Synopsis of National Holiday and next steps

I do apologize for the long-ish blog silence of updates -- 1 week after returning from Mongolia it was National Holiday here in China and Max, my boyfriend, came to visit.  Holidays in China are such that EVERYONE has the week off, and EVERYONE tries to go home, so that's many millions of people clogging the public transportation system  -- so we didn't even try to beat the crowds and instead stayed around Beijing.  Which after all is the size of Belgium, so there's certainly enough to do!

Over his 10 days here, we went to several large parks in the city with scattered temples, caves, marble boats, lakes, and loads of people.  We got out of the city one day to Fang Shan National Park which has a medium-sized mountain with a Buddhist nunnery and some fantastic views.  (and less, but still sufficient people). That was an adventurous day because it turns out there are 5-10 lines of the same bus number and while we managed to get on one that went to our destination, we got on the extremely slow one that took 4 hours to get there instead of 2!  We went and saw an amazing acrobatics show, the highlight of which was 12 girls riding on one moving bike!  We went camping on the Great Wall which was an amazing experience (except for the SNORING guide who kept me up all night long!).  And we had some nice relaxation time just walking around Beijing, eating Chinese food, playing pingpong, and generally enjoying each other's company.

Tomorrow, Adam and I are going with some other students from our office and our boss, Dr. Qiao, to Yangcheng, a small city in Shanxi Province.  We are starting one of the cervical cancer screening trials and I have developed a survey that I will be piloting on Sunday!  I am super excited about seeing another part of China and getting to really kick off my research.  I might not have good internet for a while, so that is why I might not have posts for a couple days.

In the meantime, enjoy these highlights of my vacation with Max in Beijing: (sorry that the pictures from yesterday somehow got mixed into the same album - just click past them to see vacation pics!)