新年快乐！

Happy New Years!
We had the day off classes today, so Lissa and I and her roomate (Huangshan) ventured off into the city today. We went to the Lama Temple which is the most famous Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Tibet. It was turned into a lamasary in 1744 and has a 17m tall Buddha in one of its buildings. It's absolutely stunning. All of the signs on the buildings were printed in four languages-Tibetan, Mongolian, Chinese, and another sanskrit type [and if i could get pictures to load, i'd put one here....].
After lunch (which Lissa and I agree was the best food we've had so far...) we went to a Confucius temple, which was really interesting. They had rows and rows of huge tablets documenting the thousands upon thousands (chengqianshangwan) of people who had successfully completed examinations to become government officials, and their home town. Most of these tablets were ridiculously old...but my favourite part of this temple was the Cypress trees, one of which is thought to be at least 700 years old, and able to tell the difference between good and bad people. [I love trees] There were also lots of really pretty birds there with long tails that Huangshan said are thought of as good luck birds that will bring peace and other good things to you. They were blue like blue jays, but there tails were more like a morning dove tail. Really quite beautiful.
Anyhow, I'm going to start my homework now...
Love you all!

Beijing

I'm here and alive. The flight was non-eventful...though I got strangely nostalgic for the long flights we use to do to and from Singapore. They still do the noodle thing...which probably made me happier than it should have.

We arrived at the school around 8pm and after checking in a group of us went to the local jiaozi place for really really really good dumplings. This morning at 9 we had our placement exams and this afternoon we get to explore the area where we are...we're really close to the Beijing Zoo. which makes me so happy :) Anyhow, it's off to lunch for now, but it's really exciting being here!
Lots of Love.

Five Days and Counting...

Tomorrow we leave for Chicago and the 27th I fly for China...