Mud Caves

Don't worry my friends, we didn't take a mistake to tour. We started out by entering the cave on a little wooden canoe, then we toured the caves for about forty minutes, played in the mud pit (no one else was there, so all the men that usually take pictures to sell them were just watching Matt and me playing around in the mud. At least we had our own personal photographer!) The images are terrible, I know, they're a picture (taken with our webcam) of a not so great print, but you get the idea.

After wallowing like little piggies, we rinsed off and went to chill in the hot springs. Man, life is just hard sometimes.

the Chinese Chip Testing of 2010

Let me just start by saying they have some weirdy flavors of Lays here.

All the teachers came to stay at our house last weekend, so Matt and I decided to host a little chip testing. They have just expanded our grocery store, and also started stoking some new flavors we had yet to try. So we bought a bunch of chips:

Gathered the victims:

And made them all close their eyes, sample the chips and then guess the flavor.

After we tested all the chips and everyone was sufficently nauseous, I had everyone write reveiws, but since I am in Yangshou right now (yay!)I don't have them... so you'll just have to imagine what Mango, Cucumber, Seaweed, Cherry Tomato, Blueberry and Lime flavored chips taste like (I'll post the reviews when we get home, they were pretty funny). Let me just tell you that while the blueberry ones SMELLED like muffintops, the taste was something else.

I think the unanimous WOSRT tasting ones were the cucumber.


And, I think the prize for best face making definately would have to go to Shelby:

On a train, on a boat

I thought I talked about this earlier, but I was looking back on my blog, and I don't think I mentioned one piece of China craziness. 

Hainan is an island. We went to there. While we were planning our trip, we weren't sure if there were trains that went from the mainland to the island, or if we would have to take a ferry. We looked at google maps and saw this:

"Cool," I thought, "they built a bridge." And we didn't think anything of it again, since we bought train tickets from Guangzhou to Sanya (mainland to island) with no problems.

It was a sleeper train, so we settled down in our bunks and went to bed. 

About three o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by multiple ruckuses. There were of course the babies crying and people snoring, but the train itself was really loud, and kinda bumpy, even though we were stopped, almost like they were separating the cars. I looked out the window and we were unnaturally close to another car, but it being three o'clock in the morning, I wasn't really too concerned about what was going on. 

We arrived in beautiful Sanya at about six. While we were on a bus to find a hostel, we (myself, Matt and our friend Sam) started to talk about how we had all be woken up by the noise last night. We could not figure out what had been going on that could be so loud, or why we were stopped with cars on both sides of us. I don't know how we came about it, but we started to think that maybe they had put the train on a ferry.

"That's too crazy, even for China," we all agreed "Put a WHOLE train on a ferry and ship it across the bay? Thats insane."

When we arrived at our hostel, we got on google maps, remembering that we had seen a bridge. This time we switched it to satellite view, and this is what we saw:

No bridge. They totally put our train, car by car, onto a ferry, shipped us across the bay, connected us all together again and continued on their merry way. Who thinks of something like that? I'll tell you who, the same people who decided to build a railway on ICE into Tibet(seriously read the link, it's crazy talk). 

So, moral of the story is, I have been on a train, on a boat. 

For Christmas...

I would like a baby, and right now, I think I would like that baby to be Chinese. Too bad neither Matt or I are thirty (the age you must be to adopt from China). Here are some Chinese children for your viewing pleasure:

(Sorry the posts have been picture heavy lately... I don't have anything really interesting to say)






Okay, so not really a picture of a child, but doesn't this old lady look cool?

Random Cool Door

I have found about five thousand gazillion places I would LOVE to do a photo shoot in this country (I'll post pictures later of an abandoned amusement park) and this little area is one of them.

The Lost Memory Card

I was clearing off my many memory cards the other day, and I found a bunch of pictures from our trip to Hainan at the end of January... most of these were taken in the center of the island where we went to see a bunch of minority villages. I love pictures. Especially BIG ones.

The Best Kept Secret

Notice anything 'odd' about that little boys pants? Ya, the first time I saw that, I probably did the biggest double take in human history. I wondered what parents would let their kids run around commando, much less with a HUGE rip in their pants... then I saw a kid squatting in the middle of the Forbidden City, and realized this was no mistake.

Split bottom pants, ahh. Just when I stopped giggling every time I saw them, it got freezing, and we would see these babies with six inches worth of clothes on and their brown little bums peeking out(kinda defeats the purpose of bundling wouldn't you say?) Little kids here really just pop a squat any time they feel the urge. They wear these split bottom pants from infancy to when they are potty trained(mostly), they have diapers here, but I don't think they use them as much as in America. Next time I hear a debate about cloth vs. disposable, I think I'm gonna throw this idea out there and see where that takes the discussion.

Stages

I believe that how adapted you are to life in China is directly proportional to how you respond to honking. According to my imagination, there are five stages. I will illustrate said stages by quoting the thoughts that go through your mind upon hearing a honk.

Stage 1: "Holy COW! Stop all this infernal ruckus! Why, oh why is there soooo much noise! Simmer!"

Stage 2: "I am super cool, I am totally used to all this honki- BAHHHH! Okay, that one scared me." 

*and somewhere between stage 2 & 3, you learn that honking is not a sign of aggression, merely a friendly reminder that someone is fast approaching you, possibly head-on and is therefore used excessively. Just one of the many reasons why their INSANE driving does not result in thousands of casualties daily.* 

Stage 3: not really a thought process, but an automatic movement from the middle of the road to the sidewalk upon hearing a honk. 

Stage 4: "They can totally fit around me"

Stage 5: upon NOT being honked at: "Hey! A little warning would have been nice before you came within an inch of my personage!!! Honk next time fella!"

And then there's Matt, who has reached the same level as a Chinese National and must be dragged out of harms way because he pays absolutely no attention to the horns.

Country Number 4

I have this goal that I want to visit 50 countries before I am 50. So far I have the US, Mexico, China and most recently Hong Kong. I have technically been to Canada, but a four hour layover hardly counts I think. Matt and I got to go to Hong Kong with our parents over the Spring Festival Holiday, and it was really fun! I am still on the fence about counting Hong Kong as a different country from China, but here is my reasoning for doing so, and you can let me know what you think.

1. to enter Hong Kong from China, you must go through customs, the whole she-bang, departure cards, stamping visas, etc.
2. they have their own currency (which looks like monopoly money by the way).
3. they have their own separate government.

So, what say you? In the meantime, here are some pictures from H.K. (you may have noticed that I figured out how I can make my pictures bigger, despite the firewall! I know they are maybe too huge, but I think I am overcompensating for such small and weirdly organized pictures for so long. But ya gotta give me a break, I am working in html code here!)

The view from Victoria's peak:

The temple when we went in: (they were doing construction all around it, so it was hard to get the whole thing without a big ugly crane in there)

The Temple when we came out, as is everything else in Hong Kong, the temple was beautiful at night.

Mia Familia

I was talking with my momma on Skype today, and she was giving me an update on the fam.

"Shane didn't think this was very cool, but he got a letter from Steven's Institute of Technology, or something like that... it's in Hoboken, New Jersey... it was about-"

"HOBOKEN?!?! Tell him to go to there. No matter what. He MUST go to this school. Doesn't he know that's where Carlo's Bakery is?!?!"

Carlo's Bakery is where they film my most beloved TV show, possibly ever.


Mmm, Cake Boss makes me happy. It's a reality TLC show with this Italian/New Jerseyian Baker who tries to be hardcore... but just isn't(those are my FAVORITE kind of people). Plus, they make some really delicious(sounding) and cool looking cakes. I think part of my affinity for this show stems from me discovering it right before I left for China, so it reminds me of happy-being-at-the-Carters times.

Basically, I think that Shane should go there, meet Buddy (the Boss) and get him to make me a specialty cake. I'm thinking "Devil’s Food Cake with Chocolate Mousse, a thin layer of Chocolate Ganache, and Fresh Raspberries or Fresh Strawberries", and it should be a representation of all things awesome. To embody our(mine and Matt's) awesomeness.

P.S. They sent Shane a letter about him possibly swimming for them. Too bad Shane is way too cool for Division 3.

Kristal vs. The Classics

A few weeks into being here, we discovered our bookstore. In the back of said bookstore, there is a little shelf, with English books. It was just about the greatest discovery ever. I love reading. Always have, and always will. I haven't ever been really able to get into 'the classics' though. I guess I'm just kind of a hater that way. But since these books are the only ones we had, I decided to give it a go, and it's been awesome! I made a goal to read all the English titles they have.

I started with A Tale of Two Cities, and admittedly it took me awhile to get through the beginning of that book, but the end was really epic... and got me really excited to read more.

I have to say that I am REALLY suprised how much I have loved some of these books. I know it sounds totally cliché, but there is a reason (some) of these books have lasted. I'm just about halfway finished with the books there, so I have to fly to finish (but I calculated the pages per day, and I think I can do it!), but I thought I would give my opinion on the ones that I have read so far. Let me just say right now, that I read primarily to be entertained... so thats how I judge books.

Highly, HIGHLY recommend:
The Counte of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (the movie is bubkis compared to this book, I think it's my favorite ever)
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas(okay, so basically anything written by Alexadre Dumas, he's BRILLIANT)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

Worth the read (still awesome):
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen(anyone who knows of my former resentment of all things P&P, Emma and Sense and Sensibility should know how much this means)
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby by Scott F. Fitzgerald
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

They were okay:
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Tender is the Night by Scott F. Fitzgerald
The Oz Series by Frank L. Braum(I only read books 1-3)

Only High School English Classes should be sentenced to read:
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (maybe I should have picked a more popular Dostoevsky for my first one? This one was painful to get through)
The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne(I 'read' this one in High School, and thought I would give it another go while I wasn't being forced. Still didn't like it)


Sorry for the ridiculously long post... I'll try to keep more up to date as I finish books. Right now I'm working on Plato's The Republic, and taking breaks with Edgar Allen Poe's complete short stories collection.

Feelin Snazzy

The first weekend in April we went to Yangshou again (I know, obsessed much? We've only been there FIVE times in the seven months we've lived here) and I really love that place. Not only do we get to sleep in the only soft beds in China, but we get to do loads of shopping. I love shopping here. I'm starting to get pretty good at it too. The fine art of bargaining is a skill carefully aquired, but highly useful. My favorite buy of the weekend: my Chinese dress! I can now leave China fully satisfied. I had to get mine tailored for me, since all the 'long' style ones go to my knees(no joke). Most of the girls in my group had one made and so we went down to the Li river to take some photos. I pretty much want to wear mine everyday, just cause it fits so splendidly.


In case you don't recognize me after my long absence, I am the one in the black dress. I got the two piece outfit, just so that I could get two different lengths of skirts. It's fabulous!

Oh the joys...

see that mischievous look on Annie's face? Not one you want to see when you know she is signed into/looking at your blog. Check out her handiwork on my sidebar... 

The problem is, I can't even access my sidebar to change it back. Hence allowing Annie to sign into my blog (dangerous, I know). Guess I'll be a self proclaimed doofus until I return.