This aisle is brought to you by noodles!

Since we haven't done too much this week, I thought I'd catch everyone up on our move to our second campus. Since the Chinese Fall semester doesn't end until Chinese New Year, our stay in the city was only for 6 weeks. A week or so after New Years, the 40 of us made the move out to a suburb of Shanghai, about 45 minutes away to start taking our engineering courses at SJTU's main campus at Minhang. I say the 40 of us moved, but actually it was more like 25-30 of us moving 40 of us, since some people had already left on their spring break trips (we had 2 weeks off from classes due to the New Year, so some people took longer trips than others. Those that left early found someone willing to take their stuff over to the other campus in exchange for dinner or another agreement. So, the 30ish of us loaded up 2 buses with all of our luggage and moved to the international student dorms on Minhang's campus. We live on the 3rd floor of the building and there are no elevators, so we all got a great workout carrying 50ish pound bags up the stairs. I personally made about 4 or 5 trips as I moved my roommate in too. The dorms are much nicer than we expected, about the size of an American dorm, but we have less stuff with us so it seems bigger. We have 2 beds that face each other, two desks, a TV, two sets of closets with more space than we could possibly fill on this trip, and our own bathroom. 

One of the beds in the room by the window. Outside the window is a clothes rack for drying our laundry.

TV in between the desks.

One desk set up.

Our huge closets.

Although the dorms are nice, we did encounter some extra expenses that we weren't expecting to have. We have to pay 2 yuan if we want our shower to be hot (less than 50 cents, a small price to pay for not freezing every day), and we have to pay for our own utilities which includes the heater to warm up the rooms when it gets cold. Needless to say, people are putting on more layers until it warms up outside because they don't want to pay for anything extra. Other than that, the campus has been great so far. We live right by the track, so me and Joe have started running for half an hour every day and we are also close to the biggest cafeteria on campus, where we eat 2 meals a day for around a dollar each!

On Monday we started classes on this campus. Most of us are only taking 2, although a few are taking 3. They are all actual Mechanical Engineering classes now instead of classes about China, so they seem more serious. We are certainly living the life though as we only have class for 1 hour and 40 minutes Mondays and Tuesdays and for 3 hours on Thursdays, giving us Wednesdays and Fridays off and most of the other days off too. We have some more homework now than we did before, but we definitely have more free time than we all did back at Purdue- next semester will be a struggle I'm sure. Our teachers are very good so far and speak great English. In one of our classes, we are joined by Chinese students, so we finally have an advantage in that the notes are in English and they are still working on their English. 

Right by campus is a huge supermarket where we went to go and buy our towels and other things for our rooms when we got here. This is Joe's favorite aisle just because it is absurd. All of these boxes and packages you see are different flavors of ramen noodles, with their very own aisle in the store. As you can see, they're pretty popular here. 

This aisle brought to you by noodles.

Unidentified food on a stick

After we went to the warrior museum, we spent the night in the Muslim area right by our hostel, which was filled with the same old souvenirs in every Chinese city, but some different street food choices. We got lamb on a stick, some other random unknown food on a stick and some dumplings which were all very good. The meat and unidentified substance on the stick were incredibly spicy, and we were struggling to eat them on the street while everyone else ate them with a straight face. We still have no idea what we ate, but they were very good. The Muslim area was very popular and packed full of locals and tourists which made it very hard for us to move around, but it was a fun area to spend the night.

Unidentified food on a stick

Packed Muslim street.

The next day, we decided to take ourselves on our own walking tour of Xian. Like Pingyao, it is completely surrounded by a wall, but it is much bigger than Pingyao was. We went into the bell tower right by our hostel and also visited it's brother the drum tower which is right down the street. They were cool to go in and get a view of the city from. 

Sign as you come out of the underpass that goes around the city center.

The bell tower at night- much prettier than during the day.

Inside architecture/decoration of the bell tower.

View of the drum tower from the bell tower.

Our hostel building, seen from the bell tower.

Me and the drum tower

Joe and our hostel. 

Drum tower at night.

A few of the many many drums in the drum tower.

After the drum towers, we went back through the Muslim street to the Great Mosque, which is listed as one of the must see attractions in Xian. Despite it being relatively well known, it was almost deserted. We thought it was beautiful and interesting compared to some of the Buddhist and Taoist temples we've been to. 

Prayer hall inside the mosque.

Prayer schedule.

A weapon that was just laying around but couldn't possibly be moved due to its weight.

One of the awesome buildings in the mosque courtyard.

From the mosque, we headed to the wall to go up and see the city. Once you're up there, you can pay to rent bikes to take around instead of walking. Since it was much bigger than Pingyao's wall, we decided to go for the bikes, but didn't make it all the way around as they conveniently only give you 100 minutes, which we figured was about 20 minutes too short to really make it around comfortably. We biked around the sides of the wall for around an hour before giving them back. It was harder than we thought since it was all worn down bricks we were biking on, but it was a lot of fun and a cool way to get around the wall.

The gate we went through to get up the wall.

Cool New Years mural on the wall.

Us as warriors.

Cool lamp posts on the top of the wall. 

Another castle-like wall.

View from the top.

A couple taking their wedding photos on the top of the wall.

Cool old buildings that we saw while biking around.

Joe and his bike. 

Me on the wall. 

It was much longer than the Pingyao wall- we couldn't even see the end.

After our bike ride, we kept walking to the Xian museum which is paired with a pagoda called the small goose pagoda. When you go in, there's a food area with Muslim men cooking more meat on sticks, but this time blaring club music and dancing/singing while cooking. We got a kick out of it and watched for a while before moving on. Inside the park area where the museum is, there were lots of games and entertainment for people walking around which we think might just be for New Years. There was also a garden full of old statues, featuring our favorite lions with some hilarious facial expressions. We finally made it through to the museum and saw some more artifacts and a 3D city map like the one of Shanghai which was cool. The area was great and fun to sit and people watch in.

Dancing food area.

The pagoda.

Best buds in one statue.

CHEESE

This is my favorite expression of any statue we've seen.

Entertainers singing and dancing.

Small kids were climbing on these horses, so we figured it was OK for us to do so too.

Jade carving inside the museum.

Another great facial expression on a statue inside the museum.

Old city map of Xian, broken into different compounds.

Half man, half animal statue

 Our walking tour was a lot of fun, and we were able to take the metro back which saved us some energy. The rest of our time in Xian was spent wandering around the shopping areas and generally killing time until our flight back to Shanghai on Friday night. We were able to catch the airport bus back which saved us some money on a cab ride again. We made it back late Friday night after taking the subway for an hour and a half from the metro back to campus so we were pretty tired, but overall very happy with how our trip turned out.

Fountains outside the drum tower.

Great store name.

In our hostels restaurant- you can't see it very well but they're all picture frames with the piece of paper that comes with them still framed, we thought it was pretty funny.

A local park we went to on our last day, with kids playing in pedal boats and inflatable rollers on the water.

View from our hostel window.