October 24, 2006

At night and the only foreigner there. I got off the bus and pretty much jogged across a six lane boulevard. That’s three lanes in each direction. Then I chilled at the diner for a few minutes, just long enough for it to start to rain. Packed up and biked back to the hotel. China is awesome.

Not much new news today, Kind of a slow day, talked to a few chinese and got asked “What is your major?” more times that years Julie is old. 

Anyway it is late and I should go to bed.

Night,
-Andrew!

October 23^nd, 2006

Now I long for yesterday. Not all that much, I haven’t said anything wrong either. That song just keeps coming up. Love was such an easy game to play.

Anyway, I didn’t get to send out this email yesterday so I am going over it to combine it with the stuff that happened today. But I am not sure how well this will work out, since today was the match to yesterday. 

Yesterday I did my laundry; it got done about 10:30. I was wondering if my socks would be dry in time for me to wear. They weren’t. I just put them on wet and waited for them to dry on my feet before putting on my shoes. It all worked out. I didn’t have to mircowave them to dryness(my original plan). I am still wondering if that would work though.

Yesterday, I was wondering what food I was going to eat first thing back in the states. On most trips, you know what you want to eat first thing back in the states. Last night I came to the conclusion that I wanted Hawaiian pizza. I have been eating Chinese food every breakfast and I was getting tired of it. For lunch and dinner I have been eating western diner food, greasy and french fries. Now, both of those types of food are good (Both favorite), but I am getting tired of them. I thought long and hard and Hawaiian pizza was my choice to eat once home. But I just had Hawaiian pizza tonight for dinner. So maybe some home made potato soup… or something… 

Today, we went shopping. Lots of walking, and not a lot of cool stuff. I did find some jackets that were nice and I would have like to buy, but it is really sad when you don’t fit into an extra large. Now, I am not huge, but I am some what on the large size with broad shoulders. It is just kind of depressing going to a store where you want to buy something and nothing fits. Anyway, on to happier subjects.

Yesterday, I saw myself ride a bike. How many of you can say that? Luke and I were rather bored so we went on a bike ride. We decided to go left at the end of the street (actually we asked some nice old Chinese man who didn’t understand us, and ended up pointing is some direction), and we came to where the sidewalk ends. It doesn’t end in some scary precipice made of crumbly concrete some children’s book wants you to believe. It ends in mud and a truck. Then a cement road. Which kind of looks like a sidewalk, but isn’t. It leads to some place that looks like a village and reminded me of Mexico. Not the fun, cute kids side of Mexico, but the lets not go there, cause will get shot kind of Mexico. Luke wanted to go. I said no. Luke said, come on. I said lets see where the other end of the sidewalk is. So we turned back around and rode. 

We rode all the way to Jum-bai, or JK mall. There we checked our bikes, which is really hard when the only things on the sign that you can read are “20.00”, “50.00”, “0.10”, and “0.50”. It ended up being the last one, or which is something like six and quarter cents. For two bikes. Got to love things like that.

After drinking our drinks and stowing our gear, we rode around outside Jum-bai, while I filmed Luke doing things like wheelies and stoppies. After getting enough weird looks we rode on. (This is where I get to see myself ride a bike. See after we left Jum-bai, Luke rode pretty much the whole way filming. See, I did get to see myself.) We took the long way home, stopped at a dock and I saw a huge fish jump. This thing could have eaten a duck. In three whole bites. Yeah, big. Got back to the diner and bused. And kept track of whose table was whose, and helped seat people. Rather fun. 

So that was yesterday and today. More of how today was the second half of yesterday, and yesterday in general.

So here is a shout out to all my work homies. Miss you guys and send me emails. 

Well, tonight wasn’t that funny in an outside kind of way. But long run on sentences that you think are funny when you write them ‘cause you are tired when you are typing are somewhat funny in a sad sort of way.

Night peeps. 

-Andrew!

PS. The light in the attic is just a light with a string attached to it.

Hey Xanga friends! I here are some of the emails that I sent out to the people on my list, the remote posting feature isn’t working.

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October 21^st, 2006

And the other people that read this! You do too!

I didn’t really know who was all getting these awesomely awesome emails that I have been writing (still don’t), but my audience is a little larger than I expected. So I guess I am going to have to check my spelling a little better and explain more of my inside jokes and my off-the-wall humor.

So I was writing an email to my good friend, and I thought it was getting too long. She can’t have all my creative juices, and I used a lot on her. Since I am trying to “trim the fat” out of my budget at home, I have become a little more thrifty. Which has spread to other parts of my life, and Miriam will soon attest, emails included. 

Chinese Chinese food. Mexican Mexican food. The Chinese at home is different than here. The restaurants are just so different, there are different eating customs.

So a place setting consists of a small plate (the small plates that you might be served a piece of cake on) a tea cup, a small bowl, chopsticks and spoon and one of those really cool holders for them. Well the plate is actually for garbage. That is where you place the bones or shells that you don’t eat. You eat out of the bowl. To put food in the bowl you use the chopsticks, you just grab what you want and place it in the bowl. Then you eat, and use the same chopsticks to grab more food. You just kind of push that thought out of your mind… You normally don’t get rice or noodles. I haven’t had any chow mien here, and I am kind of sad.

And serving is different here, once the food is on the table (family style, if you didn’t catch that before) the oldest or the most honored takes food first. So if I was out with my family, my dad would be first. He isn’t the oldest in the family, but he is the head of the house. Now if my dad wasn’t there, Cindi would be the one to take food first. Now if I wanted to show my dad how I thought he was a really good dad, I would put food into his bowl. It would be kind of expected for him to say that I am a really great son by putting food in my bowl.

In restaurants, you can get a table or a room. The rooms are great, cause you avoid the stares as you try to eat shrimp in the shell using chopsticks. (Tip: They are split in the back, you kind of eat all the flesh you can reach with your teeth and throw away the rest of it. Something rather hard for a mountain boy who loves seafood to do. Such waste). When you have your own room you usually have your own server girl, waitress person. They will come and take off all the pretty folded napkins off the plates and the covers off the chopsticks. Oh, yeah, some places charge you for napkins. Rather strange, but this is halfway around the world. So the girl pours the drink that you bought (you buy a big bottle for the table and share it, there is no “I’ll have this, and she will have this” thing going on). They get embarrassed if you pour your own drink. I really wonder how much of this is due to not knowing what they heck anyone is saying. There is much more, but I don’t really want to talk about it now…

Chinese is a hard language to learn. It is so tonal. I am pretty good at repeating things I hear, when people try to teach me, but I can’t remember any of it. And understanding writing is even harder. I have learned something like 8 characters, thought I was doing pretty well. Then someone mentioned that there are over 3000… Yeah, I was saddened.

Well, good night all you people!

-Andrew!

PS. Remember to stay away from any Vegemite, and slap the Aussie that says it is good. So gross…

October 20, 2006

I bought a bike today. It is a nice one. Cheap too. I bought it without a translator, that was different. I don’t know enough Chinese to eat or to find a restroom, but I can point. And xie-xie is a good phrase to know. I can also tell the taxi driver “fagua jia” (french street), which will get me to the diner. But I am not going to need that anymore.

But back to the bike, it is pretty. It is a lot like the bikes I rode at OOR over the summer two summers ago. So far people either think I am rich to drop almost 800 on a bike for 8 more days, or that I am going to end up staying here. I, myself, am not even sure. Since I have a plane ticket back already, I think I am going to end up giving the bike to the diner. The owners have to provide housing for the employees, and the boys house is about a half an hour walk away from the diner. So they really could use the bike after I have had my fun.

Now about my subject (if it the there), does generosity breed generosity? And am I really being generous? The money for the bike was given to me, so giving it away isn’t really costing me anything besides money that was never really mine. I could say that the bike came out of the money I paid myself for the trip. But once all my loving friends, family, and others gave me the money for the trip, it became mine. I could have spend the money that, say, my dad gave me and then thrown in the same amount of money I worked for. But that really isn’t the point here… I don’t know what the point is.

I guess what I am saying is that I could have used that 800 RMB to buy souvenirs, or saved it for the next trip I am going to go on, but I decided to use it to bless the people here…

What do you think, did I misuse funds entrusted to me? Or should I just buy it with my personal money as a really big souvenir? It is pretty nice…

PS. Or I could just stay here for a few more years…