Finally in Xiamen

Let's see, where did I leave off from LiveJournal? . . .I think I had a couple days of Hong Kong left? Well, there's really nothing interesting about 'em, except that Liz, Ryan, and I decided to eat dinner at Pizza Hut one night. It was a lot different than the ones back home. o_o

Leaving Hong Kong was interesting. We took an overnight bus to Xiamen, and guess what! Instead of seats, there were beds! Kinda like the Knight Bus in Harry Potter! Thankfully, these beds were stationary:



We ended up arriving in Xiamen around 5:30 in the morning. Blech. A bus from the university picked us up. . .somewhere, and when we finally got to the campus, we had a few hours to get situated before going to dinner at the CSP offices. We met Dr. Jay's Chinese wife, Yili, and their daughter. Dr. Jay and Yili are interesting to watch. There's definitely and East meets West thing goin' on there. XD

Uh. . . What else?

Oh! Chinese New Year! We went to a banquet on New Year's Eve, which was held for the foreigners on campus. There are a lot. That day was also my birthday (I think I heard Yili say that was good luck for me), so when we got together for a meeting in Heather's room, the rest of the group gave me a birthday gift of foods and drinks that they noticed I like. 8D



I also got a birthday gift for myself earlier that day! We stopped by a store in the afternoon that had good prices on clothes because a few people needed jackets ~ I ended up finding a cute one that actually FIT ME. I got really excited. >.>

img src="http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5433/90267473ni1.jpg">

There's Engrish on it too!



On New Year's Day, some of us went to check out the temple. I ended up wandering off by myself up the mountain. I got a lot of stares. One guy even followed me a bit with his camera trying to get a picture. . . I purposely kept my back to him because it was kind of creepy. ._.

Anyway. . . Pictures! The second one is the Xiamen University campus from the highest point I got on the mountain ~ I almost got to the end, but the path started getting really narrow and crowded, so I figured it was best to head back down.





Later that night, we went to see fireworks!





And here's a few random things before I go:

~ No central heating in the dorm building (or any building, really) sucks.
~ I saw a record store with a DBSK Mirotic poster in the window and it made me really happy.
~ I saw monks shopping at the supermarket!

That's all for now. There's more pics, here.