So anyways...

All the pictures I took on vacation I'll get around to posting here and on facebook.

My friends and I have also resolved to go to more interesting places this semester so we get to experience the "real Beijing" so hopefully I'll blog about that.

my New Years resolution was to be a better student... and well there is still some hope.

I think a better resolution would be to stop watching so much TV, it is kind of ridiculous I think.

There is a girl with in my calligraphy class with a name that sounds almost exactly like mine, but her second character is different, it is "Rainbow" instead of "Girl" I am jealous.

I update my Plurk way more than I update this, be my friend!

If I get bored I might post a "get to know me!" quiz on here for kicks.

<3ADC

Too Late is my Ancestral Home

Yeah, only one person will get that joke.

But I am now in Taiwan, with my mommy. And all of my relatives, who all speak Taiwanese, which I don't. I'm kind of picking some up though, like I can kind of tell when they are talking about me.

I owe my sister an apology, Dolly (my cousin) has two kids one 5 and one 3 last time my sister was here she was all, "Ugh, these kids are the most annoying ever and just need a good disciplining!" And my response was, "Whatever Sunny, you hate kids." But now... now I kind of have to agree with her, wow these kids are annoying, and I really like kids, but they need to learn some manners, quickly.

We were at a giant shopping mall yesterday and I finally bought an electronic dictionary (YAY!) and the lady at the Jade counter was asked, "What relation does this person have to you?"

I responded, "My mother."

Then she said, "Oh, she doesn't look like your mother."

Mom cut in, "She takes after her dad."

The Lady at the counter now ignores me and turns to my mom, "But she's so dark."

Which my mom replies, "She just got back from Singapore where it is very Sunny."

"I see." She turns back to me to ask, "You're mom is very pretty isn't she?"

I respond, "Yes." but in my head I'm thinking, Thanks for calling me ugly, bitch.


Sorry this is all over the place but I'm just writing things that are comming to mind. I'll write more later.

<3Annie

Singapore!

So now I am in Singapore, it is really nice here. I like it a lot more than any other place I've been on this vacation and an infinite amount of times more than Beijing. We got a cab ride from the airport and on the way from the airport to our hostel our cab driver spoke 4 languages, 2 to us (English and Mandarin) and two on the phone (Cantonese and I'm assuming Malay). And Singapore is so clean! probably because you get fined if you do anything else and because they're kind of totalitarian here, but it's a great place to visit.

A quick update

So I am back in my seedy little internet cafe hanging out withmyself because I didn't want to go out. I've been going to a lot of places though and taking a lot of pictures, I'll try to do an epic blog, or multiple epic blogs to do it all. But here is a quick snap shot.

Yesterday I went to Nanling garden a really pretty park on the island side of HK. We were all lined up staring at a pond with Giant Koi in them when we had the conversation as followed:

Naomi: I wish I were a fish
Me: I wish I were 80 so all I had to do was stare at fish all day
Laurel: I wonder what these fish would taste like

yep I'd say that sums us up pretty nicely

<3Annie

Why yes I am still alive!

So I have departed on my trip and am currently at an Internet Cafe, or a really shady place that I can get online. I rang a doorbell and they let us in.

I like Hong Kong a lot better than Beijing because the city is so much more lively and less smogy. The subway system is awesome and there are night markets, a lot Taiwan which is really exciting. I bought Esme a Qipao today for Christmas as well, shhh don't tell her.

I'll try to blog when I can,
Annie

Tickets or Drug deals...

So for those of you that don't know I am going on break very very soon, and I'm so stoked. Here are the places I'm planning on traveling to:

Changsha (the hometown of Mao Zedong)
Hong Kong
Singapore
Taiwan

I bought plane tickets from a travel agency here in China over the phone with my mom for Taiwan. And like many things in China it is really shady. Basically you call them up, reserve the tickets, then you come up with a place to meet. They send a messenger and when the messenger reachers the spot they give you a call. Then you go down and meet him and have a conversation that goes something like this:

"You (insert name here)?"

"Yeah. You the Guy?"

"Yeah. You got the money?"

"Yeah. You got the stuff?"

"Yeah."

"Cool."

"Cool."

Then you exchange goods and go off on your marry way. sounds like something that we have in the US too, except you know illegal.

But anyways I'll take lots of pictures and blog about it when I get back other than that I guess we'll be corresponding in a few weeks. OH! and if anyone wants to get me anything my mom is flying out to Taiwan to meet me, so send it with her?

Peace, Love, And Fair Trade,
Annie

Glasses... indeed.

For the past week or so a screw fell out of my glasses and I've been holding them together with a paper clip, ghetto I know. (This post is actually about a week late sorry)

So my friend took me to a glasses market which sells fake designer glasses for a pretty cheap price. There they also do perscription sunglasses so of course I have to get some. Anyways two 10 RMB cab rides and a 45 min subway ride later I end up at this place and it's pretty cool, I got a pair of glasses which were done in litterally a 10 min and a pair of sunglasses that I needed to pick up the next day.

Then it was friday and I took another trip to the glasses mart on the subway and instead of taking the taxi I just walked there, and on the way there I ran into a street vendor that was selling these delicious meat sandwich things. since I bought one I decided to stop and take a picture, It's really odd to think that all they do all day is stand on the corner and make food and that is their lively hood, but it is really common in China, especially at night, especially with Chuar.





While in the glasses place I had to wait like 20 min for my sunglasses before they were done, so I took a picture



And then I overheard someone bargaining, then it occured to me, this is a market place, of course there is bargaining. It's just that everything is shiny and white and all the fuwuyuans wear lab coats that it has the air of being a legitmate doctors place, but it really isn't. so then I was kicking myself for not trying to bargain, but they were cheap anyways so I don't feel terrible about it.

I also got to watch how they made the glasses, basically they take the demo lens drill a hole into it, put it in this machine take the perscription lens attatch a suction cup to the middle, put it in the machine, then there is whirling and grinding and water running and smoke comming out. Basically the machine uses the demo lense as a guide to grind the perscription lense out. then they repeat with the other lens and before you know it, new glasses YAY!

I really like my new sunglasses I've been wearing them everywhere I think I look pretty awesome.

Why Hello Curly, Larry and Moe...

So yesterday, a few friends and I were hanging out in my room and eating bread with butter and drinking hot chocolate, and knitting (of course I was knitting). Well my friend and I were sitting on my roommates bed and I commented something along the lines of, "Be careful I don't think Vera would appreciate us eating on her bed." Not a minute later one of the chopsticks we were using to spread the butter falls off of our plate and we get a little on her blanket. So we look at it and go "Oh, crap what now?" then the other chopstick with MORE butter falls and gets on her blanket. "Oh double crap."

We set down our hot chocolate and look at the blanket pondering what should happen when... we knock over a cup of hot chocolate onto the floor, and on Vera's rug. So then we start scrambling getting the yarn off her bed so we can get a move on and clean this all before she comes home, and in the scramble we knock of the other cup of hot chocolate (I think we're up to 4x crap now).

What ends up happening is we pull the extra blanket off of my bed (which looks like hers because she uses the ones provided by the school, I was using it as padding against my lack of a mattress) and throwing the rug and everything into the washer. Then we see that my school issued blanket is a slightly different color than her school issued blanket (quintuple crap!) we put it on anyways and hoped she wouldn't notice.

The next day I tell Vera that we spilled hot chocolate on the floor yesterday and I'm sorry but I got it on her rug, Vera goes, "It got on my blanket too didn't it? this one is new."

... I told her yes.


In other news this weekend I went shopping on the Silk Market, a place famed for their silk scarves and Caitlin and I wandered into the touristy section (well the whole thing is touristy, but the REALLY touristy section). And there was this white guy kind of flirt bargaining with a fuwuyran (shop worker) and then another one kind of playfully swatted at him and the guy kind of jumped back and went "Bie Qi Fu Lao Wai!" which roughly translates to : Don't bully the foreigner! except Lao Wai is a semi insulting term for forgiener so it made me giggle.

I also love eggplant, a lot.

I will try to take more pictures soon. I know I've been lazy/nothing interesting has been happening.

WALL E

So in buying semi illegal DVD's here in China the other day I bought a copy of wall e. And to my great pleasure it was an actual legit DVD... well not legit in the legitimate sense, but it had like all the bonus features and animated shorts attached. It made me extremely happy.

I finally got the chance to see it though, and it was really really adorable I think. I know I should be blogging about China, but I wanted to update and thats all I really had to say.

<3Annie

Beijing DOES NOT Huan Ying Ni

SO I no longer love this song, because I had to sing it, in front of a LOT of people (like probably over a hundred) with my Kou Yu Ban. Sadly I was not the worse singer, and that is saying quite a bit, because I am kind of bad.

Observe:


My favorite part is the flag interlude, I want to speed it up and make it a gif. srsly.

And then we were followed by Koreans and for some reason almost all of them can sing really well (see you if you pick out the Koreans in my class) and just got owned.

Here is a picture of my KouYu Ban because we don't normally all dress like the Chinese flag I promise, this picture is old becasue my hair is still long in it.

more on life later,
Annie