中国

I'm in China! Already I have had quite a few adventures. We left Monday and arrived Wednesday, I never got a Tuesday. Tuesday's gone. ;)
I don't even know where to start. The airport in Hong Kong was beautiful, you could see the ocean on one side and mountains on the other. We flew to Wuhan, had some strange seafood creation for breakfast on the airplane. I thought we were going to be spending a few days in Wuhan before traveling on to YiChang, but when we got there, our Wai Bon was waiting for us with a van so we loaded up five of us in five seats with bags in the floor and drove 4 or 5 hours, I'm not really sure. We stopped for lunch and I had my first attempt at eating with chopsticks, (other than Pei Wei in America). I'm horrible at it. I dropped everything I picked up, but eventually I managed to get enough food in my mouth and it was good food too. You don't order your own individual meal at restaurants, you order a platter and everybody shares off of it. Also, lanes mean nothing here. I don't even know why they bother to paint them on the road. Everybody drives wherever they can fit and even where they can't and that includes the wrong side of the road. Well we finally made it to YiChang, and Jian showed us to our apartments and told us to meet at a little restaurant we had passed in an hour for dinner. So I showered and left, and promptly got lost, but I made it there, and I was still on time too. A word of advice...if you ever get the chance to eat eel, DON'T! It was the worst thing I have ever had the misfortune to put in my mouth. Trying to swallow and pretend like I liked it was not an easy task, that's for sure. Well after dinner, I treked back to my apartment and stuck my key in the door and turned it...and it broke. Now I'm holding a half of a key in my hand, with the other half still stuck in the lock, and it's dark outside, I don't have a cell phone, and I don't know anybody except Zack and Elizabeth. Luckily they happened to be with me because they wanted to see my apartment, so I spent the night with them. They have three bedrooms so it's no big deal. I am REALLY glad I got a shower before I went to dinner. The next morning we had our medical exams at 8:30, and that was another adventure. Then we went and got our bank accounts set up, and went grocery shopping. My favorite part of grocery shopping was the live fish they had for sale in tanks on the wall. It smelled horrible though. I had to buy an umbrella because it has been pouring all day and I was completely soaked. I could not have been more wet. It hasn't stopped raining since I got off the airplane. Oh yeah, and Jian had someone come fix my lock so I finally got back into my apartment yesterday afternoon. I went to an ATM only to find out that it declined my card. I'm not sure if it's a problem with the bank in Oklahoma or the fact that I'm in China, but I need to get that figured out as soon as I can. Zack and Elizabeth came to my rescue again and gave me some of their cash until I get paid, which isn't til the 10th. Yikes! But I ate supper last night for about 16 American cents, so I think I'll be okay. My apartment is really nice, it's got wooden floors, two TVs, a mini oven, a microwave, all kinds of neat stuff. I also get internet for free, so I was super excited about that. I have to plug it in, but that's okay. Zack and Elizabeth have wireless but I'll take what I can get. I still don't have a phone though, and it might be after September 10 until I get one, after I get paid.

Colorado and back

I did one of the stupidest things I've ever done on Tuesday and I got up at 4am and drove 15 hours by myself to Salida, CO to pick Sammie up. Part of the stupidity comes from the fact that I was already sleep-deprived from the week before so driving that long was painful. The other part is that I made the mistake of assuming that the interstates would be faster than country highways. WRONG. So what was supposed to be a 12 hour trip turned into 15 and I was fighting to stay awake and alive by the end of it. Add that with the fact that my windsheild wipers sometimes decide they don't want to work, and you come up with a pretty miserable day. But at the end of it I got to hang out with some of Sammie's Trek buddies, we went to Mama D's and then bowling, where I bowled my best game ever. I even doubled Sammie's points (which wasn't hard to do). Maybe I should always go bowling when I'm sleep-deprived. Then we went back to the barn and watched Top Gun, which surprisingly enough Sammie fell asleep in the middle of but for some reason I, the one who wanted to go to bed hours before, couldn't sleep until 2am Oklahoma time. Then we got up at 5 because Samster and I were gonna bag Mount Massive before we hit the road back for Oklahoma. I only got two days off work so it was a short trip. Well by the time we actually got around to climbing we decided we weren't gonna summit, plus there were clouds around the top since 9am. Must be the hurricane effect or something but I doubt anyone summited that day. We just went for a short little hike instead, which was sort of disappointing but oh well. Then we drove to the Springs to REI some stuff and it was like 3:30 before we actually headed back toward the home turf. I made Sammie drive the entire time. I couldn't keep my eyelids peeled open. I actually drove for 30 minutes while she was on the phone and then I gave up. I'm a loser and I just couldn't do any more than that. Good thing my sister loves to drive because I'm no help whatsoever. So we got back to good ole Norman at 3:30am and then I went to work at 8:30. They say you never recover from the sleep you lose, but I'm sure gonna try.