Times are good! I just finished my first week of classes and I'm really excited by the positive start to my semester. The past week and past weekend was filled with "cool" activities, I visited the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival! Even though it was really cold, it was worth seeing all of the beautiful ice sculptures. They even had an ice slide that my inner five year old thoroughly enjoyed snailing down (I say "snailing" down because there were also a lot of other inner five year old human beings on that slide and hence we couldn't zoom down :( hahaha)
This was a great way to kick off the spring semester and I'm glad I made it in time before the closing of the festival in late February.
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Next up, I woke up to a lot of noise outside on the stairwell of my apartment. I went to investigate
and found that our service maids (we call them 阿姨 (ayi)) were moving chairs out of our rooms and replacing them with "new" chairs. I asked why this was necessary since our chairs were fine, but she replied "it's just the way it is." I nodded and then volunteered to help out the 阿姨's move chairs from floor to floor because of several reasons. Number one, I just think it's the right thing to do, since some of the 阿姨's are a bit aged and I know I can be of use in helping them. Number two, it would increase the efficiency of the task getting done--more labor means the task would be done faster, which in turn would mean less disturbance for everyone in the apartment. Thus, with the goals of helping 阿姨's and for the common good I diligently worked and completed the task.
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Lastly, my friends and I crossed the Songhua River (松花江). The river was completely
frozen over (enough for cars to drive on it!) and so my friends and I enjoyed our journey
across the river. It's little adventures like this where I'm glad I live in a cold region which
offers cool opportunities like crossing a frozen river :)
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| Can you spot the trucks? Yep, the ice is that thick... |
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| Casually taking a pic while standing on river |
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| My fellow adventurers Jake and Hannah! |
Thanks for reading this post everyone, hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you next week!
Best,
-Sam
That sounds like an awesome time! I remember it was minus 27 degrees when I went to Harbin. I had to keep looking at the giant thermometer to remind myself of how cold it was. How was the trek across Songhua Jiang? Seems like a pretty cool adventure.
ReplyDeleteHahaha worrddddd Rahul! The minus 27 is no joke, I think for me it wasn't that bad since I went in Feb, 从而吾避免了一月的寒冷。哈哈哈
DeleteThe trek across the river was a lot of fun! Yo, after we're finished with Yale let's go back to China and travel together dude!