saturday stroll

Although we have only had 3, this weekend was the best yet!  It started out with a really great hike to a village about an hour and a half north of Kunming.  the village was a very special place and we plan to share much more about it in our next post.  The hike itself was quite interesting and we put together a little video to share the experience. Notice all of the different people pointing in the pictures...that's cause nobody knew where the village was!  What was supposed to be a 20 minute hike up the path turned into an hour of bushwhacking and trapsing through corn fields.  We did make it and had a great time with our new chinese hiking buddies!

small victories

Liss and I both feel like we are generally pretty efficient people.  Liss especially can whip up a task list and start blazing through it, crossing things off before you can blink.  We're finding that the China version of Jon and Liss is a little less productive, though....at least for now. Little things that should be so simple, take forever to check off of the list because of the uncertainty that comes with doing things for the first time.  "Buy a notebook" is part of an easy Target run in the states, so we can't figure out why it made itself at home on our to do list for 2 days.  I guess that's life though, when you try something new and different.  Even though we are not quite up to speed, every day we are learning and expanding our experience.  For now, we invite you to celebrate our small victories with us....grocery shopping at the market, charging the scooter, ordering (chinese) food, finding our way across town, making our first meal at home, locating a tennis court, buying a map, finding the park, learning new words, making friends, and of course...buying a notebook.

lost in translation

last night liss and i decided to go out for dinner.  you might ask us if we had fried rice or steamed vegetables or chicken and cashews or smelly tofu, cause hey we're in china, right? Well, after considering our options, we decided to really spread our culinary wings. We strolled right on by the street vendors and two-butt kitchens, past the tiny one room restaurants and straight on to...pizza hut.  yep, i'm sorry to say, it's true. The funny thing is i think we actually have done better ordering in the chinese restaurants. We were ok until our waitress came back to inform us that there were no more "pan" pizzas available.  That sent us and her into a semi-communicative frenzy of menu pointing, page flipping, broken chinese, blank looks, nervous laughs, and "ting bu dongs".  (that means i hear but don't understand.) With a degree of success, we waited anxiously to see what would come from the kitchen.  To our amazement we got the pepperoni pizza we ordered! Upon further review, though, we realized that through all of our antics, we are pretty sure we ordered a pizza with exactly one solitary piece of pepperoni on each of the 9 slices...snobby foreigners.  

transportation

we don't have any kids yet, so the minivan just felt wrong. hot red scooter just seemed right. we've already ventured around town and jon hasn't dumped me off the back once yet!

  

let's get physical

these are just a few highlights from a 2 hour experience that we will not soon forget...

1. blood test: anyone that knows me well, knows that i have a problem with needles...giving blood in the US is a bad experience...i don't even have a category for this one. they took not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR vials of blood in one shot. i almost passed out.

2. EKG: reminiscent of a jack bauer torture scene - stark white room, one doc, 6 probes around your heart, and metal ankle and wrist clamps...chloe, help!

3. urine test: you try carrying a lid-less plastic dixie sized cup full of pee down a hallway past other people and sliding it across the counter...makes the spoon and egg camp game feel like a walk in the park.

4. X-Ray: doc playin solitaire upon entering the room...nuff said

...and i grew up 2 miles from the world famous mayo clinic. 

New Territory

Wednesday we took sam and katy to the airport and said goodbye. It was kind of surreal because so many times it has been the other way around.  I could only dwell on the strangeness of the moment for about 4 minutes though because of the task at hand...driving their van home from the airport in kunming traffic!  Sam told me to use the third ring road because it would be the easiest and have the least traffic and all i would need to do is turn right out of the airport and bada bing bada boom...we’d be home.  It seemed easy enough, plus we had an ace in the hole.  Paul, a chinese friend of sam’s came with us just to be safe.  So i turned right after leaving the airport and bada bing bada...what the?!?...Paul didn’t know where we were either.  We eventually did make it home a few wrong turns and tense moments later, but not without vowing to park that car for the next four months and lose the keys.   Anyway, when we got home we were both struck with how absolutely quiet the house was.  I am not sure we were prepared for the lonely pangs that silence could bring.  Liss put it best when she compared it to the feeling you have when your parents leave after dropping you off at your college dorm freshmen year.  You know it’s gonna be incredible, but it takes some adjusting.  

We're here!

Hello from rainy Kunming. We arrived here safely this afternoon and we're just trying to stay awake a couple more hours so we can sleep well tonight! It was a smooth trip over here and we've already had our first latte from the Silver Spoon Cafe! 

checks and mates

Our last few days have been a strange combination of frenetic last minute preparations and meaningful goodbyes. It seems like we are constantly dancing back and forth between checking off the lists in task mode and enjoying our incredible friends and relatives in people mode. People mode is way more fun and Liss and I have enjoyed lots of great time with family and friends...Thanks! We love you all.

take off: june 13th

loks like we will be taking off on friday, june 13th - one week to go! We'll post regular updates here to keep you up to speed on what we're doing in china! write us any time - we will miss all of you dearly!