Bangkok Portraits

Last night, Ariel, Ross and I were walking back to the hotel when we came across a portrait artist on the street. For a dollar-fifty a pop, we had the three of us drawn.



Today, Ariel and I landed safetly in Tokyo, Chicago and lastly, Miami. Ross is in Bangkok.

coming home

After a month of traveling through various Asian countries, I am ready to visit somewhere familiar. And so, I am coming home!
I will see you all tomorrow, the 5th.
When I'm able to use a computer next, I will post pictures and stories.
See you all soon.
<3

many wendesdays ago picnic

the crew


lix cassie and cam


the kite


dirty park foot


ross playing sports!

八大处 Badachu park

Last weekend we went to Badachu park.
It wasn't as beautiful as other places we have been, but it was extremely worth it because of the slide ride that it had.
After climbing up the huge hill we were rewarded by being able to slide down this immensely long twirling garbage chute of sorts on a little one-person car contraption. I will get to posting some pictures that Ariel took soon. There was no way I could take any pictures, I was concentrated on going as fast as I could without dying. It was the best 40元 I have ever spent!

Some pictures...

Red lanterns which people have scribbled wishes on with markers.



猪八戒！the pig of the eight prohibitions


孙悟空！ The Monkey King!



a silly picture next to a painting of a tree branch

Ross posted about this too!

广州 Guangzhou

The weekend before last I was able to escape Beijing and visit my friend Erin, who lives in Guangzhou. It was extremely exciting to leave the 60 degree dry weather of Beijing for Guangzhou, who's temperature and humidity resemble Miami.



The city is situated deep in the mouth of the Pearl River, way down south, in Guangdong (广东) province. Before I left, I checked the weather and was happy to see the forecast predicted blue skies! I soon found out that blue skies in Guangzhou mean that there might be some blue behind the all-encompassing pollution dome that covers the city. The pollution was severely worse than any other city I have been to in China.
Aside from the gross smog-blanket issue, the city was pretty amazing. The most wonderful thing was the difference in culture and language. Northern China and southern China are very different. The south seems to be more social. The subway cars were full of chattering as opposed to the usual silent subway ride in Beijing. I got to speak to lots of cab drivers using the Mandarin I know and quickly found that it was difficult to understand their Mandarin. They had no trouble understanding me, but I had much trouble discerning their strangely accented Mandarin.

There are a few reasons why their Mandarin is so different from the Beijing accent I am used to hearing. One of the reasons is, of course, the distance between Guangzhou and Beijing, the city which sets the standard accent for Mandarin. Another reason is that the cities which are situated near the Pearl river in Guangdong province also speak Cantonese, and so their Mandarin carries a Cantonese accent. I absolutely love the sound of Cantonese. Every cab ride became a lesson in Cantonese, with the driver as Erin and I's teacher.
I cannot begin to stress how incredibly different this language is from Mandarin. When you speak Mandarin, like every other language I know, you must shift your tongue into different positions to achieve a desired sound. Well, a cab driver I met taught me how to say hello in Cantonese, which is something like lay? hoe? (pronoucing both syllables as if you are asking 2 separate questions). When I tried to mimic him, he corrected me. He told me that I was trying to use my tongue to speak, as I used it in Mandarin. He says to speak Cantonese correctly your tongue should not move at all, it should be completely limp. It will feel strange at first, he told me but assured me that I would quickly get accustomed to it.
广州Guangzhou, as much of a building erecting, counterfeit product producing, cancer-air city as it is, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. The quality of restaurants is comparable to Shanghai, the people are charming and the language is one which I must learn.

Thanks Erin! It goes without saying that you have free stay in Beijing anytime you'd like!



The Filipino, Maria Fernandez lip-syncing to It's Rainin' Men at a drag-queen show we stumbled upon.


Erin and I looking a bit glassy-eyed


An exhibition at Guangdong Art Museum(广东美术馆) of Jacques Henri Lartigue's photographs.


That previously mentioned museum had another exhibition where they had many paintings, each representing a country. Each Chinese artist was given a country to make a painting about. This was Cuba.
USA was a collage of every race smiling with an American flag draped in the background, oh my god.

Skype pictures

Skype is a strange thing. When both parties have their webcams hooked up, the conversation is so much more about looking at each other's videos than actually having a conversation. When I'm Skyping, I find myself showing people neat things that I have lying around my house or newly found youtube videos. Sometimes we have a beer together. When I was back in Miami, my brother Vince, who lives out of town, once attended a family function using Skype. His wife and him would sit down in front of the camera and invite people towards the laptop. My brother said they had a few successful conversations.
Skype has had a huge impact on the health of long-distance relationships. Let's keep Skyping, people!

西游记 Journey to the West

Journey to the West (or The Monkey King) is one of the four classic novels in Chinese literary history. If you ever ask a Chinese person about Chinese literature they will bring up these four classics, Journey to the West being one of them.
The story is about how the Monkey King, the Pig and Friar Sand protect the Monk Tripitaka on his journey to find the Buddhist scriptures.
The book is written like a comic book with no pictures. Each chapter ends with, "Listen to the next installment to hear how he was dealt with the following morning," or "If you don't know what happened to Monkey King's life, then listen to the next installment," which makes reading it a bit awkward, but overall Chinesely pleasant.

In the 80s a TV show was made which plays out the novel, chapter by chapter using amazing special effects and lots of smoke machines. You can turn on Chinese TV at ANYTIME and this show will be on. Every Chinese person living in China today knows and loves this TV series. I just bought the entire show and am also reading the book. Reading the book helps me understand just what, pray tell, is going on during the show. It seems the producers had a low budget to make this highly fantastic novel and so some of the scenes are hard to understand without any previous knowledge of the story.

Here is a clip from the show...
In this clip, a very fancy party is going on in one part of heaven while the devious monkey king is causing ruckus in another part. He's gotten drunk off heavenly jade liquor, downed a bunch of golden pills of refined elixir and stolen a plethora of heavenly treats to take to his monkey friends down on earth. Now, he's trying to escape the floating ladies with lanterns.

ENJOY!