the great wall

this was far and away my favorite day on the trip.. or at least my favorite in china. the great wall is more than you imagine it to be. it seems to go on forever and it's wide and very tall. we hiked a 6km section at jinshanling. you can take a cable car to get up, but we hiked up these steep steps to get to the top where the wall goes up and down over the curves of the mountains.

here we are on the great wall! it ended up being kind of hilarious because i'm wearing that shirt in literally 90% of the pictures that were taken of me on the trip. i guess when you only brought 5 shirts, that's kind of bound to happen.
this is when guillermo took one million pictures and i did a series of model poses.
we rode there/hiked the wall with this very nice spanish couple. guillermo was happy to be able to use his spanish and they were super funny and nice.

of course there was a couple taking their bridal portraits. we were wondering about the groom's wardrobe choice.. but that's very classic asian wedding photo.

[p.s. i didn't want to mention it before we left, but guillermo and i actually broke up a month or so before the trip. we still had a really good time, and i wouldn't have wanted to go with anyone else.]

beijing

welcome to [smoggy] beijing! we'll start off in tianamen square. we skipped out on going to see mao's body and just walked through the square itself. it dominates the center of the city and makes you feel very small to stand in the wide open space of it.

it's actually 4 parts. two gates to the city on the north and south end, the monument to the people's heroes is in the middle (which you can see below, the tall thing), and the mausoleum of mao (above).
this is one of the temples at the summer palace. you walk up a very steep hill to get to the top. when you're standing at the door of the temple looking outward, you see a giant man-made lake. or the idea of a lake, since it's so smoggy you really can't see very much at all.
see what i mean?
i was walking around the summer palace with one of those audioguides that tracks where you are and chimes in with relevant information. it told me about who knocked the heads off of the statues of this temple.. but i don't remember anymore.
one of my favorite things about being in asia is how you can see the difference between eastern and western imaginations. they have all kinds of elaborate, imaginary animals in their culture.. but that are very highly regarded and taken very seriously. it doesn't feel like santa-imaginary. it feels like thousands-of-years-of-tradition-steeped-into-it-imaginary.
the photo below is of a tour group at the forbidden city (which is in the photo below it). guillermo and i joked about how next time we would join millions of tour groups and just pile the hats on top of each other to show what super-tourists we were.
i did something weird with the final four so i can't write commentary within them.. but they are: the forbidden city, which is made up of one of the largest collections of preserved old buildings/temples in china.

our hutong (alley neighborhood) where our hostel was.

and two pictures of our peking duck experience, which is carved tableside.

home

well we made it home. we were pleasantly surprised to find out that our long flight was only 8 hours, when we were thinking it'd be more like 13 like the first one. love air currents. so it wasn't that bad at all. he was able to sleep for a bit and i watched movies and read. the best part was being in a row of 2 so we could lay all over each other and not worry about bumping into anyone.

then guillermo had an early flight this morning (7am) so i stayed there and we left the house at 5 this morning after not sleeping well at all. so my goal today is to stay up until it gets dark tonight so i can try to sleep through the night. so far so good but i feel preeetty sleepy.

i'm going to upload pictures city by city over the next week or so.

last couple of days in taiwan

we have to get up super early tomorrow for our flight.. but the highlights of the last couple of days have been:

• danbing.
• hot pot in guei shan
• wearing bright yellow rain ponchos as it rained in guei shan. walking into various shops on the search for cheap contacts and getting water everywhere. my prescription hasnt changed at all since last year even though things appear blurrier..
• seeing my two favorite classes in guei shan and their disbelief as they saw me. debbie just kept repeating 'megan?' and running away
• meeting up with steve, josh and 'old martyn' as bobo calls him at the new great white shark
• (those were all yesterday. now today..)
• waking up at the crack of dawn to play some english games with joyce's class even though i barely slept last night due to the ear-splitting typhoon wind that was making the door open and close all night and the screens howl
• joyce being super proud of her foreign friend, who butchered BINGO because her early morning voice couldn't hit the high notes at 7am
• going to the coolest tea house with alex and sitting outside watching the koi fight for food in the pond while it poured down rain
• our subsequent search for a tiny clay teapot
• homemade danbing at the kuo's
• mr. kuo and i going on a hunt in da chu for the tiny clay teapot that alex and i couldn't find
• talking to amanda like we hadn't missed a beat
• seeing my favorite tuesday class (and teaching them a new QA because their foreign teacher is on vacation)
• mrs. chan sending me home with homemade danbing sauce and packaged pancakes

so we're all packed up and ready to go! taiwan has gone from fall to winter in the last 3 days. it's cold and windy and rainy out. kind of looking forward to fall in texas in 2 days

taoyuan day 2

guillermo is sleeping (even though it's 10pm..) so i have to type quickly/quietly.

today we went for danbing at the breakfast place near my old dorm and it was delicious as always. caught the bus to the train station and went to the top of taipei 101. it's kind of cloudy i guess because of the typhoon (which isn't anywhere near us right now or headed this way, for that matter) so you couldn't see as far as we could last time.. but it was still cool. we saw the sparkling gold damper which i don't know why i find so interesting, but i do.
ran into a gloria teacher friend on the way back from taipei 101, totally randomly. funny to think i only know a total of, let's be generous and say 20, people in this country and i run into one in downtown taipei.

then we hunted down a computer with internet so guillermo could check football scores, naturally. we ended up eating lunch in taipei main station before meeting up with alex and his girlfriend, emily. she's nice. we all went to shilin night market which is lanes and lanes in a section of downtown. we had some milk ice and just looked around. it was raining so we didn't stay too long before taking the bus home.

hopefully it will stay dry tomorrow. i have a lot left to fit into the next two days.

taoyuan day 1

we made it to taiwan! last night we took a bus from the airport and walked by the dorm, used the computer in the coffee shop and got in touch with bobo who came to pick us up. we're staying at her house for this week. (she was my chinese teacher in taiwan). jaime was awake but doing homework and was a liiittle shy at first but warmed up quickly. of course, she loves guillermo. so does joyce. they have trouble remembering/saying his name though. last night guillermo stayed in as we had a pretty long day of traveling and bobo and i went to this bar downtown called genesis and met up with a bunch of the other foreign teachers. my friend steve was there. he's a lot of fun. and i met this guy john from canada who's a professor at a university in guei shan. he's been here 2 months so we had the typical 2 months in taiwan conversation. i told him about all of the food he needs to try and that he needs to get a scooter ASAP, etc.

then today we kind of did the grand tour of my favorite people in taoyuan. we saw the kuo's this afternoon and hung out for several hours where they literally stuffed us full of all the food we could handle. bobo's family came with us to eat lunch which was really cool for me. they had never met before so they both had lots to say. at first the kuo's had kind of forgotten some english so they translated a lot through bobo. mrs. chan made my favorite beef with peppers and onions.

bobo's family left after a bit and guillermo and i stayed for a few more hours. they cut up guava and honeydew melon and dragonfruit and grapes and we ate and ate until we couldn't fit any more. mr. kuo gave us these cool things made of paper that his mom made. some teapots and baskets and cups. hard to explain, but i'll send pictures when i get home. anyway it was really a whole lot of fun to see them. i'm going there again on tuesday.

mr. kuo dropped us off at the coffee shop and we went through the fruit market. the fruit ladies remembered me! it was really funny. i said 'long time no see!' and they said we thought you went home and i said yes but i'm back in taiwan visiting for a week. this woman was standing beside me buying fruit and the older fruit lady explained that i used to be a teacher at gloria and i bought all my fruit there. it was really sweet. i was glad they knew me. thennn we went to to tina coffee and the older woman there remembered me too. she had the same questions.

then we went to the coffee shop for a little while to have some cheesecake. tonight we watched a movie with bobo's family and then we just went to tapenyaki which is one of my favs. guillermo loved it.. he wants to go back before we leave.

so overall today was just really nice :) everything you could hope for. and no rain. apparently they've had rain all week which would be inconvenient for us since we're on foot. taipei tomorrow! hitting the highlights

HK day 3

you can tell we're hitting a bit of a travel-weary slowdown this week. yesterday we slept in late, grabbed an egg tart (which hong kong is apparently famous for.. not my fav) and headed for this dim sum place miriam suggested because it's where anthony bourdain went. guillermo went into sensory overload as we nestled in at a table with 6 other people, with dim sum ladies and their carts everywhere and white teacups flying. we had 4 cha xiao bao (my fav.. steamed buns with bbq'd pork inside. kind of sweet) and an order of ..of course now i can't remember the name. shrimp wrapped in noodle. i want to say hor chow but i know that's the fabric pattern.. anyway, something like that.

then we came back and washed clothes and hung them up to dry. doesn't seem like anything would ever dry with this much humidity, but it did.

natalie had told us we had to check out the bronze buddha which is only accessible by cable car, so we did that. the cable car ride is 26 minutes long and it goes over a body of water and over all of these beautiful green hills. there was a pathway underneath on the land that you could hike if you wanted to. we saw 4 or 5 people walking along it. don't know if i'd be up for that. the cable car ride is 5 km, but it doesn't go up and down all of those hills. who knows how long that hike is. ..but the buddha was pretty once we got there. it's apparently the largest seated bronze buddha in the world.

in the evening we went to a laser light show on the coast. buildings on both sides of the river light up and shoot giant spotlights out of the top of them or green lasers. it's set to cheesy 80s techno music, but it was kind of cool.

then for dinner we hunted down taco loco for tacos, nachos and margaritas. not bad at all by asian standards. guillermo seemed happy with his 6 tacos.

today we need to clean up jane's apartment, which at the moment looks like a bomb went off in. our laundry is hanging all over the place trying to dry, and we've taken over the couch and table with the other contents of our backpacks. luckily when you only have a small backpack's worth of stuff, it's pretty easy to pack it all up.

headed to guangzhou this afternoon on a 2 hour train ride (!!!!), staying in a marriott that faj set us up with, and our flight for taiwan leaves at 4pm the next day, so it will be a bit of a whirlwind.

hong kong part 2

so glad we're spending such a long time (compared to 2 days i guess) in hong kong because there's so much to see in this city. the fact that it's soo busy also kind of wears you out a little bit. thankfully guillermo and i share the same traveling style which is relaxed, hitting the highlights and not cramming your day full of a million things. granted, we probably don't get to see eeeeverthing there is to see, but we see enough and don't feel completely drained at the end of the day which is nice.

anyway yesterday we got up and took the peak tram up to the top of victoria peak which overlooks hong kong island. it was a little bit smoggy/hazy yesterday, but you could see pretty far. hong kong smushes everything up together so it's kind of like the view from taipei 101 with buildings everywhere. pretty though because there's some water and a lot of trees on the hillside.
so we had panini's up there before heading down and making our way to stanley, which is a little town on the coast that's supposed to be good for shopping. it was full of fake silk and chipao dresses (what you think of when you think of traditional chinese dresses) and grandma jammies and postcards. nothing i needed. but guillermo finally found a cheap pair of sandals and threw away his tennis shoes which had far outlived their natural lifespan. i think he feels better without being in socks all the time. and he stubbed his toe the other day and it's been causing quite a bit of pain for him, so maybe it feels better for that too.

after quite a while in stanley, we headed back and had dinner at the globe which is a pub across the street from jane's. i had fish and chips and mushy peas. he had vennison sausage. very delicious, very expensive. filled with white businessmen in suits.. which is actually what the interior of many a restaurant looks like in this part of town. jane lives right in the middle of a neighborhood called central which is quite fancy.

then in the evening we met up with alan and natalie who i had taught with in taiwan. they moved to hong kong a bit after i moved back to the US from taiwan. it was a lot of fun to catch up with them over dessert, hear the gossip from gloria, and they told us a few things we should do in hong kong that we haven't done yet. natalie knew about a shopping street that will hopefully have a dress or two. i haven't bought one piece of clothing this whole trip and i'm beginning to feel like i might go home with nothing but pictures.. which i guess wouldn't be sooo bad, but i'd like a black dress from hong kong to remember the fancy ladies.

we're off to enjoy our last full day here!

hong kong

i can post my own blogs now that we're in hong kong! feels like a looong time ago that i was on this website last.

to honor our very last overnight trip from one city to another, we opted for a 'luxury bus' from yangshou to shenzhen, which is the border city from china to hong kong. we opted to pay 40 yuan (a little less than $6) more in order to be on a bus that would drop us off right by the border so we didn't have to take an extra bus. naturally, that didn't turn out to be the case. the bus itself was kind of hilarious. we were in these teeny beds where you couldn't lay down flat, you had to scrunch up your legs. that wasn't so bad, but when the bus pulled in, everyone got off and we just got right back on it.. so your bed was literally still warm from whoever was sharing your duvet and pillow from the previous trip. a little gross. in spite of that though, i think we both more or less slept the entire 10 hours.

when we got to the bus station, we found out that we weren't actually by the border at all. luckily we just followed these dutch and norwegian guys who were students at a university in hong kong, and somehow we all ended up getting on the right bus to take us to the border. two stamps in our passport later, we had made it to hong kong.

our first impression of the city is that it's super fashionable. we thought shanghai was fancy, but that was the small time compared to this. there are luxury shops and giant malls everywhere. everyone is really fashionable and super put together. there isn't as much neon or lace or bedazzlement. the biggest noticeable change is the huge number of foreigners and foreign kids. we must have seen 20 white kids under the age of 10 today.. which hasn't happened in all of the other cities combined.

anyway today we had the best lunch we've had so far at an italian place across from jane's apartment. she met up with us after that and showed us around a bit. her apartment is LOOOVELY to say the least. on the 4th floor of a tiny little 6 apartment complex. it's airy and white and IKEAd out in the best possible way. she has a postage stamp kitchen that's super cute and it just feels like home. she's lived here for 2 years and in hong kong for 4. she's very nice. and she's going on vacation this week so we'll have her apartment to ourselves. i'm excited about the possibility of leaving leftovers in the fridge and maybe a juice or tea or two for when we feel like it. funny the things you miss when you don't have them.

tonight we went out for thai and malaysian food in a place called rat alley.. which very well could be because there are actual rats, though i didn't see nay. the food wasn't suspect at all. so that's the update. 2 and a half more days in hong kong and a whole lot on our to-do list.

Shanghai Day 2 and on to Hong Kong

so day 2 in shanghai was kind of a whirlwind as our train to guilin left at 5. we went to the shanghai museum and looked at more jade, seals and bronze pottery than one person can handle. it was interesting though. they had a russian and an indian exhibit going on. we were wondering how much russian porcelan chinese people have seen before. it looks so different than traditional chinese stuff.

then we got on the LOOONGEST train ride. we were expecting it to be 12-14 hours like the others, but no. it was TWENTY THREE HOURS. thank goodness we had sleeper seats. the people below us were pretty nice. we had the same reaction once they figured out that i spoke a little english. one man refused to understand anything i said in chinese and this woman had to repeat everything i said for him. at one point i said 'you really don't understand what i'm saying?' in chinese and the guy replied 'i really don't understand.' ...so. who knows. it's just kind of annoying when you're trying really hard to communicate in a language that isn't even close to your own and people don't give you the benefit of the doubt. but the other people were very nice.

ate some delicious train food in a little cardboard box for $2. and we had our first instant noodles with some boiling water from the train car.

then we finally arrived in guilin around 3pm and decided it wasn't that great so we got on a bus and went to yangshou which sounded like a nicer spot, according to lonely planet. it would kind of remind you of cancun or koh tao how it's completely made for tourists. we're staying on a street called xi jie (west street) and it's wall to wall trinkets and "silks" and "pashminas" and western bars and tourists. you can hardly walk through the street there are so many people.

not sure what we're going to do today. google guilin or yangshou and check out the limestone mountain/hill things. i think we're going to climb up one of those today. other than that, i think we both feel like laying kind of low. guillermo got some bad news from home that he doesn't want to talk about, but he's bummed out. we'll see.

leaving for hong kong tonight. two of my friends who were teaching in taiwan with me are living there now, so it will be fun to see them. truth be told though, i really just want to be in taiwan. it's been a whole lot of overnight trains and new hotels and new streets to figure out. it will be nice to be somewhere familiar a week from now.

thank you for the comments and emails :) it's been nice to feel like i'm in touch. went on a boat cruise up the li river this afternoon. it was breezy and cool on the water which was a nice change from the heat of the town on a sunny day. our PVC raft was powered by a lawnmower motor on a stick with a propellor at the end of it. very chinese. at the top of the river, our driver paused on this tiny island so we could take a picture of 9 horses mountain (or something) and guillermo wanted a picture with a bunch of chinese people our age. after that, they all wanted a picture with me. he took the same pictures as all of them took, it's pretty funny to see. embarrassing but fun.

then we just had indian food and hour and a half massages for $8. not bad at all. we have an hour to kill until our bus comes to pick us up to go to shenzhen which is the chinese border town that gets you through to hong kong. once we get there, we'll stay with my friend jane who i met during open water dive certification in thailand when i was on vacation from teaching in taiwan. i only hung out with her for a few days while we were there, but she's a nice english girl. she lives across from a pub.

talk to you from hong kong.
:)

Shanghai 10-14-2010 aka Gram's birthday

maj told me she posted my emails to my blog and i get the comments in my email, so first i want to say hi to lily and meredith and the 7 other people who read my blog :) it's been weird not being to update from here, so i'm glad majjy is taking some time to upload my posts and even more glad that you get to share a little of china with me.

can't remember where i left off in wuhan exactly, but we went to an arcade and then back to phils before catching the evening train to shanghai. we had booked hard seats which were the only available seats left. turns out we were in the dining car.. not sure what happens when people who have real seats want to eat. i think they may or may not kick you out of your seat. anyway about 20 minutes into it, this guy was talking to these two older people sitting across from him. he was talking about guillermo and i and i looked over at him and i said 'ting de dong' which means 'i hear and understand you' and it was a little awkward but we all laughed and then he started talking to us. this guy one table over, iverson, also speaks english so he started chatting too. over the next 3 hours we talked about all kinds of things, and we ended up giving the guy an english name, alex, because he didn't have one.

it was fun to talk to them and it really ended up helping us a lot because they were able to tell the conductor that we wanted to upgrade our tickets.. which i could have probably conveyed, but it's just easier when someone else can do it for you, let's be honest. so we're waiting to hear about our tickets as they go through and count up everyone in the sleeper cars.. meanwhile.. all hell breaks loose in the dining car. two men in their 50s or 60s stand up and are screaming at the top of their lungs at the wait staff and the conductor and just at everyone in general. iverson told us it was because the bathrooms were locked and they were outraged.. but that it was normal and not to worry about it. at one point, this woman sitting across from me asked for some hot water for her water bottle and one angry man stood up and started screaming at the waitress when she didn't walk over fast enough. the waitress answered 'this isn't my job to give her water!' and was yelling back at the man. then a bunch of other people started yelling. it was really kind of crazy in there for about 20 minutes.

finally the conductor and a woman with a little mobile card reader came over to us and told us we could upgrade to hard sleeper seats.. so that was fantastic. we immediately fell asleep and woke up to the conductor yelling at us to get down (we were in the very top of 3 stacked bunks). i thought he was just telling us that we could sit down in the hall or something, but we soon found out that everyone else had gotten off the train and we were the last ones left. so we grabbed our stuff and walked through the whole entire empty train trying to find an unlocked door to the platform. it was really scary for a bit. thought we would be on the empty train to wherever it goes, but eventually we got out. i accidentally left my snow bunny jacket (because it's white and fleecey) behind though. :( and it had 100 RMB in it ($20 US or so) .. so double :( but it's an excuse to buy a jacket in shanghai i guess.

this is going to be way too long unless i get going so i'll just say that we are LOVING shanghai. when we got off the train and into the train station, i almost died when i saw 7-11, 85 degrees and mister donut. all shops we had in taiwan that i haven't seen the whole time in china. i immediately bought a milk tea and sushi triangle.

..but 7-11 and watsons and cosmed aside, shanghai is just lovely. most notably, it's clean. the buildings are kind of european looking in architecture. lots of detail and pretty windows and concrete and interesting curves. normal chinese architecture is really boxy, made of tile and diiiirty. but shanghai is sparkling clean and beautiful with trees and flowers hanging from streetlights. the people are dressed nicely and it does seem like the classiest part of china, as we had heard.

the first hostel we tried was booked, so we ended up at one that's right next door to a fish market which makes the entire thing smell kind of fishy, but it's alright. you have to go up 3 flights of stairs to get to the rooms though.

today we wandered around east nanjing and the malls around there. we eventually made it to the bund, which is a section of the city along the river and it overlooks the downtown skyline. you can see the pearl tower (i don't know what it's really called) but it's shanghai's most famous building. has two giant red orbs. kind of ugly. we had noodles and fried rice for lunch in a little hole in the wall. and guillermo's on a baozi kick (steamed buns filled with random meat and vegetables). his chinese vocabular is now: tai gui (too expensive), bu yao (don't want), xie xie (thank you) and baozi.

oh right and then tonight we went to a chinese acrobat show at the shanghai circus. there were women hanging from ribbons in the air, trapezes, lots of tumbling of various kinds, and at the end there were scooters in a giant metal cage. they started with 2 and ended with 8. i kid you not. it was incredible/worth the $40 we paid for the seats.

talk to you tomorrow!

10 13 2010

we uploaded my photos onto phil's computer so i can show you what we've been up to. the files are really big so i'm only sending a couple, but it's tiannamen square in beijing, us on the great wall, some beef noodles in beijing, the guy cutting up some duck in beijing and terracotta warriors.

today we went to two of phil's classes at the university of wuhan. he was teaching a lesson on how to play poker so then we got to play poker with his chinese grad students. they were really a lot of fun. theyve been learning english for a long time so theyre pretty good. kind of shy, but not as much giggling as usual. guillermo was loving the attention from the girls who think he's soooo cute. i think he momentarily got a glimpse of why guys end up staying here long term.

we had lunch at a hot pot place. only a few questionable meat choices because phil's strategy was to just pick random stuff on the menu. one looked a lot like spam, and we had some frozen chicken wings.. everything other than that was really good. my food vocab can get us certain KINDS of meat, but not certain cuts of meat.

this afternoon we got hour and a half massages that were woooonnderful. they soak your feet in this stuff and then massage them. they put these glass cups on our feet that kind of vacuum seal to you. i don't know what it's called but it's standard in chinese medicine. guillermo had his eyes closed and he almost jumped across the room when the woman put them on him. they spray the inside with alcohol and then light it on fire so it sticks to your foot when the air rushes in, and it isn't burning hot but it is kind of toasty and it just surprised him. but then they massage your shoulders and your back. it was pretty nice. and only 55 yuan which is like $8.

then we went to a shopping alley that reminded me a lot of taipei night markets but a lot cheaper and with less stuff. passed up a whole lot of ruffly hello kitty jammies for $3. kind of wishing i had bought them, but i don't have enough room in my bag and they were really seethrough too. and then we went to an arcade and played the basketball game for a while. it was a very chinese kind of day. it's been rainy both days in wuhan and phil says it's been rainy all month, so we're kind of glad to get out of here. the bottoms of my pants are all crispy and grimey. we'll do laundry once we get there.

so we're in the process of showering now and tonight we're headed to shanghai on a hard seat train. hoping to upgrade once we get on it. so fingers crossed! talk to you from shanghai and hope you like the pictures. (This is Megan's mom posting her emails. I'm working on the photos.)

Wuhan 10-12-2010

i can't remember when i last emailed.. but we left xian last night after spending the day at the terracotta warriors. i don't remember telling you about that.. we took a city bus from the train station for 7 yuan which is a dollar which we thought was pretty amazing. an hour later, we were at the terracotta warrior museum which is up in the mountains kind of. it's interesting because you pass all of these trees and the fruit is covered with individual ziplock looking bags. you can't tell what it is from the bus but then when we got to the museum, there were a bazillion stands lining the roads and they turned out to be pomegranates. i bought one on our way back down, but anyway.. once you get up to the top of the hill and to the museum itself, the buildings are made out of pretty stone and the landscaping is really nice. it has a different feel than everything else we had seen so far. we started at the exhibition hall and saw some of the artifacts and then we went to the smallest pit and ended up at the largest one. it was smaller than you would imagine from pictures.. but really impressive. there were rows and rows of soldiers in front and then a lot of unearthed rows behind them. i got a lot of pictures, hope they turn out whne theyre blown up.

i've been taking lots of pictures in general but won't be able to upload them until i get home. i was worried about my battery not lasting and having no way to charge it, but it's been fine so far.

anyway in the evening we went to the muslim quarter and got a bunch of different food. dumplings and that meat on a rotating spit thing and persimmon cake things and kebabs. there were lots of vendors in the streets selling nuts and dried fruit and walnut powder. we had a good time there looking at everything.

so then last night we got on an overnight sleeper train and ended up in wuhan where guillermos friend phil from college is living/working. he's nice. kind of quirky. he speaks in simple sentences as all long time english teachers abroad seem to do. we're staying at his apartment tonight and then we just bought tickets to shanghai for tomorrow night. they only had hard seat tickets but im hoping we'll be able to upgrade once we get on the train. the bathrooms on the trains are preeetty rough. saw a bunch of things i never wanted to see. but we loved the sleeper train last night. it's nice to be able to stretch your legs out. and it comes with a pillow and a heavy blanket which is pretty comfy. i think we each slept 6 or so hours.

in wuhan we met up with his friend after a bank/taxi/lunch fiasco. i yelled for the first time all trip. get a little grouchy when i haven't eaten, and we hadnt eaten anything since 4 or 5 the previous day and it was then 1 pm. we stopped at mc donalds for a quick burger, i'll admit it. but it was an emergency. but then a really nice girl at a bank let us use someones computer to get online and she also gave us directions to the city bus that would take us to the university phil teaches at. an hour and 1 yuan later, we got to the university and met up with him. we just went to a big restaurant and now we're thinking about going out to some western bar. we haven't gone out at all so far and guillermo is itching to go.

Xian 10-10

today began last night when we hopped on the overnight train at beijing train station. most of the seats on the train were facing one way, but we happened to be in this little cluster of 4 seats facing a table in the middle which turned out to be nice because we had a lot more room than the normal seats. sleeping in those seats was impossible though. guillermo and i took turns sleeping in eachothers lap but i think i probably slept 2 of the 11 hours. ..because of that, and the fact that it's rainy and cold in xian today, when we got back to the hostel we just camped out in the cafe and in the lobby until our room was ready at 12 and then took a much needed shower and long nap. we had breakfast here though and it was reaallly good compared to the last hostel. i forgot to write about that, but we had breakfast there one day and when we got the pancakes we ordered, they were like the size of a coaster. ridiculous. but today's breakfast was yummy and regular sized.

amazing how greasy you feel after just sitting down for a whole night, but we were feeling pretty gross. the shower is nice though. all slate with a rain shower head. and the bathroom is closer to our room than in our last hostel and most importantly, it has toilet paper in the stalls! (usually you have to carry your own with you because they don't provide it). in our last one, we had to go to the shower/kitchen area to get toilet paper and then walk to a different area to use the rest room which was kind of odd.

so tonight once we got going, we went to this restaurant that's famous for a 3.8 meter long noodle soup.. first noodle under the sun. . it's one continuous noodle and it comes in this giant bowl with just water and then it comes with 2 smaller bowls of broth that you put the noodle in. one is shark fin broth and one is hot and sour. both weren't too bad but they weren't very hot which would have helped. and we had sweet and sour chicken which guillermo was happy to discover was really similar to american chinese food. he's been on this search for orange chicken which i keep telling him he won't be able to find. but you could easily find that chicken at panda express or whatever.

after that, we went to a place that specializes in this soup called yangrou pao mou which is these two discs of bread that are really dense and you break them up into tiny pieces. the woman kept telling me to make them smaller and smaller.. and then they take your bowl back and add broth and lamb and glass noodles to it. can't say it was my fav thing. really intensely lamby. i still taste kinda lamby right now. the restaurant was lao sun jia.

tomorrow we're going to try to get ourselves to the terracotta warriors via bus. our train for wuhan leaves at 7 so it will be kind of a quick day. hoping the weather turns out better than today. it was pretty chilly. glad i have my snow bunny jacket.

Beijing last day 10-9

today was a bit slow. checked out of the hostel and went to see the forbidden city which is apparently one of the best preserved set of old buildings in china/beijing. you couldn't go inside the buildings but you could look in. lots of thrones. then we toured through the garden which was pretty.

went to a place and had half of a peking duck. they put half the head on a plate and i tried a little piece of cheek meat but it was a little off. the duck itself was yummy. hoisin sauce and little pancakes with scallions. pretty good, but we felt kind of greasy and tired afterward. worth it though.

other than that, we haven't done a whole lot. got foot massages and had a cup of tea and a beer. the ladies giving the foot massages asked me a million questions. at one point my brain stopped working in chinese and i couldn't think of any words. sometimes i just get chinesed out.

in the train station right now with about an hour and a half until our train for xi'an leaves. miriam gave me a recommendation for a hostel, so we'll probably head there once we get there. do not like carrying my backpack, though it only weighs 20lbs. still heavy when you're hot and tired.

things we'll miss about beijing: the trophy and medal shops on the way to our hostel, hepingmen station exit C, the guy who took us to the great wall who lives with the people who did our laundry today, 1 yuan water, the stink of beijing, public restrooms, people who don't smile at you in the street, the metro system and their 2 yuan tickets, the bicycles, the spitting, the hostel with the pillows and blankets we didn't find until night 3, and guillermo's loofah which was left in the middle shower stall and traveled around the bathroom until its final resting place on a shelf.

The Great Wall 10 8 2010

this morning we got up bright and early to take an expensive tour to the great wall. you can go to different sections, we went to jinshanling which a couple of friends had recommended. our driver showed up at 6, we got in the car with two other people and headed off. after about an hour, guillermo realized the people with us were speaking Spanish. turns out they were from Spain. super friendly, in their 30s. so after a 2.5 hour car ride, we pull up to this dirt pile on the side of a mountain with a little stairway and our tour guide told us to go up. he handed us a little map and told us where we needed to get off the wall and head down to a restaurant for lunch.

as soon as we started going up, we were "befriended" by these 3 "farmers". i talked to one woman for a while, we talked about her kids etc. naturally, they were hawkers. they pestered us all the way up until we got to the wall and guillermo and i finally gave in and bought 2 t shirts that say "i climbed the great wall.' $7. not so bad. they were sooo annoying though. we kept saying no and they kept asking and asking. finally they left us after a while. there were lots of other people strategically placed along the wall though. lots of old commie guys camped out in green jackets trying to sell hats and drinks.

the wall itself was beautiful. there's so much smog in this country that you can't see further than a couple of blocks ahead of you. it's like there's fog everywhere. but at the great wall, you could see probably a mile or so even though the hills in the distance were pretty hard to see with all the smog. i got some pretty pictures though. it seemed like most people had come fromt he other direction, but we agreed that our way was best. it was uphill in the very beginning, but then we went down for most of it which was nice.

we walked 6 km up and down the wall and then headed down to lunch that was included in the tour. arguably the most fun part of the day was hanging out for an hour witht he spanish people just chatting while we waited for lunch. high school/college spanish got me far enough that i can easily understand what everyone was talking about, even if i couldn't answer back. guillermo interpreted for me though.we got back a little while ago and we're probably going to go in search of food and just rest our weary legs for a bit.we get on a train to head to xi'an tomorrow night. met up with my friend emil from taiwan and am hoping we can get together with him tomorrow t hang out for a bit.

ready to go

i thought it was really interesting to read what meredith was going to pack for her around the world trip, soo here's my packing list.

the watermelon dress

1 pair of sleep shorts

1 pair of regular shorts

2 pairs of pants

2 T shirts

4 3/4 or long sleeve shirts

1 pair of keens

1 pair of flip flops

1 jacket

10 pairs of underwear (packing so light with everything else is fine, but packing light on underwear is not fine.)

sleeping bag

quick drying towel

the fancycam and charger

travel medic pack

5 luna bars

4 books includdding the girl with the dragon tattoo

minimal make-up

blanket & ribbon

and that is it! it's a frighteningly small pile of stuff. but there will be night markets aplenty and cheap, cute tops.

in my arms

crossed a lot of things off my to do list today. the fact that i know my way around REI now just makes me laugh. found a quick drying towel and really cool environmentally friendly medicine kit thing. it has just enough of everything you'd want to have with you.

watched texas get obliterated by OU today. embarrassing. we didn't deserve to win.

tonight a bunch of girls from high school and i got together to catch up. becca is in town having her bridal portraits done, so we met up with some old friends. it's interesting to see how life has unfolded for all of us. stacy is married with a baby, rachel is married, becca is a newlywed, and i'm going to china for a month. you prooobably could have guessed when we were 13 that's how it would be.