dell griffith, overpriced water, & barbie and ken

WHEW! i'm finally home and never thought i'd see the day. it feels like i've been gone for so long, but things seem exactly the same. although joseph and mom have braces, emma has headgear, and jacob has a more social life than me....i can't have that. my vacation was OVER THE TOP ADVENTUROUS! mud caving, rock climbing, hiking into obscure villages, bike riding. there may have been times where 20 year old judgement lacked, but i don't regret a single moment of it! we also did china really cheap...we stayed in hostels that barely made a dent in our dwindling accounts and i've learned that bartering won't get you very far without a little flirtation.

speaking of hostels, i had a little roommate situation that could be construed as funny.....although at the time, was anything but.

in yangshuo, we stayed in the "showbiz inn" which sleeps six people per room. i guess for every three roommates, your bound to get one weird roommate. enter creepy australian fellow. atleast sixty years old. eager to socialize with the rest of the twenty something year olds who populate yangshuo. he kept asking me where i was going and who i was going with and what there was to do around town. yes, i was a little creeped out by him and when you're traveling with one other girl, you can't be too safe. i was a bit elusive and when i returned later that day, found him playing pool by himself on the roof. a little bit later, he was trying to talk to some women in the lobby. later, reading a book by himself in the bed. who does he remind me of? i kept thinking about it all day long and it didn't occur to me until a few days later that he is dell griffith from trains, planes, and automobiles! you know, traveling alone, he just wants to find a friend, but he's just kind of a burden and he knows it. no one really wanted to do anything with him. i felt kind of bad for him, but that didn't stop me from waiting in the lobby for the rest of my roommates to turn in for the night. you know the age-old saying, "we girls gotta stick together when there are weird, too-much-leg-baring, teva-and-socks-wearing old men in the bed right next to mine." one night, kindra was asleep, the other roommates were partying the night away, and i was CLEARLY, VISIBLY awake and reading in my bed. maybe he forgot there was a bathroom in the room, maybe he was too lazy to make the effort to change there, but all of a sudden, his pants were off, showing me more old man, white australian bum than i'd bargained for.

alright. any chance of me inviting him on a bike ride went down the drain. i suddenly longed to be in a flaming car with original dell than in this too small room with naked phony dell.

another character worth mentioning is my "sleeping tiger" friend. we hiked this hill called "moon hill", which is less of a hike and more of a climb up 800 steep steps. at the bottom of our hike was this old woman, for sure somewhere in her eighties and probably half my height and weight. she asked if we would buy her water and upon hearing "no, i have some, thanks", she brought out a winnie the pooh fan, pointed to the top, said "go!", and followed us the whole way up. every time we stopped to catch our breath (which was pretty often), she would pounce on us with the fan and fan us till we were ready to go. she would also point to my mosquito bites and say "MOS-EE-QUITO! no good...no good!" i think she must have been bitten by a radioactive spider to give her superhuman endurance because she could have run up and down those stupid steps five times before i could make it up once. crazy lady. well, of course, at the top, i had to buy a bunch of her overpriced water. oh yeah, the reason i call her my "sleeping tiger" friend is that she kept pointing to this mountain saying "sleeping tiger" while pretending she was sleeping and then popping her eyes open and saying "RAWR!" while turning her fingers into claws. i'll miss you, crazy superhuman grandma.

i have to say that i could not have been more welcomed back into the states by anything more than TOY STORY 3. so good! maybe my favorite of the trilogy. there was not a minute where i was not laughing hysterically. best characters....barbie and ken. by far. pixar has outdone themselves again. geniuses. i want to send those people a bouquet of roses.

i bought the whole series of "lost" for under $30 in china and my siblings and i are on a "lost" binge, so i gotta go. what's that? hermit on a friday night? can't talk. have to go help desmond save the world. DESMOND!! AHH!!

the creature

it's really late at night here and i can't fall asleep; i've always been an insomniac- i blame my night thoughts. i always seem to solve the mysteries of the universe at night when i'm laying in my bed and should be sleeping. and there's a lot to think about right now. everyone that i've spent the last 3 months with is going home tomorrow and i'm just remembering all the crazy stuff we did together. but i'm not going to blog about my sad feelings right now. i'm going to blog about the creature.

what is the creature, you may ask? remember when i tried to dye my bangs purple and they turned out bright orange? the given name of the bright orange streak (courtesy of kindra) is the creature. when i went to a more credible salon and got it fixed, i didn't realize that it could only be fixed as bangs in china can be fixed, and lo and behold, the creature came back the very next day (no, wait....it was the cat that came back the very next day.) well, the creature came back a few weeks later, albeit not as bright and creature-ish.

but you'd have to know my hair to know why the creature is so ridiculous. think of the movie heidi...that is my natural hair without the frizz. so one day right after the c-word incident, i was straightening my hair, and right in the middle of it, the power went out. and the water was turned off that whole week, too. so i couldn't shower. i couldn't finish my hair. i had a newly nested creature in my hair. i had to walk around with half of my hair pin straight and the other half curling and frizzing in every direction it was able. my new motto is: a tamed creature is better than a frizzy creature.

one day the creature actually looked kind of cool. it was just last week when we were invited to a chinese wedding. i thought i would shake things up a bit and braid my bangs back. i walked outside and kindra exlaimed "rachael...today is a good creature day!"

you could say i'm somewhat of a fashion plate in china. it seems to be that the trend for girls here is to creature their whole head. their whole head! can you imagine?! all you have to do is take a dark brown/black head of hair and apply permanent, cheap bleach in it. i have so many issues concerning this. isn't one creature bad enough? should that be legal? how can you tame so many of them?

so even though i am killing the creature in infamy right when i get back to the land of sensible hair cuts, colors, and salons, i'm a little bit sad because the end of the creature signifies the end of china. we've been through so much together. i guess all creatures must come to an end. goodbye, creature. goodbye, china.

p.s. are you surprised that i just wrote that much about a streak of color in my hair? me too.

i've loved these days

what a dramatic day.

i've been pushing back thoughts of saying goodbye to my kids to the back of my mind. it was assumed that we would teach our kids on friday then pack up and leave this weekend. we were planning a big party, and i was going to make cards for all 30 of my kids. on wednesday, i got a really bad cold and slept for less than an hour that night. you know when you're sick and you spend most of the night in semi-consciousness, having weird hallucinations? i really thought all my kids were coming into my room in the middle of the night to get my autograph and i was so confused as to why they needed my autograph NOW?! well i stumbled into the cafeteria thursday morning, half awake when two of the teachers brought me to my senses. "have you heard? there's no school tomorrow! our last day of teaching is TODAY!"
dang it, i wasn't ready for this. mentally, i didn't think i was prepared to say goodbye. i was supposed to have one more day with my kids! so the rest of the day was spent running around, getting pizza, drinks, candy and toothbrushes for our kids (ironic, but the kids love them) and trying to prepare games. plus, i had an english enrichment class to teach, which is just something on the side we do a few times a week. i only teach these kids once a week for 40 minutes and i hobbled out of the room with 30 sobbing 7 year olds attached to my legs.

i barely got everything done that i needed to (including throwing together somewhat lame cards for my kids) in time for class. i can't even express to you how much these kids mean to me. i found out from one of the chinese teachers that most of the kids are here as a result of divorce and neither of the parents wanting to take them. most kids see their parents once a year. so i can't help but feel like we've kind of been their mother figures (my kids sometimes refer to me as "mommy".) the whole day was great and the kids were probably a little confused when we brought them pizza and aubrey started tearing up. at the end, we got them all together and tried to gesture that we were going home and that we would miss them very much.

"OKAY! GOO-BYE!" and they went right back to playing with the toys we'd given them. a few seconds later, robert- suave, cool little robert, who never acted like he cared- looked at us with a painful, confused expression and started wimpering. then he started wailing. then one by one, all 30 kids got it and started crying. and then we started crying. and then everyone was just crying and falling apart. i'll never forget robert climbing in my lap, kissing my cheek and saying between compulsive sobs "i...i...love you, miss meetchel." i know there have been days where i have wanted to put them all on a rocket with a one way ticket to pluto, but when it comes down to it, these kids make me happy and i've grown to LOVE them. their teachers finally had to come in and pick kids up off the floor. when they left, it hit me that they would grow up and i would never see them again.

and then i suffered a bout of jealous rage that some other girls would come next semester and steal their hearts from me. but they're MY kids! MINE! i was outraged before i calmed down and realized how irrational i was being, but i think i had a little bit of a glimpse of how a mother feels about her kids. (and to be honest, i still have selfish little thoughts about my kids. hey, i'm not perfect!)

because it ended so sad, a few of us decided to sneak into their dormitory and surprise them when they came in for bed. we tucked them in and snuggled with them till we were kicked out. i think that's been my single best memory in china: tucking my kids in bed and kissing them goodnight. we were all joking around and having fun and it wasn't sad at all. my food stash started with a cherry. frank gave me his cherry for a "present" and then all of a sudden, every kid was reaching under their bed for their small food stash to give me something. yogurt, fruit boxes, peaches, apples. the food was burying me and just in the nick of time, little danny appeared with a bag for me to put it in. it was such a happy goodbye. who can ever say that goodbyes are good? what a poorly named term. but this really was a good goodbye. it still breaks my heart that it's over. i just finished cleaning my classroom and had to take a minute to look at it and remember all the shenanigans that went on in there. my time in china has meant more than can be understood. i've learned a lot and have made lifelong friendships.

so tonight is our last night all together. we're all packed up and ready to go. tonight, we're going to the best gourmet donut shop known to man for a last hurrah and then everyone is going their separate ways. up next: kindra's and my adventure down south!

one movie to rule them all

i just have to put in my two cents and say that reason for humanity's existence is...the lord of the rings.

"return of the king" (even though the others are almost equally amazing) is the sole movie that stands on that blessed golden pedestal in my mind-by a long shot- as the best movie in the history of movies. EVER. i will fight this till the day i die. this is the movie i saw three times in the first two weeks it was out. this is the whole trilogy that leaves me sad that it's over after i watch it. it's kind of like that inescapable rip-your-heart-out emptiness you felt after finishing the seventh harry potter book. i get so attached to the characters in "the lord of the rings" that i feel anguished when it's over just because it's over and it didn't really happen and then i don't even want to watch anything else because everything else is bland in comparison. it's so epic. epic disappointment, epic heartbreak, epic victory. i would like to give thanks to the icon that is peter jackson. the hours that i have spent in my basement with my brothers watching extra footage from the extended versions would astound you. the character development, the friendships, the music, the acting...everything. this is truly the only time i will say that the movies....are better than the books. and the books are good! my favorite line of all lines? "i'm glad to be with you, samwise gamgee. here at the end of all things." san francisco my butt. i left my heart in middle earth!
p.s. i will also fight for this truth until the day i die: samwise gamgee is the GREATEST character of any film or book that has ever graced this planet. i want to marry someone like him. oh, and sean astin is amazing. if i could meet any actor, i think it would be him.

i'm too distraught to come up with a clever title

i think i'm having a midlife crisis. what does one of those feel like? i don't even know who i am anymore. maybe it's more of an identity crisis. yes, that's it, i'm having an identity crisis.

i've run out of books to read. i don't know what to do with myself anymore.

i read four really good books in the past two weeks. here's my quick thoughts on them.

three cups of tea: really, really inspiring. a little slow at times, but it taught me so much about pakistan and the taliban and the humanitarian spirit. if greg mortenson isn't the coolest guy ever, i don't know who is.

kite runner: i got SO emotionally invested in this book. it is SO good. i would react to certain parts out loud and my roommate kept saying "rachael, it's going to be ok!" the author has the coolest writing style and envelops you in the story the whole time you're reading. there's not one dull part in that book.

hunger games: it's a young adult novel with a crazy love triangle and it's much better than twilight. (i do like twilight, regardless of the cotton candy substance. although i have serious issues with angsty, moody edward and bella, which is a discussion for another time.) and as morbid as the plot sounds- 24 kids thrown in an arena to fight to the death- it's SO ADDICTING! i stayed up so late reading, trying to will my eyes to stay open. i plowed through it in 24 hours.

catching fire: the sequel to hunger games. so intense. so good. i'm pre-ordering the third book on amazon. august. it's so far away.

and now, i've read almost every single book that every girl has brought here. i have one left that i brought from home (crossing to safety by wallace stegner), but i want to save that for planes, trains, and automobile rides. what am i supposed to do with myself?

i guess i could do something productive like work on lesson plans or build an orphanage.

to read or to not read? that is the question....

"X" destinations

MSN recently came out with an article entitled "the ABC's of travel", which had a destination to visit for each letter of the alphabet (yes, i am the MSN fiend of them all. if it was an article on MSN...i have read it and i will bring it up in daily conversation). anyway, in case you were wondering what destination they chose for "X"-like, out of ALL of the plethora of "X" destinations they could choose, xi'an was the choicest of them all. and i'd like to add that i'm pretty sure it would still be choicest even if it weren't the only "X" destination, because i. LOVED. xi'an. so much that kindra and i are going back on our way back from guilin. our whole trip was picturesque. some of the highlights were:

-our cute hostel tucked away in the cleanest, greenest, and perfectly humid part of town.
-the park right across the street from us with little markets, temples, and the largest water fountain in asia.
-watching the HUGE fountain show at night with colorful lights and blaring chinese music, and then doing cartwheels through the fountain when the security guards weren't there.
-riding a tandem bike around the whole top of the city wall in an hour (BAM!)
-eating, eating, and more eating. what money we saved on hostels and hard bench train rides, we spent on good food. japanese cuisine one night (gosh, i love a good sushi roll), a western cafe with dutch cheese burgers (manna to my taste), subway, chinese pancakes, yummy salads. one of the girls in my group met a guy who had been all over china and upon hearing that we are teaching in industrial taiyuan, he remarked, "yeah, i went there! the food was awful...i couldn't even stomach it!"
-the little coffee shop that we went to every single night to take off our shoes, kick back, listen to jack johnson, play 5 crowns and uno, and eat the best, freshest smoothies you will ever eat in your sorry life (sorry until you try this smoothie, that is).
-the hostel walls that everyone drew on before they left....kindra and i staked out our territory and spent a night creating tributes to our favorite band and artist...the beatles and billy joel. could i have left my mark in xi'an in any better way?
-my ride to xi'an. PSYCH! remember what i said in the last post about buying standing seats to save money?

oh, you naiive, little girl, rachael. never EVER EVER again will i buy anything other than a sleeper on a train over 10 hours long and i would advise anyone to follow suit because that smoke infested cabin with flat slabs of metal as a sad excuse for seats was beyond miserable. luckily, we had bought sleepers on the way back and i was able to sleep for the whole 12 hours even though my face was 6 inches from the ceiling and took about half an hour to climb down for lack of space.

well, it's been real....but i gotta go to bed early to wake up at 4 AM and skype home so i can talk to ben...mother's day means a call from the missionary. can't wait!
(oh, and by going to bed early, i mean i'll get in bed at nine with good intentions, but cave into instant gratification and stay up till 3 reading "the kite runner." why has no one introduced this book to me before? i stayed in bed all day yesterday and read half of it. and then i got mad when i was hungry and had to put it down to eat. what an inconvenience. it's harry potter all over again.)

when life gives you lemons, hop a train to guilin

our foreign coordinators sprung a vacation on us this week. they sprung it on us only a week in advance and they took days off our vacation. and there's nothing we can do about it. originally, we were going to take a train down to xi'an, where the terra cotta warriors are, on our way to guilin, which is supposedly "the prettiest city on earth". so we had to choose between guilin and xi'an. BUT we found out train tickets to guilin were sold out. xi'an it is. i was trying to perk myself up about it, but since i've spent the last three months reading about, planning for, and looking at pictures of guilin, i was pretty heartbroken. i guess my idea of a vacation is not really tourist destinations. sure it's fun to see them, but i would so much rather go to an obscure, local town and see the scenery. hike mountains. do the things the locals do. i don't get hyped about tourist spots. don't get me wrong: it's fun to say i've been to those places, but they are not where the charm of a country lies. i think i should quit school and be a backpacking bum. give me a map, a kayak (if forrest gump can run across the entire country, i can kayak across the entire ocean, dang it.) and some lembus bread to sustain me. anyway, kindra, the girl i've grown the closest to here, has the exact same mindset as me. everything she says, i think "yes! exactly!" we have the same travel plans. we've already planned to travel the world together. i'm pretty sure we're kindred spirits! well, after the x-word was dropped, i shuffled into her room and we sat on her bed for a few minutes, slumped over, just the most pathetic sight you've ever seen. and then, the words she said were the sweetest ones i've ever heard:

"wanna backpack around china when school gets out?"

"yep."

so i skyped my parents to see if they were on board (they didn't even hesitate before saying yes; they're the best :) ), sent in my flight change request, and we mapped out our three week course after everyone goes home: take a train to guilin, rent bikes to get around, explore the number one ranked underground cave, swim in the li river, take a bamboo boat to yangshuo- asia's number one rock climbing town, rent bikes again, rock climb, brown up a bit, hike the renowned mud caves, take a train to huangshan and hike the yellow mountains- that's where they filmed "crouching tiger, hidden dragon", take a train to beijing, do some last minute pirated-movie shopping, fly home well seasoned travelers (just kidding).

so i say....when life gives you lemons, hop a train to guilin! (and buy a standing ticket at that- we can't afford sleepers, so we're going to sit on the floor for 25+ hours. yes. i'm all for the experience.)