China's Song

Calvin my hero- saved the day when a girl checked her passport in her luggage on our way from Hong Kong to China

Our first moments in China!

Teddy and his year of the tiger hair cut

fenghuang

dinner with the chinese teachers

kels and taush at the rice fields

in this village the women never cut there hair and pinch peoples butts to show affection...we were welcomed into their culture wholly...

yup that is dried rat for lunch.

cutest little water buffalo man ever. he let us ride his water buffalo- in a literal sense- get you mind out of the gutter...

jamie had just told him she loved him "wo ai ni"

asian babies are the cutest!

jordan- what a goofball

joni and teddy. class sweethearts.

we convinced this guy to give us these popsicles for ling quai or zero haha we are such good bargainers

stoked to be ziplining off the great wall!

jump picture on the great wall

creepy terracotta warrior and girl puppet in xian

celebrating children's day

world cup party!!

bruises from a "massage"

derin, my favorite bully with a birthmark on his nose, and rat tail down his back.

I cannot even begin to sum up my china experience.... so many things.... i had so many language mistakes....like yelling at the creeper man Bizi instead of BeaMo (these are all phonetic typings of course...) which essentially means NOSE! instead of the intended don't touch me! or when Tausha and I were so proud of our Chinese and decided to go to the computer store to get her headphones and were asking for "se" "wo men yao se" which we thought meant color-logically since all of the colors end in "se" heise, baise, luse, etc.... Taush wanted color headphones not white or black... so we go around talking to every store asking for this (it's like an electronics marketplace) people are laughing at us and we aren't really understanding why...we go back to chinese lessons that day and Annie our teacher was taken aback when we shared our "outstanding" chinese skills apparently we had actually been requesting a "bad or dirty boy" ! hahah and not only that we were very specific about what color we wanted him to be! not black or white! "bu baise, bu haise!" yikes.....

There are too many stories to tell but I did have this email I wrote to my mom a month after i'd been in china...it seems appropriate here:

i Hao!

So i know i have sucked at complying to your email every week rule.. haha but in my defense we like skype pretty much everyday.. I have been making notes on what I have learned about Chinese culture so I will share with you the 20 things I have learned about the Chinese in the month I have been here.. this is probably gonna be long haha i know you love those...

1. It is def NOT like eating at Panda Express everyday.. the food is... different... haha i'm getting used to it tho.. and i'm a pro chopsticker by now...
2. All of the kids are master kung fu-ers we have incidents everyday where psycho ryan does his shaking bit and then all the sudden appears calm and out of know where gracefully leaps across the room to flatten jordan out of his chair with some epic kung fu chop. it's ridiculous.
3. I can count to 6 really well now.. there are 6 girls I have to keep track of and i probably count to 6 at least 200 times a day...
4. Crossing the street can only compare to a real life game of frogger.. there are basically no stop lights. you just chance your way across 4 lanes of heavy traffic when you are feeling brave.. being almost clipped by motorbikes is a constant occurrence..it's also not rare for the motorbike drivers to keep watching you so long that they run into things--embarrassing for them for suresies --creeps.
5. Showers are definitely taken for granted.. our shower is a nasty stugglefest.. just like in thailand it's a shower head on the wall...the whole bathroom gets soaked..our head is also really short so you have to like awkward duck to get under it haha.. the best part is that it is so humid here the bathroom is just covered in mold..it's great.
6. They honk all day everyday. A ride just wouldn't be normal if they weren't honking at least once a minute. It is so annoying.. but kind of a hey i'm coming get out of the way thing i guess...
7. ASIAN BABIES ARE THE CUTEST. nuff said.
8. The weather can go from sweaty hot to see your breathe cold in one day. So rude.
9. Clothes are real cheap here...if you can find your size... i'm going to develop a complex if people keep looking at me and pushing me out of their shop haha or laughing when i tell them my shoe size... hah
10. Dessert has a whole different meaning here. Pork Porridge is just not my idea of a "yummy treat" come on people where are the brownies and ice cream??
11. The babies all have splits in their pants and no diapers... it makes it convenient for them to just do their business whenever the urge hits them... gross?
12. The Chinese are pushy! When we were buying tickets for the train they were like pushing me out of the way like legit you have to physically push your way to the front of the line.. order means nothing and everybody is always up in your business... if you don't move quick enough they will just push you out of the way mid sentence.. a little uncalled for if you ask me!! ha
13. Ni-ga is their favorite word.... it is used at least twice in every conversation and it really means "that one" when we first got here we heard them saying it like a million times and were all like does it sound like she just said...... well yeh haha turns out she was.. my favorite is when they say i have that one which comes out "whoa yo ni-ga" HAHA.
14. It is the cool thing here to wear glasses that have no lenses in them and are bedazzled. I swear everyone has a pair. Also an outfit is not complete without something furry.. be it vest, shoes, purse, or skirt i've seen it all...
15. They don't have drinks with their meals, no water, juice, soda, nothing. Strict rice and random unidentifiable other food only and nothing to wash it down with...unless it's boiling hot water. They are really focused when they eat and usually only stop to talk after the meal...but if they are talking during the meal... talking with your mouth full is fully acceptable.. yep food spray all over.. it's delightful..
16. Bread here is made with equal parts sugar and flour. It is great. They don't really eat bread though except for dessert and occasionally ruin the goodness that is the bread by putting weird meat shreds all over it or in it or if not meat it's cream cheesish stuff and corn.. interesting to say the least...i def don't think of corn as a fruit... but here it is for suresies considered just that.
17. The girls wear their wedding rings on their right ring finger and the guys on their left... that is where i wear my CTR ring so the Chinese teachers thought I was married for awhile haha it feels awkward to switch it tho.. so oh well!
18. I have never said Hello so much in my entire life... every single person we pass (no exaggeration) feels the need to use all of the English words they possess which sums up in Hello! we feel bad not responding so we end up just saying hello and waving all day constantly. They also love to take pictures with/of us and it gets a little ridiculous ha but we try to be nice.. i won't lie though i have taken my fair share of pics where i am making a really weird face in them or once.. to this lady super obviously taking creeper pictures... a mouth full of food..haha they laughed so hard when they reviewed their masterpieces.
19. Beds here are ridiculously hard. it is so stupid. laying on the ground is occasionally softer.. SOO LAME..
20. In China they think that people who write with their left hands are smart... so suck it Thailand! haha UH

ha told you that it would be long.. this counts as at least 4 emails haha... love ya

lex

I can't get more specific than that! I had a love hate relationship with china. There were days that I was so happy to be there. I loved the girls I was there with. Chey (the kids loved called her shuay -which mean cool, or shuay ge which means cute boy), kels, taush, jessa, karita, and lina all made me laugh, made me cry, and ultimately kept me going. we had so much fun! you tend to bond with the only 6 people who can speak english in your immediate space even if your personalities do clash at first. we traveled china together! fenghuang, guilin, yangshou, beijing, xian....all great places.

We even wrote a song about it : https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150150312630755

Come with us to Da Fu Yuen

Where all we say is Duo Xiao Qian

You can have some sweet baozi

or get some pork filled jiaozi

Derin can I braid your hair?

George sit in your freakin' chair

Gucci please stop being mean

James wash your hands I don't think they're clean.

They feed us so much we broke the bed

Dang all that turtle head.

Please stop feeding us chicken feet.

We just want a yummy treat.

Krissy has a smoker voice.

Alice why are you so moist?

We all like Ron's shuai ge clothes

Merlin what's that on your nose?

When Ming De has vacation days

We are on a train and asians take our sbace... you know sbace with a b yeh

Did crazy things on the wall of great

Fenghuang, Guilin, Xian, it's a date.

Andy, Peter, Jordan any more kung fu

We'll take you to Lulu.

I'm gonna miss my Teddy bear

Mandy what's with the tube in your hair?

We will miss you Xiaolan

Elephant park Wo shi wan... ta

Home was always naked men

Ning jing de xiatian.