My apologies for the nonexistence of last week’s blog post. I was actually not in Beijing all last week! A few friends from my time studying abroad with CET Beijing (fall 2014) came to visit me in Beijing and we took a trip to Gansu Province together. Gansu is in Western China (near Tibet).
My friends (Jason and a girl who is also named Caitlin) and I left Beijing last Saturday. The farther we went into the Chinese countryside the more interesting our forms of transportation became. We flew to Lanzhou, took a bus to Xiahe, next we hailed a taxi, hopped on a rickshaw, and finally, found ourselves on horseback, deep in the grasslands of the Tibetan plateau. We rode horses to a small (3 tent) nomad “village.” There, we stayed the night with Tibetan nomads. We ate their food, enjoyed their company, helped them shovel yak dung and heard the yaks, and–drum roll please… in the morning I milked a yak! I’ll be adding that one to my resume;)
Tibetan tent selfie!
We also hung out with monks in the town of Langmusi. It was so weird to talk to completely normal kids our age that have devoted their lives to Buddhism and monkdom. You’d never know they were monks if they didn’t wear red robes. Seriously, imagine seeing monks walking around with iPhones, backwards baseball caps, and–my personal favorite–at the ATM gettin some cash;)
That’s Jason and Caitlin next to the monk there.
Wellesley Track & Field represent!!
And yep… If you look closely, you can see a pair of really nice headphones chillin in the grass behind this monk as he drinks milk tea to celebrate the Dalai Lama’s birthday. Apparently, monks listen to podcasts to. Words cannot describe how cool and weird this trip has been.
I’m sure you’re wondering how I managed to travel while also interning for a magazine here in Beijing. Well, the cool thing about City Weekend is that each publication has a travel piece in which someone shares a recent travel experience. These are generally about destinations in China that our readers may be interested in. So not only did I get to travel for work, I also get to write an article about how much of a blast it was so that others can try it too! I’m living the dream:)
My internship is now halfway done and I will be returning home in about four weeks. I can’t believe all the things I’ve already done here in such a short time. And there is so much left to do! I’m sure I’ll have a new adventure to share next week.
Until next time!