Turtles!

Besides the loads of goldfish (we've managed to kill 4), we now have 2 pet turtles. But warning: do not leave turtles unattended -- they may leap off the kitchen counter & crawl under the kitchen sink in less than 45 minutes...woops.

Slumdog Millionaire

Beautiful Cinematography, great story - go see it!


Here's the trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIzbwV7on6Q

Beijing Karaoke

This is Quan & I doing karaoke in Beijing. (stay tuned for painful videoclip...)

Cary & the busload

Katie = Crippled

Confession: Katie's busted hand was very annoying at times.
Here she is(Brrap Crippoh) after we found her on a sidewalk, dressed very inappropriately for freezing Beijing winter. A group effort to put on her jeans, shoes, and jackets was a daily occasion.
So was doing her hair.
And washing it.

Beijing: 798 District

Since 798 = Beijing's contemporary art district, you shouldn't be surprised to find pepto-bismol-pink sculptures of butt-naked ladies laughing euphorically while suggestively straddling their bicycles. (ooh baby).
This is me attempting to look cool at Nike's warehouse in 798 (Lebron exhibit).

Exploring an empty warehouse. (Reminds me of when I was a kid & used to roam around the woods in our backyard while trying to find snails, pulling ivy off of trees, & doing all the other nature-loving things that suburban freak loner children do. Except in the city, it's all about exploring empty, gutted buildings. hmm, guess I haven't changed much, except now I have a penchant for cement, graffiti, other man-made clutter.)
This is me supporting gun violence & gang warfare...daddy, aren't you proud?!?...(and this is what inspired the founding of Brrap Noodoh. yes it's true, my friends and i actually gave our posse a name, thus successfully proving that a degree from Williams means nothing in terms of one's own maturity level...brrap brrap.)

Beijing Hospitals

This is Katie 3 days after "the Incident". The short-story: Katie sliced a nerve in her hand, had to get surgery, & spent the night in the hospital. More details of the story are below...
On Friday, Jan. 2, we all decided to go out dancing. For some reason, Katie thought it'd be smart to start a mosh-pit during a Nirvana song. After wild-banshee-body-slamming anyone/everyone on the dance floor, she bit it. hard. A big hunk of glass (we think) broke her fall. All I remember seeing was blood spraying out of Katie's hand. Cary, Katie, & I proceeded to throw ourselves into a cab. (meanwhile, Quan remains completely oblivious to our disappearance for the next 12 hours...). I'm sure the taxi-cab driver wanted to smack Cary, as she decided to repeat the word for "Hospital" over & over again "Yiyuen! Yiyuen! YIYUENYIYUENYIYUEN...". She also attempted to give Katie mouth-to-mouth resucitation, even though Katie was shrieking & rolling around in her own blood (generally loud noises & body movement indicates that a person is breathing & does not need Cary's well-intentioned-but-unnecessarily-forceful-blows to the lungs...).

Not that I was any more help -- I ended up crying like a prissy in the hospital lobby because the surgeons wouldnt operate on Katie's hand until we paid $$$, but my Visa wouldnt work, the taxicab driver ran off with my ATM, we had no working cell phone, and the hospitals wouldnt let us use a phone or internet. That was funnnnnnn. The good thing about having Katie's blood smeared all over us was that when we'd wave our bloody hands around, the nurses seemed to be more willing to help us -- even though they had no idea what we were saying. (Eventually another Williams classmate who was in Beijing came & bailed us out.)

Katie now has her stiches out, cast off, but there's a bad-ass scar & some big chunks of scar tissue. (She's also lost some feeling in her hand...but they say nerves grow back a millimeter a day...)

Oh, and hospitals in Beijing are pretty interesting -- aparently people are allowed to chain-smoke in the recovery rooms (which consist of 40 people in the same room, all hooked up to IV's. Then again, they're all used to that Beijing air. So yeahhh, light that ciggie up!)

Forbidden City: Chinese love white people

This is me & Cary at the Forbidden City. (I dont know who the other people in the background are. Eventually a whole crowd of people joined in because everyone wanted to be in a picture w/ a white person aka Cary.)

Chinglish

...so drop the cell-phone in the toilet again & you'll get beaten w/ the ugly stick. owwuuughhhhhhh.

Meet My Friends

This is my China posse & some of my favorite people in the world. Impressed? Probably not. It's ok, I have a thing for posting highly unflattering images of my friends on Facebook. Above are Cary, Katie, & Quan -- mid dance-party on the Great Wall of China. (I played field hockey with Cary, ice hockey with Quan, and I lived w/ both at college. Katie...uhh we just picked her up off a street corner, & she kept following us around i dont know why she must not have any friends. Yeah, awkward...Fine, I'm lying -- Katie's actually here in China on a Fulbright scholarship -- I'm crashing at her place in Xi'an at the moment.)

All 3 of them are ridiculously funny & psychotic & it's a shame if you dont know them. Below is a more appropriate image of the gang.

The Gist

New Year's Eve: Flew into Beijing
Jan. 1-14: BEIJING (with friends from Williams -- Cary/Quan/Katie)
Jan. 8-9: HARBIN (C/Q; K stays behind due to injury - more on that later)
Jan. 15-20: XI'AN (Q/K; C leaves for work in Thailand)
Jan. 20-23: SHANGHAI (Q; K stays in X -- move into apartment)
Jan. 24-29: HONG KONG (Quan; K stays in X -- Fulbright restrictions)
Jan. 30--: XI'AN (Katie's apartment)


Since my life-time goal is to see the world, and the economy has gone to crap & no one's hiring anyway, I figured it'd be a good time for me to travel. (Well, other than the going-broke bit; but hey, this beats crying myself to sleep at home b/c I'm pathetically unemployed...ok i'm exaggerating -- i'm not actually much of a crier, so maybe i'd just break dishes. Oh, wait, i dont do that either. But you get the point. )

Conveniently, a bunch of friends from Williams were all going to be in Asia at the same time, so we decided to meet up in China & travel around for a bit.

Herro!

Decided to start keeping notes on my life here in China (instead of flooding your inboxes/being a bad person & forgetting to email you.)

Warning: Also included are any random thoughts that might fly through my head...Which may or may not include swear words and/or reveal my adolescent-state-of-mind. So apologies in advance to anyone who might be offended, shocked, enraged, etc. (super sorry Dad!).