest of the day.
I took the freeness to go out and do a little bit of haggling for some gifts for friends and family back home and possible a suit. After a ridiculously long taxi ride by myself I got to the silk district in Beijing. I found no suit (I must have not looked hard enough) but I got a sword! (maybe I was a little distracted). Because of the long taxi ride I didn’t have a lot of time so I got back in time to leave for dinner.
It was a slower day, but that was nice.
Until the night. We went out partying. Very fun. And during our taxi rides we found that there are no open container laws in China.

Take shelter from the wind pond cuttlefish Zi!

9/13

Onward to the Forbidden City! The day started a little rough. Four of us got into a taxi and neither Ying nor Edwin was with us. The driver took advantage of us, charged us much more than we should have, and dropped us three or four blocks away from where we really needed to be. We were lost for about an hour and a half and walked all they way around the outside of the imperial city to the south entrance (and apparently we were supposed to enter at the north entrance).
It was worth it to finally make it in though. The four of us got over our frustration for being lost and enjoyed the sites. The buildings were beautiful and huge. It was a bummer though cause a few of the bigger ones were under construction (tidying up for the Olympics next year) and they were covered with stories and stories of bamboo for the workers to use.
We luckily ran into the rest of the group after about an hour but then everyone split up to do their own thing (some of us made plans to meet up at Tiananmen Square in a few hours). I went to the man made mountain just to the north of the Forbidden city so that I could check out the view and the incredibly organized layout. Also while I was up there I took the opportunity to dress up in an emperor’s clothing and get my picture on a thrown. It was pretty funny.
A few of us walked around Tienament square and around the surrounding area which is very under construction for the Olympics in 08.
We went out to eat and the menu had the funniest translation to English that we had seen yet. Menu items included, “Fragrant and hot pig hand. The fire explodes kidney. Take shelter from the wind pond cuttlefish Zi.” Just to name a few.

Great Wall trek and the hostle

9/12
What an amazing day! The trek on the Great Wall was absolutely incredible (the pics do not do justice)! It was so surreal (like I have said), the wall just goes on and on as far as the eye can see in both directions. I started my third project by taking a bunch of pictures of sunrise to the afternoon. I plan on making a time-lapse video out of it.
We woke up at around 5:30am but I’ve never been so awake with so little sleep. Our groups energy was awesome. It was so inspiring that Ying’s husband David (whose a little bit more heavyset) decided he would join the group on the 5 mile (or 7.5km to be exact) hike on some sketchy parts of the Great Wall.
The hike flew by so quickly even though it took us about 3 – 3.5 hours. I’ll tell much more about the wall if you ever ask me.
I was in the first of a few groups to reach the final tower of our hike (we went from tower 4 where we slept to tower 30). We waited and haggled a bit with the merchants waiting for tourists. It wasn’t too long for everyone to meet up and we started to head for lunch (we were STARVED!). We heard there was a cable car to take us down but we all didn’t want to pay for it. Then as I walked by it I realized it was a zip line. Instantly I was in and most of the group followed. It was only 35 yuan (a little over $4) and it was so much fun. It zipped us from next to the Great Wall down over a river to the base where we took a boat from there to get to where we would eat lunch.
We ate our fill as usual then headed out (and slept on the ride home, it felt like it should have been night). Two hours later we were back in Beijing and we headed over to our hostel. We all expected it to be shady but it turned out to be the living arrangement favorite. It was like a small community area. Our group took up most of the rooms but there were ironically a guy who was doing graduate school at U of Washington. There were also two girls traveling together, one had gone to George Fox in Oregon the other somewhere in Portland. Small world! And Andy (Washington guy) said that a few days before our arrival some Duck graduates had stayed there as well. Must be a popular place for people of the Northwest even though Ying had just randomly run into the site for it on the net.
There were also a mother cat, two kittens and a turtle for pets crawling around the area and letting themselves into our rooms which was really cool.

Beijing and the Great Wall

9/11

We woke up early yet again to head to Beijing. We caught our train at 7:00 and we rode first class!
When we arrived in Beijing we went to China central Academy of Fine Arts (one of the top revered Art universities in the world). It was awesome. A top notch campus full of everything a digital artist (amount all other artists) could every want. It really inspired me to apply for my masters even though they only accept less than 2% of their applicants (but they said that they really liked to accept more foreigners especially English speaking). We’ll see if anything every comes of that, but I was very inspired being at the campus.
After the lunch and tour of the campus it was off for sleeping on the great wall. The drove through some of the countryside for two hours until we arrived. It was surreal being there. We made it for sunset but there was too many clouds and smog to see the sun. We had an awesome home cooked meal from the people who host the overnights on the wall. Afterwards we hiked a little ways we arrived at the tower. We received a sleeping bag, pillow, and a bit of padding for the stone floor. There were odd bugs crawling around which was a little creepy but it was still amazing. We slept outside underneath the stars (but we could only see a few through the smog).

"Little Tiger"

9/10

Today is set up and show day. We met with the president of the Shandong University of Art and Design early in the morning. Then it was on to setting up the show. It went fairly smoothly. We were surprised to find that all of our projects were printed out already on foam core. Yao and my projects were simple enough although there was some confusion (big surprise) and we didn’t get a projector to put up our animation on so we just used my laptop.
I wasn’t particularly proud of all our projects but when the show started and the room was filled with people admiring our work, I had to have a little pride for what I had accomplished. It was pretty cool. And I made a speech on behalf of our UO students, which was pretty cool. I spoke a few sentences and then Edwin would translate (and the crowd thought it was pretty entertaining).
When the show was about finished we did another took another long sheet of paper for everyone to doodle on. A few students, including myself, took advantage of the sumi ink available and soaked our hands in it and painted like that. All in all it was very fun.
After we said our sad goodbyes to the students we headed back to the dooms to shower and get ready for dinner with the professors and president.
The dinner was very interesting to say the least. The restaurant was very beautiful and the food was very “richly” prepared (small amounts of different types of food). Many people including myself were served some small bottles of alcohol to drink. The bottles were full with about four shots worth of their 112 proof “bi-joe” (liquor). There were many toasts and we only drank about a 1/4 shot at a time. Before long the alcohol took effect and then came the randomness. First one of our waitress preformed some Chinese opera karaoke which was quite hard on our ears. Then the president did some Chinese opera, then Ying sang a song (not opera though), then Drew (brave) and then Jackie did another opera song (the only one my ears could really take). Then the lights dimmed and we were expected to start dancing to “rock and roll” (techno/hip-hop). When practically no one got up to dance they turned the lights back on and the president insisted we were too tired or not drunk enough, so more drinking commenced. Then I got a new nickname, “Little Tiger”. The president proposed a toast to people who were born in the year of the tiger (Myself, the president, and Ying’s husband David). Some where in the mix I commented that the president there was less in my little bottle than in his (oops). The president laughed and came over to me, got me another bottle, and poured me a full shots worth (which was insane). We toasted and someone translated later that he called me a Little Tiger.
Later that night many of us went for another round of massages.