As you can tell from my title, the temperature has dropped down a couple of notches recently. COOOOOOOLD! It's actually not all that cold, but there is never anywhere that is too warm either (read about the glorified hair dryers that serve as heaters in one of my previous entries.) No real need to moan about the weather on the blog though - I just need to buy myself some long underwear, a real coat, and a pair of gloves.
The semester is winding down quickly. I am entering my last week at school and Emma is all but finished already. It's pretty nice to finish up :) I realized that this Friday is going to be the last time I work for the next 6 years or so... Awesome! Grad school is a beautiful thing. Speaking of which, I'm getting pretty psyched for grad school. I don't know what's come over me these past few years, but I've really been focusing myself on continuing my education while working. It's funny though - I don't think I really fully applied myself academically the whole time I was in college, but now that I'm out of college I'm constantly trying to learn new things and dream of taking courses in Chinese or Statistics again. Swat turned me into a student after all... Anyways, I'm rambling now. The point is that I'm almost done with work and I'm really looking forward to studying Chinese and Stat for the next 6 years!
Recently I've also been planning my next China adventure - Harbin. Harbin is in the Northeastern (read: Siberian) corner of China. This part of the country is known for three things: freezing weather, dumplings (yum), and the Harbin Ice Festival. I'm mostly braving the cold (apparently the average temperature is -20 degrees Celsius) to check out this Ice Festival (tons of cool ice sculptures all over the parks in town), but I'm also looking forward to checking out some other cool things in the area. There is this old Germ Warfare Base that the Japanese set up and a cool Jewish museum about the Russian Jews who moved in during the 1920s and even a Siberian Tiger Park. It should make for an interesting trip... Oh, I've also entered cost-saving mode (not working for the next 6 years will make me a poor little man) and instead of flying up to Harbin I will be taking a 32 hour hard seat train ride. This should save me around 1000 RMB one way, so I figure that after the train ride madness I can afford to eat as many dumplings as I can stuff in my face from the moment I set in Harbin until I leave.
On a totally unrelated topic, I have been messing around a lot with podcasts recently (mostly for ChinesePod) and I really like the format. Emma just introduced me to TED Talks too and they're awesome! Highly recommended for anybody out there with a little time to kill and an interest in Technology, Education, and Design (read: Dad)
That's all from Suzhou. Our last week here!
- Jon
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