Back to Earth!

Wow! It's good to finally have internet again! I feel like I've had no connection to the outside world. I've spent the last two weeks living off a Blackberry, which got EDGE service at the camp. This meant I could check my gmail every once in a while, although it took 10 minutes to load (if it loaded at all). Anyway, I'm excited to tell you all about the first camp, but first I have to tell you about my journey from camp to Vienna!

Camp ended perfectly, with everyone thoroughly overwhelmed with emotions about leaving the people they had gotten to know so closely the past couple weeks. There were tears, laughs, and hugs to say goodbye to each other. Every single one of the students made a huge impact on us, and we're all so excited to see how much they grew as people during their time at MBM. When it finally came time to say goodbye, I was wondering to myself, when, during these past few weeks, these students changed from shy people into a close-knit group of friends that have experienced so much together. It really made me happy.

On our bus from Velké Meziřiči to Brno was great. Although most of the students went to Prague, we had Frank, Johnny and Igor to accompany us to Brno. I fell asleep right away because I was absolutely exhausted, and when we arrived to Brno, we had 20 minutes to get from one bus station to the other. Remember how I'm always running to catch a bus, train, plane, boat, etc etc? Well this time, I didn't have to! But I almost did. It was me, Harrison and the 6 girls each with luggage and tired from camp. And getting from one bus station to the next was about as fun as trying to drag a stubborn bull to the market (bad analogy, but I'm tired so give me a break). We ended up arriving to the other bus station a few minutes before our bus departed, and I was convinced that we were going to have to run for it.

Our bus from Brno to Vienna (Wien) was a wonderful ride through the countryside. I once again fell asleep but luckily this bus had nice air conditioning and comfortable seats. When we arrived in Vienna, I had to navigate the subways and dig through my backpack for the hostel information. We were staying at a hostel right off the subway line, and so we began to search for the line, which was luckily right around the corner. We went to the subway and I found our stop. Everything is now in Euros, which means I'm going to be absolutely devastated when I go to purchase items that are American prices (2 euro waters, 4 euro sandwiches, etc) but really in Euros which means that It's not a $2 bottle of water but $2.50 and so on and so on. It doesn't help that Vienna is one of the most expensive cities in Europe (we just found out) but I'm pretty sure that tomorrow will be an awesome day full of fun.

When we arrived to our hostel, we checked in and found out that actually when we made the reservation we only made it for four people for two nights. That means that four of us are in deep trouble! It actually wasn't me who booked this but I paid for it to make it easier for everyone, and our preparation for this trip wasn't quite spectacular. We went out for Ana's birthday the night before, and we were rushing to go to the Green Day concert in Prague afterwards (which was a spectacular show!), so I can easily see how this confusion happened. Luckily the hostel has room for everyone tonight for a decent price (15 euro per person), but four of us have to move out tomorrow because they don't have enough beds for everyone for two nights. Luckily, I'm staying with Jolin, Ekta and Aysegul at the hostel and Ana, Tete, Harrison and Lessya are going to find another hostel or hotel to live in tomorrow. I know we won't have this problem in Budapest (because I had double and triple checked everything before hand), but knowing my luck, we'll probably get lost or something finding the place.

When everything was settled with the hostel, we dropped our stuff off and made our way into the city center. It was already 8 PM by the time we left, and when we arrived, we walked around a bit and found a really nice Asian place to eat. The funniest part about dinner was that there were Chinese people working in the restaurant, and it was easier for me to speak Chinese with them than to try and order in English or German (the language spoken in Austria). After dinner, we walked along the Danube River (the longest in Europe) and called it a night. We've all been internet starved and so we headed back to the hostel to catch up on our lives at home.

I'm extremely tired right now, so I apologize if this post doesn't make sense or is a little messy. I'm heading to bed. Tomorrow we're waking up early to go sight seeing. Be prepared for when I return to Velké Meziřiči for the second camp, I'll have a post scheduled for every single day I'm away. Good night!

A National Lampoon Chinese Vacation

I'm back from yet another adventure. This time my travels have taken me to Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou. All of these cities are located along the central part of China's east coast. We arrived in Shanghai Saturday morning and I was absolutely ready to go exploring around town. Shanghai has over 15 million residents living in this sprawled out, skyscraper ridden maze of streets. The buildings are tall, spaced out and everywhere. The people crowd the sidewalks and the cars make crossing the street a headache, constantly turning left to right watching for turning cars, swerving vehicles and other pedestrians. It reminded me so much of New York City and that is probably my favorite part of Shanghai. Our hostel was located near the Bund. The Bund is a European district across the river from the Pudong Financial District. From the Bund, I enjoyed looking at the European style architecture while at the same time looking across the river at the Jin Mao tower, Pearl of the Orient TV Tower, and Shanghai International Finance Centre. These buildings are well over 70 stories tall. It was a beautiful skyline. After hanging out in the Bund, we walked down Nanjing Road, famous for market shopping and other stores. We ate dinner at the French Concession, which is an expat neighborhood in Shanghai that was originally a French colonization. The area was pretty cool but very expensive. We enjoyed some Thai food and headed to an Irish pub afterwards.

Sunday morning was the official start of the National Holiday. The Bund was closed because there are too many people and the government takes precaution to make sure people don't fall over the wall into the river. We headed to Yu Garden, just south of the Bund. The Yu Garden was amazing. We found a lot better markets around there and found some cool gifts. After hanging around the gardens and eating lunch, we took a ferry over to the Pudong Financial District. From here, we walked down to the Pearl of the Orient TV Tower and went to the top. By the time we arrived, the sun was beginning to set and reflect off the glass skyscrapers. From the top, we couldn't even see the end of Shanghai, the horizon was dotted with far away apartment buildings and the rest faded away in the haze. It was amazing to see such a great city. We were surprised by how much the wealth gap effected Shanghai. The juxtaposition of old Hutongs and soaring skyscrapers was incredible. We wandered through a hutong and were awed when we looked up and could see 50 story office buildings just a few blocks away.
After the TV tower, we met up with our friend Serena, who studies at a university in Shanghai. She took us out to a great dinner for authentic Shanghainese cuisine. It was so delicious. Apparently, Shanghainese and other southern provinces do not serve as large of portions as Northern provinces, so we ended up having to order a few extra dishes to fill our American sized appetites. Afterwards, Serena showed us a Roman Catholic Church nearby. It was a beautiful church and unfortunately it was closed but it was the first I've seen in China.

Monday we left for Hangzhou, which is a great city. Located in a small mountain range, the main attraction here is the lake. Hangzhou is the number one tourist spot in China and I could definitely see why. You know how you are always looking for the perfect place to have a great family reunion, or to take your family for a relaxing weekend? This is definitely the place. The lake offers peaceful views and refreshing breezes perfect for flying a colorful kite or walking around. There are a couple pedestrian bridges crossing the lake that make it perfect to walk across or even ride your bike. We rented bikes for our two day stay and had a blast riding in traffic. We got to see tons of the city and the city reminded me so much of home. The mountains were really cool and the mixture of city life and outdoors was balanced just right. Getting to Hangzhou was a fiasco however. While in shanghai, we took a cab to the train station. Before we arrived at the train station the cab driver offered to take us to Hangzhou, to avoid all the crowded trains, slow busses, and long lines. After our experience with the Qingdao train, we were all loving the idea of taking a car to Hangzhou. We settled on a price and it was great. We loved the cab driver, the cab driver loved us, he even stopped to get some breakfast (we were starving)! It was clear we were on the same page and it was a lot more convenient to be dropped off right at our hostel in Hangzhou. Well, we were wrong. We arrived in Hangzhou and the driver tells us to get out and take another cab because he doesn't know the streets. Well, we weren't going to pay him in full for dropping us off on the outskirts of Hangzhou, so we gave him what we thought was a good price and walked away. Then, we have a crowd of Chinese around us, people spitting out Chinese at us and a whole scene going on. To cut it short, we ended up having some random guy take the front seat, we crammed in the back, and he told the driver how to get to our hostel and we paid him in full. Huge ordeal, not worth the hassle, we should have taken a bus.

Our hostel booked our room, so we ended up having to share a room with four random people. They woke us up at 6 am by talking loudly, smoking a cigarette, and banging all the doors multiple times. We did have a great restaurant across the street though and our other friends from Beijing had arrived in Hangzhou the same day. We met them that night for dinner and drinks and we enjoyed meeting up with our classmates in a different city. We left on Wednesday, October 1st to Suzhou. We only spent the day in this "Little Venice" which is quite an overstatement. Venice is far more beautiful and spectacular, but Suzhou had some great things about it. It was very small town feel, but because of the National Holiday, there were about 1.5 million tourists there that shouldn't have been there. Too crowded but great to visit. We took a boat ride down the canals with a couple of Chinese students that were travelling for the holiday. It was a lot of fun and we caught a bus back to Shanghai. The traffic to Shanghai was outrageous but we arrived in 2.5 hours (should have been 40 minutes). We missed the fireworks for National Holiday and again, our hostel booked our room so we had to stay at a different hostel. Sometimes, unfortunate things happen for a reason. Our new hostel was 100% nicer than any other hostel we stayed at. For $7 usd a night, we had our own room, great facilities, clean bathrooms and ping pong and pool. Not to mention a great location and a movie room with internet.

For our last day in Shanghai, we went to People's Square near our old hostel. We spent the day in and around the area, buying some souvenirs and enjoying the weather. We ended up staying in the Park for a long time. It reminded me of going to Central Park, looking at all the buildings around me, laying down and taking an afternoon nap in the warm weather. It was great. We ate at a Japanese restaurant and went down to the Bund to see the skyline at night. It was amazing and beautiful. We spent the night on a rooftop bar at our hostel and invited our other friends from Beijing over for drinks.

The trip went by incredibly fast and I had a great time. I hate giving these abbreviated stories but I'll post pictures soon. I'm back in Beijing trying to catch up on all the mountains of homework I've left for myself. Cheers.