Kunming City Scenes

 The week before I left China, I went around the city in attempts to take some good pictures of the city for memory's sake.  I ended up with some beautiful pictures from the Green Lake area in the center of the city.  Enjoy!

 Kunming skyline taken from Green Lake.

Just as I was about to leave China, celebrations for the lunar new year were just beginning.  I love the festivity in the Green Lake park area! 

I just love how some of these dusk scenes turned out.  They really show the liveliness and color of the city.

The Bird and Flower Market - basically a giant flea market, but with a lot more variety!  They sell collectibles, and many people sell plants, animals, instruments...you name it.  If you ever go here, don't forget to bargain hard!

The sidewalks are marked in texture so that the blind can find their way around.

Musicians playing at Green Lake.

This trash area was on my way to the small outdoor produce market where I often shopped.

If you ever have the chance to visit Kunming, I would highly recommend!  It really is a beautiful city, as well as Yunnan is a very pretty province.

The Yunnan Provincial Zoo {Travel Tuesday}

Today, I'm taking you on another China throwback to when I went to the Yunnan Provincial Zoo.  I'd have to say this was BY FAR the best zoo experience I've ever had!  The animals were mostly out and active, largely due to the fact that patrons can pay to feed many of them.  

When we started off in the zoo, we were in a children's area that also had animal cubs and animals that are of particular interest to children - like monkeys, bunnies, etc.

These little tiger cubs were so adorable, and were play fighting each other while we were there.  

I LOVED how close we could be to the tiger cubs!

  Just before we left to move on to the next part of the zoo, they cuddled up to take a nap.

We were feeding these bear cubs some carrots.

This raccoon seems really fat!

 I'm not sure what type of animal this was...but something seems wrong with it.  :(

  

On our way to the next part of the zoo, some people asked us if we wanted to sit on the camel.  I thought I'd get to ride it, but I guess it was just for pictures.  It was still super cool to sit on it, and well worth the ¥10!

Okay, I've gotta say that I didn't realize camels were so BIG before this!  And this wasn't our last adventure with camels that day...

 The zebras are SO pretty!

One of the highlights of my life!  I would get yelled at all over again to pet a zebra again!

A view of Kunming from a hill to the next section of the zoo...so pretty!

This is the crazy camel.  Scroll down for why he's crazy.

My American classmate wanted his picture taken with the camels.  Let's just say that we were actually made to buy insurance in addition to the gate fee at the zoo, and once we got in we realized the insurance was in good reason!

Here's why you need insurance to enter the Yunnan Provincial Zoo:

The camel's face in the middle picture has me rolling in laughter every time! hahaha  And the fact that the grass in it's mouth is flying in the wind....oh goodness! Funniest picture on earth.

Oh, and you know those awkward moments when you know you should be asking someone if they are alright but instead you are laughing your butt off?  Yeah, this was one of those moments.

Now off to find the other zoo animals!
This Emu was not in a cage and was the scariest thing ever...

Just look at its evil glare!

Dawwww...

Maybe a once in a lifetime chance to see a live panda?   

"I'm a lazy panda.  I like to eat, and I like to sleep."

Yunnan is probably one of the most beautiful places I've seen!

The tigers were absolutely beautiful. 

Love the white tigers!

One of the coolest (and probably more "inhumane") aspects of this part of the zoo was the "tiger fishing."  Curious what I mean, read about it here.

You can pay ¥10 for a slab of meat, tie it to a bamboo pole with a rope and let the tigers catch the meat.  I wouldn't think this was mean except that I think the tigers in the cages closest to the meat vendor were overfed, and the tigers furthest were underfed.  Not only that, but we saw some of the zoo patrons who would never let the tigers actually catch the meat and were teasing them to the point that they started fighting each other.  Just like with any cat, you should play with them long enough for it to be fun, but eventually let them get the treat.  I thought it was cool to get to play with a tiger, but overall I think the unmonitored and uncontrolled aspect of this idea is mean to the animals.

This tiger is looking at the meat he is about to run and catch.

Loved this guy's face.  They walked around freely, and thought we would feed them.  When they found out you have food, they would chase you down.  

The zookeeper kept telling Sam “不怕他” which means, "Don't be afraid of him." haha

Some of the best parts of the zoo in Yunnan was how much interaction you can have with the animals.  You can feed many of them, and are much closer to the animals that you would be at the zoo here in the U.S.  I can definitely see how many aspects of this zoo aren't exactly "safe", and also how the animals might not be treated as well as they are in American zoos.  With some of the animals living in dangerous circumstances (we saw a monkey chewing on a piece of wood with nails sticking out of it), I really can't agree with that and would only hope for a change for better conditions.  However, the interaction with the animals made this by far my best zoo experience ever!

My Favorite Travel Picture {Travel Tuesday}

Today's Travel Tuesday topic is to show our favorite travel picture, and explain why it is meaningful.

All I have to say about that is, "Really, just one?!?!" 

First of all...impossible.  And especially if the picture is to have meaning to me personally, then it is really super impossible.  I have many pictures that are not the pretties or best composed that have deep meaning to me because of the people who are in them.  So here we go with a few of my favorite pictures...because I can't pick just one.

This picture is probably my favorite picture of me in China.  It is at one of the oldest buildings on Yunnan University's campus, looks very traditional, and is obviously Chinese.  I feel like this is the epitome of why I was in China: studying abroad at Yunnan University to learn Chinese and get to know the Chinese people and culture.

Okay, so composition-wise, this is one of my favorite pictures I took in China.  This was during my first week in Kunming, and a friend was showing us around the Buddhist temple.  I thought this little old man was cute, so I took a picture of him smoking on his pipe.  The color and framing turned out well and I feel like it really embodied what it was actually like sitting in the back of the temple's outdoor area.

Here are my favorites that have more personal meaning to me...

These are some friends from an event we went to every week called English Corner.  I would go help some local students practice their English...which was always beneficial for them to speak with a native person.  It was beneficial for me because I made friends, learned more about their culture and beliefs, learned new Chinese words, and had something fun to do every Friday night.  I'll never forget about the wonderful people I met at English corner, they were really my most true Chinese friends I made while living in Yunnan. I'm also sad I don't have more pictures with the rest of them.  Joyce, on the far right, was the one who helped me become involved in English Corner and also with substitute teaching for their English class for some middle school children.  She is a person who is incredibly mature and caring, and really one of the nicest people I've met!

What's more Chinese than getting a lift home on a boy's bicycle?  I love this picture because before I ever went to China I thought it would be so fun to be the girl who got taken home by a boy on the back of his bicycle.  Obviously because I was dating Tyler this wasn't romantic like it is in all the Chinese movies, but it was still AWESOME.  Poor Josh was really tired by the time we got all the way back to Yunnan University!

This picture is from my 22nd birthday with my Korean classmate and his girlfriend.  They were definitely my closest friendships in Kunming.  It was so much fun having dinner dates with them, getting to enjoy their company for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and just having true friends.  I remember while my roommate was gone on trips a few times, Daesun would check on me to make sure I was alright.  This friendship was also the most beneficial to my Chinese learning while in China.  My level of Chinese was so low that actually having conversations with other Chinese people was really hard.  They usually used words that were WAY out of my vocabulary range, and spoke really fast.  Daesun's Chinese was just a few steps ahead of my own, so I was challenged to speak to him, but it wasn't so difficult that it was impossible.  Plus, most of the Chinese people knew English and he didn't, so Chinese was our only form of communication.  Then his girlfriend, Minjeong, came to visit in December.  She only spoke Korean and English back then, so it was always fun since everyone had to translate what we said into two languages.  I miss them!

My friend Doris was another friend from English corner!  On this particular day, she took me out for my birthday (which was the day before), and I got to spend the day seeing and learning more about her life!  Her mom runs a jewelry shop in Kunming, so I got to go to her work and watch them consult with dealers and drink coffee together.  Then she showed me some new shops that I hadn't seen yet, and I got to ask questions and learn about how she had moved from Myanmar to China.  Her Chinese is so fluent, you'd never realize she wasn't native!

These were my classmates!  It was really fun getting to know people from so many different countries and learning Chinese with them.  I think most of them had better Chinese than I did, but it was still a great opportunity to be able to learn a lot more.

One of our classmates brought puppets for our teacher to use when reading the dialogues.  I really thought this was funny, but it was amazing how much they actually helped when trying to differentiate the characters in the dialogues.  Plus this particular teacher was really sweet, so she was just cute.

Okay, so I picked 8 pictures instead of 1...which is better than 20 right??