Min Squirrelled

What did that crazy Min squirell away today? Oh its our giant Battleship/fun park, The Minsk! While we haven't yet been to the humongous Air Craft Carrier parked next to us, we are getting closer and closer to actually just taking a true picture of it to post here. For now, though, BE INTRIGUED! by the leviathan, colorful archway guarding the entrace to our little section of shenzhen. also BE ENTHRALLED by this far away, misty, enigmatic picture!
But wait! We don't have jetpacks, we are in china not japan! So how did we get a picture from so high up?! We had to rely on the good old fashioned method of steps. Lots and lots and lots of steps.
See here in Shatoujiao, we are sandwiched directly in-between the bay, and the biggest mountain in the city. It sits there glaring over the city and mocks us. "How's nearly-sea-level? more like pee-level! You suck!" It picks on us everyday in an effort to gain popularity amoung the cooler geographical formations around (Everest still thinks our mountain is a bit of a loser). So one day we, Kitty, Jody (Our school's other foreign teacher from Canada), Niko (Another CTLC teacher), and I, had had enough! I poured a small pile of dirt on the ground, stomped on it, lit it on fire. then glanced up towards the mountain and said, "You're next."

Then we had to walk. A lot of people like to hike up mountains, but this mountain has stairs. Stairs for tiny chinese people. Stairs for people with tiny chinese feet. Stairs for people who weigh between 80-110 pounds. Stairs for people who must have hollow bird like bones to be jogging cheerfully past us at an 87 degree angle.

This mountain was super cool, but sadly it destroyed us, and we still had 1500 of the 4500 meters to go, when we finally caved in.


Our big ol mountain had big ol towers. Some people think it ruins the view, but i thought they were kind of neat. Got to listen to radio in your head the whole way up!

They had a super fun bridge but some girls were apparently too wimpy to cross on their own.
It is a little known fact that the largest percent of china's GDP is in the form of pictures of white people. Anytime someone spots a white person they can snap tons of pictures, and return to their starving family with big armfuls of white people photos, and say, "Linda! get that sock out of the pot, we are eating Shark Fin soup tonight!" The kids cheer, and help daddy sort through the white people of the day, and properly preparing them for export (sometimes secretly keeping a few for themselves) to whatever magical fantastic location that must exist to cause such a huge demand for generic pictures of white people.

When the people hunters attack you, i have found that the best defense is taking pictures of them right back So here is some dude, who really really needed our pic. I started photographing him, and then we made him be in our picture. Good job dude!


Here at the beach was another girl, who was lucky enough to spot the group of whities, but was caught un-aware when they started firing photos right back!
The beach had really fun, giganto things in the sand. The water was kinda very icky (like newspapers, maxi-pads, and jody gets a swollen eye kind of icky!).

There is also some fun sino-graffiti on a cactus