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.

they're on to me!

eep!

i was blocked out of my blog for a few days. yikes. it seems as though maybe in small towns i'm going to have more trouble getting stuff posted. if i ever have to abandon ship completely, i'll have no way of sending word. and on monday i'm off to a smaller town again for three works to do some wwoofing work. wwoof stands for world wide opportunities in organic farming, so you can sign up and go live and work on farms all over the world, and in return you will get fed and have a nice(?) place to sleep while you are there.

i wwoofed in india last summer. i was pretty interesting. under the wwoof contract you are only supposed to work 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, but i was working more like 12 hours a day -- every single day -- and, i'm not joking, all i had to eat was bread and water and some cashews, which i had brought along with me. that was by my choice though: i sort of refused their milk straight from the cow and the spicy oil soup that were making me sick. i was so buff by the end of those two weeks. and it was in the middle of nowhere india and no one for miles spoke any english and the women i worked with were all over 50 (i think, i couldn't ask them of course) and i wasn't about to peeter out --oh no-- i was strong. i held in there. and i had a thing for the little old grey-haired shepherd who wandered around the villages and we found a cobra and had to call a snake charmer to come collect it.

i don't expect this experience to be quite so trying, since it's in a larger city, the workers speak some english, i'll be sleeping in a house with electricity, and i plan to eat more than just bread and nuts. the work will involve something with vegetables, that's all i know for now.

and, good news, feast your eyes on this:

that's right. it's the trendy, new, e-kingo car.
but more than that, it's a picture!











and so is this!
















and this!










i'm going to set up a photo website later tonight.
i just realized i've been on the computer for way too long and i'm burning daylight.

so off i go to play in chengdu, eat lunch with some monks, and hang with oliver's friend, dani, who will show me the hearing center in chengdu, where oliver used to work.

and p.s. note to derek stiles: when i was at the post office a few days ago, two workers behind the counter were playing spider solitaire . . . two-suit spider solitaire . . . that's right.

dajia hao

hooray! i got a train ticket and didn't have to walk to chengdu! i was in a closed cabin with three chinese men. one who would sing and whistle along with the extremely loud chinese techno music that played, basically, for the whole 24 hour journey. ouch! he and his friend offered me a portion of whatever they were eating, and "wo chi su" (i'm vegetarian) only got me out of so much, like the vaccuum sealed chicken legs. i did help myself to a few spoonfuls of canned chinese congee, which as far as i can tell is puffed wheat, rice, beans, peanuts, and something the can said was "Job's tears" mixed together in a semi-thick sugary sticky white sauce. i just couldn't eat the whole can, or drink warm carton of grape-milk. maybe it had to do with the constant loogie-hawking into the trash can right under my seat. i have to get used to all this spitting again! i think they felt badly for me since all i had was dried fruits and nuts, but that's all i wanted, i swear! and my bag of goodies was very tasty. really though, i think it is just chinese custom to share train food. it's been my experience in the past. they bought me bananas and some kind of candy, too, along the way, and i shard my chinese fruit roll-ups with them. the chinese invented fruit roll-ups, did you know? it's true. my two travel companions were memorable characters, very nice, and helped me fight the hustle and bustle out of the train station. the third guy just slept the whole time and smiled on his way out the train.

i sped right out of chengdu into leshan via bus to see what have proven to be some awesome sights.

now, let me just say, it makes me so sad to write in my blog and not have any pictures to share. :( sniffle.

but imagine, if you will, the world's largest carved buddha. carved from rock over a period of 97 years in the cliffs overlooking the perilous junction of three roaring rivers. the monk who started building it ran out of money halfway through, so he blinded himself to convince the government to give him more money to complete his project. i don't know if it was like "i'm blind, now you have to give me more money to survive and i'll just spend it on the statue" or if it was kind of a threatening effect like, "look how crazy i am! give me money now!". it was most likely a sign of his devotion to the giant buddha. it was meant to protect those who traveled past, yet i think it would have distracted me something fierce and i probably would have lost control of my ship drowned in any case. but it was a nice gesture and it's cool to visit now, 1300 years after the fact. some day i will post pictures, i swear.

while touring the giant buddha, i met a study abroad group from u georgia, who were all text messaging photos of the buddha back home. wow. times are a-changin'. also, i met a very nice and "hen shuai" fella from france who just got done doing study abroad in hong kong and will travel for a while before he goes home, and a group of chinese freshman university students who toured around with me for the rest of the afternoon. they invited me to their english corner, though i can't go because it's on thursday and i'll be back in chengdu by then. however. hmm. this english corner thing seems quite common. i think i will drop in on universities i pass by during this trip and see if i can land myself at a few more english corners before i go home. they are pretty fun.

i'm off to chengdu tomorrow to meet up with two friends of some friends. i'll spend the week there, where i plan to pass the mornings at teahouses, eat very spicy tofu dishes, see a chinese opera, and then leave on monday for the farm.

photographs and lessons in the flow

you can click here to view miss melissa's photos of the trip so far.
i'm still trying to figure a way to share my photos that doesn't involve uploading each individual picture because that takes too long.

and today i'm regaining my going with the flow, as all the train tickets for chengdu have long since been booked and it looks like i can either pay out the arse for a plane ticket, take a 2 day bus ride, or walk. options or no options, of course i will take the 2 day bus ride. sigh. one year ago this would have been nothing. in fact it happened to me. several times. and it was nothing. but a year in america can soften a person up a bit. i going to take this as a sign that i had better book my ticket to lhasa as soon as i pry myself from the sweaty, stinky bus-fest that will be this coming weekend.

one more day in nanchang, complete with a ride on the world's largest ferris wheel.
bet you didn't know that was here, eh.

babies and babies and babies

we're really busy here during the day and just exhausted when we get back to the hotel, so i don't have time to post pictures yet. we'll be leaving on saturday and i'll write a whole lot more and put up some pictures before i go to chengdu.

the orphanage is amazing though. amazing, and so sad. we've been able to fit a few hearing aids (yay!) and tested a lot of babies, but the OAE machine has been on the fritz, so it's taking us a long time. the nursery can just break your heart, but the women who work there are amazing. the only thing is that the orphanage is so hot and they put the babies in five layers of clothes and wrap them in warm blankets! i asked about it and they said it's important to keep babies warm, but then i'm all "for real?" and they're all "word erin, warm babies are best" so then i'm like "whatevs." that's how it is here i guess. can't argue with that. and then they laugh at me for wearing a hat in the warm weather. take note: only babies can be super warm in nanchang.

last night we went to "english corner" at one of the universities with one of our translators from the orphanage. so cool! it was so much fun! we ate at the "cool beverage" diner. michi and molly split a plate of four chicken nuggets. i've got a great photo of that, believe you me. the diner had swings for seats. then we were bombarded by 8 bajillion chinese students asking us questions like:

could you tell me how you keep such beautiful skin?

do you want to marry a chinese man?

can you dance while you sing?

why are you wearing a hat when it is so hot?

why have you never worked in the public society?

what is the meaning of life?

and others which i will not put here but which you should ask michi about later because they are fabulous. i was so hot i thought i would keel over. it was my best night here yet.

then i called my mom and she was on a bus tour of broadway in new york city. and that made the day complete.

fatty mcfat fat fattums fatto pants

more nostalgic moments in asia: fun with shopping.

in two separate stores today, i was told that i was waaay too big for anything in the store and not allowed to try anything on. one woman in a third store was kind enough to bring me a single large ugly black frock to try, though. sigh. memories.

the shoes fit though. oh yes, do they ever. :)

so today we went shopping and toured the town temple and had a fabulous romp in the grocery store. hooray for jackfruit chips and dried papaya!

wahoo!

it works! but all the tabs are in chinese. let's hope i remember which buttons mean what. so i'm here! yay! nanchang china for two weeks to work with deaf orphans. perfect plot for the next disney movie, i think.

on the way we flew over the north pole and i took some cool pictures. and it was the party plane on the way over. seriously. hardly anyone sat in their seats. the flight attendants were really mad about that. no control whatsoever. even while we were landing people got up to see the great wall. no respect for the seatbelt light, i swear. :)

also, michi had a few drinks over the course of, you know, 13 hours, and when she tried to order her third drink the flight attendant told her "i don't think so, we're going to cool it for a while." it's not like michi was flashing the row behind her or anything. and i was told i couldn't have a bottle of water because the bottles were "for the whole cabin, not just for me." i was really thirsty though. so i said, "fine then, how about 7 glasses of water?" she brought me two. she may have won that time, but i grabbed a bottle on my way off the plane. ha! :)

it's so cool and strange to be back in asia. i almost cried when i was in the airport and saw all the little korean snacky things they had at the little grocery stores. the smells are the same and the view from the hotel in nanchang is so familiar. it's great to be here! i saw a man burning his trash on the roof of a building next to us this morning. yay china!
i'm having a great time already. and i'm reading the alchemist again, so i feel happy-fuzzy all over. tomorrow we're off to the orphanage to get to work, but today we're going to tour nanchang. i'll post photos probably on tuesday or something.

i hope everyone who got married this weekend, and you know who you all are, had a wonderful celebration! ^_^

new blog for the summer, fingers crossed

starting friday, i will be in china until the beginning of august. last time i was in china, blogger was a blocked website. let's hope this works.