Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Trip to China

These are all of my pictures that are still on my phone from my trip into Mainland China.

Yangshuo


This is Gemma and I. We came with another friend, Hannah, and ran into some of Hannah's friends, so we followed them to where they were staying. This is shortly after arriving. We road on a sleeper bus, which was a lot more comfortable than sitting on the train that we took back.

This is the show in Yangshuo. That area is part of a river, and the red stuff is some sort of plastic that stretches across the area. The lighted figures men pulling themselves across the water, and they make it look like they are working in a field, moving along a red hill working the ground with their hands. It was brilliant.

Embarking on a trip down the river on a bamboo raft! We went another time, but the next one was a swimming adventure.

This is a street in a group of houses along the river that we stopped at while on our ride down the river.

Same group of houses, different spot.

The Wet Market:
This is the equivalent to a village grocery store in China. This is a really common sight. If you look closely, you can see that they cook the chicken with the heads on.

This is the same market. Some of those bins are snails (on the left side, middle). The bin in the lower left-hand side has live frogs in blue mesh bags.

Bunnies in the middle, pigeons on top, ducks bottom right, and I think those are chickens to the left.

There were a lot of tables with raw meat on them. Pretty gross. Not really sanitary. It was interesting to see all of the pieces of meat out together. It was a bit creepy when I saw literally half of a pig's face just sitting on a table though.

Vegetables! It's hard to eat fresh vegetables, mostly because it's rare for them to be served in China. Likely because, well, these are being sold across from the meat (although they are split into a meat section and a produce section).

We went to the meat market with our cooking class. Don't worry, they had already gotten the meat from somewhere (who knows where though). The food was delicious, and I learned a bit about cooking Chinese food, which hopefully I'll get to apply someday. Note to self: I need a Chinese wok.

Guilin: Our last stop
We went to the Dragon's Back rice patties in Guilin. It was amazing. We hiked up the mountain, and there was a village (which included some tourist hotels), plus a ton of people selling stuff. I bought a new wallet. The view was amazing. Great experience.



That's all folks!

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Running Shoe

I'm starting to run more, and could use some new shoes. Since I just recently broke a personal record (which you can read about on my private blog), following some running blogs came to mind. So... here is a shameless share that will earn me one extra entry:

http://www.runningandrambling.com/2012/03/new-balance-minimus-zero-road-review.html

The review is for a New Balance running shoe. It looks pretty good, and if I win, I'll definitely share my thoughts on all of my social media pages.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Three Vowel Words

Probably one of the more random things that makes me happy (and there are quite a few of those) is finding words that have three consecutive vowels in them. From now on, I am going to post these three vowel words as I think of them. Hopefully there will not be any repeats.

Let's start:

Beautiful (and beauty for that matter)
Ostentatious
Tenacious

Okay, apparently that's all I can think of right now. Don't worry: more will come.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Movie Cousins

Has anyone else noticed that sometimes when movies come out, their close cousins decide to join them around the same time. Notable examples:

  • A Bug's Life and Antz
  • The Wild and Madagascar
Before I leave for China I'm working at the local movie theater for a few weeks, and it looks like there are a number of spy movies coming out in the near future (most of which I believe are rated R, so I won't be seeing them, but still). As my brother-in-law and I were noticing tonight, it pays off to have original ideas. These types of movies have to be inspired by the same sources because that type of thing doesn't just happen. Just an observation to Jibber about.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

E-comfort

Has anyone else heard the term e-comfort before? I recently read it somewhere, and I think it's almost sad. It refers to the idea that people need a certain level of technology in their lives to be comfortable. Who would have thought. I guess the real challenge is when it shows up in the dictionary.

I would like to also point out my hypocrisy: this post is my first ever from my iPhone. Oh the irony. BlogBooster-The most productive way for mobile blogging. BlogBooster is a multi-service blog editor for iPhone, Android, WebOs and your desktop

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

You Might Ask "Why?"

This blog is just a bunch of my own random thoughts. Now you know.