Amazing Race

First story:
Due to a wonderful mother-in-law we've recently acquired the first 4 episodes of this season's Amazing Race. Woohoo!! Well, we watched them all the other day and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. If you are up in this season's AR you know that the first episode took place in Beijing. It was so exciting for us to think about a bunch of American's rushing around Beijing, eating fish eyes, and raiding Tiananmen Square. You also should know about some of the competitors, (or should we say "characters") on this season. There are the token frat boys, the cheerleaders, & the couple "struggling" to stay together, but this season there are a couple in there who we think highly entertaining. There are two black girls who speak ebonically perfect and a married couple who...let's just say they must come from the deep south of Kentucky. Up until today they were our votes for "who should be eliminated next." (I'll explain in a moment)
Second story:
Tonight one of our best chinese friends came over for a visit. He's an english teacher so we usually speak english to him. Tonight though we thought we'd practice some of our chinese on him so he could help us with pronunciation. (This being the same guy whose in-laws can't understand him because they speak a different dialect. Let me also interject...those in-laws only live about 2 hours away.) After we discovered that we didn't stand a chance of understanding him, we transitioned into us helping him with his english pronunciation. After getting bored with going through the entire alphabet, practicing saying America instead of Americ, we got a new idea.
Merge two stories:
Why not introduce him to ebonics, hicks, & airheads all in one simple episode of Amazing Race?!We popped in the newly acquired AR DVD and fast forwarded to the parts featuring the couple from Kentucky saying "I ain't never been to China", the cheerleaders saying "like", the frat boys saying "dude!", and the black girls saying "oh, nuh uh, she not gonna do dat." Before you jump all over us for being stereotypical, examine the beauty of educating some of China's finest on the multi-faceted language that English is. ALL IN ONE EPISODE!! He thought it was hilarious that only the hicks had English subtitles explaining to other English speakers what they were saying. Of course he couldn't follow along quite as quickly as most of the people were talking, and couldn't read the English subtitles as quickly as they were flashing up there for the hicks, but he sure enjoyed watching all of them use two hands (one hand per chopstick) to eat the fish eyes. And even more so when all of them butchered the pronunciation of Xie Xie (thank you.) So thanks mother-in-law for not only being a our provider in time of AR need, but for providing some educational resources as well.
This is him trying to make sense of it all:

a BIG thanks to my mom & dad for providing the BIG HUNKS laying on the coffee table.

Sports Day

This last friday our university took a break from classes and had a big sports festival! We were obviously thrilled to have a break from classes but had no idea what a sports festival might look like. So, thursday afternoon we headed out to the university's track field to take a gander. We entered through the main gate (still quite a ways from the field) but already could hear the madness going on at the track field. As we walked closer and closer to the "stadium" the ruckus grew louder and louder. We heard a bunch of shouting in unison to large base drums with elaborately dressed drum beaters. The track field is an 8 lane track with a large stadium seating apparatus on one side and an iron fence on the other. We approached from the iron fence side thinking we'd avoid most of the crowd. That was definitely not the case however. It was crowded all around. And this is what we saw:

The view of the track is still a little blocked. But what was going on was basically like a school wide track meet with students & teachers competing. While we were there we saw about 7 heats of the 400m. It might have been a little more entertaining had we gone and sat in the student's section:

I know, you're wishing you had a matching outfit too. The picture may be too small, but if you look closely you can see the big red drums on the bottom row. We've uploaded a lot more pictures of Sports Day at our picture website over there ------>

This is about three o' clock in the afternoon on sports day...and that's the sun (a common day to day sight in our city). Say it with me now, "mmmm pollution filled lungs."

This next one is also a common site. Sadly, it's customary here for the grandparents to play a bigger parental part in children's lives than the actual parents. The grandmother's do most of the raising of the kids. They came out to watch some of the events at sports day as well.

We just thought this one looked kinda cool. They're not quite as excited about sports day as everyone else.
And this is part of the crowd headed to the stadium to watch.

Nephew Galore

Before moving to our new country, we had zero nephews.

Since moving to our new country, we've acquired three nephews! Count them with us folks 1,2,3. In just two months! Granted, two of them are what we'd like to call "nephews by association," none the less, we're still Uncle Brandon & Aunt April all the same!
A little more than one month ago our "official" nephew, Judah, was born to my brother & sister in law. We're finally uploading a picture of him! Woohoo! (along with some of my brother's boots, timberlands of course...long story)

What a cutie! Wish we could be there to see you in three dimensions buddy!

Then there came our firstly acquired "nephew by association" Ezra. Again, another cutie. But something that Ezra gets quite a lot living over here that I'm sure Judah doesn't have to deal with is the comment, "He's got a double eyelid!" Meaning: well, we're still not all that sure, but we think it means that he's got a fold in his eyelid rather than the chinese look. (Which makes sense because he's not chinese.) Anyhow...here's Ezra!

And just when you think it can't get any better, along comes Elijah! Yep, another nephew by association! He arrived just in time for us to celebrate his birthday. And we went all out, chinese cake, awesome firecracker-type exploding candles, real cake with sprinkle icing (thanks erin!) and everything. Here's Eli:

And guess what came to China with Eli? His little sister. (oh well and his parents) So we now have our first "neice by association!" Welcome to China Hannah!

At this point of course we'd put a picture of Hannah. But since our internet has spontaneously started rejecting any effort to upload pictures, we'll wait til next time. Just picture the cutest little blonde cabbage patch doll ever made, and you've got her. See? no picture needed!

Two Months!

Today is our two month anniversary of being in China. We can't believe how quickly the time has passed! Over the course of the last two months we've kept a record of quotes that we've entitled, "Things we never thought we'd say." As a tribute to the two month achievement, we thought we'd post the best of "Things we never thought we'd say" and their accompanying story.

1. "I've already got a husband, but thanks anyways."
I said this one after a nice lady in a furniture store offered to help me find a suitable husband in our city. Actually, since my chinese isn't quite up to par it came out like this, (pointing at Brandon) "My husband. Thanks." (smile and quickly walk away)

2. "Those are the people waiting in line for eggs."
Eggs here are sold a little differently than back home. Lots of people stand in a really long line in order to get up to the front and tell the person how many eggs they want. At that point the cashier person turns to a big crate full of eggs, grabs however many, places them in a plastic sack, ties it up, and slaps a big sticker price on it after weighing it. I guess it's cheaper to buy them that way rather than in the already packaged plastic cartons. After being informed of this strange phenomenon, we saw a really long line at Fu Mart and that's when I said to Brandon this quote.

3. "Man it's only 7:30. I'm ready to go to bed."
Brandon said this one. Not much explanation needed if you've ever experienced jet lag...

4. "Man those Germans sure can make Jam."
We actually can't take credit for this one. This one was said by our supervisor's wife, but we thought it was blog worthy. Trust us, out of all the jam here, the German's is the best!

5. "That tv almost got ran over by a bus."
It really did. It was a close call too. And not only did the tv almost get ran over, Brandon & our supervisor were right there along with it. It was one of those slow motion moments where your adrenaline starts pumping and everything seems to be all blurred. They were safe though, and so was the tv. After the harrowing experience, Brandon calmly stated this quote.

So it's not an exhaustive list, but we thought you'd enjoy hearing a few of the random quotes we've uttered during the last two months. Though we tell a lot of strange stories about how backwards this place seems sometimes, and though most of the time we feel incredibly out of place...there's no where else in the world we can imagine being right now. Most of the time we thoroughly enjoy living here. We're getting to know our neighbors more and more and all the people we pass outside our apt. seem more used to us now.
This picture is of some ladies that are always outside near our apartment. They live near us we think. They especially like Brandon! :) Brandon asked to take their picture. You can see the one in the purple giggling.

If The Shoe Fits

Our baomu (house helper) came today. She comes twice a week (6 hours total) to help us do those pesky routine chores like vacuum, mop, dust, do the dishes, you get the drift. She's such a cool girl, an adult by the way for reasons we'll explain later in the story, and has great chinese so that makes her easy to practice with. Today she even made us some tasty banana bread! Mmmm yum. Anyways, not the point of the story. So she showed up today with a sack in hand from the local Silver Plaza (although a neat store, not quite as fantastic as the name might lead you to believe) She bought herself a pair of house shoes to wear while she's in our home so she doesn't track in all the stuff off the streets and carry it all over our floors. "How nice!", you say. I know! Then she takes them out of the bag and Brandon and I just about fell to the floor in laughter. Let me show you why:
(her's are in the middle, our's are on each side)

They may look like a 9 year old's pair of shoes but I assure you they fit perfectly on the foot of a 28 year old chinese lady. Need I elaborate more as to why we cannot find shoes that fit our feet in this country?

Call Us Crazy...

We've found a new appreciation for commercials. I know, sounds ridiculous, but when the only commercials you ever hear are cheesy "real-wood floors" commercials or the daily countdown to the Olympics, you'd appreciate a good commercial every now and then too. Our friend's blessed father mailed him a recording of a Monday Night Football Redskins vs. Vikings game. Though the game was a few weeks old, and though we knew the outcome, the MNF renowned song was music to our ears. Every other American in the world would have fast forwarded through those commercials, but man was it nice to see a huge red Chevy truck barrelling through mud again. Sad to admit it, but it really made it feel like Sunday with football all afternoon.