Going to Hohhot....Sleeping in a Yurt

Yesterday marked the first day of what I am fondly calling, "May Madness!" I made a trip to Beijing to pick up 3 friends from the U.S. - Eric, who is a friend of mine from Marshalltown and Sarah, who was one of my college roommates, along with her husband, Ben. After dashing back and forth between the new terminal and the old I finally "collected" all 3 of them and we made the journey back to Tianjin. They were quickly immersed into Chinese culture as they were asked to be speech competition judges with me tonight. :)

Tomorrow we leave on an overnight train to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia. The train will be yet another cultural experience and our time in Hohhot will be organized by one of my students so I am not sure what to expect. As you can see from the orange part of the map, Inner Mongolia is in the very Northern part of China - it should take us about 13 hours to travel there by train.


While we are there, we will be staying in a yurt for a night...kind of like a big tent (see picture below.) I will be sure to get a picture of the actual yurt we stay in and post it later! Also, Hohhot is famous for its grasslands so we're hoping for a camel or horse ride through the grasslands!


The reason I am referring to this month as "May Madness" is that for the second part of the month, my family and friend, Beth from Marshalltown, will be here! My language skills and cultural knowledge are being stretched! I'll keep you posted about everything that's going on here. Bye for now! :)