Help was just around the corner...

Starting from today I WILL never use GEEK SQUAD again. They are dumb ( not all of them of course) and have no Idea what they are talking about.

There was one computer repear shop 0,7 miles from us and they had no problems taking my stuff out of my old laptop. AND it costed me 2 dollars less than Best buy would have costed.
Anyway- here is long promised story---

Wanzhou, My Nicks hometown July 2006. One week with his family.

Nick was born in Sichuan province, Wanzhou city in 1966. His original home is under the Yangzhe river because after dam was built city started moving families layer by layer to higher places and gave them little money to make the move. Now his original home is under the water and above it is beautiful bridge that takes people from one part in Wanzhou to another.
His hometown is mountain city. Big buildings everywhere. If you ever been to Big Bear mountains then you know what I am talking about. Only and HUGE difference is that big bear has little houses but Wanzhou has huge granite buildings everywhere and it is very ,very crowded. In Wanzhou city lives around 1, 50 million people. Estonia does not have that many people . And Estonia is lot bigger . Here you have to walk a lot. Lots of stairs, since city is built on top and on bottom of mountains. Everything here seems to be maid of cement. Lol
People here do walk a lot or take taxis. 14 kilometer ride costs us around 23 yuans , witch is about 3, 2 dollars. Very cheap. That is one reason we did not rent a car. Rental car price would have been around 60 dollars per day- TO MUCH. We always took blue taxi- all taxis are blue here. Mostly Volkswagens- Old ones. And in very bad condition. But road condition is horrible also. And let me mention one more time about how awesomely bad GOOD drivers Chinese are. They constantly drive in opposite direction lane , cars start passing each other whenever they feel like – even if there are cars are driving towards us on other lanes. And Honking- honking, honking. Honking when starting the car, honking when passing other cars, honking when they see other cars, honking when they see pedestrians, honking when they are mad at other cars, honking when they see friends- and HONKING when there is curb to let cars know that crazy taxi driver is about to enter the curb, or parking lot, or parking building. AND most of the cars on the road are taxis. I saw to much blue here.

And spitting is starting to drive me Crazy. I CAN not stand spitting. People( including his family) is spitting ALL the time. Even in the restaurants. They spit on the floor right there in front of me. Lol They make sounds when they eat, sounds like spit is stuck in their throat. EVERYTHING that is not eatable( bones, bottles, napkins etc) gets dropped right under the table. So imagine how tables look underneath after dinner is done. Very gross, but again. IF they like it, whatever.

Waitresses suck big time. Slow, slow, slow . Nobody says thank you ( besides big hotels and more expensive restaurants). No tiping- I guess that is why service people are so bitter all the time. I think I am getting used to life here – finally. Nothing surprises me anymore. Not even 3 am traffic jams. Seems like this city never sleeps. AND food is available 24 hours. There are people who sell food on streets- They have little stove, where they cook everything and then lay it on street corners and they mix noodles and meats etc. Breakfast time is fun. Since we live in the “ suburbs”( well, wanzhou people consider this part suburbs), there are people making dumpling every morning, different kinds of breakfast breads, meats and then walk around and scream- SOY MILK, DUMPLING, FRUIT, DUMPLING, BREAD, NOODLES etc…. and people run and buy food. IT is kind of fun, and food tastes good, but WE think it is very unsanitary. No wonder I have had stomach pain ALL this time while being here. Horrible pains. Couple of times I broke down in tears in restaurants, because I just could not take the pain anymore, and then Nicks family feed me some herbal medications and I was better again. My digestion stopped for 2 weeks because of TOOO spicy food. And food in siczhuan is overly spicy.

No about his family. He has 2 younger brothers and one younger sister. His sister has 9 year old daughter and she is also raising her brothers 15 year old son, since his brother is lazyass and has no idea how to raise his son. His brother is remarried to a “woman” who is “ gold digger” and total mean bitch who hates his husbands 15 year old son. So my dh’s sister does everything to give hi at least some kind of educations. But with 400 dollars a month( average salary), it is not easy. Nicks sister has been awesome this whole time we have been here. She speaks very little English, but she does everything for us. Even our laundry. If I want to do something she just takes stuff away from me and does it herself. She has tons of energy and is always on the go. Kids love her and she loves our kids. She takes them out and give me and Nick some time to spend together, but since our days are always filled with field trips , we really do not do anything together as a couple. There are always TONS of people hanging out with us and taking care of us. Nicks sister is biology teacher and her husband is geography teacher.
Nicks youngest brother got married about a year ago and her wife is about 2 months pregnant. Nicks younger brother looks just like him. He is- I think 5 years younger than nick and is starting to loose his hair . Regina thinks he is funny. And seems like he even has nicks nice personality .

Nicks dad got remarried after his wife died couple of years ago. EVERYbody hater his new wife because- OF COURSE she is a gold digger to and her DREAM was to come to USA and she thought that if she gets married to my dh , WE will help her. She seems nice up front, but I have heard enough stories about her bitchiness and sneaky personality… lol His dad wanted to spend more time with kids, but he is that kind of dude, who has no idea what to do with them . Nicks mom was the one who raised all 4 of them and Him, so all he did was smoke and eat. Lol

AND his family likes to talk. We have had way to much food here within this week. First night here we spent with nicks class mate. HOT POT in Sichuan is huge. People love hot pot ( not Pot luck- huge difference) Hot pot is kind of like shabu shabu. There is huge bowl with spices in the middle of the table, table has cooktop in the middle. Then waiters bring raw food on the table( 10-30 different ones)- meats, vegetables, fungus, fish, insides, outsides, penises, etc. And if you feel like eating fish- you take fish and stick it into boiling water, if you feel like eating vegetables you stick veggies there etc. and you eat and you eat until you drop. AND you drink beer – lots of beer because people want to drink with you and more drunk they get more they want to drink with you. AND they want YOU to drink more than they drink. So they come to me or nick and tell us all the nice things- HOW pretty I am, and how smart nick is, and what a good sence of humor I have, and how well I eat with chopsticks and how MUCH I can drink because it is GOOD to drink a lot etc. lol and then we drink- bottle after bottle after bottle and then we eat, and we drink.
Dinners in most cases last over 4 hours and we always have at least 10 people eating with us. Lots of food.

Second night we had dinner with Nicks family. Of course EVERYBODY wanted to drink with us and I got lots of good compliments ( so did nick, but I got more) AND did I tell you that NOBODY besides his sister speaks in English? Yup. But still I managed to be funniest of them all. Lol Not sure how I did it but they all love me. Oh, I am so fucking good. Honestly. How did I manage to keep my temper so awesome this whole time.

Then we had more hot pot dinners and more beer and street food and beer and “ Chinese Mexican food” , and tea houses, and few lattes and … TONIGHT we had the best food ever. WHOLE LAMB – it was grilled with lots of spices, very spicy, but meat was SOOOOO GOOD. Even Regina, who is lamb hater ate it. I think she was just exited to cut meat of the lamb by herself, so that is why she loved it so much. Gabriel hot new favorite food- He had never had eggplant in his life before. BUT today I managed to make him eat eggplant and he ate, and ate and ate and was sad when he finished everything and there was no more. Lol GOOD BOY.J

Tomorrow( Friday) we are leaving his hometown with 2 night cruise on Yangze river. We really want to see 3 gorges Dam- which is the LARGEST dam and the biggest energy source here in china. It pollutes environment like crazy, but what can Chinese do about it. They need energy. SO they really need this dam. SO leave Chinese alone about this dam.!!!… OK. I am really , really tired. Walking around and seeing all the beautiful places here is exhausting. To many stairs, no elevators, no direct access…lol I love it. I just wish that it was not so hot. It is impossible to do anything here during the daytime. IF we do( and of course it is because of me, because I refuse to sit indoors all day long), All I hear from my DH. BLAH, BLAH, BLAH- IT IS to hot, it is to hot, I hate it, It is to hot, let stay indoors, I do not want to go there, I do not want to eat there, I hate food, I hate drinks, I hate everything. AND All I want to tell him is- SHUT UP YOU high class whore. You were born here, you were raised here- and all you can tell me is- I HATE CHINESE FOOD???? How in the world do I learn about Chinese if even you- Genuine Chinese man do not want to teach me. So shut the fuck up and start talking and stop whining….

…. OH BTW, if you really want to see real buddas, you should not go to temples and watch those statues. China is filled with buddhas, and they are everywhere. Lol Chinese men in general look like BUDDHAS. They have huuuge beer bellies and shaved heads and have these silly smiles with very bad teeth showing ( Asians in general have very , very bad teeth, and lot of the people do not even wash their teeth because it takes time. ( GROSS, I have seen to many people here with huge chunks of food stuck between their brown cigarette stained teeth . ……

My vacation is fun. Yeah, I do complain a lot, but so what. I still manage to find things to make my vacation fun. I just point and tell- I WANT THAT, I WANT TO GO THERE. == And I get it. I feel like an American princess…. ( so what I am not even an American. . I speak English and I am not American. What the heck is wrong with me…….. ( people here think so….)

...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. :)