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.

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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.