Dian Fei

Yesterday from noon until approximately 5 p.m. (we're not quite sure because we were checking out new Christmas decor at Fu Mart) our apartment had no electricity. In several countries through out the world that's really common...and it might have seemed usual to us if just previous to the outage a lady hadn't shown up at our door. We received a knock at our door just after noon by a lady who apparently knew nothing else to say except, "Dian Fei!" repeatedly. We didn't have a clue what she was talking about until she stepped over to our breaker box, unlocked it, and shut off all our electricity. At this point we naturally assumed she shut off our electricity because we missed paying our bill this month. Before you go off on us and call us irresponsible let me explain how the "billing" system works over here (to the best of my knowledge.) We pay our phone bill between the 5th and the 12th of every month, the electricity bill between the 10th and 20th, gas bill is paid whenever the lady shows up at our door...which in the past is around 9 p.m. at night on a Sunday, heating is paid 4 months at a time and should have been turned on yesterday yet still we're without heat, and then there's water...well I really have no idea how we pay water. You can't pay them early, likewise you can't pay them late. (or I guess you can if they show up at your door and shut everything off) Well apparently we missed paying our electricity bill, maybe you can see why we might get confused though, and they showed up and shut it off. Instead of letting us pay her she made Brandon run down to the office and pay up at which point they told him that they'd promptly turn it back on within the next three days. Luckily we have a friend that knows all the bill paying words who informed them that we'd prefer it if they could turn it on a little sooner. So around 5 p.m. yesterday we returned to a home with electricity.

Coastal City

This past weekend we took a short vacation to a nearby coastal city to relax a little from language learning and to eat some American food. It was a much needed vacation & and a long overdue visit to Starbucks. Despite how beautiful the city is, our favorite part was the eating! We visited Pizza Hut, Starbucks, & Haagan Dazs all in one day! It was truly a spectacular day! This city makes our city seem so small & country-ish. There are a lot more foreigners there because it is one of the biggest port cities in China. Plus it is growing and expanding so much because it is playing a big part of the 2008 Olympics. The sailing competitions will be held in this city & there are signs & posters everywhere in the city preparing people for the upcoming event. Our hotel was very close to the beach front boardwalk so we had easy access to some very pretty sights. We took several pictures while we were there so get ready for another picture + caption blog.

Here's Brandon enjoying his Haagan Dazs ice cream!

The Pizza Hut we went to was the nicest Pizza Hut we've ever been in. They carried all sorts of pizza including some not so tasty sounding ones with corn on top. Luckily they had the "American Special" with cheese & pepperoni.

And now just to go along with all the hype all over the city, we're posting what apparently is a new symbol of the Olympics. He's everywhere...billboards, taxis, grocery stores, commercials, and he's even been inserted into the sidewalks lining the launch point for the sailing competition.

This is the pier for the launch point. It might be hard to see but there are flags lining the pier the extend even further to the left of numerous countries...unfortunately we couldn't go all the way out there because there is so much under construction getting ready for it all!

Old City Streets

On Saturday we visited another district of our city which has some incredible sights. There is a section of the city with some really old "really china" looking streets. It was so pretty and it felt like we really stepped back in time. Time to overload you with pictures again.

This is a lady in the silk market:

The entrance to the Old Streets:

And then we were serenaded...

And then Brandon got to talk with them for awhile...

And then I asked this guy if I could take his picture, he asked "how many?" So I told him just the one...and he gave a little smile:

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.