Mom, Dad, don’t hate me.  I couldn’t resist.  You have to admit, though, I do look awesome!  I hear there are some great Obamao t-shirts in Beijing.  Google it; I am sure there are plenty of images out there.  I’m going to have to pick one up when I go.  I think it will make a great souvenir.  I wonder what would happen if a bunch a people showed up at a Democratic rally wearing them.  Tehe.

Gabe, the Party Member.

The other night, Phil, Bo, and I decided to take a midnight run to McDonald’s to grab some burgers and hot fudge sundaes.  I had been craving a sundae for at least a week and really wanted to get one.  We probably should have just stayed home and gone to bed because our physicals were the next day and we had to get up at the crack of dawn, but we just could not say no to the American arches.

So, we did what any sensible, hungry American without a car would do; we hailed a taxi.  We had only done this a hundred other times, so we weren’t worried that we wouldn’t make it to our destination.  Linyi only has one McDonald’s and everyone and his brother knows where it is.  Or so we thought.  The first taxi we saw didn’t acknowledge us, but that was fine because another one was right behind it.

The particular cab that we jumped in only had one working head light and the body of the car felt like it was held together by a few strings of imagination. A few snips here and few snips there, and I think we would have had a Flintstones moment.  We all hopped in and told the driver that we wanted to go to Mai Dang Lao.  He repeated our destination and off we went.

Everything started out just fine.  The taxi was going in the right direction and we were getting closer and closer to fast food bliss, but then we noticed that the taxi driver passed the normal turn and then another turn that he could have taken, even though it would have been a little out of the way.  And then we were no where near where we needed to be.  Just as we were about to speak up and say something, the taxi driver did a u-turn and started back the way we came.

Again, the taxi driver passed the normal turn.  We looked down at the taxi meter, saw that it read 20 yuan and decided that if he happened to get us to the golden arches, he was only going to get 10.  The three of us were completely baffled.  We had no idea where he was taking us.  It seemed as though he was taking us back to the school.  Finally, he pulled over  . . . but not next to McDonald’s.  Instead, he brought us to another fast food joint open 24 hours a day – Mr. Lee’s.

This was mind boggling.  Bo, who was sitting up front, repeated our destination, but the taxi driver just stared at him.  Then Bo mentioned the land mark right next to McDonald’s, People’s Square.  The taxi driver perked up and repeated People’s Square in Chinese.  He was all smiles, like he finally knew where he was taking us.  If only.

The taxi driver started driving again, but instead of doing a u-turn, he continued down the same road that would take us back to our school.  Within a few minutes, we passed the school’s gates.  At this point, we were pretty pissed off.  This guy was taking us on a joy ride.

I leaned up behind his seat and asked him in Chinese if he knew where we were going.  He didn’t respond.  I asked him again.  Same thing.  I asked him over and over again, every time my voice becoming more serious.  It was as though I wasn’t even there.  Phil started yelling stop in Chinese.  Again, nothing.  I was beginning to get worried, and asked Phil if we should call the police.  Phil began to considerate it an option.

Phil asked Bo to try and get his attention, and finally, the driver pulled the wax out of his ear’s.  He finally seemed to understand that we were rather pissed off and stopped the car.  We weren’t too far from the school, but we were down one of those roads that I only like taking in the day – one that isn’t likely to get a lot of traffic at 12:30 in the morning.   Phil told us to get out, and we didn’t argue.

I think it was pure luck that another taxi showed up as we stepped out.  We frantically waved him down.  As soon as he came to a stop, we jumped in.  We told him where we wanted to go, but he sat and stared at us for a minute.  He was obviously confused with what was going on.

Our crazy taxi driver decided to get out of his car and started yelling at our new driver.  I wish for all the world that I knew what he was saying.  They exchanged a few words, but our taxi didn’t budge.  Our new driver looked over at Phil, who was now in the front seat and said something, God only knows what.  Phil began telling him, with his limited Chinese, what had happened and that the guy standing in front of our taxi was one crazy man.  A few more words were exchanged and the crazy taxi driver walked over to Phil’s window.  Why our driver did what he did next, I don’t know, but it made me very, very nervous.  He rolled down Phil’s window.  The two began exchanging words.  It was pretty obvious what he wanted.  He wanted his 28 yuan.

Phil is a pretty patient fellow, but at this point he was about ready to strangle this guy.  So, he did what any sensible, angry American would do.  He threw a few f-bombs out the window. It’s amazing what a f-bomb will do.   Perhaps sensing that he wasn’t going to win this battle, the crazy taxi guy turned around and headed back to his car.

Phil told our newly acquired taxi driver again where we wanted to go, and off we went.  Ten minutes later, we were sitting at McDonald’s wondering why in the world it hadn’t been that easy it the first place.

Today during our two hour lunch break, Bo and I went to the shoe repair guy outside of the school’s gate to see if it was possible to fix the bottom of Bo’s shoes.  His soles were looking pretty worn.  When we got there, another woman was getting her boots done, so we had to wait.   I thought it would be a good idea to ask how much it was because there would be no point in waiting if he quoted us some ridiculous price.  When I asked him, he paused for a moment as though he were thinking of a price.  The woman waiting on her boots to be finished perked up and said something to the man.  He looked at her and said a few more things and then she turned back to us and said 2.5 in English.  This sorta surprised me.  I hadn’t expected either one of them to speak English and it was cheaper than I thought it would be.  2.5 yuan is like .37  cents.  Do you have any idea how much it costs to repair soles in the US?  Not .37 cents.   We decided to wait.

It didn’t take the guy long at all to finish the woman’s boots and then it was Bo’s turn.  He sat down on the little stool the guy had provided and took off his shoes.  The guy took them and went straight to work.  In a few short minutes, the guy had resurfaced the worn places on the shoe and handed them back to Bo.  We asked him one more time how much it was just to make sure.  For a second, I thought he meant 2.5 yuan for each shoe, and that would have been fine, but he repeated his earlier statement.  Bo slipped on his shoes and stood up to test them out.  He said that they felt great and that maybe he should bring all his shoes to get fixed in China.  Yep, that is my plan, too.

I’m not sure how many of you care about Chinese Folk art, but I have several videos that I took at the Wind from the Plateau, a performance held at the Koger Center here in Columbia.  Instead of making several posts, I am just going to shove all 12 of the videos I uploaded to YouTube. Enjoy!

I am sure I will have more of things like this to come in the new future.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM9vbFoMnmY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMZrskavUOM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5SmK-Qb2us[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI7QZte-LQQ[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqaIcc4IH10[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXFOoVPC7Dk[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMsSiztIQbk[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edv2yrujk0A[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmH_0EoZR8Q[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi8vyGUI9ts[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVVVTjNE7Hk[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlZrHBdZtPs[/youtube]

For some reason, we thought this was one of the scariest elevator doors that we had ever seen and insisted on getting it on video. I will admit that while it just looks like an elevator on video, it was rather terrifying in person. Having no real light in our hallway may have contributed, but it could have just been the rickety sound of the door opening. Who knows. I just know it was frightening getting on and off the elevator every day.

If you can’t tell, I’m having a horrible time coming up with stuff to either post or write about.  I’ll work on posting something more real next time.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-e6leONmJc[/youtube]

We really didn’t stay in Shenyang long enough to get to know the city as well as perhaps we wanted, but we were there just long enough to make our apartment feel a little bit like home.  And that is why it made it even more frustrating to repack everything we had previously shipped as well as all the additional goods we purchased since we arrived.   Some of the stuff we bought seemed like too much trouble to ship, so we left it.  We probably could have found a way if we had more than one day to move down south, but since we were stuck with the fixed schedule, neither me or Phil cared if we lost out on a few 100 yuan.

Our apartment was small, but it was decent.  The bed was soft and the room was bright.  It didn’t have the greatest view in the world – we had a series of train tracks outside to look at – but we  could see the city all around us since we were on the 15th floor – technically 14th.  4 is a bad number in China.  Sounds too much like the word they use for death.  Our bathroom wasn’t too shabby, but when you took a shower you had to make sure you were done by the time the number on the water heater got to 32 or so or else you would be stuck with cold water.  With me having such long hair, 32 always seemed to get there way too quickly.  It was always like a race against a ticking time bomb, and I always seemed to flipping lose!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebjfpWNRjSo[/youtube]

A long time ago, I posted a picture of what a soft sleeper train car looked like in China, but the picture was a little distorted and it was hard to gauge its actually size.  The video Phil took helps, but not by much.  I highly recommend forking up the money for one if you are traveling more than eight hours.  Even though I had a hard time going to sleep, it was nice to have a place to lay my head and be able to stretch out.

I was terrified that somehow the crazy snow storm that attacked Shenyang was going to freeze us on the tracks in the middle of no where and that we would ultimately starve to death because we didn’t have but a few snacks with us.  Thankfully, that never happened, because if it did, well, you wouldn’t be reading this right now.  🙂

If you have plenty of time or you want to save money, trains are the way to go in China.  However, you can’t really plan ahead too much when it comes to buying tickets because they only sell them one or two weeks in advance.  I can’t remember how early you can buy them, but it is something like that.   If you wait too long, depending on the time of year, you may not be able to buy tickets and you’ll have to figure out another way to get where you want to go.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR_E-HZhIxM[/youtube]

I don’t know how I ever forgot to post this particular video.  I mean, it isn’t a ground breaking video or anything, but it did make me laugh when I watched it for the first time in a long time.   As I mentioned in my last post, this was our third attempt trying to get to Shenyang. What was supposed to be an easy hour and a half flight, turned into 14 hours of hell.  It would have been one thing if we had waited in the lobby for 14 hours, but most of our time was spent on the tarmac, cramped in a small plane, filled to the brim with passangers.  I suppose the craziest thing was that we actually took off for Shenyang at one point, got half way there, and when they found out there was no room for the plane to land, we were forced to go back to Beijing.  It was at that point we decided to give up and go home and figure out another way to Shenyang,  but before we could go home, we first had to get our luggage back.  That was another nightmare all together.  Below is the video Phil took as we waited for Richard’s(Yuli Guo) luggage to be found.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EA0-VNpEBs[/youtube]

Flipping through my Chinese videos, I found a few that I had never shared before and decided to upload them for your viewing pleasure.  The first video is of the freak snow storm that hit us when we were in Beijing waiting to go to Shenyang.  You can read all about that special story here, here, and here if you have no idea what I am talking about.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFZg-JinN5Y[/youtube]

Every now and again, I type random words into You Tube’s search engine hoping to come across an interesting video.  I stumbled across this one not too long ago, and thought I would share it.  The little girl is just too precious.

The video was filmed in the most beautiful part of China that I visited – Yangshuo.  It’s one of those places that you have to see to truly appreciate.  No picture or video do the landscape justice.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqiXw7nqw6k[/youtube]