(If I could find a laundromat, I'm sure it would be cheaper. They're just hard to find. And stuff.)
Anyway, these have been quite the last couple of days. I'm so tired! Dad's asleep on his bed. I'm glad we have the rest of the night to just chill. It's been go go go the last 72 hours. Insane.
Yesterday was the village. Oh wow. Let's just say it was crazy. We traveled for forever until we were sufficiently far away enough from civilization that we forgot that ice water, electric fans, and sanitizing wipes even existed.. We first got off the highway and missed the turn to the actual village.. it looked like a wide, dirt-covered sidewalk. No lie. I can't believe our bus/van fit through it. Upon arrival, we met up with everyone. The whole village came pouring out of their respective living areas and came to see us.
It was so. so. so. hot. [and humid.]
I thought i was going to melt.
Plus, electricity, air conditioning, and running water were non-existent there. Oh boy.
We went around to various places, praying at the ancestors' altar type thing, and then at the village alter thing, and then at the first gravesite, and then at the newest cemetery... etc. Oh man. Two hours of walking around in the dirt carrying around a gigantic suckling pig on a wooden tray in humid 90 degree weather is not my idea of fun. However, it was educational. And cool[ish]. After a while, though, I got tired of the bowing and the incense lighting and the firecrackers... repeat. and repeat. and repeat again. By the last place, I was dragging my feet, [unsuccessfully] trying to run away. Actually, half the places they forgot about me and didn't have me pay tribute.. but by the end of it, I was trying to get out of doing it. I had to keep telling myself "this is a cool thing. you're going to regret this if you don't pay attention! PAY ATTENTION!" but it was so hard. The heat and the repetitive-ness just got to a bunch of us. The babies were having fits. Danny less than Kaya, seeing as he's used to that more humid climate, but it was still uncomfortable. Finally after mindless hours of visiting graves and altars and other representative places, we sat down in this grove of trees that reminded my dad of something (hehe) but it was still quite bright and hot even though we were partly in the trees. They then dumped the pig tray on the ground, pulled out a cleaver, and chopped it into pieces. Left its head and rump. Then they tried to make me eat it. After smiling and nodding and taking the rib, I inspected it as I inched my way to the back of the crowd, and when no one was looking, I threw it over my shoulder into the nearest bush. However, I soon realized that if I was holding something in my hand, I could pretend to be full when someone offered me food. They didn't seem to believe me if I didn't, so I'd just pick stuff off and throw it to the dogs and then when people came by, I was usually ok. One of dad's cousins came by with a bamboo skewer of fried-in-something-greasy crackly pig skin. Dad smiled, nodded, lifted the skewer as if to toast the cousin, and then paused... when cousin kept smiling and nodding and gesturing his hands, Dad weakly bit the corner of the piece off, and then smiled and nodded again. Cousin looked excited.. and then promptly noticed that I didn't have any of this "treat." He scampered off in pursuit of a treasure for me to eat as dad stared blankly at the skewer of crap in his hand. When cousin came back, he wouldn't fall for my "i'm full!" act, and shoved the skewer at me. I took it, bit it, smiled the biggest, most fake smile of my life, and crunched the corner piece in my mouth. Cousin was still watching. Dad finally took the whole dang 1-2 sq inch piece and stuck the whole thing in his mouth while he chewed it with this interested then pleased face. Cousin smiled and jumped around and ran off finally as someone else called him over. Promptly, Dad turned around and spit the whole thing in the bush, and then hastily turned around and smiled as he picked his teeth with the skewer. I was actually surprised that it was still in his mouth to spit out.. it looked to me as if he ate the whole dang piece and enjoyed it.. which surprised me in the first place. That was lunch. I thought maybe it was over, but then I heard we had dad's MOM's village to go to then. Good grief!!! I thought I was going to faint. They picked up the tray with the head and rump still on it, threw all of the trash on the ground, and then we traipsed back to the path on the other side of the grove to a minivan. This time, they stuck the pig in the back of the van, and then the rest of us followed a couple of the cousins back to the village. We loaded up, took lots of pics, and then went to the other village. (The Hong village was interesting.. the whole thing was so overwhelming I'll just have to get everyone together and you can all ask me questions at the same time.. I don't know what to write.)
So yes, we got to the other village. This time, we only went to like 3 of the altars in the houses, no hiking around the foothills of china to various mounds of dirt/cemeteries and those other various places and so the ceremony was somewhat faster (only took like an hour this time). Took more pictures, talked to the relatives, talked some more, drank some nasty bottled water... etc.
I'm actually worried because when i went into the last house, we were all dying from the heat, and one of the wives handed me a glass of water. I looked in it and didn't see any particles floating around and noticed she had a couple of glasses of water sitting on the kitchen stove/counter (they have just this little counter with a hole for a wok to sit on and one burner in another hole) and there was a kettle sitting on it. I sniffed the water, saw other people drinking it, and so i took a sip or two. However, upon arriving in the main room, I saw they had a pump going and people around it. I really hope that it wasn't well water that I drank.. but the odds are against me. If I die, that's why. Hope you all come to the funeral. It should be lovely.
Aah, all of those cemeteries are wearing off on me!
Oh, and about the pollution.. it is terrible. People just throw their trash on the ground all over the place. I couldn't even do it.. it was like a moral no-no that's been engrained in me since girl scouts back in the day. "Don't litter!" Yet here was a whole village of people finishing their cartons of tea and then they'd just chuck them over their shoulder like it was a piece of grass or something.. like a penny in a wishing well (only not so excitedly. More of a lazy toss). Watch the footage I took. I was flabbergasted. Us American Hongs took a box and tried to make a garbage can type receptacle but no one cared... it was interesting. No wonder the rivers are brown and full of garbage, the skies smoggy and the sun hidden from view. The people don't know not to litter! (Beijing is getting ready for the olympics hehehe so it's been interesting to compare Guangzhou and Beijing. Our tour guide said the chinese govt made every single industrial factory move out of Beijing to another place within the year. It has to look pretty for the world. Too bad they don't know the real side of things.) Anyway, we did the village stuff, came home to another hotel, moved in, showered, used the really nice terry cloth bathrobes and gigantic soft bath towels while we stepped into our new (also complementary) clean slippers--maybe that was just me--and then went to sleep. Wake up call was at 4:45 AM. We ate our breakfast from the hotel in a box on the way to the airport, got Matt/Carrie/Danny and Tim/Debbie checked in at the international terminal, checked in ourselves at the domestic terminal, said good bye to our awesome tour guide (he was so cool! Name of Daniel. Really meek, humble guy. Very knowledgeable. Wife teaches at a university. He was so full of knowledge.. and his English? Impeccable. He had a Chinese accent and yet his pronounciation was amazing. Better than many people I know. [Snake River]
Just kidding. Really though he had some amazing language skills.
A lot of people have these biblical English names. Which reminds me! Hahahahaha
My newest grandma, Susan, has a son in China still: Larry. Larry has a gf named Yuki. She was asking us at dinner the other night if we could count how many people we knew named "Dear". We all just kinda blinked at her. She went on to say that she had a teacher in school who told everyone that "Dear" is a very very very popular name in the U.S. We all started busting up laughing and told her that none of us knew a single girl named that and she got a perplexed look on her face. Apparently, the teacher went so far as to name one of the girls "Dear". Yuki told us she didn't think that was a popular name.. but she wasn't sure. We responded by telling her to tell her classmate that she needed to get a new English name because hers... well... yeah she could use a new name.
That made me laugh for quite a while. Poor girl. How would you like to have your nametag say
Hello, my name is
DEAR LEE
on it? Or something. Ah, those crazy Asians.
Ok I'm going to summarize the rest of the things I was going to say.. I'm sick of typing. Dad's been asleep this whole hour that I've been online, checking mail and whatnot. (I just realized that I forgot to request work off for Morp before I left. Crap!! Anyone know pbg's email?)
Summary: Asian people love Kaya. Watch the footage when I get home. It's ridiculous.
We went to the Temple of Heaven today. Lot of people. Apparently, it's one of the three major holidays of China right now. Weeklong. And we're stuck in the middle of it, totally unplanned. Just means there are Chinese tourists EVERYWHERE now.
Dad and Uncle Jerry are going to see if they can switch their flight to mine on the way back because it gets home earlier than their current one. (I'm good with that because otherwise I get to fly back from Beijing to Idaho Falls by myself. Me and my lonesome for 18 hours. Oh boy.)
I miss everyone like crazy and want to go home to see them (some more than others. lol. I miss chad!) And also half of me never wants to leave this place! (Specifically HK. I fell in love with Hong Kong. Can I move there someday....?)
Ok. Time to find some pics. Tomorrow is the great wall and summer palace. Friday is tian ah mien square (which i learned at the village that one of my cousins died in!) and like the forbidden city and stuff.
It's only when I see things like this that I'm reminded I really am in China. It still is kinda surreal. This was at the airport in Guangzhou.
Daniel!! I feel bad. He was with us all two days instead of being with his wife when she wasn't at school because of the holiday. He was so smart. I'm going to try to send him an Idaho T-Shirt. A bunch of the people he's taken around have sent him shirts from the US (case in point, this Hard Rock Cafe shirt) but we asked if he had an Idaho one and he said no. That's next on the agenda! Too bad we were with him for the shortest amount of time. Hmm.
This one's for you, Katie. Baby Danny.
So many people! And this is on the street in a mall area! Lance said if this many people were walking in one direction in Idaho, either 1) you'd run out of people in about 10 minutes, or 2) you'd go with them because the only thing that would cause that many people to head in the same direction would be like a volcanic eruption. or the snake river exploding. or something like that.
Crazy people at one store. I'm in the middle of that crowd. They had people with megaphones on stools outside a lot of the stores blasting their Chinese at the top of their lungs. It was nuts!
Here was a random little side shop on an alleyway. It was really funny to read the shirts because some of the western themed wannabes had sentences on them like many of the ones you see on the street.. but these sentences don't make sense, and the words themselves have misplaced letters in the middle, on the ends, and even at the beginnings of them. Many times, they'd just put words on there (i am prone to believing) merely because they like the way they look. I thought this concept was so funny that I bought a shirt with a random girl and an umbrella on the front and then a big "ASBESTOS" emblazoned on the back. You'll have to see it sometime.
I'm having struggles getting the other memory card to load so I'll just post more pics from Temple of Heaven later. So many.. they just kept going and going...
so yes. later. now is time to check out the hotel since dad is still sleeping.
