Campania Trip: Reggia di Caserta (Garden)

As I was staying in Caserta (actually Marcianise, but that’s details) for about a week, it would be pretty dumb not to go see The Royal Palace of Caserta, since it was right there, and not too expensive to get in. In Italian it’s called Reggia and it is actually the largest royal residence in the world.

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Campania Trip: Benevento

For the spring break I went to the south of Italy to visit my friend Fabrizia, whom I met in China. I didn’t plan much, I just bought plane tickets and booked GoOpti to get me to the Trieste airport. So I was happy to just hang out and see a bit of the area. I arrived to Napoli airport and Fabrizia picked me up and took me to Caserta, where she lives. Continue reading “Campania Trip: Benevento”

Roller Derby: My First Attempt at Documentary Photography

Last semester I took a class called Foundations of Photography. My topic was documentary photography and as my subject I chose the fascinating sport of roller derby. I chose the topic to try and challenge myself and I think I succeeded at least a little.

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Qingming Park – Kaifeng

We spent the second part of our only full day in Kaifeng in Qingming Park (also called Millennium City Park). It’s a theme park based on a painting called Along the River During the Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan. The picture is the shape of a scroll rolled out horizontally. Unfortunately they don’t exhibit the picture (except for short periods every few years), so we didn’t see the original. When I was in China Art Museum in Shanghai a week ago, there was an interactive exhibition about this painting, but it required special tickets so we didn’t go in (the museum is free except for special exhibitions). But back to Kaifeng.

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Dragon Pavilion – Kaifeng

When we arrived from Xinyang to Zhenzhou East train station, we spend some time to find the bus station, and from there we took the one hour bus ride to Kaifeng. Our friend, Bingjie’s cousin Diandian (gege – brother), picked us up. We went to eat, and after we went to the hotel he booked for us. But, a little problem, this hotel doesn’t take foreigners. If you ever go to China pay attention to this, because many hotels are only for Chinese residents. In this case the hotel doesn’t have to care about your registration with the government. At least I think that’s the reason, I haven’t actually checked.

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