Thursday, March 19, 2009

run for your life.

ni hao my american comrades.

i am still in china and it is still good. the sun is shining again and all is well. i love being able to sit outside and enjoy the beautiful sunshine.

things in china have been good.
minus this scariest moment so far: here is how it goes... there were a few of us that made the trip to zhongshan city (about 2 hours away) and we were hanging out on walking street. you know, just shopping and people watching. we had walked up one side of the street and were walking back down the other side. it was pretty busy on saturday and there were a lot of people staring at us. we weren't drawing attention to ourselves or anything. that is just how it is when you are the only americans some people have ever seen. so we are walking down the street and i wasn't really paying attention to what was going on and all of the sudden kate goes walking past me really fast and mumbling about someone grabbing onto her face. and was followed by hannah and kaitlin telling me to walk faster. then, from behind me i hear alexis yelling something at someone. at this point, i was still not really paying attention to what was going on and out of no where i feel someone grab onto my sleeve. i turned around and saw this crazy asian woman staring at me with these HUGE creepy eyes and then hear alexis yelling "stop! stop! stop it!" and hitting this woman who is still holding onto me. finally the woman let go and we walked away. to tell you the truth, i wasn't really paying attention to what was going on and was still a little out of it, but alexis and i look behind us and the woman gets up and starts following us. so, we started walking a little faster, and so did the crazy lady. so we started running, and so did the crazy lady. she chased us for a good couple of minutes and we were weaving in and out of the street and finally went into a store. we waited for a few minutes and the coast was clear. let me just say it was a once in the lifetime thing (knock on wood) that i was chased by a crazy asian woman. i hope it never happens again.

we spent some time at the xiaolan city park. it was a great time. there were a ton of asians there and it seemed as if none of them had ever seen an american before. we were being stared at and watched the whole time. there were a ton of people that walked by and tried to snook a picture of us having a picnic. it was pretty darn funny.

this weekend i played some ping pong and badmitten. we went all out and showed off our stuff at the city park. we are terrible at both of those chinese sports, but the locals seemed to get a huge kick out of us. it was pretty funny. i have never had a crowd stand around and watch me make a fool out of myself. it was really funny to see a bunch of chinese men standing around and smirking. oh the chiner.
oh. speaking of the park...we were walking home from the park (guzhen city park) and around the park there are benches and things to sit on (because there isn't any grass) and we walked past some groups of people sitting and talking. we walked past this group of mothers who were breast feeding their babies and all of the sudden we see one woman...full on...and heard her say "hao chi, hao chi!" which means "yummy, yummy!". who says that to their babies when breast feeding?! it was the funniest SLASH weirdest thing i have ever heard. we were laughing pretty hard. maybe you had to be there. i mean here. in china.
also, while we were at the park i squeezed onto the lap of a statue of a man reading a book. it was like he was holding me and we were reading the book together. it was a great time and there were a ton of chinese homies watching me. such a great time.

this past monday we (5 of us) were still on vacation and decided to go out of town for the day. we got up early and took a bus ride for a couple of hours to foshan. a small little town, that is really a HUGE city, that we totally didn't expect. it was a really neat place and super fun (if you are ever in china, go to foshan). we went to these famous kilns called the "ancient nanfeng dragon kilns." it was crazy awesome. i thought it was going to be just a kiln...you know, a round machine that gets really hot. PSYCH. it was a HUGE kiln that can hold over 1000 pots at once. AND! it has been burning since it was first fired over 500 years ago. it was awesome. i was also able to make some pottery. on a potting wheel. it was super hard and took so long but i made a cute little bowl that will be great for eating rice out of. the people who run the kilns are going to fire it (in the ancient kilns)! i am so excited. chinese pottery. fired in an ancient chinese kiln. how cool is that?! there was a ton of awesome art at the kilns. it was like a huge museum and the kiln was the center of it. it was great. i highly suggest going there if you are ever in guangdong province.

2 comments:

Chelsey said...

Wow! Why ? Why was that crazy lady grabbing our arms and faces? That is super creepy! Yikes! PS I bet your little bowl looks awesome!

tifsong said...

your pictures are so beautiful. linds! you're beautiful!