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.)