08-31-2019

Made it to Hohhot! (Look at the mountains in the background :D)

On campus

The bed in my dorm room. My roommate's looks exactly the same.

view outside my dorm window (aka our AC unit)

08-30-2019

In Beijing!

I figured I would take a train from Beijing to Hohhot, but most of the tickets left were hard seats, and some contacts recommended not buying a hard seat ticket for a long ride (shout out to Xin and her peeps). 

And my mom didn't like my plan of a lack of a plan, so she reached out to a friend who contacted a friend in Beijing. He picked me up from the airport and helped me book a hotel room near his apartment. He (or someone else?) also bought a plane ticket to Hohhot for me, and he is going to drop me off at the airport tomorrow morning.

So this hotel was SUPER nice...and if this looks mediocre then let me say that this is really nice for China.

The friend also invited me to dinner with him and his family. They were celebrating his sister in law's birthday, and there was a LOT of food. Also the restaurant was nice - I wouldn't say it was SUPER fancy, but it definitely was not just a normal sit down restaurant.

08-29-2019

That moment when you fly over the city you are traveling to..

I took a picture of the city lights since I had a window seat, but since the cabin lights were on the picture and glare is terrible.

08-28-2019

Bought some Texas swag before leaving for China! I am heading to Hohhot, which is the capital of Inner Mongolia province in China. Inner Mongolia is not Mongolia, but it is next to Mongolia, see the picture below:



I am cheap so I bought cheap tickets to China. My journey there will look roughly like this: Austin (yes, flying out of Austin and not San Antonio) -> Los Angeles -> Chengdu -> Beijing -> Hohhot. For clarification, I bought a ticket from Austin to Los Angeles and a ticket from Los Angeles to Beijing with a layover in Chengdu.