The End of the World (is in your hands)

Here is a guide on how to play the game everyone loves, Apocalypse, in case you forgot, or sadly, have never played.

Jackie Chan

Sometimes my mind will get a little caught up in the strangeness of the chinese view towards westerners. It helps though to pretend that you are living in america, and big purple polka dot people start showing up in the library, and the grocery store, and every now and then you see one on the bus. Also these purple people speak to each other in a language based on a subject that you have been forced to study but that most people have never used in their daily lives, like trigonometry. And these purple people have sweet laser guitars and are inexplicably cool.

So when i get driven to places to get treated for gigantic weirdness festivals, it helps to imagine myself big, and blue, and screaming "Co-oo-oo-Secant!" into my microphone tentacle that springs out of my back. Otherwise it seems just crazy to make such a big deal over the white people.

Since the olympics, a new sport has developed in china of "bizarro spectacle competitions." Every city seems to be trying to prove its abilty to have brain destroying craziness shows just like the opening of the olympics. Here was guangzhou's attempt (the judges ruled it an 8.6).

Everything that could be made to light up or explode did so accordingly, and if the people could gyrate they made sure they were giving the gyrations of a lifetime.

While the extravaganza in the front was going on, our attention was breifly focused on the backstage where a guy instantanouelsy burst into flames and began running around. I guess he was okay, no one really seemed to mind. Perhaps it is possible to over-gyrate.

This is where i think the guy meant to activate his explosion stick.

Of course the night was topped off with a special arrival of JACKIE CHAN and friends! He drove onto stage in his own little 747 in the background and sang us a song about how he was ready. Ready for what? I don't know, but apparently not ready enough to give us a freakin karate chop or anything, just ready to sing and sing.
(He is the tiny dot in white above the second creepy talking hand from the left)

A closer view of jackie chan's anthropomorphic face hands (his friends?)

Here was a group of kids walloping each other with big branches from trees. I snapped a quick pic before we left. They were having an incredible time.

Papa Jawesome!

For some reason Papa Johns and KFC tend to be the most global fast food places. Way more than even the supposedly ubiquitous Mcdonalds. Even though the basic fastfood places in China (McD, KFC) are supposedly way better here than america, i have vowed to put off eating at such places as long as possible. However, I have been wooed by the upper-echelon fast-food delicacies of Papa Johns. Oh my GOD! It was incredible! Normally pizza here is prohibitorily expensive. Those tiny pizzas on the table above are around 68 RMB (10$) each, and what i would think of as a "normal" large papa johns pizza could easily run over 20$. But for some reason the company decided to make a somewhat secret deal where you could pay only 60RMB (9$) and order anything you want from the menu, AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT! but there is a catch:
Anything you don't eat, you have to pay full price for!

So not only is it a crazy deal of a lifetime, they also make it a challenge/game, which just makes it incredible!

I got that same giddy rush of adrenaline/fear when i get to do something awesome that defies all societal rules imprinted into my mind (think walmart), and got to business.

It is a really good feeling to just slap the dessert menu on the table and say, "wo yao liang ge mei jian shi" (my bad chinese way of saying, I want two of everything! DAN CHANG EDIT: better way is to say "mei yan wo yao liang ge") This picture was taken about 4 seconds after i had a different cheesecake in the other hand.

After this we went out to the bizzarre ultra-deluxe infinitely dense shopping labyrinth of Dong Men. Those are regular pants printed to look like jeans.

Not only do people sell DVDs, the cutest animals, and weirdest trinkets all over the street, they also accost you to get tattoos on a whim. ALSO IMPORTANT FUNNY NOTE: The men here also get lower back tatoos! As soon as i can snag a pic of one i will post it!

There are too many terrific items of clothing avialable and too few that could fit any westerner, if only i could squeeze into a "Super Wood Panel Carrots" shirt.

Me and Kelsey's fav is the "The" dress.

During our gluttonous feast we were kindly informed by the wait-staff that crusts do count as food, so we cleverly stowed these bad boys away.

Thanksgiving Itchy Anus

Dear family and friends,
I hope that you all have a terrific thanksgiving this year and I am sad that I will be missing out. This of course means more food for you and all of america, so maybe my absence will aid everyone through these hard, economic times. Remember to be thankful that during this day of gratitude you did not have to teach 100 chinese kids about "Vomiting," "Diarrhoea" (yeah i have to teach british diarrhea), and the most important lesson of all, "Itchy Anus."

Since they of course did not know what any of these words meant, i had to start at the basics...the very basics.

Actually it was one of the most fun lessons ever. I had one of my assistant teachers falling over and laughing. We managed to get together with some awesome friends who made and incredible meal (even included real pumpkin pie!). Kitty also got to eat some turkey (or as they call it here "fire-chicken!") last weekend in preparation for the holiday! Happy thanksgiving everyone!

PS. Check out these awesome stickers kitty's mom sent us! So weird!

Hong Kong 1

We took our first trip to Hong Kong city this past weekend. Astute readers may remember that we've been to Hong Kong to camp before, but that was some kind of rural part of Hong Kong (?) which totally doesn't count. A bunch of our friends have birthdays this month, so we decided to go to Hong Kong to celebrate, although we only managed to stay together for about 15 minutes before the whole group disassembled.

Beware! No longer are you allowed to transport your luggage full of dead chickens between China and Hong Kong. Although the penalty of 50,000 kuai seems pretty steep.

Approximately 30% of the people in this picture were celebrating their birthdays.

The building on the far right is the one where Batman jumped off to steal that dude back out of Hong Kong. You do not stay in Hong Kong unless Batman permits.

I wish you could read Andy's shirt better, because it's hilarious. It's a plea to reason, saying how abysmal it is that people think Tibet should be independent. And I quote: "TIBET WAS IS AND WILL ALWAYS BE A PART OF CHINA We need more truths instead of listening fucking lies." You can kind of see where it says CHINA'S POWER at the bottom. I begged him not to wear it in Hong Kong, where tons of people speak and read English, but then again I don't know how they feel about it in Hong Kong. If he wears it in America, he'll probably get lynched.

They have this huge boardwalk devoted to Cantonese movie stars.

Hee hee.

Andy made me lie on a bed of nails at the Science Museum, which we went to because we're the nerdiest type of sight-seers. It hurt even though he promised it wouldn't!

They also had a kind of fun optics exhibit there, including crazy sideways room:

And "Kitty's head in a vase" room.

Requisite "infinite room":

Hong Kong is pretty amazingly infested with Christmas spirit. There's crazy lights all over the building. It's surreal to see this kind of stuff when it's still 70 degrees out. Speaking of which, our dorm room at school came with a tiny Christmas tree, but I wonder what the chances of finding a menorah will be. I guess I can always make one out of a potato?

Jackie Chan stared at us with his message of fitness while we enjoyed burgers and fries at Outback Steakhouse.

After we got separated from most of the group, we still had one birthday boy left with us, so we went in search of a cake.

We brought this wonderful mango slice cake and plenty of cans of beer to a public square in Hong Kong. We thoroughly enjoyed all said items. It's awfully convenient that they don't have any laws against public drinking anywhere in China.

Then Andy bought me a 'muscat' flavored KitKat. Surprisingly gross! (ANDY EDIT: Not just muscat, but Muscat of Alexandria! We could have snacked with kings!)

I guess I should consider myself lucky for not having to eat tomato soup KitKat.

Giving onstad a run for his money

The next day i had to teach a whole lesson against the wonderful phrases, "I is die!" "I am die" and "I die," but don't worry i don't think it stuck

This one only got one rabbit because after a while you might realize that the doctors maybe actually be there to help the pulpified bodies and not just drive over them as it may appear at first.

WHAT! after the other 159 submissions, i have to suspect that somehow the people are doomed in the final panel. maybe they are getting skin cancer from the sun, or the red helmet one poisoned both their helmets to help them catch a comet to alpha centari.

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Ahhh, paramedics+"I Silly"=superb!