As you can see I recently took a  trip to China's Inner Mongolia, during it's massive week-long holiday: 国庆节. I t was stunning! Beautiful, exotic, full of deep and rich culture that has existed for more than a thousand years. And my friends and I got a taste of it, literally! We first took a trip out to the hallowed grasslands, where a majority of their culture was centered around during their nomadic period. We stayed a night in a rather modern and nice yurt, as well as had some yummy grass plains lamb. 
The sunrise and sunset were absolutely stunning as you can see! 
From there we traveled back to the capital city of Hohot, and then went to the desert. It was a barren, sort of beautiful sight and the sand was pretty much dust piled up together... very fine sand! The dunes were gorgeous and the sand designs... even more so. Take some home with you as I did ;) 
 
Oi ve! ... I don't even know if I spelled that right. Apparently it's Yiddish when I thought it was French. But that type of thing has been happening lately. Paradigms have been flipping all around and back and forth, but I guess that's the reason why I came in the first place. To "broaden" my mind as my defunct school and  academic advisers tell me so.  

Anyways, below you'll find a myriad of pictures. Beijing, my lovely friend that I made in Beijing last year was very kind to me this time. Together we toured Beijing before I started school: we went to the Beijing museum of Dinosaur(I don't know how to translate it) history, saw Harry Potter, and took me to several wonderful restaurants! I'm very blessed to have such a kind and unique friend. 

Later that weekend I went to Tianjin. A city just not 30 minutes outside of Beijing, by high speed rail... and  it sits on the ocean. There I went with a friend that I met this summer to help a colleague with his business. In return, he took us out for a night on the town. It was one of the most authentic, local restaurants you could find, where the slightly drunken owner somehow took a liking to me and kept making me drink their homemade 白酒, or white fermented wine. It's like sake but a little more stinging punch in my opinion. He also kept talking about Obama, Mao, fat girls in the U.S., and then kept giving me food saying that my Chinese was good. It was a particularly enlightening experience.  

Also if you can see from the pictures below, Tianjin has somewhat captured my heart. The night scene in this city is quite beyond comparison. It was a city that used to be controlled by the Allied forces before WWI, and thus as you can see influences the many different types of architecture. Walking around, especially with the better air quality, made me fall in love with the literal cornucopia of cultural imprints that scampered across the city. After which, we went to a small bar that was surprisingly nice, and ordered an absurdly large Mojito which I am proud to say my friend and I drained. We just couldn't walk correctly after for some reason.

The next day we rode Tianjin's ferris wheel. It somehow is in the middle of the bridge, which crosses one of Tianjin's most prosperous rivers: The mouth unto the Ocean...river. Long-winded I know but it sounds cool,
Anyways... just a normal weekend in China ;) Look for more and I miss you all.