Li Mei Hua at 11:22 PM

So, when I first came to China, my diet was pretty pathetic. I was too new to this place to know what to buy. For the first few days it was instant noodles and crackers. the crackers stuck, cause I didn't know what else to do for munchies. Other than that we ate outside. Within a few weeks we found a place that makes hand pulled noodles and fried dumplings. We had this amazing food place literally 20 steps from the bottom of our stairs, but about 2 weeks into the semester they moved and someone else came in who made yuck food. So I was a little discouraged, until I found Li Mei Hua.

Li Mei Hua makes the best fried rice I have ever heard of. First off, we have to realize, that I can't read Chinese and I did not know what to eat in this country when I first got here. So any type of food I found that was safe, tasted good, and was easy to find again, was an instant success. Right outside the back gate of our school is this alley that has all these ghetto food places. It's actually really cool, partially because they're super poor and they're really nice. Anyways, I tried to eat at a lot of these places and it was good, but it was so different that I felt like lunch every day was a gamble. Until I found Li Mei Hua. When most people make fried rice in Hunan they do two things. Usually it's spicy, which is REALLY good and usually they put in these pickled beans, which I think taste like unhappiness. So one day, (there's about 6 or 7 food places) I went to this random place in the alley with this random lady and I asked for fried rice. She cooked it and gave it to me, and I partook.

Spicy - Check
No ugly pickled beans - Check
Good price - Check (4 yuan, which translates to about 60 cents)
Vegetables - Check (This is important cause we didn't have a working kitchen and you can't eat veggies raw here or you get parasites so they have to be cooked in your food)

Delicious - Double Check

It was love. Not with Li Mei Hua, she's married and I can't understand her Chinese anyways, well I can now, but I couldn't then. It was the fried rice! I think almost every day for the next 2-3 months I had fried rice for lunch (Don't worry mom, fried rice here is way healthier than in America). Every time she saw me she would start laughing and shout out "Ji dan chou fan" (Fried Rice), because she knew that's what I was going to order. Anyways, it's weird how you can be friends with people even though you can't speak the same language. I actually think she was usually pretty happy to see me despite the huge communication barriers. After a month or two, once I figured out how to ask questions in Chinese, she would teach me the names of all the foods she cooked with. Which was super cool, because, most of the words I know for food came from her. Anyways, the first couple months of this semester I didn't go out there as much cause I started eating fruit in the mornings and oatmeal for lunch. Plus lunchtime was a good time to study, so if I ate alone i usually got more done. Anyways, I went out there last week for the first time in a little while and I think it totally made her day. It made mine too. It's weird how we're friends due to all the times I ate there. Especially because my Chinese wasn't good enough that I could understand her and have conversations until recently. (Which by the way, having a conversation in Chinese doesn't mean I'm good at it. Just want to point that out.)

Anyways, she's my hero. I'm not really attracted to Chinese girls in general, but I always thought if she was about 30 years younger, not married, and a member, those things with her food would be enough for me to consider a marriage proposal.

So I've attached some pictures of her here and where she cooks and lives. It's basically a two room place. One room opens to the street where people can sit and she cooks. and the other is her bedroom which also has a table for eating. And that's it. That's her house. For a woman with no money, she seems really happy. Basically, I think she's the bomb and she's one of the things I'll miss the most about China.

The first picture is her bedroom pretty small. The second and third pictures are her cooking in her front room for students at lunch. The last picture is the view of the Alley just outside her place.

It kind of makes me grateful for how much stuff we have in America. Like places to live that aren't totally open to the elements. Air conditioning and heat. A clean work place. A computer. A car. The list goes on....

Things I miss about America at 9:05 AM

These are in no particular order. So don't be offended family, you would be at the top of the list.

1. People who come to my door and knock less than thirty times
2. Eating Raw Vegetables
3. Eating Raw Fruit
4. Being able to see the sun more than once every 2-3 weeks due to pollution or rain
5. People who don't stare at me
6. Being able to walk up to someone and know they'll understand me (English)
7. My family
8. Girls I'm attracted to that speak English
9. Driving
10. Having a dog that I know no one will eat
11. Food products that are filled with things that match the description on the container
12. Peanut Butter
13. Steak
14. Food in the grocery store that expired less then 3-6 months ago
15. My sister's wedding (I'm still really sorry about that Ami...)
16. Smash Brothers
17. Going to church in a Church Building
18. Having a priesthood leader that lived less than 1500 miles away
19. Signs on the street that I can read
20. Public trash cans people actually use
21. Bath tubs (oh how I miss a good bath)
22. De-oderant
23. Guaranteed seats when I travel (although 2-12 hour standing tickets are an adventure...)
24. Set Prices
25. Living in or next to the same time zone as most of my friends and family
26. Juice that's actually 100%
27. Meeting someone and not having every person ask me
  A. What country am I from?
  B. How much do I make?
  C. Do I have a Chinese girl friend?
  D. Why not?
28. Kitchens that work (China has kitchens that work, mine just doesn't happen to be one of them)
29. Toilets outside of my house
30. Toilets that I can put the toilet paper in (disgusting I know, but Chinese toilets clog if you put the toilet paper inside)
31. Hospitals that don't scare me (I'm sure there are some of these out of Hunan, but I picked a poorer province to live in)
32. Swimming
33. Home teachers that live less than 2 hours away
34. Knowing I won't get in trouble with the government if I talk about the gospel
35. Watching movies without Chinese subtitles
36. Not having to say Ting Bu Dong every 5 minutes (Chinese for "I don't understand," my chinese is way better and this is still one of my most common phrases)
37. Not sounding like an idiot to native English speakers due to speaking at half or a quarter speed too often and not being able to switch out
38. People who don't try to take my picture while I'm not looking
39. My old room mates
40. Watching General Conference live
41. Cities where people don't burn their trash every day
42. Not being expected to always have my own toilet paper when I use the bathroom any where other then my house
43. People who don't talk about me less than 4 feet away under the assumption i don't know what they're saying
44. People who don't talk about me less than 4 feet away
45. People who don't say I'm fat
46. Dryers
47. English I can understand (on T-shirts, notebooks, etc)
48. Waffles and Chocolate pancakes
49. Group video games
50. Ferris Wheels that let you go more than one time before they charge you again

Now, I want you to know a list of things I'll miss in China is coming out soon. Just cause I miss a lot of things about America doesn't mean I haven't been extremely happy here. More to come!!!!

(If you vote on your favorite ones I'll try to do a blog post on it, it may not be long, but it'll come)

Hong Kong 2: New Teachers at 9:11 AM

Around January, my good friend Jacob Harlan asked me a favor. He's the guy that runs China Horizons. China Horizons is the program that got me here. Anyways, Jacob asked me to help him help the new teachers sight see in Hong Kong and make their way to their respective schools. So we hung out in Hong Kong for a few days. We went to the temple a lot which was awesome, because that's the first time I had gone to the temple since I had come to China. (LDS Temple, not bhuddist, although I saw a lot of those, and they were really cool)

We also saw a lot of other cool stuff. We went to this place called Ngong Ping village on Lantau Island (other side of the island from the Campbells)  where they have this huge bhudda statue and a cool bhuddist temple. Overall, really awesome place. I went twice. Once before the teachers came and once with the new teachers. The first time was awesome, becuase I had all the time in the world. That day I hiked to the peak of the island by myself in this killer awesome fog and I think I can understand why historically amazing religious things happen on the tops of mountains. It was an amazing experience. About half a mile from the top there was a white out. It was like I was hiking through a really windy cloud. My hair was wet even though it was warm outside. (I think that's what happens when you walk through clouds.) The second time the whole place was under fog (all my pictures are from the second time), and it was just as much as an adventure even though I had already seen it. On top of the awesome Bhuddist temple and the Cool Giant Bhudda Statue (Yes, that's a proper noun, maybe not accurate, but deal with it), they had this really awesome place called The Path of Wisdom. It's a figure eight path you walk, probably only about 80 meters total and as you walk the path they have these giant trees cut in half along the path with writing on them. The writing is the Heart Sutra, which apparently is used by Taoists, Bhuddists, and Confucianists alike. I may not believe what it says, but it's still pretty cool. And it was fun to walk along the path and not read it (I can't read Chinese yet....). I did read it after on a plaque for Americans who can't read Chinese.

Other than that I went to church in a real church building for the first time in a few months. Man is that something I've taken for granted in my life. I'll write a post about how we meet for church in China soon too...

The new teachers were not what I thought they would be. I don't even know what I expected, it's just hard to imagine up a new personality. When I finally met them it was fun to watch all the new social dynamics come together and especially fun to watch people bond because they had no one else. I love all the new teachers. They're fun, they adventurous (they came to China, that would be enough for me to know they were adventurous), and they know how to have a good time.

We also went ice skating, but somehow I didn't document that. Sorry. It was also awesome.

After Hong Kong we went to Shenzhen for a couple days to train the new teachers. We really didn't do anything, we just sat through good trainings on how to teach, but I do have some pictures of us on the town at night playing pool. Sorry you only get to see one.

And Erica, thanks for the note. I will keep writing!

Hong Kong 1 more pics at 7:41 AM

Enjoy!

Hong Kong Part 1: The Campbells at 7:39 AM

You guys, as many of you know I'm WAY BEHIND in my blog. This entry is about February, and it's uhhh, May. Yep, It's May. So this is my time to recommit. I'm going to try to bust out a lot of entries in the next month. We'll see how it goes. I'm hoping that if I don't people will start emailing me about being lazy. Also, I love your comments. I can't really respond because of the filtering system here, but I will in a couple months when I return to the states.

So! After Xia'men the time came for my final destination in my wondrous winter holiday backpacking extravaganza: Hong Kong. This is another one of those places that shows up in the movies sometimes and I just can't even comprehend how different it must be. Well, it was was pretty different, but ridiculously awesome. When I got to Hong Kong I headed for Lantau island where my good friend Sarah Campbell lives. I arrived at her apartment at 9pm and had one of those late night conversations with her and her husband that just make you glad you're alive. Little did I know I would have those multiple times a day for the next week. It's amazing how you run into people you know you were supposed to be friends with. Well the week was pretty fun. Sarah and her husband Eric can't have kids, so they adopted. As of now they have two awesome kids who speak fluent Cantonese and English. They were kind enough to let me sleep on their floor for a week before I helped the new teachers in my program find their way around Hong Kong. Sara showed me around for a week and helped me see some of the sights. She took me to the beach with her kids and overall it was awesome.

My students had told me that Hong Kong was too crowded. I expected to go there and find a huge city with out space. Which was sort of true. I found a big city, with a lot people, but I also found some of the coolest abandoned trails and beaches. It wasn't what I expected at all. It was clean, beautiful, huge, but it still had everything that I would want in a place to live. I probably won't live there, but I have tossed around the idea....

The pictures are of Sarah, her husband Eric, and their kids Cooper and Anderson. Totally awesome family.