philadelphia, pennsylvania

In December 2017, I was staffed to a project near Philly with Sequoia! It was the middle of winter and we managed to get in before Philly was hit with a snowstorm. They started to cancel flights right after we landed.  One of my friends, Luke, lived in Philly for work so we had a mini reunion.

Philadelphia International Airport had this little display of bikes through the ages. I'm not sure if it's still up. Anybody know??

Philly Cheese Steak from Jim's Steaks on the corner of 4th and South St

Philly Cheese Steak from Jim's Steaks on the corner of 4th and South St

The first thing we did when we got into town was meet up with Luke at Jim's Steaks on the corner of 4th and South St. I only got one but probably could have eaten a second. With all the walking around we did later, I probably should have had two. 

We went to go see the Liberty Bell and passed a lot of other historical sites on our way there (we passed the first fire insurance company! 🙀) We also wandered over to Betsy Ross's house and the remnants of Ben Franklin's house. 

We took a quick snack break at Franklin Ice Cream. I'm lactose intolerant and didn't have my lactose pills on me (story of my life), but I was still able to enjoy ice cream in the middle of winter since they had non-dairy options.

Later, we popped on over to the River Park area, they had some winter fest going on. It was a cute little area with an ice skating rink, firepit seating areas, and a lot of decorated Christmas trees. 

Oh! We also found three cute little snowmen! Very fitting for our little group.  

And being in Philly, we definitely had to go visit the Rocky Statue and Rocky Steps.

Ok confession: I've actually never seen the movies! It's on my list! I'll get around to it! I didnt watch a lot of movies growing up! #excuses

Anyway, I didn't take a lot of video when I was there but here are a few snippets. 

Until next time, 

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beijing + shanghai + qingdao, china

I figured I'd combine these places in China since I didn't really take enough photos for each of them to be their own post. Since we were staying in Guangrao for work, we just went on weekend trips to these cities. Guangrao didn't have a train station so we had to drive an hour to get to Qingzhou to take the bullet train. 

Beijing

In Beijing, we usually hung out in the Sanlitun area. After being in a remote area of China with limited options, you start missing Mexican food, burgers, and beer. 

The two places we would pop in to every time in Beijing were: Slow Boat Brewery and Great Leap Brewery. 

Also, since a few of us have never been to to the Great Wall (myself included) we decided to wander over there for a day. We went to the Mutianyu area which had a lift to the top and a toboggan down (A+++ def recommend but the people we were behind were hella slow so we couldnt fly down the slide). We went in the middle of November (I think? This was so long ago haha) and I didn't expect it to be that chilly. I could've used an extra layer. 

Oh, and we stopped by a cat cafe before we caught the train back. 

Shanghai

Just as in Beijing, all we really do is drink and eat in Shanghai. Oh and we took a group selfie with a stranger, she wechatted me the pic. My fam actually speaks Shanghainese at home so I understand it better than mandarin haha. 

Qingdao

Just like the previous two places, we came for the beer, the Tsingtao Beer Museum to be exact. Here you can get your face printed on a bottle of beer! Qingdao also hosted the 2008 Olympic sailing events so there is a large torch at the marina. 

seoul + boseong, korea

I'm writing this while I'm in Spain, whoops! At least the blog title holds true. Anyway, during my time in China I had to take visa trips. I think I've explained what visa trips are to pretty much everyone in my life now (the ones who don't do this sort of job at least), but I'll explain it again. 

My China visa is only valid for 60 consecutive days, so I have to leave the country and come back to restart the 60 day countdown. I was in China for 4 consecutive months which means I had to take two trips out of the country. The typical place to travel to is Korea - a close and a relatively cheap place to get to from China. We only ever go for a weekend so I don't usually get a lot of time there. 

Seoul, Korea

Mt. Inwangsan

When I landed in Seoul, one of the first items on the list was to do a solo hike. I settled on doing Mt. Inwangsan which connects up to the Seoul Fortress Wall Hike. It's fairly quick to access from Seoul's public transport system. At the time, I was staying in an AirBnB in the Myeongdong district which is near the big shopping area.

 

While in Korea, Google maps was the most functional it has ever been considering its accuracy of train times and english translations. China blocks Google so having it once again available to me was great. Heart heart heart Korea. 💖💖💖

If you're interested, I followed these directions that I found on someone else's blog that were pretty comprehensive. The view of Seoul is amazing from the top. Lots of well maintained steps to get to the top* so its not particularly difficult.  

*So not that much different than a CCR unit, eh?? Haha hehe hoho, sorry! 😏

 You reach the trailhead by walking through a park and a small little village, I'm pretty sure the earth quaked in anticipation when I arrived, or maybe it was the earthquake generated by N. Korea's nuclear bomb test the day I was hiking. But ya know, anticipation too haha. The village had some cute old houses, lots of cats, and some huge murals. The trail leads past the village to some natural stone structures and eventually meets up with the city fortress wall trail. Following the fortress steps up will lead you to the lookout to Seoul.

I really recommend bringing a lot of water since there's really no place you can fill up on the way and it's approximately a 2-3 hour round trip and its hot and humid in the summer. Also bring snacks! Enjoy the view! Take a bunch of snack breaks to enjoy the view! I ended up sharing my chicken flavored cheetos (like a 5/10 for me, I don't think they're that great) with a cute old guy (COG) who shared his mochi (like a 10/10 for me, love mochi) with me. 

 
Shopping Solo & Shopping with Viv 

I had another day to myself before I met up with Viv for some shopping. So I ended up shopping by myself. 😂😂😂 Seoul has some pretty cool clothing brands and you can't forget the Korean skin care everywhere. 

I did most of my shopping around the Myeongdong area on my own during my first and second trip to Seoul.  They have a lot of skincare shops that will just give you a free face mask for walking in. I ended up stocking up on a lot sheet masks (they sell facemasks in 10packs! it's amazing!) and Tony Moly hand creams.

Ok real talk though, I super love Korean clothing. Most things don't fit me super well since I'm relatively tall, BUT, I did find a few pieces that I liked when I was there. I was actually also on a mission to find some warmer clothing to bring back to China, since I didn't pack enough warm pieces. Cause you know, I made the mistake of thinking I was going to come home right after that assignment, whoops! 

I went to some bigger flagship stores in Myeongdong and Hongdae but also had time to check out some smaller shops that lined the streets near Ewhas Women's University.

I wish themed cafes were a thing in the states since I 💖💖💖 themed cafes. I treated myself to a cat cafe when I was out on my own. When Vivian was in Seoul, we went to a sheep cafe. Thanks Nature Cafe serves waffles and has two sheep. I think their names were Anna and Sam and they were super precious.   

On my second visa run, I met up with Sequoia and Brett since they were already in the country for a job. Brett was looking for souveniers to bring home for his wife and Sequoia and I suggested getting some Korean skincare since they're usually pretty nice. We took Brett to a bunch skin care places in Myeongdong to help him pick out some stuff. I remember him asking us how many sheet masks he should get and I remember Sequoia and I answering with something along the lines of, "How about one of each ?? We think you need like one of each." 

Boseong, Korea

During my second time in Korea, I met up with Sequoia and Brett to go and try to find some fossilized dinosaur footprints. These were located near the southern end of Korea so we drove from Seoul for a few hours south. We thought they would be pretty easy to find (they were not haha), but we ended up turning to a hotel reception for help. They told us that we had to take a ferry out to an island and it only run a few times a day. For the day that we were there, we missed the ferry by like half an hour. Defeated :( On the bright side, Sequoia actually recently went back to Korea for a job on the southern end and managed to see the fossilized dinosaur prints! So jelly. 

All was not lost for that day though! We ended up going to the Boseong Green Tea Plantation and it was really nice. The place was really well kept and the weather worked out well for us. 

The green tea bushes were situated on a hillside and we could wander the fields and hike all the way up. They have a pretty well marked pathway up and through the hills and plenty of viewing platforms for pictures along the way. On our way out of the fields, we stopped by the gift shop and the little cafe they had. I got myself a green tea ice cream haha. Ok also, look at this ridiculously photogenic series of Brett that Sequoia took and me enjoying my ice cream haha. 

** 📷: Sequoia and her Pixel

 

Korea was a good time and I feel like there's still plenty I haven't explored yet, so I'll definitely be making a trip back out there.

until next time, 

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guangrao, china

Not a lot of people know where Guangrao, China is, so I have attached a convenient map for you. It's located in the Shandong province (which my coworkers affectionately call the 'Dong) and it's pretty much smack dab between the two bigger cities of Zibo and Dongying. 

 

The biggest downside of Guangrao (besides its remote location) was that it did not have a McDonalds. It had a Pizza Hut and a KFC but no McDonalds... How??? Pizza Hut ended up being one of the most frequented dinner places for us while we were there, along with this "French Teppanyaki" place. 

There wasn't a whole lot to do in town, so a favorite past time was to bother Eric. Eric is from the customer site, but we ended up seeing a lot of him while we were in Guangrao. He's a little ~shy shy shy~ around the camera but here are some good photos. Photo cred mostly to Michael.  

Eric actually took us to the movies when we were there (we saw that Jackie Chan movie, The Foreigner). The best part of this theater was that they offered two kinds of 3D glasses at the theater: actual 3D glasses and clip-on 3D glasses. As we're all glasses wearers, this was amazing. The evidence is as follows: 

While we were in Guangrao, we ran into a guy from the States (which is pretty rare for this location) from Utah and he built coasters. Apparently Guangrao has this cultural theme park dedicated to Sun Tzu, the guy who wrote Art of War.  

We went on a very smoggy day and there was practically no one in the park. I think we saw about 8 other people? Keep in mind when China builds parks, they build HUGE parks. We rented a 4 person flintstone car on a whim, and I'm glad we did because walking this park would have been exhausting. 

In total, I spent approximately 4 months in China. One of the strangest parts about being in China was that people were convinced I wasn't Chinese. If I told them I was, they were convinced I was only a fraction Chinese. I'm ethnically 100% Chinese, but born in the states, an ABC (American born Chinese). A lot of them said I didn't look Chinese? ? ? Why? ? ? 

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The contractors really liked to take sly pictures of the "foreigners". This contractor was originally at my site, but left after installation. He ended up at a site with my coworker and showed him the picture of the other foreigner he met, me.  So here's a picture of a photo of me on some old contractors cell phone. 

 

Anyway, here's a compilation of snaps from and around Guangrao.

until next time,

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food in yinchuan

Hi hello, I'm in Egypt now and I'm still trying to get through stuff from my first assignment. Whoops! Anyway heres the Yinchuan food post. 

The refinery we were at provided these box lunches everyday. I tried to remember to take a picture of each one, but most days I finished eating the food before I could remember to take a picture, heh.

The operator we worked with didn't think it was that great though, the conversation usually went something like: 

Us: Lunch was really good today! What do you think?

Operator: Sigh, it was only OK. 

We also tried a few smaller places around town. Our driver took us to a small noodle joint and our process engineer took us to a noodle shop near the refinery. I didn't manage to get a picture of the food at the restaurant our process engineer to us to since I ate it too fast D: BUT Drew pinned it on Google Maps for any advisors that might come through after us (I think the translation of the name of the place is Glass Bowl Noodles?).

There was a place that was near the hotel that was recommended to us that we try before we leave. We were told we would recognize it by a large gold bull statue in the store front. The restaurant would be on the 3rd or 4th floor. 

We ended up finding it and then quickly realizing that it was supposed to be a dinner place for bigger parties. So Drew and I ended up being seated at a huge 8 person table. On the plus side, the food was pretty good and they had a picture menu. 

The restaurant also had a small shot sized bottle of goji berry vinegar. Complimentary. It was oookay I guess. Wouldn't order the full size for myself. It's apparently supposed to be good for health? Digestion? Alcohol consumption? I don't really know. 

We ordered a variety of food, argued over if we ordered a pigeon or not (we did). Drew wasn't convinced it was a pigeon at first, but after asking around the refinery, turns out, I was right.

The staff was pretty concerned that we only wanted one pigeon (people must order like 2-3). We ordered mutton with the nice vinegar dipping sauce (not the same as the goji berry vinegar), a sea cucumber soup (neither of us had tried sea cucumber at the time), some meat buns, and donkey. 

Personally, I really like lamb/mutton. Donkey was pretty good too, but I feel kind of guilty eating that. Theres a saying in China apparently that goes kind of like "In heaven there's dragons meat, on earth, there is donkey meat" 

I did not care for the sea cucumber soup. Not one bit. I can't get over the texture. And I made the mistake of biting into it and looking at its insides. Horrible. It's considered to be very high in nutrition but I just don't like it. 

Pictures of some food items are below, sorry it took so long for me to gather everything together! 

 

Until next time, 

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yinchuan pt. 2

This is late considering that I'm not in Yinchuan anymore, oops! 

On our second weekend off, Drew and I decided to check out one of Yinchuan's tourist attractions, Sand Lake (Shahu). It's supposed to be a really great place for bird watching? Not really my thing, but when we looked it up it appeared that they had camel riding and dune sliding too so why not? 

We actually didn't end up doing either of those things. We ended up looking for the swimming area when we got there because it was hot and we (read: I) wanted to swim. We had to walk to the complete opposite side of the park from the entrance to find the swimming area (and if China does anything well, it is making huge parks so it took forever). When we finally got there, it wasn't that great and Drew kept on getting hassled by minnows, but at least we escaped the heat for a bit. 

It's supposed to be the sweetest watermelon. It was explained to us that watermelon become very sweet when grown in a dry climate. How true is that? ? ? I have really no idea. 

Oh we also finally tried the local watermelon. It was hyped up to be the best watermelon in all of China by the operator we worked with. I'm not sure about the best watermelon, but it was pretty good. I managed to catch Drew's Sri Lankan Nair situation on camera too haha. 

We did a round of ATV riding and parasailing after the watermelon snack (meal? it was a lot of watermelon).  I'd have more pictures, but Drew hasn't sent me any from his phone yet >:( So here's and album of just pictures of Drew. 

Anyway, at the end we got the most amazing picture from this park. They photoshopped us onto a boat, they photoshopped the boat onto the lake, the photoshopped the birds flying in the photo. Just A+. Wonderful. 

yinchuan, china

My official transfer date was August 1st and I immediately got staffed for a job where I had to be on site in China on August 2nd. It was already August 2nd in China when I got staffed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is the nature of the job so I really shouldn't be surprised to find grass in a park. 

I flew out of ORD and did a (kind of stressful) layover in Shanghai for my final destination of Yinchuan. 

 

The first week went by quickly and the customer gave us a day off since we were going to come in during the weekend anyway.

We figured it would be a good time to do some touristy things! An operator told us about a tomb we could tour so that was first on our list: the Western Xia Tombs. We started off by checking out the museum of artifacts before we headed out to look at the actual site. There wasn't any access to to the inside, but they were pretty impressive with the Helan Mountains as the backdrop. 

Second on the list was the Helan Mountains Cave Paintings (this is rated a quadruple A attraction, AAAA). This started off with another museum tour on petroglyphs around the world. We ended up doing two rounds in the museum trying to find the exit to get to the shuttle up the mountain. We ultimately settled on exiting through the front and walking around the outside of the building to get to the back. When we saw a stream of people exiting from the back of the building, we had to go back in an find out how we missed the exit. We felt like huge dummies, how did we manage to miss an exit that literally a whole tour bus full of Chinese people filtered through? Turns out, since neither my chief or I can read Chinese, we both missed the taped up handwritten sign that pointed towards a dark stairway that eventually led to the exit. 

I didn't expect to see any wildlife in the area due the the high amount of tourists, but a family of deer came down to drink out of the stream while we were there. The AAAA rated tourist attraction also had one of Han Meilin's Art Museums at the end of the shuttle bus ride. He's the guy who designed AirChina's logo and designed the China 2008 Olympic mascots. I don't have any pictures of the artwork inside the museum since the staff was gracious enough to give us a tour through the museum in english! 

I found out later that theres a cool looking bridge somewhere in the Helan Mountains that's also attached to a hiking trail. So the next time we get a day off we'll probably go take a look at that. One of the operators also mentioned a hot spring nearby. But do I really want to sit in a hot spring in the middle of summer? Do you find grass in a park? (Yes.)