Quarantine, High Holidays, and PHOTOS!

Time seems to be flying by since I got back from my trip.  My class schedule has been pushed back to the afternoons (after a bit of complaining), and now I can stay up late and still actually sleep.

We were told last week that there was an H1N1 outbreak at Heilongjiang University (HeiDa), which is only about two miles from HIT, where I'm studying.  Apparently, a Canadian brought it to Harbin, where it quickly spread due to the close living quarters and poor circulation in the dormitories.  (Some dorm rooms are shared by 8 or more students.)  HeiDa responded by quaranting all students with any signs of illness or fever, canceled classes, and sealed off their campus.  HIT, wary of the possibility of the virus spreading to our campus, put a partial quarantine in place, only allowing people with university IDs to enter the premises.  Additionally, the Chinese students will no longer be allowed to return home for the upcoming Chinese National Day, being given only one day off (a Thursday), rather than Thursday through the following Wednesday.

As I'm living in one of the foreign student dormitories, we also encountered some new restrictions.  They pasted a large notice in the lobby of our dorm informing us that no one not residing in the building would be allowed in, and that we'd be required to take our temperatures and report them each day.  They provided one used thermometer for every two roommates and pasted a report sheet on everyone's door.

The weather has been getting colder here, which doesn't help the spread of illness, whether it be H1N1 or the common cold.  At night the temperature's been dropping down to near-freezing.  I felt like there's been a great deal of overreaction to H1N1 here, but perhaps that's just my American perspective as most of the Chinese people I've talked to seem to be fully accepting of the measures that have been put into place.  And, I suppose better safe than sorry.

Since we're in the midst of the Jewish High Holiday season, I've been having a bit of difficulty reconciling my current lack of Jewish community.  Even when I was at the U of R, despite being away from home, I still had plenty of Jewish friends and a Hillel and Chabad to choose from for religious services.  Out here in Harbin, however, this city, which once was home to a thriving Jewish community of over 20,000 Jews, has been left vacant of true Jewish culture and religion, only a synagogue-turned-museum, some Jewish stars on buildings, and a Jewish cemetery outside the city left to signify that there was ever any Jewish presence here.

I considered traveling down to Beijing for Rosh Hashanah, as there's a fairly active Jewish community and a Chabad there, but the price of the ticket and my lack of time dissuaded me.  So, I spent Rosh Hashanah on Saturday going through a short service on my own, and performing Tashlich on Sunday with a friend.  I also took it upon myself to make a honey cake, which was certainly a task, since some ingredients are hard to come by in China, never mind the complete lack of measuring utensils.  You certainly need to be resourceful to bake successfully here, but the cake came out moist and tasty.

Yom Kippur will be a little bit more difficult since I will be traveling this weekend with my program.  We will be leaving tomorrow night for DanDong, a city in Liaoning province, across the YaLu river from North Korea.  It should be a good trip, but I'll get into that in a later post.  In any case, I'll figure something out, and I should probably stop procrastinating my homework, since it seems that tomorrow is bound to be a long day.

Below are three of the panoramas that I took on my trip to Western Inner Mongolia.  I have a few more, and I've also uploaded all of my photos.  Check them out in the 'photo gallery' section, or by clicking here.   (ALSO, check out the "open in fullscreen" button for a slide show of my photos, but be wary if your computer doesn't have much RAM.)

Finally, please notice that by clicking on any of the photos below (or any of the photos from my last post), you can see a larger version of the photo in a lightbox.

[caption id="attachment_162" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Fresh Water Lake in the Badan Jilin Desert"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_163" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Twin Lakes in the Badan Jilin Desert"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_164" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Plateau at Nansi in Western Inner Mongolia"][/caption]

I have some videos to post as well, but not really any time to play with them.  So look forward to them in an upcoming post!

I should also mention:


[This is not an official Department of State website or blog, and the views and information presented are my own and do not represent the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State.]