The Faux-hawk and the Golden Tree (it's the next installment in the Harry Potter series...just you wait)

This new post is completely for the pictures. Here we have the faux-hawk, mentioned in the last post...it might not last long, so save this picture for posterity. And we also have myself (the tall white guy) standing under the wishing tree outside of the famous Fuzi Miao (or confucian temple) of Nanjing with Zhang Ping (whom I met maybe 50 yards from this spot on Mid-Autumn festival) and her friend Han Rong (with the shorter hair...she's actually one-fourth minority race (how on earth do we say that in English?)...she's tuzu (or of the dirt tribe...yep. no lie.). Good thing I cut my hair, no? It was getting unwieldy. We wandered around the mall, played some super-fun (and yet embarrassing ) video games...like dance-dance revolution, but with fifty people watching...and you have to use your ARMS too! Then we called up Greg and went to dinner. After we'd finished eating, I called a bunch of people from our study abroad group and we went to a KTV and sang for a while. Both girls sang surprisingly well, but there was one song that Han Rong just went to town on! It was way good. All the guys sang (twice!) a song by Guang Liang called "fairytale" or Tong Hua. WAY FUN. Ask me for the song sometime. UPDATE! I PUT THE SONG IN MY MUSIC PLAYER AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.  LISTEN TO IT! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!

The Huang Shan post you've all been waiting for (or maybe just my mom)

Huang Shan (黄山) is probably the most beautiful place I have ever been. Period. It just barely edges out Maui. Mind you, Maui is probably still my favorite place... Huang Shan is just better-looking. Imagine granite boulders shooting up from the tops of jungle peaks like roused giants from the blankets of sleep. There isn't an actual "huang shan peak". The whole area is called Huang Shan. To pick a peak and call it Huang Shan would be like picking a single hair on my head and saying that THAT is his hair. ____On a completely relevant note, I finally gave in and got my hair cut today. I'll describe it and you can name the price you think appropriate. I got a 15 minute (kid you not) head massage/shampoo (it was by a dude...Greg's hair person was this super-hot asian babe, but I'll take what I can get), the world's most meticulous stylist (he never took off more than an eighth of an inch at a time, I swear on everything precious to me, and had his eyes approximately 2 inches from my head for the duration of the 25+ minute cut...for reference, it usually takes about 10 minutes for a professional to cut my hair), ANOTHER washing of the hair...shorter this time, but still satisfying, and a final touch-up by the stylist (who, by the way, was wearing the coolest pants ever...like faded army fatigues but with zippers and buckles all over the place...very urban. I'm gonna buy some first chance I get) in which he first blowdries my hair in the direction he wants it to go, then puts a fat glob of texture cream in his hand and sculpts my very first faux-hawk (I chuckled, but let him keep going) and finishes off with hairspray. To be frank and honest, I look like a sexy beast.______Well, now that I've gone off on that tangent for long enough, back to Huang Shan! PS-if it bugs anyone that I can't put returns in these posts, you're not alone in the universe. Anyway, our trip to Huang Shan---> We met Thursday afternoon at the building in which we usually hold class (mom's gonna go get on google earth the first chance she gets, so it's the Zeng Xian Zi building just to the East of Shanghai Road at the western edge of Nanjing University campus) at 1 o'aclock and it took about six hours to get to Huang Shan City. The city's just one continuous street of hotels, so I'll skip it. It was pretty boring. The next morning (Friday), we hopped on a bus and drove to the base of the mountain. Then the torture began: approximately one point four billion steps up the mountain. There were no dirt paths, no switchbacks, and no hikers with the good sense to carry water (except for foreigners). I saw young ladies with heels walking up the stairs like they were on their lunch break. They've got the WHOLE MOUNTAIN covered with hand-made stone steps. So while every single one of the native chinese was carrying nothing but the clothes on their back (and even that was optional!), here we were, a bunch of americans walking up the stairs all decked out in hiking gear and toting our camelbaks (people thought these were the coolest things they'd ever seen!). Anyway...I can't do justice to how beautiful this place was, so take a look at the pictures. We hiked up to the top of one of the peaks and around to two other peaks and finally took the cable car back down. I'd recommend the cable car up and down to anyone going. There's nothing to see on the way up, really...just lots of trees. I wasn't able to upload as many pictures as I had wanted on this website, so you'll have to check out my new albums on my facebook profile. If I'm not your friend yet on facebook, you'll have to request it. Maybe I'll consent. Maybe I won't. Kind of exciting, isn't it?

黄山 (Huang Shan)

Just a teaser for more to come! Get ready for the coolest place in the world!

Regarding KTVs

k. my mom just emailed me and asked approximately 1,057 quesions about KTVs. for your convenience, i've included the wikipedia article on KTV. remember- wikipedia is your friend. just click on the title above- "Regarding KTVs" and it'll send you to wikipedia. i'll answer her questions as they appeared for everyone's benefit. (ps, mom, you can just write questions like that in the comments section under each entry in my blog) What does KTV stand for? Korean television? NO. BUT GOOD GUESS. KARAOKE TELEVISION Are there individual party rooms and your group had one, with a Chinese group next door? YES Is it like racquetball courts where there's a huge window to see into the room? THE RACQUETBALL COURTS AT BYU HAVE THE WORLD'S SMALLEST WINDOW AND YOU HAVE TO BEND IN HALF TO SEE INTO THE ROOMS. IF THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE REFERRING TO, THEN YES. Is this television the one that has the lyrics on it? YES Why then would they dance with one hand on it? BECAUSE THEY WERE DRUNK AND CHINESE. Can you see anyone on the screen? ONLY KOREAN SINGERS, BACKUP DANCERS, AND ANIMATED DANCING GIRLS (TRENT'S FAVORITE) Did you go with just your BYU group, or are there others from other universities that you're hanging out with? BEN, A FRIEND OF GREG'S FROM ENGLAND, CAME WITH US TOO.

Y'all just WISH you had a KTV next door

i don't know whose idea it was, but a bunch of us ended up at a KTV last friday night... a KOREAN-style KTV, at that. i'm blaming that on dave. anyway- the place is halfway between my house and the school...east side of 上海 road, right next to the "cat hole cafe" (remind me. there's a story there too). look for the super trashy blinking neon lights and korean characters. we showed up and rocked out. i've really never willfully sung karaoke (i think that goes for most of the group that went with us), but i remember EVERYONE in taiwan telling me that i had to go sing karaoke with them on my day off. classic moments from karaoke- 1. trent. i can't even begin to describe how hilarious it was to watch trent jump into karaoke head first. the rest of us rolled with laughter as he became the designated back-up dancer for pretty much everybody's singing. i think his claim to fame might always be repeating dance moves with those three peppy anime chicks. 2. brinley. the new spice girl. we're sending her to american idol with her rendition of "wannabe". 3. "hey jude". ben picked the song for himself and greg. before twenty seconds were up, the whole group of us were standing up, arms on shoulders, swaying with the beat, and singing at the top of our lungs. The lyrics on the screen were classic, too. half the song- "da da da da da da...!" 4. and you can't beat number 4. the drunk chinese dudes next door. ben, brinley, greg, and (i think) dave wandered out of the room after about an hour to breathe for a second (we had no less than fifteen sweaty bodies locked in there with no airconditioning)...while they're out in the hallway, i guess the chinese group next door to us started waving through the window for them to come in. they wandered in and most of us trickled in over the next five minutes. i don't think i can do this justice, but imagine: maybe twenty staggeringly drunk chinese dancing with ten tall white kids (and trent...we love you, man). have you ever seen anybody dance with a freaking television? these kids would walk up, put a hand right on the middle of the screen, bend over, and bust a move with the tv. somehow, brinley and juliana ended up dancing on the table on either side of the television, and i'm pretty sure i saw the three amigos (chris, dave, and marc) on the only other table in the room. meanwhile, there's this plump, spectacled chinese dude going to town on the light switches over in the corner. i don't think i've had that much fun in years. three guesses what we're doing next weekend.

Backmail from Last Sunday

Sunday, September 7, 2008 It’s Sunday. Weird to think I’ve been in China for nearly a week now. Our apartment doesn’t have internet yet, so I still haven’t emailed my family since those first two days… mom and dad are probably dying a thousand deaths. I think we’ve FINALLY stopped buying stuff for the apartment. It feels like we’re spending a lot of money, but then when you realize I got all my bedding for under twenty bucks, I guess it’s a bit less disconcerting. Everything’s super cheap. I bought a pretty tasty rou bao 肉包 for 1.2 yuan (or about 15 cents). In Taiwan, those things cost nearly twice as much! There are seven of us in the apartment. Here’s the breakdown: Greg- he’s the program facilitator, which, in his words, means that he “makes it so we don’t have to talk to Prof. Lefgren directly.” We all laughed. He served his mission in England, speaking Chinese when possible. James- our resident married man. His wife’s back in the states, and won’t be coming to meet up with him here till December. I don’t envy him, but he says they both felt right about it, and I guess that’s what counts. James hails from New Mexico and served his mission in Indiana. Keith- he and I were in Prof. Honey’s Chinese philosophy class winter semester of this year. We liked the class, but it was pretty special. Prof. Honey spent most of the last half of the semester talking about some meditating survivalist’s book and how his mental marker for meditation was a huge ice cube on his butt. Good ole 韩老师。 Keith served in Gaoxiong, Taiwan (高雄，台湾)。 Trent- also in Prof. Honey’s class…though he spent most of the time surfing the net. Good subject matter, he said, but too many tangents in class. Trent’s something like fourth generation Japanese-American…went to Hong Kong on his mission and spoke that bastardized version of the people’s language they call Cantonese. Dave- for some reason, Dave decided he wanted to learn Chinese after serving his mission in Spain. I should ask about that sometime. Poor guy’s currently on the floor in the spare bedroom (because the landlord hasn’t brought up that extra bed yet…he said he’d ordered a new one that was soft so that he didn’t have to sleep in hard beds like the rest of us…except for Greg, of course, who’s sleeping on the couch). Matt- he’s Canadian. Served in Ogden, Utah, and met a bunch of Chinese people that he taught in Logan. He says he found out that BYU had Chinese classes and that once he started he couldn’t stop. And yours truly- I’m sharing a room with James. Short story: Last night, I was coming back to the apartment at about eleven and I said hi to the zhuguan 主管 at the bottom of our building. He was chillin on a chair, leaning up against a car, just watching people come and go. We started talking and he pulled up a chair and asked if I were in a hurry. Nope! I’m wandering the streets looking for random Chinese people to talk to! So we talked for a bit. He introduced himself as Mr. Hua 华, and was pretty dang impressed that I knew it was pronounced with a fourth tone instead of a second tone when it’s a last name. Thank you Elder Manjarrez (his name was hua too). He taught me a few phrases as we were chatting, and I wandered in a half hour later feeling pretty happy about life. AAAAAND…. We’re off to church.