I got bored. And then my batteries died.

I’m not particularly fond of any them. I just thought I would post some pictures.

I couldn’t decide if I liked this one . . .

or this one better. Eh. Neither one is fantastic or anything.

And this one isn’t fantastic either. I don’t really know why I am posting it.

This Wisteria was not cooperating with me or my camera.

I would have taken more photos, but Phil looked perturbed.

I don’t know why, but I really like this one.

Phil and I were driving around one Sunday. We managed to drive to Camden, SC somehow.

I thought this sign was interesting. I’m not sure why there is an Indian on it.

And you know what that means . . .

Beans, beans, the magical fruit.
The more you eat, the more you toot.
The more you toot, the better you feel.
So eat your beans with every meal!

Aren’t they just precious.  I think they are the cutest beans I’ve ever seen.

I’m such a proud mother.

This picture shows just how small they are.

Our plants are so small, it isn’t even funny.  I don’t think any of them are more than a foot tall.  Perhaps we bought midget plants or something. I think it has to do with the lack of light that they get. We have to put them outside soon or else I’m quite certain they are going to bite the dust.

I want to build a little garden area in my backyard, but I don’t even know where to start, and my brother informed that I am probably going to have to spend a few hundred dollars on soil.  How depressing.  Also, my backyard sorta sucks – there is really no good place to build a little garden.

I guess I’ll figure things out eventually.  I’ll have to, or the 80 tomato plants chilling on my back steps are going to run off in protest and plant themselves elsewhere.  I never intended to have 80 Beefsteak tomato plants, but since I have such awesome “greenhouse” light in my office, every single seed I planted in my grow kit sprouted.  I really don’t remember planting 80 seeds, but I guess I did – or else they were magic seeds and they multiplied.  Hey, anything is possible.  🙂

One evening, in Fuyang, Phil and I were invited to attend one of Phil’s student’s birthday party. For the life of me, up until 5 minutes ago, I couldn’t remember the name of this student. I’m sure that you don’t care, but it was about to drive me mad. I hate when I can’t remember stupid stuff. Anyway, the student’s name was Alan, it was his 16th or 17th birthday, I can’t recall, and he wanted his two new foreign friends to celebrate with him. We gladly accepted the invitation, of course. Alan was a good student and actually seemed like he wanted to be our friend, unlike many others who just wanted to tote us around and show us off like we were an exotic breed of dog.

Alan told us to meet him at the school gate after class. He didn’t live too far away, so we all decided just to walk to his parent’s house. When he finally got to the school gate, he looked very troubled and sad. Apparently, he had somehow lost the 200 yuan(RMB) that his parents had given him to use at KTV – Karaoke TV – later that night. He thought someone in his class had taken it, but since he didn’t have a clue who, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do about it. We offered to give him the money, but he politely declined. Some of his fellow classmates, who were also going to be in attendance at his party, were going to help him out. He made us promise not to tell his parents.

We first stopped by his grandmother’s house – at least that is who I think it was. She was old and they seemed related. We sat there for a while basically staring at each other. She didn’t speak any English, and our Chinese was limited – conversation was almost impossible. Alan translated a little for us. She gave us some tea, and when we were done, we walked a few more blocks to his house.

We arrived to find Alan’s father cooking in the kitchen. If I remember correctly, his father was a cook in a local restaurant, but don’t quote me on that. His parents, like his grandmother, spoke no English – besides hello. They greeted us with huge, happy smiles on their faces. Phil and I sat down on the couch and started sucking on some sugar cane that we saw cut up in a bowl on the coffee table. I always expected sugar cane to be more, well, sugary, but this kind wasn’t. I wonder what they call a coffee table in Chinese since many of them don’t drink coffee. Hrm, I never thought of that before now. 🙂

Phil had brought his computer with him so that he could play some American music for everyone. Music always makes a party better, didn’t ya know? Well, the music that Phil played was a bit different than what they were all used to. A lot of it was harder than the typical music played on Chinese radio. If you’ve been to China, you know exactly what I am talking about. If you haven’t, most of the music, at least what I heard, is very soft and slow. I’d say a lot of their songs have a rather strong lulling effect. I tried picking out some softer music for them, and they seemed to like that a bit more.

After Alan’s father finished cooking and had all of the dishes placed on the table, both of Alan’s parents said goodbye and left. I was very confused. I asked Alan why his parents were leaving, and he said something like his parents didn’t want to bother us. Phil and I shrugged our shoulders and started digging into the feast that lay before us. All and all, it was an okay dinner. I wasn’t particularly fond of any one dish. Like at most birthday parties, the one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was the birthday cake.

Birthday cakes in China are a little different from what us westerners are used to. The cake is more spongy, and the icing just tastes different. I don’t know exactly how to explain it. Also, a lot of the cakes come with fruit on it. Is it good? Yeah, it’s alright, but I still prefer the western cake a little more.

Well, soon after we polished off our table of food, someone brought the cake out of the refrigerator. In Fuyang, every time you bought a cake, you got a cool ass Lotus candle. (I’ve got a video of the one that was on my cake. I’ll post that soon.) It starts out closed up like a bud. A wick sticks out of the top. You light the wick and when it burns down, it lights all of the other wicks on fire. There are wicks on each of the petals. When all of the wicks catch a flame, It opens up like a flower blooming and sings Happy Birthday to you. It’s absolutely awesome and looks very pretty with all of the lights off. I haven’t seen anything like that here in the States before. Well, the flower bloomed, we sang, and the when started to cut the cake.

There is a tradition in my family, or rather, a cruel joke. Whenever we eat something that is mushy, like cake, ice cream, or mashed potatoes, we like to get a little bit silly. I’m sure everyone reading has probably seen it done. It goes like this. You hold the mushy substance close to your nose, smell it, make a face like it smells like something died, pick a target, and have someone come smell it for you to make sure that it really smells as bad as you say. When they lean in for the sniff you shove said substance up their nose. Laugh. Laugh. Laugh.

Well, more or less, that is what I told Alan, who had just cut himself a huge piece of cake. For a second he let the words settle in and then without any hesitation, turned and shoved the entire plate into one of his party guest’s face.

I was shocked. Phil was shocked. Everyone, especially the person that just had cake smashed into his face was shocked. And then war broke out.

The boy that had just been creamed, picked up what was remaining of the cake and threw it into Alan’s face. Alan took what was left and threw it at one the girls in attendance. Her silky black hair turned white and she started to scream. She retaliated and threw her piece back – not caring who it hit as long as it hit someone. Cake was flying everywhere. It was madness. All I could do was laugh and watch. I had tears rolling down my face. The apartment had been trashed.

“Oh, his parents are going to kill us, ” was all that I could think.

This must have gone on for several minutes before it finally calmed down. The girls had locked themselves in the bathroom – 1) to protect themselves from further attack and 2) to clean themselves up. They hadn’t looked so hot going in.

I had been smart, and saved my piece of cake. When all was said and done, I ate it.

We made sure to clean up the place a little bit. I really didn’t want his parents coming home to see what the Americans had let unfold in their absence. I’m sure they would never have been able to understand. I made a mental note to never tell a person who didn’t speak English as a first language my family’s little joke ever again. 🙂 I found it funny that he skipped the whole, “Hey, smell my cake,” and just threw it. You really had to be there. It was crazy.

Once we had everything cleaned up, we left the apartment, hopped in a cab, and went to a local KTV to sing for the next several hours. Nothing else crazy happened that evening, besides seeing a woman fall flat on her ass as she walked over a bridge. It was old and slippery – made of marble or something like it. Poor thing broke her tail-bone I think.

And that is the story of the birthday cake. The moral of this story? Be very careful if anyone ever ask you to smell something. 🙂

I knew it would happen one day, but really, I didn’t think these sort of feelings would surface for a good long while. If you ever read My Chinese Headache Part 1 and 2, and many of you must have in order to make them my top two posts of all time, then you know why I didn’t think I would miss China, for a while – anyway.

Let me explain.

I don’t miss the crap I went through to get back home. Not in the least. Yeah, it made me wiser and stronger , and all that jazz, but I never want to have to go through something like that ever again. Ever. Nor do I miss the way I was treated by some of the people in charge of me, mainly Richard Guo, AKA Yuli Guo. That man is the Anti-Christ. My blood boils when I think of him. And I don’t particularly miss my first batch of students – except one or two, and I’ve mention them before. I don’t miss the dirt or the pollution either, but who does? Oh, and the lies. All of the lies and deceit were enough to make me go mad.

What I do miss . . .

I miss the daily excitement. Everyday was a new one in China. I could never expect the same thing to happen twice once I walked out my door. There was always a new obstacle, a new challenge. Yeah, it wasn’t always easy, but they sure made life interesting. And if I ever just wanted to get my heart pumping, all I ever needed to do was hop in a taxi and ride across town. A taxi ride in China was like riding a roller coaster, except without all the steep inclines and loops.

I really miss the street food, even though I’m sure some of it made me ill – very ill. I can forgive the street vendors though because they made some very tasty, cheap snacks. I had some awesome fried banana in Beijing. God, that stuff was tastebudalicious. Yes, I just made a new word. Also, I really came to love corn on a stick. I can’t think of a better way to spend 5 yuan. Well, maybe 5 yuan on lamb sticks. I could spend 5 yuan all day on that. There are many more street snacks, but if I went into detail about all of them – you’d be here all day. 🙂

Cheap DVDs – even if some of them didn’t work quite right – were awesome. I will never forget the hours I spent watching season after season of Smallville, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and House – just to name a few. To watch those back home would have cost me a small fortune, unless of course I pirated them, but I would never do that. 🙂

I miss being the center of attention. Yes, I’m an attention whore – hate me. Even though, at times it could be a bit annoying(all the hellos and what not), it was kinda cool to feel famous. I think I had my picture taken a few million times and I now have a few more crease lines on my cheeks to prove it. Hehe. On one occasion, someone even asked for my autograph. I’ll never understand that one, but hey, it was cool. And I can’t count how many free dinners I had in China. When I was taken to a banquet or even a simple dinner at a restaurant, I felt like a Queen. I have never seen so much food.

I miss how complete strangers would welcome me into their home and offer me tea and sometimes fruit, just because they could. Half of the time we couldn’t understand each other, but we didn’t have to.

So, I imagine one day, Phil and I will have to go back. I don’t know when that will be, though. And hopefully, China won’t change so drastically that we won’t be able to recognize it when do.

Well, at least my handwriting has. Hehe.

If you’ve taken a look at my comments lately, you probably saw that Sibel, whose from Turkey, left a comment saying she received the postcard that I sent out on April 3rd. It only took 7 business days(8 days in actuality) to get there – which in my humble opinion is amazing. Sometimes it takes 7 days, if not more, to send something to my Dad who lives in Roswell, NM – you know, the place where the aliens crashed in 1947. My Dad was their leader! 🙂 That is the only way I can justify my craziness sometimes.

I would have thought that the postcard I sent to Keller in Connecticut would have gotten their first. Perhaps it did, and it is just taking her some time to hop online and register it. But since we are dealing with the United States Postal Service, I wouldn’t be surprised if my postcard was still somehow in transit.

Unfortunately, Postcrossing is down for some strange reason today. I noticed it this morning and thought it may be my internet being screwy, but then Sibel mentioned it too, all the way in Turkey. I guess their servers crashed. Hopefully, they will get it up and running soon. The sooner Sibel is able to register my card, the sooner I’ll get a postcard in return.

The silliest things make me happy. I know, I’m retarded.

The other day, I was reading through the blogs I like to frequent, and I came across something rather interesting. Thanks, Erick.

I’ve always enjoyed the idea of having a pen pal or something like it, but I’ve never really participated in it fully. A few years ago, I stumbled upon a website that allowed you to send emails to people, but it didn’t work very well, and I got sick of the strange men who kept wanting to marry me. 🙂 I think it had to do with who built the site. It wasn’t very user friendly. I think the site is still up and running because every now and again, I get an email saying that someone has sent me an email. I don’t even bother opening them anymore.

So, I was very happy when I stumbled upon Postcrossing. Basically, in a nut shell, it works like this. You sign up, request a user’s address, and then send them a postcard. Once the person you sent it to registers it on the website(to me this is the only real pitfall, even though after a certain amount of time they expire), your name is then able to be randomly selected by other users. You can’t go requesting user’s addresses all day long. Postcrossing only allows you to send 5 post cards at any given time. They say they do this to protect users from the crazy people out there who just want to gain access to your information. I understand their reasoning, but in reality, all anyone needs is a computer or a phone book. Your address isn’t top secret or anything.

I like that you never know who the postcard will be coming from or when, but you are more or less guaranteed a postcard back if you send one. That is what I really like about Postcrossing. And besides the money you have to spend to buy postcards and stamps, it’s free. Free is good.

So far I have sent postcards to an Annette in Finland, a Robert in Germany, a Keller in Connecticut, a Vinni in Brazil and a Sibel in Turkey. I imagine that the one I sent to Keller will get to her soon, considering how close she is to me.

Hopefully, I won’t get any crazy stalkers or anything. At least, if I do, they’ll most likely have to spend a lot of money getting to me.

I’ll post the postcards as I get them.

This should be interesting. If you want to sign up, just go here.

Ok, I know that having things made in China and other countries like it can save a business money, but sometimes someone just needs to draw the line.  Let me explain.

The other day, Phil and I were walking through Kroger – a southern grocery store chain. Lately, we’ve been buying the Simply brand of juices because they’re so good, but they also can cost a bit, too. So, Phil decided to save a few pennies  this time around and bought one of the other brands – I can’t remember what brand it was off the top of my head and I don’t think that it was a Kroger brand. I could be wrong, so don’t quote me on that.

Anyway, he picked it up, stared at it for a second and said, “I don’t think so.”

I rolled my eyes because I thought Phil was saying no to it because it looked like it was old or had been tampered with or something like that. He does this with almost everything he buys – especially frozen or cold food items. I would say that this is because we spent a year in China and we had to do this regularly, but he’s done it for years.  He’s eccentric.

“It looks fine, Phil. Buy it,” I said.

“Nope,” he replied, “it’s from China.”

“What do you mean it’s from China. It’s juice.” I looked closer at the bottle, and sure enough, this is what I read: Concentrate: Product of China. “Well, I’ll be, it is from China. Since when did they start putting that stamp on stuff?”

Even after I argued that it was just the juices of a stupid apple and that he should buy it anyway, Phil still refused. He said something to the affect that we weren’t in China anymore, and that we had a choice on whether we wanted to eat or drink something that was from China.

“But we didn’t die from eating apples in China!” I exclaimed.

“I don’t care,” he replied, and that was the end of that. Back on the shelf it went.

All I have to say, is that it is a sad day when America can’t freaking juice their own apples. I mean, really, how expensive can that be?!

And that is my rant for the day.

Phil called me and told me to check all of the smiley faces I had put on my previous posts. What in the world had he done to them, I wondered. And this is what I found.

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂             🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

🙂 🙂 🙂

🙂

I thought it was pretty cute. Now, he needs to go and make all of the other facial expressions. I really want to see an angry Chinese one. That would probably be amusing.

I didn’t really want to take pictures of all my plants this go around, so I just took a single shot of my growing brood.

Last night, Phil and I decided to transplant our babies. They were getting a bit too big for their little cells – at least most of them were. We decided to leave the green peppers, watermelon, and tomatoes until they are a bit bigger. Maybe in about a week or so, we should be able to transplant the rest and put them out on the patio. They need to be out there now because as you see from the picture above, there just isn’t enough room for all of them in front of the window. The weather needs to get steady though. I don’t want to put them outside, and have them die a few hours later.

Well, I can’t think of a whole lot to say about the plants. They don’t do a whole lot – except cause a huge mess in the kitchen. That is where we transplanted them because it was too cold outside. I wish I had a picture of the dirt all over Phil’s kitchen floor. It was a pretty amusing site. Heh.

I’ll try to start blogging more regularly again. Let me get over my sickness first. My Chinese battalion of martial fighters heard about the unrest in Tibet and left me. Jerks. I was just starting to think I was invincible, too. 🙂

I went over to my Aunt’s house to attend our family Easter dinner. When I got done eating, I went outside with my camera and started taking pictures of the pretty flowers blooming in the back yard. Since I am not entirely sure what these plants were called, I haven’t included their names in this post. I’m not a botanist, so shoot me. And since I can’t think of catchy lines to describe each and every flower I have listed below, I’m just gonna let you look at them and go, “Aww.”