Advice and a Foreign Restaurant!

Okay, first: watch this video.

I get a lot of emails from people asking me for advice, so I made this video, for which there's a sequel in the works. By the way, YouTube really hates me right now, so all the stuff I upload looks like total crap. Watch the first embed- it's HD quality on Youku.

If you have no plans to come to China, then this video's not really for you -- but you can always watch it if you want. If you don't want to, skip to the next bit down below!

By the way, if you want to contact me, you can email me at letchinasleep@gmail.com or send me a message on YouTube or leave a comment. 

Okay, now onto other things.

I went to a real American restaurant today! It's run by this American guy named Josh who's studying aeronautical engineering or something crazy like that.

He's got his own family recipes for the menu, which includes hot dogs, hamburgers, fries, and salad.....I can't remember much else.

There's not much in the way of food, but I got the burger, which was really awesome!

There's a ton of cocktails and drinks you can order, and the main waitress there has devised some way of creating her own version of Dr. Pepper...........WHICH IS AWESOME!!! It tastes just like it --- how does she do it??

Anyway, I went with a couple of friends and one of their husbands, and it was pretty cool. It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

As you can see, it's called "Charlie's Kitchen" (Charlie is Josh's dad), and here's the address: 城关甘南路中段，1881酒吧旁边. Anyway, there it is! If you're a Lanzhou Laowai, you might want to check this out - you can also find it on Weibo, @查理的厨房. 

 A cool thing that they have is this map of the States - if you're from the States, you can sign your name there and draw a line to where you're from.

They also said you can draw a picture or something, but I can't do that, so I didn't.....

East Texas represent!

 One funny thing about the restaurant is the menus -- they're just cheap, black, paper menus that are written on in silver sharpie.

But that's cool! It adds to the charm of the simple little restaurant. It's a great place run by the American guy and this American-born Chinese girl, who are both bilingual, so it's no problem if you're the lone Laowai.

It's nice to be back in a restaurant with that good old home food, you know? Sometimes you feel like a fish out of water in all this Chinese-ness. I don't want to (and can't) eat this every day, but it's definitely something I want to introduce to my friends and students and my internet people.

They have a chili cheese dog with sausage they bring in from the US! And real cheese and all that - pretty cool! Anyway, see you guys later!

"Charlie's Kitchen"'s address is: 城关甘南路中段，1881酒吧旁边. If you're a Lanzhou Laowai, you might want to check this out - you can also find it on Weibo, @查理的厨房. 

The Cave Homes of Gansu Videos!

Hey, guys!

I finally finished putting together my second video about visiting rural Gansu (赵台，in the country) and staying in a cave home with my friend's relatives. It was a rare opportunity, and I'm really happy that I got to experience it. Hopefully, I'll be able to go back soon!

For those of you who don't know, I visited an area in rural Gansu Province with two of my friends to visit some of their relatives. They live in some of the most beautiful (and remote) countryside I have ever seen. I was blown away by the difference in our lives, and I think about it every day. Please watch these videos. There are embeds from both YouTube and Youku.






This was my original video about going there - I'm sure some of you have already seen it, but I thought I'd put it up again anyway so you guys could watch them in order. As always, it's on Youku and YouTube! Thanks for watching! I'll have more to say on the second video! Scroll down!

 


The second of the two videos is the one that deals with the underlying reality and what I was (and am still) thinking about in regards to the experience. I hope it'll give you something to think about! Please watch them and enjoy them - it's not a huge investment of your time.

Feel free to comment or to subscribe to my blog - it's totally free and no sign-up and I would love to hear from you!

Tiger Cave and the Villages

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately - I've been pretty sick and also pretty busy....kind of a bad combination. I've got some bronchitis.....crazy, huh? That's not really a summer sickness....after I got here to Huan Xian, there were a couple of hot sunny days, and then it rained for 3 days, and I guess my body didn't really like it.

I've been on meds, but they haven't really helped, but I went to a different clinic today. The guy who runs it is a friend of Ben's family and knows me, so he made sure I got the right stuff. I took the medicine just once and I can already feel my lungs clearing out. 

So....yeah, I haven't been feeling up to writing much. 

I went to a couple of little, little places in some remote areas. The first place I went was called 虎洞, or Tiger Cave.....that's probably the most badass name in the history of naming towns. The people I stayed with were wonderful and happy hosts. It's a beautiful place - surrounded by mountains with a river running beside the town and its roughly 2,000 people.

As far as I know, no other foreigner has been to that little town. Understandably, my visit caused quite a stir. As I sat in this one lady's one-room house, people (especially kids) would come by, look through the open door, say "Wow, there really IS a foreigner here......" and then leave......hahaha wow. 

Visit one house, leave, visit another house, leave, visit another house, and the cycle continues. It was really exhausting day.

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The next day, I went to the real deal. I went to my friend Benjamin's birthplace - the remote mountain terraces of Gansu. It was a truly amazing place - it is said that the mountains enrich the body and mind and produce genius and well-disciplined people, and it's hard to disagree. The fresh, cool mountain air was so refreshing and the views were nothing short of truly awesome. A tranquil place. Really and truly awesome. 

And yet, as you take in the view, you realize that all of this beauty is the result of lives of hard and long labor in the fields. When you talk about people "working in the fields," this is it. One must be hard-working, disciplined, and committed to the work at hand. No one is lazy here, although it seems like the perfect place to be lazy. The weather is only the slightest bit hot, with a breeze most of the time, and the caves that the families live in are cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

As you take a walk through the wheat fields, the apricot orchards, the potato fields, you can hear the braying of the family donkeys and the bleating of the lambs. One of the donkeys developed a funny attachment to me - he was my buddy haha. 

Since me, Ben, Elena, and Ben's brother were coming, a special treat was offered to us. One of Ben's uncles killed a lamb and cooked it for our dinner - fresh lamb cannot be beat, although they insisted I be present when it was killed. They wanted ME to kill it, but I don't have that kind of constitution. Watching and listening was bad enough. There was also some fish to be eaten. Ben's grandma said it was "a new spring festival" because we were having two kinds of meat at dinner. 

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I'm going to revisit this, but I've GOT to start washing some clothes and go to bed.

Later!

“You are the First Foreigner I Have Ever Met”

"You are the First Foreigner I Have Ever Met" If someone says that to you and it doesn't rock your world, I don't know what will. This past weekend (3/12-13) was an amazing weekend - Rayna took me to her parents house for lunch and her parents cooked us a huge 6 or 7 course meal with some amazing food - oh man...homecooked Chinese food is the best. Her parents did not speak any English, so of course I had to bust out my very limited Chinese, but it worked out very well - her father was very happy that 我会说一点汉语。 We talked about Chinese culture and history, the earthquake in Japan, what I was studying and where I was from, and just other random stuff like that. Where we couldn't communicate, Rayna stepped in as our translator (very often).  It was really humbling to be considered an honored guest of a family who invited me into their despite never having met me before. They treated me so well, I am overwhelmed by some people's kindness here. As much as I know you would like to see pictures, there are just some situations where you don't want to pull out your camera - it seemed impolite.  The next day - Sunday, I visited the West Campus of L.U.T. - 西校区，as they call it here. The campus is massive and you can tell it's a fairly new campus. The copious amounts of dust that have stained the buildings here hasn't quite taken a hold on the West Campus. I went to meet 3 friends, but our numbers eventually swelled to around 10 or 15 at the peak of the day.  Everyone at the West Campus stared at me - apparently there are no foreign teachers at all on the West Campus, so many people have never met or actually seen a foreigner, which is something that still blows my mind. It's so different than America - America has every type of people from every country because it is on top for now and many people want to come to America to live or visit. Because of that, we see people of every race every day - not so here in Gansu, China. Everywhere you look, it is just a sea of Chinese people - sure, different ethnic groups like the Hui, Dai, Yi, and more, but they all come from the basic genetic pool - black hair, the Asian eyes, shorter in stature for the most part, and roughly the same skin tone. Someone like me REALLY sticks out. It is a continual reminder of where I am. The students at the West Campus have been really cool - I got invited to a random person's apartment and they made a massive meal for the whole crowd in the room. After the meal, we all just sat around and chilled for a while and talked and then they showed me the campus. It was a great weekend and I got to meet a bunch of people and see some cool stuff.  (I am sorry I haven't posted much lately - my internet is really, really, really unreliable. It's so hard to get on). I have 3 or 4 more videos made, but I haven't been able to post them - sorry :(