Fujian, Fujian, Fujian!

Catch up time! So after Guangdong, I traveled to the Fujian province. This is THE closest to Taiwan I will be this summer! I arrived in Fujian by plane on the 13th and remained there until the 21st. 

I flew from Guangzhou straight to Xiamen. On the 15th, I traveled to Wuyishan (Wuyushan on the map, at the very top) for two days. Then, it was down to Fuzhou for a day and back to Xiamen before I left for Beijing. 

This is my very quaint hotel room. The whole building had only 13 rooms and it was run by a very nice family of 4. The only problems I had with the room was that it sometimes lost electricity and that mosquitoes always found a way to get into my room, but they provided numerous mosquito incenses.   

 This is the University of Xiamen. Honestly, it is one of the prettiest campuses I've ever seen and one of the largest! Who else can claim to have at least three huge lakes, a museum AND a beach? 

This is my flagship tutor's girlfriend, Ivy. She is an unbelievably nice person!! She was my tour guide for most of this trip. 

The beach was technically returned to the government earlier on... but it is so close to the campus and so accessible that it doesn't really matter!

The next day, we went to visit the Buddhist temple that is also close to the campus. 

It was really pretty as well! There are a lot of monks and nuns that live here. This discovery made me curious about their lifestyle. Because, here in Xiamen, with the exception of living at the temple, they live just like normal people. They drive cars, go out to eat (vegetarian only), use cell phones, buy groceries, etc. 

My two favorite things about this place: the endless supply of fresh flowers of almost every variety and large ponds of turtles!

I had a staring contest with this one. He was cute. 
There are A LOT of turtles and A LOT of fishies in there! 

For some reason, some of them tried scaling the walls...   

We took a "soft bed" train to Wuyishan. I want to thank the inventor of playing cards. It is such a universal game!! It was such a great way to pass the time. ECG Peeps, I think we need to bust out the playing cards! Someone needs to teach me new card games soon!! :D

There are four types of trains you can take. Hard seats, hard beds, soft beds and fast trains. I've now been on all of them except hard seat trains! Soft bed trains are the "fanciest" and as clean as they can get. They usually are four beds to a room. Hard beds are definitely dirtier, without much privacy and noisy, these are 6 beds to a space. Fast trains make me think that I am on a flight... 

Our hotel at Wuyishan. 

This is us on the 2-3 hour ride down the river... in the year's worst rainstorm (In Wuyishan anyways). Lucky for us, it started right after we got onto the bamboo raft and ended right before we got off. Let me just say, it was definitely a very dangerous but very fun experience. Even with the rain clothing and umbrella... we were COMPLETELY SOAKED by the end.

This was at the beginning of the journey. Everything is still pretty much visible and very pretty. 

Then the rain starts to pick up. 

it starts raining so hard that the boat drivers are having a hard time maintaining visibility. Some boat drivers had stop to rest under cliffs, mostly because of the complaining passengers. We didn't stop at all, and missed a lot of the pretty scenery. :P

This is towards the end of the ride, when the rain was finally letting up. But it caused tons of waterfalls!!

The next day, we went to hike their tallest peak. This is about halfway. 

This is the view from the bottom. You can't even see the top. :P

This is one of the many places I rode through on my bamboo raft adventure. 

Oh no! Is it going to rain again...?!?

I'm going to let you guys in on a little inside joke. 

Ivy believes that I, somehow, have the ability to cause changes in the weather. Here are a few reasons why:

It rained continuously in Xiamen before I arrived. The morning of the day that I arrived, clear skies and enough sunshine that made me believe that it was much hotter than AZ. It rained again soon after I left for Beijing. 

I was caught in the year's heaviest rainstorm while at Wuyishan. 

Beijing's heaviest rainstorm in ten years, one which caused endless flooding in streets and subways, ... I got stuck in that too. 

Beijing has rained for the last two days. Even my teachers think that that is a very curious thing...

Below are a few pictures from Fuzhou and Xiamen:

Starbucks

Yes. Post-its. 

I haven't been diligent in takings pictures of my food as I should be, (all part of trying to fit in and not look like a complete tourist) but here are some Taiwan-style dishes that I tried when I was in Xiamen. 

Tomatoes are considered both a vegetable and a fruit. These small ones pictured above are fruits. The bigger ones are the vegetables. Makes sense to me!

I am doing very well in Beijing and will tell you all about it in my next post. There might be a few miscellaneous posts from here on out, because there are a lot of things that I want to show you and it didn't seem appropriate to throw them into these last few posts. Anyways, I can say that I have pretty much settled in. First week of classes is over! 7 more weeks to go! Woohoo!