i love me some kyrgyzstan. a lot, in fact.

ohmigoodness, it has been a while since i posted. and the internet of china should know my wrath at my inability to upload photos or blog or really do much of anything. a month in china really, really taught me to value freedom of information. how wonderful it is to be in a country where i'm free to search the internet as i please! i was finally able to view my blog posts, and flickr works again in kyrgyzstan.

photos are here again:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eeking/collections/

but before i get going into kyrgyzstan, can you tell me where this photo was taken:


italy? no

france? no

that's right, it's china. the deserts of western china. so beautiful and different and full of warm, delicious bagels every morning and lots and lots of camels and arabic and the most beautiful men on earth. western china, which is seemingly only chinese politically, is so very different from eastern china, and was a real surprise to me.

also, western china holds a beautiful lake, called tian chi (heaven lake) where you can sleep out in the wilderness in a kyrgyz yurt (round tent thing) and ride horses and get away from the crowds and the polution of the big cities. that was a very good experience after being in rainy nanchong for a month.

i was lucky enough to meet up with a group of people to travel with at tian chi. i was also, well, lucky(?) enough that one of them was from new zealand. kiwis never fail to surprise me.

in any case, it was still a wonderful experience, following the old silk road, full of deserted desert cities and mummies. the grapes of turpan are delicious and we were there during early harvest, meaning that the whole city is covered in grapes that haven't been picked yet and are free to be eaten by anyone who passes by the grapes growing along almost every sidewalk.

these men had never seen a woman drink 3 beers in a public park between 1 and 5 pm before.

these kids enjoy cameras. super sweet.

behold, the mummified pretzels of the ancient silk road.

and also in china, don't forget to not buckle up.


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okay, so into kyrgyzstan i go.

never in my life had i ever imagined, seen, heard stories of, or been given a remotely accurate description of the unparalleled beauty of the country of kyrgyzstan that is so intense it's almost difficult to breath, high altitude aside. i can't even describe it. you can see the photos on flickr, but they don't even begin to capture the ride from the border of china into osh.

we crossed the border and grabbed a taxi for the closest city. we started off down a paved road, then a gravel road, then a very bumpy road, then . . . our driver turned off into the grass and we just drove across the rolling hills and low mountains for a while. it was crazy. we sang hotel california and yesterday and our driver informed us that tina turner is a brick house.

we stopped at a real yurt and had vodka and i gave the end of the beanies to the kids who lived there, in the middle of nowhere kyrgyzstan.

we drank a lot of vodka that day. our driver said we were high up in the mountains, so we should drink vodka and smoke cigarettes to stave off altitude sickness. i managed with the vodka alone.

the people of kyrgyzstan are so generous, walking 10 blocks with us to make sure we know where we are going, and defending us against silly taxi drivers. the food is delicious, but vegetarian = okay you only eat bread for the next week. the vodka flows like water. i've never had so much in my life. and for some reason they really like carbonated water. blech! i had to learn to read "non-carbonated" in russian. ah, russian. it's everywhere. i'm doing okay at reading, but i'm worse at russian than at mandarin, and i never thought that would be the case. no one speaks english and this is probably the most difficult place i've ever travelled. but still, it is the tops. i don't want to leave. but i will. in five days. after i lay on the beach and do nothing but soak up rays and eat bananas, i'm going into kazakhstan.

yay kazakhstan, where i will meet up with steve. my husband. steve and i had a falling out last summer after the end of my last trip. we decided to see other people, and in fact he didn't even return with me to the usa. but now he's waiting for me there in almaty, like the good husband he is. having given up martial arts and engineering, steven now trains horses in the capital city of kazakhstan. currently, he's working on project for a central asian film, training horses in the mountains. it's kind of like remake of gone with the wind, starring brad pitt and reba mcentire, only the gender roles are reversed. it looks to be a big hit. still, he does keep up with his strength training, and after he worked as a body guard to several top politial officials in washington during the clinton administration, he knows how to protect his good wife. he should be happy to see me, and i'll be happy to see him too. so i won't be needing to hand out my email address to any of these good, gorgeous, kyrgyz men. and they won't need to be accompanying me anywhere, thank you very much. i'm happily married, at least for the next two weeks.

walking around the streets of kyrgyzstan is very fun for me, as i actually blend in when i'm not with my travel buddies. i've been stopped a few times by people asking me directions in russian, and a kyrgyz man i met who could speak english told me i looked like i belonged. awww. it's nice to belong. though it makes it just that much more difficult to find my way out of here. if i never return to iowa city, be sure that you can find me living in the mountains out here, where things are beautiful.

okay that's all i've got. i'm leaving bishkek tomorrow for the beach and there will be no internet there. even if there were, i wouldn't use it. i'm taking a break, now that i've uploaded my photos. talk to you all in a week!

changing plans: for the glory of iowa

wahoo the last day on the farm was a wacky adventure!

after i last posted, i was swept away from my last afternoon with the ladies 2 hours earlier than i expected. i was going to have chris or emily translate a goodbye for me, but i was pretty sure i would just burst into tears. it's hard to say goodbye to people (you enjoy) who you know you will never see again. ever ever. chris and emily stayed at the farm. chris said they had some "people to meet with." this was at 5:30. so i went home to take a nap and do some laundry, but my nap was cut short --> we were off to dinner. one last hot pot. so china dad and two ladies and i sat around. at the restaurant. for 3 hours. we started eating about an hour into it. none of them spoke english. no one really spoke at all. for three hours. yikes! i played charade story-telling and showed off my driver's license and student ids to pass the time. that took up about 20 minutes. then i was full and tired and really wondering where chris and emily were. they burst into the restaurant at 9:00 with oh such good stories to tell!

local people had been stealing peaches from the farm. so the "meeting" they had planned was to sneak up on the thieves and catch them in the act. they were successful. they caught 3 of around 10 poeople who were trying to steal over 150 kg of peaches: street value, maybe 300 yuan. value to chris and emily who can sell in hong kong: 1,000 yuan! yikes! so the 3 men were carted of to the police, where they were given an easy break because it's all about who you know. but emily and chris and he (that's pronounced huh, not hee) and a-wen, other farm workers, were full of great storeis about the raid. there was much beer to be drunk. we were all to be drunk in fact. i told them they should have kept me around: i can run fast. then the gossip started. so and so likes so and so, i learned a-wen's name, sounds like erin. i like that. we ate and we drank and were marry. turns out a-wen can speak english, sneaky little thing. emily and i told stories about the south park movie and sang a few songs. blame canada! we explained about satan's love affairs. we toasted good irish blessing toasts. i learned that the dog died! no! well, she didn't die. she was "put down." in a farm kind of way. gruesome. i loved that dog. it made me cry a bit. very, very gruesome.

then we went home. george strait played on the radio and all was well in the world. except of course, that the dog is dead. i could have lived forever without being told that. sniffle.

so i'll miss the farm. maybe i'll even miss my china dad wandering around in his tighty-whities. and clipping his toenails during breakfast. and leaving loogies next to the sink in the bathroom. but i probably won't miss annoying-voice man. he was a driver at the farm. he sounded like this guy when he talked:

now i'm in a hostel in chengdu. i spent the night in a dorm with two super-hottie korean men. wow. i lived there for a year and had no idea they grew them that hott there. i mean, wow.

*************************************************************
so, here's the new deal. (not like fdr's new deal) i was going to spend two weeks in tibet, but some american guys a few weeks ago were all up in their faces over there stirring the pot and passing out big signs about . . ."certain situations". now they're not letting americans in for one month, at least not by any means i could afford, dagnabbit. so fine then, if tibet doesn't want my money, i'm going to kazakhstan! for make benefit the glorious country of iowa.

and to make apologies . . .

in a few hours i get on a 56 hour (!!) train to urumqi, china. it's in the desert and features things like hand-stretched noodles and camels. i'm actually way more excited about urumqi than i was about tibet. so a few days in urumqi and then into kazakhstan and then, i dunno. back to china or something. there are old silk road ghost towns up there. looks pretty cool.

also, to get there, i have to pass through the loess plains of china. you can read about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loess

a geological formation that, until 2 minutes ago actually, i believed was unique to china and iowa. turns out hungary and missouri have some, too. jerks. that spoiled most of the fun of caring about going through the loess plains in china.

so i'm off. i hear they sell bricks of cheddar at the carrefour downtown. i've got to pass those 56 hours somehow.

the last days of the farm

yup, that's all. i'm leaving tomorrow bright and early. it has been a very unique experience and i learned a lot. for instance, the stalk of the lotus plant forms a natural straw and when cut, bleeds a white milky substance. also, water bamboo is tasty, eaten raw or cooked with soy sauce and sugar. pumpkin leaves are buttery and delicious, even if they were only used to feed pigs in china for hundreds of years. finally, and probably most importantly, i can peel a tomato in one long, curly strip.

so in xichong it has been raining since late may. the past few days have been the first bits of sunshine that i have seen in a month, and they have been lovely. i took the opportunity to go out to work the fields, sort of. i took the opportunity, but once i got out there, it was taken back. the man in charge of the field workers thought it was too hot for me to work. so after only 30 minutes of turning over some soil, i was given a straw hat (super chic!) and sent to sit in an empty cement room alone on a wooden bench. i would have rather worked the fields. so i decided to walk around the farm instead. this was also not allowed. the rest of the afternoon consisted of me sneaking away from the cement room and being hunted down and led back, with a few ripe fruits or vegetables to eat along the way. then i would pretend not to understand a sneak away again. good thing i had my camera, otherwise i think i would have passed out from boredom.

here are a few farm photos (green! green!). the rest are on flickr.

okay, nevermind. they are all on flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eeking/collections/

so tonight is hot pot one last time and tomorrow, pizza in chengdu.

three stories

1. it's festival time! dragon boat festival (duan wu jie) all over china. where i grew up (lil' ol' dubuque, iowa) dragon boat racing was a big event every summer, and yet, i never learned the history. so here's the history:

once upon a time (over 2000 years ago) there was this poet in china whose poems weren't all that popular. also, for political reasons, he was chased here and there by the government. he was fed up with something, be it his never-ending flight from the government, the poor reception of his poetry, or, so it's told, the plight of the chinese people and his inability to save his country, and so he threw himself into the river and drowned. the people of the surrounding towns threw "zong zi", this tasty treat made of sticky rice and jujubees (chinese dates):

into the water to keep the fish from eating his body while they searched for him in dragon boats. so now each year at dan wu jie, the chinese eat zong zi (oh, so good!), throw some into various rivers, and have dragon boat races. and people in dubuque just have dragon boat races.

2. there isn't much to do around here after the sun goes down. emily and chris and emily's dad play cards for money, and i dink around the computer (while you are all sleeping) and sometimes watch tv. the english language channel is tediously repetitive, and there's only one, so sometimes i stare at chinese television. the commercials are fun. oh, but twice i caught english language concerts on the music channel. one was sade and one was air supply. whoa, air supply is getting old. it took a while for me to realize who it was and then i remembered where i knew them from: maybe 10 years ago, actually probably longer, i saw them in a free concert at six flags great america. the guitarist gave kevin his pick at the end of the show. i left early to go bunjee jumping.

so anyways, a few nights ago i was watching this chinese tv and i caught the beginning of an old black and white movie. as much as i could make out, plot is as follows:

poor street boy with very large nose and straggly hair tries to fit in in china. he is beaten and starving on the streets. his friends are also poor a ragged. he is kicked out of a parade of kids dressed like boy scouts. he tries to march with them again and gets beaten. he makes his own parade and gets arrested. the police harrass him. he has no shoes. he passes by some man on the street who drops his wallet, so he calls out to the man and hands him back his wallet, only to get beaten again: the man thinks he stole the wallet. another man comes and stops the beating and invites the boy back to his home for some food and clothes. the boy then discovers the man is himself a theif and makes the boy become part of his ring of theives, though this boy wants no part of anything so immoral. he escapes only when he is being forced to steal silk at the store and purposefully lets the police see what he is doing so the man and his wife flee. the cops catch him and take the silk for themselves and the boy gets away. then he gets adopted or bought or something by some rich chinese couple, very fat rich chinese couple, who live in a western style home and eat with a fork and have fancy western clothing. he is forced to parade about for their friends and then finally leaves after he and his old street friends ruin one of the couples' parties. so he's on his own again and life is tough, until he passes by the main square and sees a new parade. this parade accepts him and let's him march along with them, and the boy is very happy. this parade is for chairman mao. then the movie ends.

i would place this movie probably some time in the early 1950's. it was a very, very interesting movie to watch, and that's all i have to say about that.

3. things that i do that make people laugh at the farm:

sneeze, talk to the dog, pet the dog, carry boxes by myself, wear a hat, wear sandals in the rain, remove splinters with a needle (i'm now the official splinter remover), peel a tomato in one long curly strip, say "mmm-mmm!" when something tastes good, be taller than the rest of them, tell the time in chinese, say i don't want babies, yawn, and , of course, sing.

the ladies i work with will, on occasion, burst into song. so i thought it was about time for me to share some american classics. now i sing about three songs a day, to a very appreciative audience. i have shared disney classics from the lion king and the little mermaid, songs by jewel, brak (they especially like "what happened to the water"), john denver, the outfielders, johnny cash, n'sync, and several campfire songs. it's a good time round these parts.

the lights and sights of xichong

1. xichong, the "tiny" town closest to the farm, where i live with my host family, has around 80,000 occupants. because it's so small, they only have one stoplight. washington, iowa, (population 8,000) has about 5 stoplights that i have to pass through just on my way home to ottumwa from iowa city.

one stoplight. think about that. it's not like those 80,000 people don't have cars. they've got 'em, all right. but only one stoplight.

2. a few days ago i went out with emily to get new glasses. for the bargain price of $20, i'm set up with some stylish frames, and lenses that are 2x stronger than the ones in the glasses i was wearing! 2x stronger! my eyes have really fallen apart in the past year. it's so nice to be able to see!

3. i have always thought that there should be some recognizable sign to let people know you are driving as a part of a caravan. this way, maybe it wouldn't be so upsetting if you cut someone off, or got cut off by someone else, or if you didn't wait your turn so much at a four way stop, maybe. well, in sichuan, maybe in all of china, people travelling in caravan all put on their emergency blinkers. it's brilliant! now, how can i implement this in the usa? i have a feeling people would just wave me down or think that i was a fool who forgot to turn off my blinkers or think that i thought the driving conditions were hazardous.

and p.s., one of the chinese students who took us to the village has translated the newspaper article for me. the student's english name is "jerald bodystrong." he chose it himself. he thought lance armstrong was pretty cool, but only arm-strong? why not be all-body-strong? it's a reasonable question, i guess. here's his translation:

The title is: An American Lady Is Learning In A Chinese Farm

In June 6th, an American lady called Erin was learning the techniques of organic vegetables and fruits in Guangfeng Agriculture Company in Nanchong Sichuan. The American lady who is from (here is the name of the state you come from, I don't know how to spell it) near Mississippi River was informed of the WWOOF from her classmates. So, she went to Nanchong and had worked in the farm for a month, and didn't ask for the salary. She used her body languages to communicate with the normal Chinese famers and learn the skill of planting organic vegetables.

in the news this week

1. paris hilton announces she plans to stop "acting dumb".

2. astronaut group-hug takes place miles above the earth.

3. american university student works on farm in china.

click here for more details from one of china's national newspapers.


:)

why are all my posts about food?

maybe because i've reached that point. the point where i would cut off my left foot for a burrito. oh, a beautiful, bursting bean burrito. with some chips and salsa and a nice cold margarita (no salt). i would even forego the margarita if it meant a tasty panchero's treat. and boy howdy, i could sure go for a hunk of cheddar cheese right now. mmm . . . cheese . . .

(every time i leave the usa, i realize that there are two things that no one does better: a readily available, wide variety of 1. americanized foreign cuisine, and 2. music)

or maybe, it's because i need to tell you that in chinese instead of saying "cheese" to take a picture, they say "qiedzi". translation, "eggplant."

so, "eggplant!"

or maybe it's because i've consumed so much MSG that i'm starting to fall off my rocker. when i lived in montreal, i made a rule about no chinese before bedtime because the MSG in my favorite meal would always give me crazy dreams and i'd usually wake up in the middle of the night in the midst of an anxiety attack and have a hard time falling back to sleep. well, i can't really abide by that rule when i'm in china. so i've been having crazy dreams and been waking up in the middle of the night feeling all anxious and squiggly. i keep having these recurring nightmares about being in a falling elevator to the point that i'm kind of afraid of elevators now. happily, there are none on the farm. as soon as i leave the farm i'm going on MSG detox: again, only fruit and nuts for a few days. this is probably a good idea, since as soon as i leave i'm going to hike a three-day mountain pass notoriously inhabited by large-ish monkeys and i'll need my wits about me.

besides food related observations, working on the farm is great. i've learned some new chinese and can tell time now, to the amusement of the ladies i work with. i discovered i can still recite the entirety of "the little mermaid", including songs and voices, though i think i'm missing large chunks of "when harry met sally". i spend hours at a time without speaking or being spoken to. it's really peaceful: i just listen to the ladies talk about stuff and wrap stuff and put stickers on stuff, and i listen to the cars and buses honk at each other on the road outside.

sometimes the ladies and i try to communicate: sometimes we hit the mark, sometimes we miss big time. for example, i sneezed one day and i thought one of the workers told me since i sneezed i should take a shot of alcohol. well, emily came down a bit later and translated and it turns out she was suggesting i go see a doctor and get some medicine. same same.

also, final story, a few days ago we were wrapping pumpkin flowers to ship to the supermarkets. when you pick them, they close up a bit, and one of the ladies was showing me how you need to open the flowers and check inside them before you wrap them, what for, i wasn't sure. but that's easy enough, so i started checking and wrapping away:

#1. nothing
#2. 2 ants
#3. nothing
#4. oh wow! two big beautiful snails, complete with a set of pointy-feeler eyes and everything!

it was so cool. i pulled them out to show to my wrapping buddy as they slithered along my palm. oh they were so cute! well, she made a face and grabbed both of them and threw them on the ground and stepped on them! nooooo! you crazy woman you don't step on snails! they made a big loud crunchy noise and i couldn't even look at the damage that was left under her shoe. i held out there for as long as i could, trying to sneak any other snails that i found under the table in the hopes that they would escape to safety before they were discovered, but they were discovered and met the same fate. now i don't help with wrapping pumpkin flowers anymore. it's too tragic. and i've taken up a "save the snails" campaign whereby i collect any snails i find and put them in my pocket, take the long way to lunch, and dump them in the grass along the way, poor things. i know, i know. it's a farm and snails are pests (maybe). but the wrapping area isn't anywhere near the farm, if you're a snail, so i feel okay about setting them free.

finally, i posted some photos of the farm here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eeking/collections

on the farm

so i'm on the only organic farm in all of sichuan province. nice, huh? the chinese family i live with own the farm. father, maybe around 55, retired from the government and opened the farm four years ago. daughter, emily, lived in canada for 7 years, went to a university some place in toronto, met her chinese husband, chris, there. they moved back to help with the farm one year ago and got married and now run the market side of everything. maybe about 10 farmers and 10 packers on the farm each day, when it is not busy season. now is busy season, so a few more farmers. and one iowan. :)

the women who work on the packaging side, which is most of what i do, call me "mei mei". this means "little sister". i like that. they don't speak english, only emily and chris do, and they stay in their office all day. so today, in the packaging bit, we exhausted the extent of my mandarin while i explained my family, everyone's job, and how i'm not married and how that's really okay. then, i found out whether they were married and had siblings or children. other than that, i welcomed them to beijing and asked if they were going to the olympics, and that's about all i can say.

well, i can also say "vegetarian" and "toilet" and when i say them they sound very similar. so imagine me walking up to a street vendor and saying: "pardon me, this looks very tasty, but first, could you tell me, is it a toilet?"

i would also like to thank mr. stiles, for teaching me how to say "poo" in chinese. the word for "poo" in chinese has the word "bian" in it. but this is pronounced like "bien" in french, so in a fluster to say "okay, okay, that's okay" at a street food vendor stall, i instead said "poo, poo, poo". i think i was probably grasping for "c'est bien, c'est bien, c'est bien." at that point i just gave up and hopped on my bike and left. you should have seen that guy's face, though. partly horrified and partly tickled.

anyways, back to the farm. i already said how it has helped to increase the income in this area considerably. it's a good place, and the veggies are very good here. i have packaged many of them. and cleaned them and whatnot. every day is a little different. well, the two days i have been here anyways. for example, today i worked with string beans, peanuts, chilis, squash of all kinds, lettuce, bamboo, green onions, turnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and probably some other things that i can't think of and don't know the name of. also, i'm the sticker woman. i put stickers on things, probably because it doesn't require a lot of explanation.

my favorite is packaging the chilies. since they are organic, some of them don't grow straight (or so emily has explained). some of them grow in a spiral or get a little wonky in some other way. as long as they are not broken or partly eaten by bugs, we want to package them. we put them wonky ones at the bottom and lay some of them straighter ones on the top, then cover them in celophane like anything you have ever seen at a grocery store in usa or canada. now, emily says that people don't want these wonky chilies, so we need to kind of hide them at the bottom, otherwise people won't buy them. but the crooked ones and the ones that grow in spirals are my favorite vegetables on the farm! i think they are very cute, fun, unique, i don't know . . . i just like them. and they taste just fine. i only put one or two of the very spiraly ones in each batch. that way, if the customer hates the spiral ones, they don't feel to put out, and if they happen to be like me and like the spiral ones, well, we can't spoil one family with too many. but it's really too bad we can't package them separately: "boring straight chilies" 3 yuan, "renegade chilies" 5 yuan.

i really enjoy the packaging part of the farm. for one, it is fairly simple, considering my mandarin is kind of "poo". i think it's easier to watch and learn the packaging part than to watch and learn the farming techniques. but also, i like to think about the families in chengdu and hong kong who are going to unwrap what i am sending to them: a lovely package of delicious organic veggies. and they'll never know i was the one who did the work. i feel like putting a bow on each batch! instead, i leave them with a simple green sticker that says "organic farm". after this experience, i will probably think more often of where my food is coming from and the people who package what i eat, every step of the way. i'll tell you something else, i'm also going to wash my food like a mad person. i know i wash my hands after the toilet, but i can't speak for every vegetable packager on the planet. also, we dump the veggies on the floor a lot for sorting. the floor where the dog sleeps. the floor where people walk after using squatty toilets and not changing their shoes. people of hong kong! wash your veggies!

fun with food and stories of rabbits

1. people in sichuan would like to think that they have the spiciest food on earth, similar to how people in montreal think an iowan has never seen -20 weather in the winter. both are wrong. iowa is cold, and korea has the hottest, spiciest, make-your-face-burn-off food i've ever eaten.

2. in china, they eat loofa! did you know that loofa is a gourd? i didn't know that. i don't really like it, the texture is strange. other than that, it tastes like cucumber. i've got a dried loofa that i received as a gift from the village which i'm going to try to bring home without destroying. i get lots of smiles when i wander around with a dried loofa gourd hanging off of my backpack next to my asics.

3. back to spicy food, i've had hot pot twice now. a very traditional sichuan food, hot pot originated in chongqing, which is a city here in sichuan province. the sailors would eat it to keep warm and dry on the boats in the winter. it is hot spicy and hot temperature hot, and it is so good. you put everything into this boiling hot oil, kind of like fondu, and then you pull it out and let it dry in a bowl of sesame oil. the first time i had hot pot, it wasn't too crazy. but last night i had as a welcome meal at the farm, and my host family ate basically every part of an animal that you have ever heard of but have never eaten, except maybe in a hot dog: cow stomach, chicken stomach, duck intestine, something liver, something kidney, something heart, and a big ol' pig brain right in the center pot. i had tofu and potatoes and lotus root and different kinds of mushrooms. "wo chi su" (which means--i am vegetarian, sorry, i can't eat any of those brains, thanks) is one of my several decent chinese sentences. although there were some brains wrapped up in my tofu; afterall, they were all cooking in the same pot. so, what the heck, i ate some bits of pig brain last night. yum!

4. this farm feeds me way more than india wwoof farm, and way more often. whew!

5. kind of unrelated to food, but the village where i am now, called xichong, before this organic farm started up, the local people made only a little of $100 a year. in an entire year, only $100! now, with the farm, the local people make more like $5,000 a year. still, not very much, but a considerable improvement in only 4 years. the organic farm, which is the only one in sichuan currently, brought with it developments to the area, irrigations systems, good jobs, and they buy food from the local farmers to send with their supplies to hong kong and chengdu, as well as other local markets in the area that are too far for local farmers to get to on their own. cool, huh?

6. so yesterday when i arrived at the house where i am staying with my host family, i began to enter the first floor bathroom, and was steered away. reason: there was a live chicken living in the bathroom. emily, my host sister and farm director told me it had been given to their family two days before and had been living in their bathroom and had sort of taken over. i don't know why, but i thought, "oh, now they have a pet chicken." we had that chicken for dinner with mushrooms. i found it floating in a bowl of water this morning in the hallway. also, out my bedroom window this morning had appeared the drying carcass of a rabbit, just bones, feet, and ears, kind of. it was reminiscent of fatal attraction. the carcass was boiled in the turnip soup we had for dinner along with our former pet chicken. i'm not a vegetarian because i think that meat tastes bad. i like meat. but i am an american in the sense that i can't eat something that i've seen living, or with it's head still attached drying outside the window of my bedroom. okay, now that i've said that, i know it's a total lie, because i do eat what i catch when i go fishing. but still, even thinking of it now . . . it really made my stomach turn.

7. so this guy brian i met in chengdu told me a story about one time when his friend's dog brought a dead rabbit into the house. the dead rabbit belonged to his friend's grumpy old neighbors. it seemed the dog had killed the rabbit, so they cleaned it in their sink and placed it deftly back into the neighbors' backyard so they would think the rabbit died of natural causes. the neighbors came over later and said that the strangest thing had just happened because their rabbit had died and they had buried it but then it ended up in the middle of their backyard--clean and smelling like soap. also makes me think of fatal attraction. isn't that the best story?

8. the food here really is good, even if they can't out-spice me! the absolute best is gong bao dofu (= kung pao tofu in usa? i think, maybe?). oh so good.

9. the chinese people i have asked have denied the existence of brown rice.

10. the farm is wonderful. i spent the day today packaging vegetables, sorting peppers, putting stickers on things, and walking around with some government officials on a farm tour. all is well. tomorrow we do some picking and lots of smiling because more government officials will come tomorrow, too. the farm is in it's organic review process where they have to prove to 8 billion people who don't really know anything about organic farming that they are an organic farm to get an export licence, or something. should be a good time.

recap of the past two weeks + pictures ^--^

so. we had a lovely time at the orphanage and around nanchang. this guy didn't enjoy audiology so much.













this guy really enjoyed it.






then, off to chengdu. not by 40 hour bus ride (whew!). i met dani, an old friend of oliver's, who studies at a university/hospital in chengdu, which has a very nice audiology set up. here we are galavanting around a riverside park.














dufu lived in chengdu.
anyone know who dufu is?
it's this guy.




then i had the amazing, amazing, amazing opportunity to visit a local village outside of chengdu along with a few english teachers i met.

THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE HAD NEVER SEEN A FOREIGNER BEFORE. **********

some of the children thought we were japanese.

first thing we did was teach a few english classes at the school in the village.

the kids were so excited. we signed autographs all afternoon.




this is a noodle factory in the village. see the noodles hanging to dry with the laundry? it was pretty awesome. you can see a video of the noodle-making on my youtube site.

possibly one of the best videos ever.









the second-to-last character says "born".
that's all i know.









more gratuitous shots of kidlets.
note the fashion of the village, a red sparkly bindi.



















this is kind of cool. the lunch table.

the character on the wall is the character for "luck". but it's upside down. the word for "upside down" sounds similar to the word for "arrival", so they put the luck character upside down and it has this fancy "good luck on your arrival" meaning.

food. good.



do you have a tissue handy?

part of our lesson was that the kids would draw a picture of their dreams for the future. there were several drawings like:

i want to be a doctor
i want to be a police man
i want to be a soldier
i want to be a japanese cartoon character
i want to live in a big house
i want to be an astronaut

this little boy wants to be a man who digs wells so that the people in his village can have enough water. this village is downstream from chengdu and for the past few years has been suffering from serious droughts. so he wants to grow up to dig wells.

another little boy wanted to own a swimming pool that was clean where anyone who wanted to swim could always swim for free.

they were all so fun.
they thought we were fabulous, only because we showed up. i felt a bit sheepish, because i didn't really do anything all that fabulous.

the students who took us to this village were high school students who wanted to do something good for the people of this village who were suffering so badly from the drought. i'm told that this is almost unheard of in china, where high school students work so so so hard on their school work and have very little free time.
i'm a big fan of these kids.

last but not least, and i don't have a photo, was a 100-year-old woman we met. her feet had been bound when she was younger. she was alive during the last dynasty of china. her legs were broken, and had been for a while, but she didn't have enough money to go to the doctor, so she rarely left her bed. she got up to meet us. her voice was tiny and dry and soft and she had really long grey hair pulled she pulled back into a bun to meet with us.
she cried as we left and said that we were very special to have come so far to meet her, she had, of course, never met a foreigner before.
she said that we were good people and for that she blessed us to live to be 100 years old, like her. i wish we could have stayed longer to talk with her more. this woman blew my mind.

so i ate good food, slept on a grass mat, learned to play chinese cards, sat around a terra cotta deck sharing stories by moonlight in chinese and english, met unique folks, was treated like an absolute rock star, and even played a game or two of simon says.

it was so, so good. so good. so good. so good.

just a few blogger housekeeping notes before i sign off:

1. i can't view my blog, i can only post. if you're leaving comments, and i still really hope that you do, i won't be able to read them or respond until august.

1.5 there a few emails i know have been sent to me that i haven't received. if you think i should have responded to you, and i haven't, please email me again.

2. i'm about to leave chengdu for an itty-bitty town, where i just bet i won't be able to get on blogger at all.

3. that's okay because, hooray!, i've got a picture site now!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eeking/collections/

and there's a strong possibility of more frequent posts on flickr than on blogger in the coming weeks.

it's been a wonderful but exhausting week.
i'm off to bed.
i need my sleep before the farm.

and last night i stayed up late watching starship troopers.
also a beautiful, life-changing experience.