[EDIT July 2008]
>>Seems like forever ago doesn't it? Anyway, not much to say except my galleries have mostly gone defunct so I'm currently uploading the pictures to a new site. Let me know if the links work or don't.
Haven't done any recent traveling, except to places like Boston and Chicago. Haven't decided to put those up here though. Next time I go somewhere exciting, I'll be back. Count on it.<<

Wrapping up my travel journal as far as my junior year in China goes. Sad to see it all end.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost

First Semester


Orientation Week in California and Beijing :: Post | Gallery

Silk Road Urumqi :: Post | Gallery

Silk Road Tian Chi :: Post | Gallery

Silk Road Turpan :: Post | Gallery

Silk Road Dunhuang:: Post | Gallery

Silk Road The Great Wall at Jiayuguan :: Post | Gallery

Silk Road Lanzhou :: Post | Gallery

Silk Road Xiahe :: Post | Gallery

Silk Road Xi’an :: Post | Gallery

The Great Wall at Simatai :: Post | Gallery

Forbidden City and Jingshan Park :: Post | Gallery

Summer Palace :: Post | Gallery

The Great Wall on the Ocean :: Post | Gallery

Guilin (Post 1) :: Post | Gallery

Guilin (Post 2) Yangshuo :: Post | Gallery 1 | Gallery 2

Guilin (Post 3) Longshen :: Post | Gallery

Fragarant Hills :: Post | Gallery

Kangxi Grasslands Horseback Riding:: Post | Gallery

Buddhism Field Trip To Monastery :: Post | Gallery

Art Field Trip To Forbidden City and Art Gallery :: Post | Gallery

Badaling Wildlife Reserve :: Post | Gallery

Chengdu :: Post | Gallery


Second Semester

Update: Sept/08 :: The site I had these second semester pictures on is no longer alive, so I'm uploading all the pictures to this site. Individual links in the posts will be updated with the individual galleries as well. Thanks.

Yunnan Kunming :: Post | Gallery

Yunnan Zhongdian/Tibet/Shangri-la (Post 1) :: Post | Gallery

Yunnan Zhongdian/Tibet/Shangri-la (Post 2) :: Post | Gallery

Yunnan Lijiang :: Post | Gallery

Yunnan Dali (Chinese New Year) :: Post | Gallery

Yunnan Xishuangbanna :: Post | Gallery

Shanghai Shanghai, Xitang, Hanzhou :: Post | Gallery

Haerbing/Ice Festival :: Post | Gallery

Houhai/Ice Skating :: Post | Gallery

Langmusi/Xiahe (May Break) :: Post | Gallery | Article

Chengdu/Jiuzhaigou (My sister’s visit) :: Post | Gallery

Forbidden City (with sister) :: Post | Gallery

TianTan :: Post | Gallery

Random :: Post | Gallery




Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.




再见。

~罗可儿 Nikki

Last China post, tying up some of my loose ends.

Pictures of Sam and I when we went to Forbidden City.
Pictures from when I went to TianTan after Sam left.
Random pictures of me, my friends, and China.

Feel free to browse back on some of my other galleries there. I lied about it being my last post, I came up with a better idea. I will create one last post with links to all of my picture galleries for easy access. I hope you all enjoyed reading about my travels, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy going on them. China is in my heart forever. 我爱中国。我想中国。 我会从没忘。

Forbidden City


TianTan


Random



~Nikki

Back in the states, reach me on my cell (940)594-1142

Figured that since I've been home for over a week I would update with the (shorter than expected) trip my sister and I took after school ended.

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No, the colour isn't edited...


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( Badaling, Pandas, and Jiuzhaigou )
Well, since I'm going to need another post, I'll leave the rest for when I get the rest of my pictures online and get the camera of my sister and I at the Forbidden City developed. Wait up for me ;)

~Nikki

我想中国。

Pictures from my most recent trip to Langmusi and Xiahe. Enjoy.

Pictures


~Nikki

So, when I can get an internet that works decently I’ll upload the small Tibetan towns that I visited last week with 3 friends for May break, Langmusi and Xiahe; some of the vacation was amazing, some was awful. The awful part was kind of scarring so I don’t know if I’ll ever actually update on this vacation. The captions on the pictures will serve as my story. Which thankfully leaves off the last part of the trip, seeing as how no one except the fucking Chinese paparazzi wanted to take pictures. Suffice it to say, seeing someone die in front of you really makes you conscious of your own mortality. I’m just thankful it wasn’t any one of my friends that I was with, it could have been any of us.
RIP
Just showed up in China Daily today
Dutch tourist falls to his death

Tragedies do happen. We can discover the reason, blame others, imagine how different our lives would be had they not occurred. But none of that is important: they did occur, and so be it. From there onward we must put aside the fear that they awoke in us and begin to rebuild.
Paulo Coehlo

"Try to ride the wave of emotions and accept that feelings of sadness and pain are unavoidable and are heightened during certain times. The intense feelings will pass, but grief is an ongoing process. Don't ever expect closure. It gets easier with time, but there will always be an empty space at the table," Bozich-Keith said.
Robert Preidt

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamador was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."

Just a picture album, self explanatory, I don’t want to write about it :P

Skating in Houhai
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^^Last winter



So, my friend's (Brigette) sister was in town last week. On Wednesday us and Pickup went shopping early in the morning (I spent a LOT of money, bought some beautiful things though, I'll post pictures of the jewelry I had made). After that we went to Houhai and grabbed some lunch and walked around (Pickup headed back to school for class). So, let me tell you a little about Houhai. They are these redone Hutongs, traditional, old-style Chinese city living. What you picture when you picture China. Old town, winding paths, etc. All redone for tourists, of course. In the middle is a huge lake that you can take boats in or skate on during the winter and restaurants and bars around the lake. Fantastic, gorgeous place. Perfect.

Brigette has been planning this since October! And we were all in on it. So, we were walking around and two of our friends were going to the airport to pick up her sister's boyfriend. Who flew in without ANYONE knowing (all of us in China knew, but no one in the states or Brigette's sister knew). We walked to the bridge that goes over the lake/stream(at that point) and her boyfriend just walks out of the crowd in front of her. She had no idea he was coming and he's also in the military so he isn't supposed to be here! He had to grow out his hair and get special permits for it. We back off the bridge to watch and he drops to one knee. We were freaking out and crying, lol.
It was amazing. I've never seen anyone get proposed to before! Some guy snapped some pictures of us while it was happening and is going to send them. But *sigh* It was amazing. Could you imagine?! He flew out all the way to China to surprise her and propose. In that setting, on a nice day, it was perfect. What a story to tell people! We were freaking out all day and being all sappy and everything, it was amazing. One of the best days EVER!


This weekend half of our group went to ShanHaiGuan, the part of the great wall on the ocean that I went to last semester (i.e. I didn’t want to go again). Scott and I decided to wake up early and head downtown as he has never been to The Forbidden City. So we did that. Left at 10 in the morning and walked for nearly 8 hours straight. Spent tons of time in the forbidden city and then when we got out we found a xiao chi place (small restaurant). It was pretty decent and the prices weren’t bad. Mine was 8RMB and Scott’s was 7RMB. To go along with that I had a bowl of rice which never costs more than 1RMB and Scott got a drink that is usually about 3RMB. The problem with that is, those two things aren’t on the menu. So they tried to SCREW us!! They wanted 6RMB for the rice (ridiculous) and 15RMB for the tea!! Can you believe that? 36RMB for lunch? We got pissed off. I asked them how much they would have charged us if we were Chinese and why they were trying to screw us because it wasn’t on the menu. We handed her about 20RMB and tried to leave. We got into a huge screaming fit that the other customers thought was hilarious. She knew she was being a horrible person, we just walked out. It was unbelievable. I’ve never had that happen to me before! We are in a touristy part of town, but I couldn’t imagine many tourists going in to that kind of place.
We walked around Tiananmen wishing we had kites on the windy day and found a small street on the south side of it to do some shopping. This street was fantastic, I had never been down there before. It’s not a street, just an alley way with shops on either side, but you go down it and you actually feel like you are in China, which doesn’t always happen here. It was pretty amazing and just assaulted your senses. Scott bought some things and I tried to conserve money for the trip next week. Fun times. Came back and crashed, it tires you out.

Haerbing
06/2/19

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( ”Haerbing )

上海
06/3/27-06/3/31

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( Shanghai )


That was the vacation in a nutshell. A nice, relaxing break from the horrors of Chinese class everyday.

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( ”Xishuanbanna” )

Flew back to Beijing. It was nice to be home, but the weather was horrible, as usual. And thus the trip ended. This was 4 months ago, I might be a little behind? lol

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( Dali )

Almost done!! Really! 真的！


~Nikki