YEAH!!!!!

I'm home!! I can also do my blog by myself. Since I was in China, the country blocks certain and a lot of websites, so I had to send an email to my mom in order to post an entry. Now, I can do it via the actual website.

The last few days have been going pretty well I haven't been too tired but my body isn't really on Minnesota time yet because this morning I woke up at 3:30 am, which in China is only about 4 in the afternoon. Its getting a little frustrating but it's so hard not being able to take a nap! For this post I'm going to try to add some photos, but I don't know how that will turn out seeing how I haven't put pictures on here before.

I have lots of things to say but I have to go for right know.

Carly

Leaving Liping

I just wanted to write a quick entry before I leave for Beijing for a day and a half. We're going to Beijing to see the Great Wall and The Temple of Heaven. We get to stay at the Yosemite Club Hotel, which is really nice.

We leave for Minnesota on Thursday morning and get to Minnesota Thursday morning!! I don't like that at all!!:~)

Well I need to spend the last half hour with the kids.
Hope to see everyone soon.

Time is winding down!

Its hard to say but I only have 3 more days with Jake and Monica. Were leaving on Tuesday to go to Beijing for 2 days. We get to stay at a really nice hotel and we get a personal driver that will wait for us when we go to the Great Wall and places like that.

The last few days have been very repetitive. Creed and I have been going to the number one high school just down the road for his Chinese lessons. Creed plays games and talks in Chinese for an hour and then he gets to go to Andrew's high school art class and then gets to paint for another hour.

The other day on our way back from the high school Creed and I got some fried rice. You're probably wondering how I, who doesn't speak any Chinese, ordered the food. A couple days before Jake wrote a card for me to order something out on the street and this was my first time using it. When we went up to the stand I think that they were pretty nervous about a foreigner coming up to them. Once I showed them my card everything was fine. We got the rice and they made it through a terrifying experience.

Well I need to start getting ready to go out to eat. I might be posting my next blog entry in America!! Even though I am sad to leave I am excited to be in my own bed!!

Carly

My new friends

Felisha and I


Lilly, Piao and I

Hayley and I

Haley, Lilly and I

Lilly and Felisha

Photos from the past few days

Under the Natural Bridge. So pretty!










A hole in the wall under the Natural Bridge













The walls of the Dragon Caves
















The city of Liping from the mountain top











Catching water drops from under the Natural Bridge

Dragon Caves, Crazy Bridges and Noodles for Breakfast

Wow, yesterday was the busiest day so far. My new friend Lilly came and picked me up at 8 o'clock and we went to a noodle shop for breakfast, which was kind of weird for me to eat something that I would eat for lunch or dinner. After we ate, we went to Lilly's friends house to pick up Haley and her sister. From there we went to the bus station and got on a bus that we took for about 45 minutes to our first stop.

Our first stop was about 15 minutes from the main road that we got dropped off on, so we walked that little bit to the Red Army Bridge. The bridge is 70 meters long and 3 meters (in feet... 230' x 10') wide and is SO scary!! The planks of wood aren't even nailed to the stays and the planks of wood bend and move a lot.

Haley's sister has a friend that lives in the village, and her brother has a wooden boat that we got to ride in just down the river and back. After the boat ride, Haley walked us around the village just to look around. After we left the village we got a motorcycle ride to the Natural Bridge, which was only about 20 minutes away by motorcycle or car.

The walk to the natural bridge was very pretty. We walked through a bamboo forest and just a "regular tree"forest. (All of this, by the way, is up and down stone stairs.) The walk took about 30 minutes because we had to go UP stairs the whole way. Once we got to the bridge we walked down a whole bunch of stairs to the river that runs under the bridge. We played there for 25 minutes of so. When we left we took these really old looking stairs. It turned out that it led to a small river and there was a path to some rice paddies across the river. Haley and her sister ended up carrying Lilly and me across the river!!! It was just one of those things that was just really, really funny.

Once we got back on to the path we walked for about 10 minutes to the road where we waited for a bus to come and pick us up to take us to the Dragon Caves. The caves were really cool. The only thing that was really both strange and funny was that it was lighted up by neon lights. I can't really explain what they looked like and my camera couldn't take good pictures because the lights were so weird.

From the caves we took a small van that belonged to Haley's brother-in-law, which was nice because then we didn't have to ride a public bus. The funny things was, was that we were waiting for a bus to take us back when Haley's brother-in-law just drove by so she called him and he turned around and came back and picked us up. We got to Haley's house and Lilly and I took a taxi back to Jake and Monica's. Once we got back Lilly and I collasped onto the couch and took a rest before she had to leave.

To summarize our transportation today, I rode: a bus, a boat, a motorcycle, a girl, a van and a taxi!

Today I babysat the kids because Monica woke up and couldn't really move her neck or shoulder, but know tonight she already feels a lot better.

Tired but excited for what is to come.:)
Photos coming soon!
Carly

Comments and contact

Hello again,

My mom changed my blog settings so that anyone can now leave a comment on a post (click 'comment' below the post). Mom will send your comments on to me, but you can also just email me at ceocon16@gmail.com.

I can't access this blog from here, but I CAN do email and I'd love to hear from you.

More about my latest adventure soon...

Hey everyone!!

Sorry its been a couple of days since my last post. We have been a little busy because school has started again for Jake so Monica and the kids are home.

About 2 days ago we were invited to dinner, but not just any kind of dinner-- it was like the Chinese Thanksgiving. Its called the Mid-Autumn Festival and they celebrate the good harvest that they had during the year. So we ate good food that night and had a fun time trying to communicate with people who don't speak any English.:)

Today(which is the 6th of October), I went out with a couple of Jake and Monica's friends who are around my age. There names are Lilly and Felisha. First we went to Nonchen Mountain, which is one of the very pretty views in Liping. You can also see all of Liping from the very top. Something that is funny to me is that at the top is the city's TV center building.

After we came down from the mountain we went to the city's "Old Town". "Old Town" is basically a street that is a mile long that has shops packed together in old houses. After we walked down the street we went to a dumpling restaurant, which was sooooo good. It was a little wierd because EVERYBODY was looking and staring at me.

After lunch, we went to go buy a cell phone for Felisha's father. So, the day was very fun and exciting and tomorrow I will go with Lilly to the "Dragon Caves" and then to her friend's house in another village about 30 to 45 minutes away.

I'll post some more pictures soon,
Hope you enjoy!!
Carly

This is Felisha and I near a rice paddy in her village.





Walking along the dikes in the ride paddys. See the stacks of dried stalks in the background

This is harvested rice drying in the sun.

After harvesting, the stalks are bound and stood up to dry.

Be sure to notice how PRETTY it is in the country!

The next picture is a house in Lotuan Village. Pretty cool place!!

Finally some photos

My mom finally got to download, resize and upload photos of the food we ate at lunch at Felisha's. It was SO good.

Tell your local chinese takeout place I said 'You're Welcome!!'.

I'll post more later,

Carly

Zucchini

Cooked rice

Spicy beans and peppers

Carrots

Sour beans and peppers and Cauliflower

A visit to a Dong Village

Hello!!

Sorry it's been a while but we haven't been doing very much so I didn't think it made sense to say "Well I can't tell you very much cause we haven't been doing anything." It just sounds bad!!

Anyways, yesterday was awesome. The name of the people group who live in this area of China is "Dong". They say it as "gum". In May of 2008's National Geographic, Amy Tan (a famous author) wrote a long article about DiMin Village, which is very near to Liping. It is much like a Dong village we visited yesterday to see one of Monica's friends. The village is called Lutuan (it sounds like Lootwan), and is just off the road so we didn't have to do alot of walking. We spent the whole day there eating and hiking which was amazing!!

I have finally have pictures to share with you so you can see what we ate and where we were hiking. I tried to send them to my mom, but she can't get big photo files, so I'll resize them and resend them. She'll post them as soon as she can.

At around 1 o'clock we had our 1st meal. We had cooked carrots with garlic, green beans with hot peppers, cooked califlower, zuchinni with a little bit of hot peppers, sour green beens with hot peppers and pork, tofu or dofu soup, bean sprout soup and of course, lots of rice. After we ate, Monica, Felisha, Chloe, Creed and myself went on a walk to see if anybody was cutting rice but nobody was out so we just kept on going. We ended up walking to the Flower Bridge, which is about 1 and a half miles from Felisha's house. When we were walking to the Bridge we were walking on dikes in between the rice paddies for at least half a mile of more. Once we got to the Bridge we played in the water for a while and there were these really pretty dragonflies that I tried to take pictures of and I got a picture but it isn't very good but I'll put it in anyways.

So after we took our walk Felisha wanted to feed us again!!! Remember it's only about 4 o'clock and we had already eaten at 1. This 2nd lunch was mostly a repeat of the first, but we also had cooked onions which were very good. At around 5:15 we left her house and took a small van back to Liping. The road is this windy mountain road and we were going as fast as we possibly could go saftly. The ride is probably an hour long ride, we got back to Liping in 35 minutes!!! It was a little scary. And I hope the pictures are sutible enough to look at:)

I'll write more again soon,

Carly

Uno, Chinese High School and Fried Rice

Hey everyone!
In Liping its Tuesday the 29th and its about 1:15 PM. Today already we went to the high school for Creed's chinese lesson(Creed is my cousin, who is 5) with a man named Andrew. He teachs art at the school, so for an hour Creed practices Chinese and then for the second hour he goes to one of Andrew art classes and gets to paint. But anyway, all the Chinese kids who are about my age up to around a senior in high school were just staring at us. Some kids in different classes were even looking through the windows. After the lesson we got 3 orders of fried rice for $1.85!! The rice was awesome and totally worth the money;)

Lets see... Yesterday we also met with Creed's tutor, except that we went to Andrew's practice for the Chinese 60th celebration. We were there for about 2 hours and during the whole thing, little girls around the ages of 8-12 were swarmed around Jake, Creed, and I staring and trying to touch us. They were also trying to take pictures of us with their cell phones. For Creed's lesson we were playing Uno to learn colors and numbers and the little girls were helping me learn colors also.

Just down the road is a Chinese circus that just got put up the other day, and everyday they put all the animals on their truck and go around banging on drums to get attention. I took pictures and video that I'll probably have in my next entry.

We are staying in an apartment here, in another wing of the building where Jake and Monica live. To get FROM our apartment TO Jake's, we have to walk down 103 steps (no elevators here!!) to ground level, then UP another 50 to Jake's apartment. That's why I'm not going to run over and get the card reader right now. ;-)

Well I have to go play with Creed!!
See you later!
Carly

I'm HERE!!

Hey everyone!!

I finally made it! After 31 hours of up and traveling, I'm here in Liping, China which is about 5 hours southwest of Beijing. The population is around 70,000 people packed in to about the size of Proctor, MN.

The flight from Portland, Oregon was about 10 and a half hours long over the Pacific Ocean. On that flight we got two airplane food meals, which of course were not very good. For our entertainment we had only ourselves. They couldn't get the video/audio system working so it was pretty boring, and you can only sleep so long on and airplane comfortably. Plus its pretty hard to sleep when in the row next to you there is a screaming baby and a little kid who was around the age of 5 jumping off the walls, but after a while you tune it out :)

So, from Portland we flew to Tokyo, Japan and had a two hour layover. From Tokyo we flew four hours to Beijing where we stayed the night in a hotel called the Sino- Swiss which is about 10 minutes away from the airport. We had a good four hours of sleep and had to wake up at five in the morning in order to catch a flight to Guiyang that left at around eight a.m.

When we landed we were in an airport where almost nobody spoke English, so one of Jake's co-workers, who is German, met us at the airport and helped us get checked in and made sure that we had something to eat. From Guiyang we flew to Liping which took about 45 minutes and there Jake and Creed met us there.

Jake is my mom's brother. He lives in Liping with his wife, Monica and their 2 kids, Creed (5) and Chloe (2). Jake teaches teachers how to teach English, and Monica works on some community health projects. They have lived in China for 5 years--4 of that in Huaxi (near Guiyang) and the last year here in Liping.

From the airport in Liping we took a taxi, which was really scary because there were no seatbelts and we were going about 55 on a really curvy, narrow road. The taxi ride was half an hour to the apartment in the city. The apartment is 5 flights up so its quite a walk.

The other day Jake and I went to the store/market and on the way we met one of his new students who doesn't know English, but in chinese she told Jake that I was as white as tofu!!! In China being really white is like being really tan in America. She also really liked holding onto my hand she didn't let go until we were walking away. Tomorrow, which is Monday, I'm going to go with Creed to his Chinese lesson for 2 hours so that will be very interesting.

I hope to be able to update the blog a little sooner that this one but were doing so much here email isn't really a big priority.
I'll write as soon as I can.
Carly

The First Ever!!

Hello Everyone!


This is just a practice blog. I am still in the states and it's about 6 days until I fly out of Minneapolis to China. I hope that I'll be able to stay in contact with as many of you as i can except for the fact I won't ever be using my own computer. That's a disappointment but I didn't have enough time to earn that much money!!

Your contact will be fantastic and I hope to be able to continue this blog as much as I possibly can.

Carly