I promise I have not forgotten about our Shanghai trip, but I wanted to post some pictures that I have been meaning to get on here for sometime now.

For instance, dinner one night at our lovely school. I am sorry that this picture isn’t any better than it is, but you’ll at least get the idea of how awkward it was to have this on my plate. I didn’t eat it. I couldn’t. My soul would have blinked out of existence if any of it had touched my lips.

Chicken Feet and Snails

The food in China is unlike anything I have ever had to eat. And this picture isn’t even the worst of it. The Chinese eat anything and everything that they can get their little hands on. They don’t waste a single inch of anything. I mean, look at this poor chicken here. They are eating his feet for crying out loud! When you order chicken back in the the good ole US of A, you usually get pieces of boneless chicken that don’t even look like it came from something that used to cluck and scratch it’s three toed foot in the ground looking for bits of food. That is not so in China. In fact, it is quiet the opposite. When you order chicken here, that is what you get – chicken . . . an entire chicken. Everything between the head and those three toed feet. The Chinese basically take a chicken, skin it, boil it, lay it down on a cutting board, hack it all to hell with a butcher’s knife, and then lay it on a plate for you to eat. Sometimes, you have an eye staring back at you. I think it’s pretty damn creepy. I don’t order chicken anymore. The whole brain thing really turned me off. Same goes for the duck dish you can order. It just isn’t right.

Something a little more on the normal side. I was walking home from school one day, when I saw this mother and these two kids sitting on her lap. I am going to assume that only one of them is hers because of the one child policy, but then again, she could be a freaking billionaire and be able to afford the heavy fine for having more than just the one child. Who knows really. She didn’t want me to take her picture at first, but I asked again and she relented. The kids as you can tell were not very happy. I’m not sure if they were fussy because I was a strange white woman snapping their picture or if they were just tired and wanted a nap. Either way, I wanted to snap a moment of the life of real Chinese people. So I did.

This is part of the street that I used to walk on Monday through Friday. Now I drive it, or well ride it. I used to walk from the bus stop next to the Xinhua Bookstore(a pretty nice bookstore similar to Barnes and Noble) to Yong Xing Middle School(it’s a good 10-15 minute walk and it sucks) because the woman in charge of me insisted that their wasn’t a bus that could take me anywhere near my home. What a fibber. I found out today there is a bus that stops right in front of the school and that it will take me to the Xinhua Bookstore where I can get on another bus that will take me almost to my doorstep. Goodness, what a mouth full. Hey, at least now I don’t have walk as far anymore. I did enough walking when I worked at Bermex. This picture by the way is right beside the bus station that takes people to and from Hangzhou everyday. All of those cars on the right are various taxi drivers. When I walk past them, they all try to convince me to get in. I’m glad that I don’t have to deal with that anymore.

The Fuchun River. People actually go swimming in it. And that almost scares me more than the whole chicken feet and snails bit. From this picture, it looks peaceful and serene, but it is anything but that. I am surprised that fish live in it. I mean, I guess it could be worse, but I sure as heck wouldn’t go tubbing down it like I would the Congeree or Saluda River back home. Ah, talking about them brings back memories . . . if you are reading this and have any idea what I am talking about – I miss you. The river isn’t all that bad I guess. It is nice to sit by on the grass – some of the only grass here in Fuyang. And the view of it from our balcony is nice, too.

Like America, China flies their flags everywhere, too. I once saw some sort of village that had a China flag on each and every building there. A lot of the apartment complexes here have them flying on the roofs. This flag in this picture is Yong Xing’s flag. And the building in the back is yet another set of apartment buildings being built. The one thing that I have noticed is that China is constantly under construction no matter where you go. The sounds of hammering are never far off. You are lucky if you don’t have to wake up to it every morning. We don’t have any construction going on around here. Just the school bells and the sounds of kids shuffling up to our six floor windows.