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.