1 Year Chinaversary : )

It was 1 year ago today that I boarded a plane in Los Angeles and took off for China. At the time I had no idea what to expect and was excited/terrified at the prospect of arriving in a country where I didn't speak the language or know a single person. Now as I sit here in my apartment 1 year later,only a few months away from leaving on a plane back to LA,  I am starting to become excited/terrified at the prospect of returning to the familiar. This year has definitely been an adventure and I am so happy that I was brave enough to come in the first place and stubborn enough to stick it out.

Happy New Year 2014.The year of the Horse

There are a lot of things I am going to miss about China...and a few things, like the squatting toilets and spitting on the ground, that I will be happy to leave behind. We just celebrated the Chinese New Year which was fun.  James and I went to Shanghai and spent a few days looking at the decorations and doing some movie shopping.

They put up these displays everywhere that usually tell some sort of story as you walk past them. Then at night everything lights up and is really beautiful.

The horse looks like he might be possessed, not sure what that means for the new year : ) We also filled our stomachs with all sorts of delicious food that we cant find in Hangzhou. We even found Cali Burger which is a total rip off of In n Out. They even had animal style fries except they changed the name to "wild fries". I'm not sure how they don't get sued but apparently they have locations in New York,Japan, and the Phillipines as well. 

We also found this awesome Mexican food place which was really exciting after having not had Mexican food for almost 7 months. They even had black beans and real sour cream mmmmmm. Can you tell what I am going to be eating as soon as I get back in April? 

We also found the government run tea house again. It's really hard to find on your own but they have these volunteers that walk around and listen for people who are speaking English in a certain area of the Yu Yuan gardens. If one of the volunteers happen to hear you they will ask if you want to come with them and experience a chinese tea ceremony.It sounds sketchy but is actually a really good deal. The tea house is on the second floor of this old building and for 30 yuan ($5) they make 10 different pots of tea for you and explain what the health benefits of each tea are. 

Once we got back to Hangzhou we decided to bike along the Qiantang river which was a lot of fun. We took the metro to a stop close to the river and from there we were able to rent bikes. We biked for about 6 miles before stopping at a pagoda that we had heard of.

After paying the entrance fee we found out that the pagoda was actually closed for refurbishment and thats why the tickets had been reduced. It was still pretty to see and you were able to climb quite a bit o see other things that were built around the pagoda. In fact there was a plethora of miniature models of pagodas from all over China that you could climb on.

There was also a cute cat that enjoyed being scratched and having his photo taken : )

This is the pagoda from the other side, where you cant tell that it is closed. Anyway after sort of seeing the pagoda we decided to hop back on our bikes and go another 3 miles to the West Lake to check out another pagoda that we had been hearing about. The hike up to it was really gorgeous and they had all sorts of old trees. Its built on a hill that used to be the center of religious and social life in Hangzhou. Even now there were tons of people up there playing cards and drinking green tea. I wanted to take a picture but I didn't think they would be happy about it.

The view from the top was beautiful and since we were there on a clear day we could see pretty far. That was it for the nice weather though. After that it started raining and has pretty much either rained, snowed or threatened to rain/snow for almost 3 weeks now. The snow was really pretty so I didn't mind that but I'm hoping that the weather gets nicer soon so that we can get out more. According to the count down on our wall we only have 38 days left of normal China life. Then my Dad will arrive and we will travel around China for two weeks.After that James and I will go to Thailand for two weeks before heading back to California. I'm sure it's going to go by fast just like this past year and before I know it we will have to say goodbye to China. Zaijian for now.