Summer Break

Summer is here and there is a lot of fun things happening here in the city. The picture of the guy cooking all the meat is a great place to hang out and order some "meat on a stick," that is what we call it (sorry Jusin and Sara I know you miss this). The summer time in the evenings are a lot of fun because people are out and the weather is nice. We do miss those New Mexico sunsets though! There's not many of those here.

John had to get his picture taken behind "Optimus Prime" and with the other transformers. We got to watch the new transformers movie here and it was in English!! We live right by the movie theater and we often check to see what the latest movies are and if they are showing any in English.

So you would be very suprised how cheap things cost here in our city. Can anyone guess how much these vegetables cost in this picture? See answer below!

It only costs about $1! There's a saying everythings bigger in Texas but we think some Texans should come visit our city. A good example is of this spinach leaf to the left in comparison to Dana's hand. We have also found some really good green chile here. A pound of green chile is only about 20 cents! There are definately pros and cons to living in this city and we've decided to do a top 5 list of both!

CONS

5. When there is a national holiday they shut the country down. Everything is closed. Even school, however, you have to make up the missed day on the weekend or evening.

4. Because were foreigners we get the "foreginer tax" and people up thier prices when we buy things.

3. The streets can be so congested at times that we have both have gotten in minor bike accidents (we're fine).

2. Bike theft and pocket picking happens VERY often so we have to always be on the lookout and watch our things extra carefully. (Even in restaurants Dana has to keep her purse on her lap.)

1. Everyone says Hello! and stares and says "wai-guo-ren" which means outsider. It stopped being cute a long time ago.

PROS

5. Local markets and storeoweners love and flock to us because were foreigners.

4. They have several import stores so we can buy things like crisco, corn flakes and sometimes cheese (the local cheese here is just not the same).

3. You can walk outside of your apartment, look to the left and see a bank, post office, 5 different resturaunts and a hardware store. Look to the right and see a fruit stand, supermarket, a park, and Mcdonalds all within 3 minutes of walking distance.

2. Everything is cheap and we mean everything and plus you can bargain for mostly anything too. (Bottled water - 15 cents, Bus ride to destination - 15 cents, average meal - $1-2)

1. We are homesick at this moment and had a hard time with culture shock this week, so we can't think of another pro! :)

Thank you for checking out our blog! We would love to hear from you!

Spring is in the Air

Happy Father's Day!!! We are still doing great! We have our "cultural" moments (like when a high school kid kept following Dana around the gym as she worked out so that he could practice his English. He not only had no manners, but now personal space as well. He took pictures with his phone too. Weird), but overall we feel great! We just wanted to share this random picture of us staring off in space at McDonald's. This is what we look like when we don't know anyone is looking at us.

It's been getting in the high 80's lately. May not seem so bad, but when there is no air conditioning in buildings and you have to bike everywhere, it seems a lot hotter. Our face and arms are so tan and it's only the beginning of summer. Dana was asked if she spoke Spanish by a local in the gym the other day all the way in Asia!!! (Everyone thinks she's Latino!)

John's hair was becoming ridiculous and he kept putting off the hair cut do to fear of the barbers here (you should see their hair). One day in class he out of no where decided he wanted to shave his head! He shaved his head when he was younger and he said it made him look like he was 10. But, he went through with it and Dana shaved it off!

Before picture on the left.... ridiculous. The new John is not John. His new name is Carlos Martinez. Nice, right? (He's shaved his dirty mustache since the after picture - to Dana's great relief!)

We've had some fun birthday parties lately. (John's is the 25th of this month btw.) One party (to celebrate 4 birthdays - John's included) was themed 1969 where Dana was a flower child. John tried to do hippy, but only looked Vietnamese, so he went with that instead!!! He got this SWEET board game his friends made. It's exactly like Ticket to Ride, but in America. They even put our hometowns on it - Las Cruces, Alamogordo, Spokane, Farmington, and our friend's hometowns). We're gonna play it Friday. Here's a happy picture of us receiving the game - 1969 style:

We miss our garden. However, Dana successfully planted an herb garden. It brings us joy to see the progress and growth they are making. It's not even been 2 weeks and they've all sprouted! From left to right she has Oregano, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (yes, like the song) Basil, and Chamomile. She thanks her mom for giving her a genetic green thumb and her brother Justin for giving her the seeds! We'll keep the growth posted!

A Little Taste of Home

Hello, and welcome back to our blog! The past few weeks have been very busy! Language learning has been getting better and we are pretty much fluent now! (Yeah right!). But we can read and write some really cool new words and get around the city for the most part. Dana usually does the cookin' around here and one night we found some colorful bell peppers, tortillas, salsa and chicken. We ate delicious fajitas and green chile cornbread that night. It was kind of like Applebees to be honest. While Dana cooks an awesome meal John usually try's to be productive and wash dishes or sets the table.

So we were walking around our city and found a really cool looking building that we wanted to show you below.

We also wanted to show some random cultural pictures that gives you a better idea of what we see day to day. (Thank you "Russian" friend for letting us borrow some pics!) Enjoy!

7 Weeks and counting!

Hard to believe we've been here for 7 weeks already. We were talking today that we both feel like we have adjusted well, and are so grateful for that. Although we miss friends, family, and nursing at times, we really like it here!

We have taken midterms in all of our classes 2 weeks ago. They were difficult but we actually did surprisingly okay being that came in halfway through! We're getting the hang of this new difficult language, sort of! I think this is our last week meeting with our tutor that is helping us catch up to our classmates, so now we have to catch up on our own! But, instead of 24 hours of language school, we'll only have 18 hours.

We had 2 friends currently residing in Eastern Europe come to visit us. We had so much fun with them and are so glad they got to come visit. Here we are at the square across from our house.

The weather can't make up it's mind. One day we're wearing flip flops, t-shirts, and the pant roll - the next day we need tennis shoes, socks, and a fleece jacket. Although it is VERY dry weather here, we have been getting a few rain showers here and there - which is nice, but hard when you have to bike out in it. We've invested in some SWEET ponchos made specifically for bikes. It is one of the smartest buys we've made here!

We celebrated our 2 year anniversary on May 14th. The last two years went by so quickly. After class (lame) we went to a fancy massage place. We got a room together. They had us change into these cute little outfits (see John's pic) and then gave us complimentary coffee. We soaked our feet while we got our shoulders and arms massaged (they are way too good at finding knots). Then we got a foot rug WHILE another person massaged our scalp and neck. It ruled! Then we went to a fancy dinner and feasted on steak, sushi, real bread, real cheese, pecan pie and pretty much anything you can possibly imagine that is good.

Here's our neighborhood on the weekend:

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What to eat: Camel hump, sheep back, dog stew, pile of mutton with bones, donkey dumplings, or yak?

The title of this blog is of different meat dishes we've had the pleasure of enjoying while in this city (that we know of)! The most recent being yak, which is the dish you see. Down our street is a Tibetan restaurant with a nice and bright atmosphere. The symbol you see on the dish goes back generations ago (originally an ancient Indian religious symbol)... and means "well-being" or eternity; and has been used to ward off evil spirits. It was obviously corrupted during WWII and is strange for westerners to see on their temples here!


Have you ever seen the movie The Mummy? The part where the bad guy blows a sandstorm at them. (Or was it huge bugs? Can't remember.) This is how Dana perceived last weeks wind. We never knew what being in a sandstorm was like until we moved here. The clouds look dark and full of rain, only no rain would fall. You cannot see in the distance, all you can see is the sand coming at you. You can either take cover or dare to endure! It was creepy because no one was outside during these windy days. The only noise you could hear was the effects of the wind! The picture looks like we put it in a beautiful sepia color, but it is natural sepia!


National (other than America) labor day was last Friday. In addition to this, our University had a huge track meet. So, we had Wed, Thurs, and Fri off from school. One of our American friends competed in the 10 K, so we went out to support him. The stadium was packed full of Asians, all wearing cute white hats or visors! The energy there was unreal. Every time a person would pass by, the crowd would go nuts!

To our excitement, there is the best vegetable in the whole world in our city, green chili! We bought some and tried roasting it a while back. The ovens here are tiny (2 pieces of toast maxes it out), so this was a challenge. Dana likes to think of it as our Easy-Bake Oven. Not only that, but it's in Celsius and the way it heats is different. So, we made some dehydrated chili's the first time. The second time was not cooked enough, but got some meat out of it... enough for our spaghetti Dana made. Hopefully third times a charm! Wish us luck!

Week 1 in Asia

We got to go on several tours of the city our first week here. While on our "business tour" we stood on a bridge that used to be the dividing point of two cities. Now it is one city and we live in this area which is the commercial/business district with sky scrapers and all. Here's a picture of what our streets are like. I think we're getting used to crossing the streets now.

This is a picture of a street vendor that is pulled by a sad little donkey. Something that we've noticed a huge difference in our city is the HUGE increase in the amount of cars (see in the back of the picture). It makes traffic crazy and the city more crowded. Our main transportation is our 1 gear bikes. We average probably an hour of biking a day. (Yes, our bums are sore!)

We thought we would included a picture of our new home and neighborhood, pictured to the right. Just kidding! Real pictures of our home will be later. (It's a work in process right now.) This pic is actually part of the old city, or what remains. A couple years ago it was the old cities 60th year anniversary and it was given a "face lift". Therefore not much of the old city remains. Now it has many new shiny high rise buildings.

We had our first kitchen flooding this week. The washing machine is kept in our kitchen because when you do a load of laundry you have to move it to the sink and take out the tube to the sink (green tube) and put the tube of the washing machine (white tube) in a pvc drain. In the middle of laundry, the tube to drain the washing machine popped out and leaked all over the floor. We had a good inch of dirty clothes water on our floor. Now we have to fight off mold under our kitchen! We're getting the hang of things here now though.

Final Stretch

We only have a few more days left at orientation before we go to the Orient! We'll be going back to NM on Thursday for one more week with family and friends. We fly out first week of April!!!



We've still been experiencing some interesting weather. Last week we got a foot of snow and high of 8 degrees. A couple days later all the snow was melted with high of 80 degrees (see before and after snowman picture below!) This week has been mostly cold and rainy.

We got to go to D.C. yesterday. We got to have a few cultural experiences. One was mastering the metro to get around. We then went to China town (more like China street, sort of) where we ate delicious Authentic Chinese food. We didn't see many people around like we thought we would, maybe due to the fact of it being freezing cold and rainy outside. There were a ton of people in the Museum of Natural History and a Portrait Museum though. We didn't get to do much touristy things like see the white house or Abe Lincoln's Memorial, but overall it was a good experience. We got to see many things in passing and hope to one day to go back for a sunny day of tourism!

Oh, we mustn't forget one more important note. We've become good friends with a Korean family while here. The wife taught Dana how to make Kimchee. She had a fun time learning this unique skill, and John had a good time eating it!