...Nicks Hometown...

..OK. Here I go , trying to retype my “lost”entry. About my dh hometown and his family.
Nick has 2 younger brothers and 1 younger sister. His siter has 9 year old daughter and one of nicks brothers has 15 year old son who lives with Nicks sister because his brother is full of crap, lazy ass, bigmouth- who has no idea how to take care of kids or his girlfriends because girls just keep leaving him,…..

Nicks youngest brother has no kids, but that will be over in 7 months, because his wife is pregnant.

Nicks dad is about 80 something old and going strong. He smokes constantly and is in perfect health. THEY ALL Live in Sichuan province , in some big city . from Nicks dad house we could see Yangtze river and port. Very beautiful landscape- BUT very dirty, stinky, un organized and over crowded. Since his hometown in mountain city, there are hills everywhere and huge apartment buildings are built on those mountains, Kind of like Laguna niguel, laguna hills, etc, but there is no space, no green trees, cement stairs are everywhere ( that is how you get from one building to other), and sometimes you have to walk an hour on stairs to get to your

View from cemetary - Nicks Hometown.
apartment. There is spitting marks and rotten food everywhere. Cig. Butts add a final touch

Nicks family was tons of fun. Lots of food, laughing, talking ( HIS FAMILY TALKS TO MUCH and they are very OUTSPOKEN, and because of that fights break loose very often. ( NICK told me that that is why he ‘Trained” himself to be different from his family. Lol Lunches started around 12 pm and ended 3 pm. Dinners started 5 pm and lasted until 11 pm. EATING, lots of food, lots of local watery beer, and lots of weird food from insides and outsides and all around. Yaiks..
( Playing Mahjong with inlaws - Mahjong is huge in Sichuan. People play it everywhere, in streetcorners, in some restaurant( special rooms) home, lunchbeaks... I kind of liked it. )
Only person who Spoke littlebit English was my dh sister. Her English was limited, but she managed to talk to me and my kids so what that She had no idea half of the time what I was saying or I had no idea what she was saying.

We went to see waterfalls there, met up with nicks classmates, visited local nightclub- Chinese do not like clubbing. They like KTV ( Karaoke TV) Huge building with rooms for partying. Inside rooms is huge tv with karaoke mashine, computer, phone- so you can hook up with other “single and lonely” karaoke singers. And then you drink and sing and eat and sing and more you drink , the better you sound.
---Yangtze River--( my dh and his "purse"")

We also did some shopping in grocery store where they had dogs for sale ( Special breed for “ dinner”. L frogs, snakes, and other weird animals and SMELL that was in meat section was just horrible. I almost puked..
We also did some bargain shopping – bracelets, pillowcases, etc. Chinese style stuff. Very cheap..

.. MORE TO COME.... Family affairs, food, ( frogs, dogs, and other cute dinner dishes...)

Some pictues

When my laptop broke I was lucky enough to upload some of the pics to my Dh's computer. Here is link with pics that were taken in my dh's hometown. Brothers, sister, his moms grave site in mountains etc.


http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8ActWTNq4ZuGIw&notag=1

Funeral....

.. best Buy geeks had no luck saving my laptop. So latest diary entries, and about 1500 pictues will rest in peace until trash truck will us apart.... I started crying when my dh told me that my Toshibas hard drive is dead and does not like communicating with people. I guess he( toshiba) was tired of my constant abuse and now it time for payback.... I still have one little hope , but I do not want to get my hopes up to much. At least I uploaded about 500 pics to nicks computes ( with his family) and Picasa albums have about 150 pics for viewing online, but still- NOW I HAVE TO GO BACK TO CHINA TO TAKE MORE PICS. :(

sorry..

for not updating. My laptop crashed... Dead- my word documents and 2000 pictures stuck inside, because power button is not working and . Right now we are back in Beijing and we will fly back to Ca on wedensday.

Nicks hometown was lots of fun. When i get back to CA I will update mo( when all the updates get recovered ). I just donot feel like typing same thing second time around. lol.... We are so ready to leave china. We are done eating chinese food, talking to people who do not speak english and we are more than ready to just have nice year long vacation in CA. There is no place like home :) Talk to you soon people...

Tomorrow we will fly to Sichuan..

yeah, Hangzhou is beautiful and here are more places that I want to see, but we are ready to go to Nick hometown. And his vacation starts today. I tell you, it was grazy 2 weeks here. He woke up- he was on the phone, he had lunch- ding, dong, we had dinner together- he was on the phone- and that was most irritating thing ever. I hated it. Hopefully now things change for couple of weeks. :)

More irritating things

1. Food markets- PEOPLE STARE into my shopping cart to see what I bought. Then they stop, turn around and check out my fat ass and comment something in chinese.
2. I HATE people who cut lines in markets. I am about to pay for my stuff and then few dickheads just spead pass me and get on line without even apologising.
3. I HATE people opening their car windows and spitting out shit.
4. I hate humid weather and sucky air conditioners.
5. I HATE waiters /waitresses in most restaurants. SInce tiping system is not present in china, they all do lousy job, sometimes they just walk away from your table, or start converstations with other people.
   
6. I hate that there are no good salads here. Most salads look terrible and they had to be cooked
7. I hate that waiters and weitresses have NO idea what one or other meal includes. ( western style restaurants). I asked what kind of salad dressing comes with salad. He looks at me and tells me- NO DRESSING, SAUCE ONLY. wtf?? So what kind of sauce it is. -- His reply- I DO NOT KNOW. So I want to really now, can you ask from somebody?? HE goes away and send some other waitress to me since I am to much to handle. lol
   AND most of the time they do not know if chicken is sour, salty, or if beef has onions in.( my kids do not like onions).... you got the picture....
8. I hate watery chinese beer, after while I feel like I am drinking water.
9. I hate that food starts to taste the same to me- same spices, same flawors, nothing new, same old, same old- I am bored
10. I HATE drivers, and I will hate pedestrians here even more. Dang bitch, stop crossing the street when I have a green light.
    
11. i hate bikers who think they are gods of china. FUCK, Look number 10.
12. And I LOVE love love love tofu. I had it as noodle style, baked, smoked, fryed, boiled, blended, skinned, you name it I had it and I could it eat all day and all night long. Just give me my tofu and I am happy
13. AND I LOVE love love frozen tea drinks here . OH, plum fig ice tea. SO good.
14. ANd I love Beijing duck
15. AND I love my dh and I love my kids and I love myself very, very much. :)
16. OH, how could i forget to mention what else I hate- I hate fucking local americans who thinks they are the gods of china, they are annoing, loud and even worse than locals. When I tell you stop smoking in NON smoking area, then fucking do it, stop jababadabadaming about russians, because I aint no Russian , you Redneck. Do not mess with home sick Estonian who really want's to go back to california so I can use my potty instead of some shitty hole in the ground that is full of ()&*(&^&(&^T&*))(&

Ok. I am done for today. More to come. And pray for better weather. This 40 degree midnight heat is getting annoing. VERY annoing.

What a life...

..Life here is getting more and more interesting for me. I do not miss home at all. NOT at all. I LOVE IT HERE.

Anyway, last night around10.30 pm our lights went off. So I went to hallway to turn on lights, It was normal that with air conditioners electicity just decided to leave us. Anyway, when I stepped into hallway, I noticed that EVERybody on 19th floor was out. And apartment building was loud, voices everywhere. We have total 24 floors with around 1000 apartments. WHOLE house was dark, AND it was 36 degree heat outside. So I called nick and told him ( he was still at work) that no air conditioners, no air to breathe - and kids are still awake because of the heat. SO he came to rescue us. He climbed 19 floors to get us and we went and spend a night in close by hotel.,( OH yeah, we all climbed 19 floors down. Not a big deal, kids were super exited. lol When we went out, we noticed that more apartment buildings had no lights and even street lights were out. FUN. When we returned around 9 am next morning electricity was back and Diana was super happy. :) AND weather was perfect. Little cooler( 30 degrees) and rainy.

Happy Birthday to my Friend Xochita:) She had a baby girl on June 22( same day as Gabriels Birthday is ) and she named her Jordan Taylor. This is her third child :) I am really happy for them :)


ALLRIGTY. NOW I have to tell you about my trip to Lingyin Temple.(Buddhist Mother)
http://www.imperialtours.net/lingyin_temple.htm

http://www.hangzhou.com.cn/20030101/ca251537.htm


IT is the most famous temple in China. AND I had no idea it was only 5 kilometers from us. I was Amazed how well hiden this place is. My dear husband really has no idea where he lives. He works 12 hour dayshifts and does not care about cultural stuff, but for me I LIVE for that stuff. First we climbed mountains LOTS and lots of rock stairs. But I was more than happy to climb them because I really wanted to see all the budhas carved( spelling?) in rock. And sight was worth of seeing.

Then after the mountain climbing we went into the temple. Ticket was about 4 dollars, but I would have happily payd more. OH MY GOD. Lucily I had a friend with me who knew more about budhism and how chinese and Indian temples and beliefes are different. She thought me how to pray "budhism" way ( her english was very limited ,but she could tell me few sentences in english. We walked, into temple prayng area. Photographing and videotaping was forbidden. At first I did not see sigh hanging outside and took my camera out- and then I hear this LOUD asian lady screaming something in gibberish..... OH, I got is, No videotaping.... lol But the emages are in my head and it is hard to explain what I saw- GIANT budhas for luck, for long life, for happiness, for fertility, for EVERYTHING, and when I say Giant, they were giant. Golden, with calm and smart faces praying for you. I was just staring because I could not get the eyes of them. IT was the most beautiful experience I had so far in asia. I left the temple with easy heart And I still feel like that I was in a dream. it all was so surreal.... Go to google and google images and try Lingyin temple . You see what I am talking about. Most of the pics will be outdoors ones, but still you get the idea.:)

What I really want to do is to go to see LESHAN grand buddha. It is close to my DH hometown, in same province, but still , it is 4-5 hour car drive from his hometown, and he is not exited about going there. ;lol
I include a link about LEshan Grand Buddha, so you know what I am talking about.
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/sichuan/leshan/buddha_statue.htm

OK. Since I am LOVING china now, I decided that I need one more extra week to travel around and see more. So we will be going home around 20th of July, instead of 13th of july. So be patient. One day we'll get there. :)

Shanghai July 1st/2nd.

( View from our hotel room)
http://picasaweb.google.com/dianatan78/My2006JulyShanghaiPictures
Shanghai is about 151 kilometers from Hangzhou. Nick had to go there to close some business deals( don't ask what kind). So we took a 2 hour ride to visit Shanghai. We spent an afternoon with his former high school classmate Angela ( she is chinese). She leaves about 20 minutes from downtown area, but with bad traffic, it took us 2 hours to get from suburbian Shanghai to get into Downtown area. So while nick was closing his business deals, we had lunch at Mc Donalds. Eating out in fast food places here is one very stressful activity. LINES are huge , and wait time often is more than 30 minutes. And Mc Donald fits itself about 300 people. IT IS GIgantic place. lol But then again, China is full of fast food hungry people who still manage to stay tiny after eating few big macs.

Around 4 pm Nick was finished with his stuff and we went to our hotel . OMG. Ride there was amazing. I never, ever ever seen so many buildings- BIG buildings in my life. Our ride to downtown area was just amazing. It is hard to explain , but OMG. I was speachless I think first time in my life. lol

We had dinner in some Chinese restaurant - Boiled blood, boiled fish, broiled other stuff, and other stuff... Nothing unusual. And again, I was forced to eat donkeys ass( that is what menu sayd).

After dinner kids wanted to go with Nicks friends for a sleepover party. lol She happily agreed to that. :)
One of our friends from Ca moved back to Shanghai while we here. SO her husband and her ( susan) took us to city tour at night. OMG again. City lights , life, music- If I ever have to move to asia it has to be Shanghai. I love this city. Around 11 pm we went some outdoor mall( kind of like Fashion Island) . OF COURSE everyboyd in china watches soccer, if you don't you are NOT cool. So at first we sat indoor in some Jazz place and after we moved out to watch the game. IF you wanted to watch the game then MINIMUM amount you had to spent outside sitting area was 100 dollars( pricy ), but again, that mall was built for forrigners, and belive me- that place was 80% white. AND they knew how to do coctails and all the items in menu were spelled right ( I have seen CACTAILS, CUCTAILS, KOKtails etc) lol And I thought I am the only one who does not know how to spell.. lol
So we 4 watched the game, and had few Coctails and snacks and around 1.30 we headed home since game was boring( England and some other guys- of course we left when game was almost over.....).

Oh, I wanted to mention about weather- it was about 30 degrees outside around 12 at night. Yeah, it is hot and humid. Today( july 3'd it is 39 degrees and very sunny).

On July 2nd, we headed out back to Hangzhou since nick had to go back to work( on sunday) He works sometimes until midnight and that is normal here. But he drives me crazy. We eat dinner- he is on phone, we eat lunch- he is on phone- he is about to fall asleep- phone rings- I hate it......

In few days we will fly to his hometown Sichuan..