This picture is a little blurry, but I just wanted to give you a visual of how much things cost here. I got these down at the little fruit and vegetable stand at the end of our street. The family that works there is very nice and are always super helpful when I pop in to buy some things. So, as you can see, one day I bought three carrots, four potatoes, three green peppers, four bananas, and one onion. Back home, I imagine that all of this would have cost me $3-4(depending on where you shop), but here in Xiamen, China, all of this cost me 9 RMB or the equivalent to only $1.12. You can’t beat that. I would like to add that if I had purchased these at Wal-Mart, Trust-Mart, or Carrefour, they would have been more expensive, but then again, that is why I don’t buy my fruit or vegetables there.

Here are some more pictures of our stroll down the beach two weeks ago. Like last time, less talk and more pictures.

How many brides can you count getting their pictures taken?

Me trying to be artsy fartsy. Eh, I should stick to being a teacher.

Be a good rock and don’t buck me into the ocean.

From further away, these parasailors looked like winged ants about to fly off the mound to mate.

Um, isn’t there something missing here. Like a person.

More pictures. Less talk.

Here are some of the pictures from our trip down to the beach here in Xiamen. I was a little disappointed in the weather. It was overcast and chilly. I imagine that it would have been more beautiful had the sun been out.

Three wise Palm Trees watching the waves crash
on the beach one lifetime at a time.

Phil striking a pose on the Boardwalk. I wish more beaches had this feature.

The water comes in. The water goes out.

Rocky beach and the Boardwalk.

One of about 15 brides-to-be taking their wedding photos.

The following is a conversation that happened in my Part-Time Advance class this past Sunday morning. I was going over a questionaire in their book and having them discuss their answers.

“So, Jeff, if a foreigner took your picture, would you be A) flattered B) annoyed C) amused D) or none of the above?”

“I would be annoyed.”

Laughter in the classroom. “Why would you be annoyed?”

“Because that is the only word I know.”

More laughter in the room.

Several minutes later . . .

“Alright, number 5, Jeff. If you were walking down the beach with your girlfriend, would you A) hold her hand B) walk arm in arm C) walk close but not touch or D) none of the above?”

“My answer is D – none of the above.”

“OK, Jeff, why?

“Because I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Even more laughter in the classroom.

Funny stuff.

Once upon a time, we lived in 沈阳(Shenyang), and there we adopted a certain fish that we quickly named 啤酒(Pi Jiu). 啤酒 means beer in Chinese, by the way, and as long as the new Google Pinyin thing is working, those are the correct symbols. Yes, we named our gold fish, Beer. We’d been in our apartment for a few days before the other teacher sent to Shenyang with us, Christine, was given a temporary apartment of her own in the same building as ours. When she saw it though, she was very disappointed and refused to stay there. When she came to our apartment to complain about it, in tears, we asked if we could see it. It wasn’t that bad, it was clean, but it didn’t have a suitable bed as well as a few other essential things. The bed was just a bunch of sheets piled on top of each other on the floor. Phil and I probably could have stayed the few days there that they were asking her to, but Christine is much older than us, and getting in and out of the bed everyday would have been hard. I’m not quiet sure who, but by this point, one of us perked up and said, “Is someone living here?” Apparently, who ever had been living in the apartment had gone on vacation(perhaps permanently), and while they were gone, they(or perhaps the land lord) were allowing Christine to stay there until they could get the other apartment ready for her. When we asked Chris about the whole ordeal, he said that the hosts of the apartment had left very quickly and he had no idea where they had gone or if they would be returning. I’m still a little confused about the whole thing. Everything, including their bike, photograph albums, cookware and other personal things were still there. It was as if they had just vanished in the middle of the night and everything that they owned had been left behind. I don’t think I will ever really know what happened or if they came back to collect their stuff. Of all the valuable things still remaining in the room though, only one thing peeked my interest – the big glass bowl sitting next to the window overlooking the city of Shenyang. By the look of the bowl, he had already been there for several days without food or clean water. He kept swimming up to the top to get some air, and when I let my index finger barely touch the film on the water, he tried to eat my finger. Thankfully, gold fish really don’t have teeth, so it didn’t hurt. Me, being the animal lover that I am, I immediately turned to Chris and said, “Can I have the fish?” “You want the fish?” Chris asked with a look of bewilderment on his face. “Yeah, do you think the hosts will mind?” Chris kinda shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t think so.” It was quiet simple logic, really. It was either I take the fish, or he would undoubtedly die a slow, painful, suffocating death. I picked up the bowl, found it too heavy to carry myself, and handed it to Phil. As soon as we had him in our own apartment, we poured him in a temporary holding cell until we were able to clean out his bowl and refill it with clean water. I wasn’t sure if throwing him into new water without letting his body get used to the water temperature first would kill him, but we didn’t have anything we could put him in that could be placed in the water, so we threw him in and hoped for the best. Several hours later he was still swimming and breathing. I figured it was time to name him since it looked like he was going to make it after all. As I mentioned above, we ended up calling our new little gold fish 啤酒(Pi Jiu). I can’t really come up with a good reason why I picked that particular name out, except for the fact that my Chinese vocabulary is rather limited, and it seemed at the time to be both suitable and cute. How he became known as 啤酒 the Wonder Fish is another story. Keep reading. Just after we had gotten ourselves settled and used to our new surroundings, as you’ve read in previous posts, we got the call that we had to go back to Beijing to get a new health check in order for the government to issue us resident permits. We had been told that it would just be a day or so, we didn’t worry so much about our new found pet’s well being. I threw in a handful of bread, wished Pi Jiu well, and left hoping he wouldn’t be floating at the top of his bowl when we returned. Somehow, what was supposed to be a few days, turned into a week and three days. After the first three or so days, I gave up on the idea that we would return to Shenyang to find Pi Jiu swimming happily in his bowl. I had enough gold fish as a little girl to know what happened to fish that didn’t eat. I just didn’t want to have open the door and smell his death. It was bound to happen. We’d been gone too long. After we landed in Shenyang, there was no point rushing home in my eyes. I had even told Phil that he was going to be in charge of taking care of poor, dead Pi Jiu. I felt too guilty. Here I was thinking that I had saved him, just to kill him a few days later. When we finally got back to the apartment, I hesitated putting the key in the door. I didn’t want to have to see what was on the other side. (Yes, I was being a bit dramatic, but things like this really bother me. I can be such a girl sometimes.) When I finally summoned enough courage, I turned the handle and looked in the direction of the bowl which I had placed on my bedside table. To my surprise, I didn’t see a gold colored fish floating at the top. My first thought was that perhaps he had sunk to the bottom, but none of my previous pet fish had ever done that. In the center of the bowl, I could see a bit of gold reflecting off the curvature of the glass, but it wasn’t moving. I dropped my book bag next to the front door and started the awful 2.4 second walk to the table. The water was dirty, cloudy, and without a spec of food anywhere, but low and behold, it was Pi Jiu – and he was ALIVE. Barely, but alive. “Holy crap!” I screamed. “He’s alive. He’s really alive!” “Really?” Phil asked. “Yeah, he doesn’t look so good, but he’s very much alive.” Chris just sorta stood there looking curious as to why I was so happy that a stupid gold fish was still alive. As fast as I could, I returned Pi Jiu to a nice clean environment. I still didn’t have any fish flakes, so I threw in what bread and pieces of crackers I had. At first he didn’t seem very interested, but soon he started eating. The entire time that I was trying to make his home livable again, I knew that Phil and I would be leaving for Xiamen in less than a day, and this time we wouldn’t be coming back. I had no idea what to do with him or who to give him to. I asked Chris repeatedly if he wanted a pet fish. His answer was always no. He said that his home was too small and that he didn’t know what to do with a fish. I knew he had a girlfriend, so I tried convincing him to give it to her, but his excuse for her was the same as his. It seemed that I had reached a dead end. When it was time to leave the next day, I fed Pi Jiu one last time, and asked Chris again if he wanted him or knew someone who did. Chris assured me that the host of the apartment would come back and perhaps he/she would adopt it. It was my only real option, so I had to take it. With our luggage in hand, we closed our Shenyang apartment door for the last time and said goodbye to Pi Jiu the Wonder Fish for the last time. Just yesterday, Phil and I were walking along the streets of Xiamen when we saw a pet store full of colorful fish. It made me think of Pi Jiu and I wondered if perhaps he was still alive. I like to believe that the host of the apartment did come back and took a liking to the little fish sitting on the bedside table. Perhaps even now he is swimming in a nice big glass bowl staring at his seemingly never ending reflection. That is what I hope.

This story is a wee bit out-dated, but it’s still funny.

I’m really surprised my parents didn’t disown me and write me out of their wills. Thankfully, they are pretty easy going people and forgave their rotten daughter. 🙂 What exactly did I do? I think the picture of the April Fool should be a pretty good indicator.

I love playing jokes on people. It’s part of my nature. My Dad says I must have inherited it from him and possibly his bad humor too(heh, JK Dad), but if that is the case, you would think one jokester would be able to smell the other jokester out before the joke got pulled. In most cases, I think my Dad would have been able too, if I had been standing in front of him. I can’t keep a straight face for nothing. This is one reason why I can never play poker. People can see my bluff from a mile away.

Being in China though, telling practical jokes is a whole different ball game. I’m 7,000 miles away, and there is no way neither my Mom or my Dad could tell simply by my face that I was telling tall tales. The only thing I had to do was make a crazy story seem somewhat believable and let their imaginations do the rest of the work. So, I plopped down in front of my computer, went into my email account and started crafting that which would be my April Fool’s joke of 2007.

It started out fairly simply, but then I would think of something cool to add to it. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I had composed an impressive story that could possible be true if you were crazy enough to believe it. Hehe. I didn’t really think they would fall for it. I thought that at least one of them would see through my elaborate lie. But, no. Apparently, my little story wasn’t quiet crazy enough. They both fell for it.

Hook. Liner. And. Sinker.

Mom and Dad,

I just wanted to email you and let you know how much we love Xiamen. It is wonderful here. The weather is fantastic, although warm, but it reminds me of home. This is probably one of the cleanest cities I have been to since arriving in China besides Hong Kong, of course. The people are very nice and everything is very convenient. Also, I wanted to tell you some really good news that happened yesterday. Phil went to Dell and applied for a job. He found his dream job listed on their site and decided that he couldn’t pass it up. So he went and applied in person. Before he could even walk out the door, the President of Dell came running after him and told him to wait. Phil then went into his office and the President started offering him expensive wine and pricey cigarettes, while telling him how much he loved his application. The President of Dell said he couldn’t let someone with his experience walk out of his office without first offering him a job. The job he was offering had already been given away earlier that day, but the President of Dell said his was a douche bag and that he liked Phil much better. To make a long story short, too late, the President of Dell had the douche bag fired, and had Phil sign a 5 year contract to work for Dell in Xiamen. They are paying him a lot too. A WHOLE LOT! We’re going to be rich! They even offered to pay for our housing and for a driver to get Phil to and from work everyday. Since Phil is making so much money, I can quit working for WECL and start writing all those books I’ve been working on for years. It’s going to be great! So, if you really miss me, and really want to see me, you are going to have to hop on a plane and come see me. Oh, and Dell said they would pay for that too.

And now for the bad news. Yes, there is always bad news with the good news unfortunately. Keep reading.

This has been a horrible, awful, no good, evil . . . . . .

APRIL FOOL’S JOKE!!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

You can’t tell me you really believed it!

But the real good news is that we are indeed very happy and the city is super clean. And Xiamen does reminds us of home. I miss and love you both and hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive your daughter. I only did it out of Love!

It was a good one though, wasn’t it?

PS Oh, and I’m pregnant.

PPS APRIL FOOLS!

PPPS The President of Dell says hi . . . Oh, right, we’ve actually never met the guy. I forgot.I’ve got to watch myself now. I just know that my dad is plotting his revenge as I type – and he has a good long year to get me back. My mom though, she’s just sad Dell isn’t really paying her flight over. Heh.

I’ll make this short and sweet.

Since I was unable to really sleep on our journey from Beijing to Shenyang, I was wide awake to take this picture. I wish my camera would work better under extreme circumstances – IE taking a picture of the bright sun through a window in a train that is traveling 120 KM per hour – but what can you do. I don’t think it came out too bad considering. At least you can tell what it was I was taking a picture of. The crazy part is that I took about ten pictures before I got this one. All the rest of them were blurry or too bright.

I miss the sun.

I haven’t seen it since the day after we arrived in Xiamen. It’s been rainy and craptastic ever since. It seems the sun is a seldom visitor in the south of China. Xiamen seems to be a lot like Fuyang in that regard. Even though it was cold, windy and dusty in Beijing, at least there was a big ball of fire on most days hanging above me in the vast blue sky. Heh. I guess I can’t be happy all the time. : ) The sun has to come out eventually,though. I’ve seen too many pictures of Xiamen to believe that it is perpetually overcast here. At least, I hope not.

As mentioned before, in multiple posts, we had to take a train from Beijing to get to our supposed final destination of Shenyang. Instead of getting a soft seat like we did to go from Hangzhou to Beijing(which I will never do again), we were provided with soft sleepers. The above picture is of the car we resided in for the 8 hour journey.

For the most part, it wasn’t that bad. The beds were soft enough to get comfortable in, but because of the constant shaking of the train, I had a horrible time getting some shut eye. Phil had a similar problem, but Christine was out cold as soon as she closed her eyes. Not long after the train pushed off, Phil tried taking a 360 of the room, but only this portion of it turned out. It shows the majority of the room anyway. The room was itzy bitzy(don’t let the picture fool you) and was barely big enough to put all of our luggage in it. Thankfully, Richard decided to take a plane to Shenyang, or else we wouldn’t have had a bed to lay everything on. Phil and I took the top bunks and Christine and all of our luggage took the bottom two.

Each bed came equipped with sheets, a pillow and a little reading light. To get to the top bunks though, one needed to be super agile. There were no stairs leading up to them. Instead, there was a little foot hold and a handle to pull yourself up. It’s much easier getting up than getting down – at least that is how it was for me. But, as I have seen since being in China – even the elderly Chinese are pretty darn flexible. I saw an old lady sitting flat footed, like it was natural. I don’t think I can name one elderly person back home that can do that. I think it is all the training they do throughout their lives to use the toilet here. I will never understand how they do it or want to do it.

And that is the low down on the sleeper car that we stayed in. I’ll be posting about our experiences so far in Xiamen soon. I just want to go ahead and post the things that have happened recently before I forget them. I have a few more pictures that I have saved on blogger to get to before I move on to Xiamen. Plus, I haven’t really had many picture opportunities since coming to Xiamen. The weather did a 180 the day after we got here. It’s been overcast and rainy every day since. We are in the rainy season, so I guess it is something I need to get used to. I just hope we are spared a typhoon. I don’t want to have to deal with one of those.

So, we finally have Internet in our own home now and don’t have to worry about going to a wang ba(internet cafe) at strange hours in the night anymore to post on the blog or to surf the Internet. Even though Internet cafes are cheap, five yuan here and there adds up to a lot if you go every night like we did. For a 2M ADSL connection, it cost us 100 yuan for them to come out and give us user name and password(Phil was the one who hooked everything up), 167 yuan for the first month, and 118 yuan every month after that. The Internet may not be blazing fast, but it works, and now I can call home when I want to and don’t have to worry about people eavesdropping on my conversation besides Phil, and he doesn’t listen to me anyway whether I’m talking on the phone or to his face – so that won’t matter too much – hehe.

And to continue on with the good news, I found out randomly today that China has decided to return my freedom of speech – for at least the time being. I don’t expect it to stay unblocked forever, but it’s nice not having to use proxies to get to my blog. That’s sorta how I found out that my blog was working again. I had tried using PKblogs to get to it like I normally do, but for some reason, it was acting all flaky and kept giving me an error. So, to test my luck, I just typed in my url and wallah – my blog loaded.

And if you haven’t noticed, a lot of my blog’s decoration had dissapeared. That is because I’ve upgraded to a new template on blogger, and when I did, a lot of what Phil had worked on went out the window. He is currently trying to get everything back to normal. Hopefully, it won’t take too long.

Now the only thing that needs to be done to make me happy is a normal working schedule!

That’s another story all together, and I don’t feel like going into that right now.

I’m just going to blog like crazy until China decides to pull the plug on me again.

And for the heck of it, here is a crazy picture I found.

Ah. No more planes, buses, trains or automobiles. I never thought I would despise traveling so much or enjoy the pleasures of home like I do now. It’s so nice to know that my home will be nice and stable for the next three months(at least) and that it won’t have wings, tires, shake, or have the possibility of crashing. We’ve only been here four days now and I’ve already dug my feet into the ground and started growing roots. It’s either going to take all of the men, women, and children of China ripping me up and dragging me out or a fierce typhoon to make me leave Xiamen.For those of you who have just arrived or missed some of the posts that talked about our crazy trip that bounced us all over China, let me bring you up to speed. For those who know all about it, take a look at the map above and get a good idea of just how far we’ve gone is such a little amount of time. I know think I can say that I have been to more places in China, than I can say I’ve been in my own country. There is something wrong about that, I think.

So, if you take a look at the map above, you will see a whole bunch of black lines going from one corner of China, one city at a time, to the other corner of China. Now you can understand my hatred for traveling. I think anyone would have a sour look upon their face if they had just gone through what we have. I’m just a little sad that I didn’t make it any further west. I mean, if you are going to bounce us around China, you could have at least bounced us in all of the cardinal directions! :)Alright, hopefully, this final explanation of everywhere we’ve been will not become any bigger than it has. Every time I’ve thought its come to an end, something else has happened. This time though, I think the insanity has finally settled to the bottom of the ocean and won’t be tempted to show it’s evil face again.

From the top:

Fuyang to Hangzhou – by bus – 1 hour
Hangzhou to Beijing – by train – 14 hours – soft seat
Beijing to Shenzhen – by plane – 4 hours
Shenzhen to Hong Kong – by “train” – 1 hour
Hong Kong to Shenzhen – by “train” – 1 hour
Shenzhen to Hangzhou – by plane – 2 hours
Hangzhou to Tunxi – by bus – 2.5 hours
Tunxi to Huang Shan – by bus – 1.5 hours
Huang Shan to Tunxi – by bus – 1.5 hours
Tunxi to Hangzhou – by bus – 2.5 hours
Hangzhou to Beijing – by plane – 2 hours
1st attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – 2 hours of sitting – Freak snow storm
2nd attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – Flight canceled
3rd attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – 14 hours of sitting for a one hour flight
4th attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by train – soft sleeper – 8 hours
Shenyang to Beijing – by train – soft seat – 9.5 hours
Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – 1 hour
Shenyang to Xiamen – by plane – 5.5 hours (delay and stop-over)

That’s about 70 hours of traveling and is probably pretty accurate, but I wouldn’t doubt it if it was actually more. I’m probably missing a bus ride or something in there somewhere. The worst part about it is that the only places we had actually planned on going after our contract was up in January was Huang Shan, Beijing, and of course Shenyang. It is true that we got to see a lot of China, but almost everywhere we went, we were trying to get important things done so that we could stay in China for the following semester. Because of that, we missed a lot of cool things in the cities that we were able to go. Maybe I will win the lottery or something, and be able to go back and enjoy them all at a much more leisurely pace. Heh, that would be nice.

And after all of that, there isn’t much more to say on that subject. I guess that chapter of my life is over and it is time to move on to the next one. As crazy as this chapter was, I sure got some crazy stories out of it – that’s for sure. And even though the experience at the time frustrated the living hell out of me, I know that I will have a good laugh when I’m 60 and sipping sweet tea on my front porch. . . .”Hey, Phil, do you remember the time we got bounced all over China.”

I have a feeling that Xiamen is going to be good to us.