Part 3 of our 4-part series takes you on a bus ride to the gym I go to 2-3 days/week. This past year, I have been teaching the employees English on Friday afternoons…in return, I was a given a free membership. It has been a true blessing and good for the soul!
Check it out…
Stay tuned for our final post of the “day in the life” series, where Kristen and I will take you to our favorite local restaurant!
We continue our “A day in the life” series with a trip to the local outdoor fruit/veggie/meat/spices/bakery market. We do miss HEB, but this is a pretty great substitute 🙂
Up next in the series… Danny takes a bus to the gym!
This is a short blog post that features the second half of our walk to school. Check it out…
Stay tuned for a video of Kristen’s trip through our neighborhood outdoor market! Where, on a recent trip, she snapped a photo of this guys awesome jacket…
We apologize for taking a year and a half to post about what our daily routine/life looks like. For the next several posts, we will let you in on what living in China is like for us.
First of all, we live on the east side of town and almost everything we need/do is within walking distance for us – or at least a short bus ride away. Because we are students and attend class 5 days a week, this post is dedicated to the walk we take to class. It takes about 25 minutes, so much of the video below is sped up, but hopefully you can get a good visual of one of our most important daily routines. (*our camera memory ran out 1/2 way through, so we’ll have to post a second video next week)
This day also happened to be the heaviest snow we’ve had since moving here!
Here are a few more still photos from around town that day:
View from our kitchen window
The snowmen weren’t made by us, but we thought they were pretty clever, and characteristic of where we live. On the left is a Tibetan man in traditional clothing, and on the right is a Chinese Muslim woman in the traditional headscarf 🙂
Stay tuned for Part 2 of our “walk to school” video…
Our month long excursion is finally over. Over the last month we travelled to 4 countries, had 11 flights (no delays and no lost luggage…that’s got to be a record), fought 2 bouts of stomach issues, hung out with dear friends, and had a little R&R.
So much has happened, I don’t even know where to begin. So we will let pictures tell the story…
First, a pre-trip haircut. My first haircut since moving to China.
Saw this at the airport on our way out… Gotta love Chinglish!!!
Our first stop was Thailand. We spent a few days in Bangkok catching up with old friends… Which basically just meant hanging out at the pool with them and their 2 boys!!! As much as our pasty skin would allow anyway. As well as filling up on foods that we can’t find in China… like Lay’s potato chips, and BBQ ribs.
Also, Kristen thought this was a great ad campaign.
The graffiti art made us miss Austin…
Next stop was Phuket, one of the more popular beach spots in Thailand, where we met some other great friends for a week. The snorkeling was awesome here — spotted over 25 kinds of fish, and even an octopus! right off the beach. But time with friends we hadn’t seen in a year and a half was the highlight.
View from our room!
Hiked a nearby mountain/hill one day
During the hike, we found this monkey. Kristen knelt down to take a picture, when he swung around and acted like they were besties who hadn’t seen each other in years. “Haaaayy!”
At a local cafe. Old people can’t take selfies…
Also found Thai Elvis…or Thai Rob Schneider. Honestly, not sure.
After Thailand, we flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to visit my Chinese tutor. He is studying abroad there and we were able to celebrate Chinese New Year together. He took us around the city to see the sights, then cooked hot pot at his dorm on campus.
Eating hot pot with his roommates as we ring in the year of the Monkey!
Next stop…Singapore, where we stayed with some college friends who recently moved to the city. We hadn’t seen them in 4 years!
Day 1 was a trip to the botanic gardens – a massive and beautiful public park near their house.
I’m pretty sure the monitor lizard wanted to eat me.
Unfortunately, this was the only day we spent sight-seeing in Singapore. The next 3 days, I was laid up in bed with fever and other stomach issues that do not need to be discussed. Singapore was a great place to get sick though – with international health clinics and my buddy’s guest bedroom, I was able to recover quite nicely. Hopefully we’ll be back again to redeem our time there.
Last stop…Cambodia!
Phnom Penh sunset the night we arrived.
Must-see places in Phnom Penh are the S21 museum and the killing fields. What humans are able to do to other humans is unbelievable. In a 4 year period, the Khmer Rouge killed 3 million out of the 8 million people living in Cambodia.
Originally a school, the Khmer Rouge overthrew the city and turned this into a torture facility.
Here were the “rules” at S21.
They didn’t shoot their victims because of the cost of ammo. Instead the 3 million were killed by being beaten, stabbed, or strangled.
Hard to believe this was just 35 years ago, but a quick glance at the news today and we can see that these tragedies are still occurring.
After our time in Phnom Penh, we took a 7 hour bus ride to Siem Reap – site of the famous temples. Most of the temples were built in the early 12th century.
Angkor Wat
entrance into one of the temples
Our favorite temple was Ta Prom, where many of the buildings are overtaken by trees. This is also the site of where the movie “Tomb Raider” was filmed.
But Kristen was more captivated by the monkeys than the temples.
After watching sunrise at the temples, we stopped at this nice restaurant for breakfast. I ordered pancakes.
Our driver and his tuk tuk. Most people spend at least a full day touring the temples. Kristen and I knocked it out in 3 hours. Our driver was impressed – I think it was because he had the rest of the day off.
One of the coolest things we did was take a bicycle tour through the Cambodian countryside. We were able to meet with locals and get a good idea of what daily life is like for them.
She put me to work and allowed me to water her plants… she told me afterward that I over-watered them.
Here we met a mother and daughter who weave baskets for a living. Working 5am-5pm, they can each make about $1/day.
I think this was the biggest pig I had ever seen. The picture doesn’t do it justice. In addition to raising pigs, this family also makes rice wine. All rice wine makers raise pigs, since they eat the fermented rice waste and the alcohol helps them gain weight.
We had a great time connecting with friends and seeing SE Asia, but by the end, we were ready to be back in China. Chinese isn’t gonna learn itself, so this will be us… skipping to class on Monday morning:
(this is a guy Kristen videoed on her way to class one day last semester)
A couple of months ago, Kristen and I spent the day with one of our friends in his hometown. The village is located on the Tibetan plateau and was about a 4 hour drive from our city. Some of the drive was spent dodging sheep…
Upon arrival, we were greeted with a ton of food, and they dressed us up in their traditional Tibetan wardrobe.
Kristen is only 5’5″ but she looks like YaoMing next to these ladies 😉
After taking pictures and eating way to much food, we spent the rest of the afternoon touring the village. I was able to have a small conversation with a group of men hanging out in the sun. They mostly only speak the local dialect, but smiles go a long way.
Kristen loved this picture and entered it into our school’s photo competition. It won 3rd place! (3rd place = a stainless steel tea kettle)
We also spent some time practicing our slingshot skills. Almost all of the villagers are shepherds and have amazing accuracy. We set up bottles for target practice, and our friend showed us how it was done. I really wish we would have thought about getting a video. It helped us get a better picture of the David and Goliath story.
Note that when I tried…I almost hit the brick building you can see in the back!
The highlight of our stay was hanging out with the preschool kids. We spent a couple of hours with them, playing and listening to them practice their English.
They prepared a couple of songs for us – getting the chance to speak English to English speakers is rare, to say the least.
Last year at this time we struggled to say the word “Christmas” in Chinese… this year, we got to tell friends what it is, and why we celebrate it! We tried to document all the different happenings:
No Christmas is complete w/o a school musical!
Kristen and I were invited to tell the Christmas story to a group of Chinese kids. We had a great time singing Christmas carols, telling them Who Christmas is about, and also talking about Santa and his reindeer!
Each year our university holds a Christmas/New Years party for all of the foreign students. This year, they asked Kristen and me to play Santa and Mrs. Claus!!! Our bag of presents to hand out was full of bars of soap, fingernail brushes, and other hygiene products 🙂 One person was offended.
Here is Kristen, I mean Mrs. Claus. We do not have a picture of Santa… he remains as elusive as ever!!!
We invited Chinese friends over to our house to make Christmas cookies…
This was the best looking Christmas cookie…a minion! Of course Kristen made it 🙂
A friend of ours has a family tradition to make an epic gingerbread scene each year. She invited us to participate… this year’s theme: Modern Nativity.
Kristen dressed in her gingerbread making outfit. Yikes.
Close up of the finished product. The girls built the thing and I did all of the white icing decoration! In the modern nativity shepherds are snowmen, camels are reindeer, and wisemen are ninjas. Also, there were butterflies on the roof.
Christmas morning we woke up early and hiked a nearby mountain with friends to watch the sunrise (our new yearly tradition that we started last year). We spent some time in praise for the True Light of the World!
It was cold (around 5 degrees F) so we built a little fire. We used my school test scores as kindle…
Sun is almost here!
We were cold, but it was well worth it!!!
Hiking back down the mountain to go have breakfast and open gifts!
In all, we feel super blessed this year and are looking forward to seeing what 2016 holds!
We recently attended a birthday celebration for one of our friends here in town and the theme was a late 60s/70s costume party. Although Kristen and I were born in ’84, we did our best to look the part!
My handlebar mustache is not nearly as good as my buddy’s! Also, for the first time in my life I thought it would be nice to have the Burt Reynolds chest hair!!!
I happened to time this picture perfectly, as Kristen looks like Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer 😉
Stayin’ alive!
Not sure whether it is awesome that we did so well in looking the part, or sad that we didn’t have to try very hard. The only thing that was bought was the pack of cigarettes (which btw…only cost $0.70- no wonder there are so many smokers in China).
As many of you know, Kristen has had a running injury (around her achilles) for 4 years now. Back in Texas we tried everything Western medicine/therapy had to offer… physical therapy, electro stimulation therapy, massages, cupping, strengthening exercises, rest, ice, medications, ect. You name it, we tried it – and spent our hard earned dollar paying for it. Nothing worked!!! So when Kristen met a girl who was studying to be an acupuncturist, we jumped at the chance to try it.
Unfortunately, acupuncture wasn’t helping either so the girl invited Kristen to visit her clinic where she had an internship. The clinic is run by a renowned Chinese doctor. Kristen thought he was going to work his magic using acupuncture, however, he had a different idea.
The following pictures are pretty gross, so for those who have weak stomachs, you may want to exit this blog right now.
Yes, that is Kristen’s leg and clotted blood. This is taking cupping to a whole new level. Basically, you stick these cups on certain spots of the body and pump that green thing you see at the top of the cup (his left hand). The skin is then sucked up into the cup. You then leave the cup on for 30 minutes.
After the 30 minutes are up, the doctor took a needle and began to poke holes into her leg. We imagined this is what getting a tattoo might feel like. You then put the cup back on and repeat the entire procedure described in the last paragraph. After another 30 minutes is over, you have a bunch of nasty clotted blood, which is what you see in the above picture, as well as the next photo.
eeeeewwww!
After it was all over, her legs looked like this…
The doctor wanted Kristen to come two more times, but we decided the running injury actually wasn’t that bad 😉
This blog is dedicated to 2 of the things we love most…”Chinglish” and catching people napping on the job!
The balance here is amazing!
I think it is supposed to read “Marlboro”.
with visions of meat chunks dancing in his head
It’s a track nap suit! They’re serious about their naps here.
Chinglish at its best! This was during a lecture at school 🙂
That’s nice…
This guy has got it made in the shade!
mmm…that’s deep!
“The more we learn about the phoenix, the more perpoulerou.” Well said! I may be crazy, but is it even possible to learn more about a mythical bird?
The following pictures are added to this blog because, well, we think they’re funny!
I think this barista started their day a little too early…
3 fragrance and 8 flavor frozen pigeon…Yes please!
And this guy… nap hard, play hard!
nomadic texan 