I LOVE MY SCHOOl!!

Today, I woke up, stared at the sky, and smiled.


These blue skies are as common as rain at UCLA (for non-UCLAers, it rained only twice my entire first year and i didn't even use my umbrella) I thought today would never happen ^^ Thus began my photo-trip around my lovely school Peking University :)

This is now my "car", it's pretty trusty and cost only about $22 with all the bells and whistles (literally):

haven't ridden a bike in FOREVER and my butt has been really sore the past couple of days because of it -_-' but haven't run over any one yet even though the biking in beijing is pretty rediculously dangerous.

This is where I live:


It's called shao yuan and you can tell it's the international student dorms because, well, it's in English. haha ^^








Anyway, so the reason I've had so much time to blog is because it's the "national day holiday" from 10/1-5 where the entire country is on holiday. so there's like a WHOLE bunch of people walking around our school. but even then... there's always the studious chinese students. in the picture below, i walked past the guy in blue (slightly hidden by the bushes) speaking Chinese-y english really loudly. this is REALLY commonplace in universities here; so many chinese students regularly practice their english lessons in gardens, anywhere. it's pretty funny ^^ but then again i probably sound hilarious if i were to do that in chinese.


Anyway, the campus is SO GORGEOUS!!!! It's jokingly known to the local students as "Beijing's biggest park". The northern part is much like a park; reminds me of UCLA's north and south campus:

















And this is my favorite place on campus:

























it's the largest lake on the campus called "no named lake" 无名胡 ; yah so poetic ^^ but anyway, i love doing devos here or just hanging out in general here. it's so gorgeous (i am soooo spoiled ^^)

This is the West Gate of the school; it's so Chinese-looking. Inside is a TOTAL park and then right when you step outside, you hear this LOUDD honk of the busses and cars and it's back to civilization :)



































below is the sign that says Peking University outside the gate:




Below is the Bicentennial hall (sorta like royce hall) where they have these famous beijing operas and other people perform:

















Beijing Olympics store on campus:

















The beautiful library:





"Beijing University Library" in chinese:
















They even have road maps on campus:

















So one of the things that I'm still struggling/dealing with is the fact that even though I look chinese, my chinese really sucks and people can totally tell I'm not from China. however, no one ever believes me when I say that I'm American.

For example, here's what they would be thinking if they saw the below picture:



yahhh i saw the good-lookin mats a couple of times in beijing :) this is us before he heads back to shanghai in a subway station. and he is as good-looking as ever.

WOOHOO yah for pictures :)