8

So the update on my brother is that he is opening his eyes, looking around the room, responding to questions, he told my mom 'I love you'. He isn't talking a lot, probably because the breathing tube hurt his throat. I'm sure Kelly has been updating the office...He is sleeping alot and snoring. The eye behind the eyebone that he broke was tested by the doctor and he seems to be able to see through it. I can't wait to see him. I have to say it is truly painful knowing that my whole family was/is with him and I'm stuck so far away. I shudder to think about if I had to try and fly home earlier- departing from the group, the language barrier, trying to get on the next flight home, etc. So, a big thanks to Pete for getting in a 'less awful' accident where it wasn't 'urgent' for me to 'get home'. My grandpa Dick called me last night on my cell phone. I said I had to keep it quick because I was still in China and he was like, OK, Bye! I didn't mean that quick. I am taking donations for my cell phone bill everybody. If anyone wants to lay bets on the total bill, I'm holding a raffle. I talked to Kasey for 24 minutes last night. BREAK STORY FOR UPDATE ON CELL PHONE BILL: ***I SENT THE FOLLOWING EMAIL AS AN UPDATE*** I was fully expecting to receive a cell phone bill in the amount of $839.52 because as we all know, the most expensive phone call in the world is to China. Remember being a kid and your mom saying, "Hang UP! Quit messing with the PHONE! Are you trying to CALL CHINA?!" But, my brother got in his car accident and ended up in the ICU and there were phone calls to my mom, and all of my four sisters about his condition (he's fine now, don't worry). Before we even left on our trip I called Verizon to see what I would be charged and the woman did not know the answer. Very frustrating - but I decided not to worry about it because she also told me that my phone would most likely not work. But, it did. Really well in fact - I had four bars the entire time. And so, while we were there, I emailed a few people from home asking if anybody could tell me how much my phone bill was going to be. I got responses anywhere from $1.29 per minute plus long distance to $4.00 per minute. Nobody could answer the sodding question. I tried looking online at my bill but it had all the charges "except roaming." So, naturally I was extremely worried and have spent the last two weeks freaking out and checking into getting a Home Equity Loan to discuss payment options. Just kidding. ANYWAY...drum roll... The bill was $166. My regular monthly bill is $99. It cost me only $67 to call home. So, I went shoe shopping to celebrate. BACK TO ORIGINAL POST: Oh, and sorry to anyone who is emailing me and not getting responses. I am logging into my work email and only getting some of the emails that are being sent to me. I think it is because if my email is open on my desk at work because the girls need to access it, I can't get emails here at that time, and each time they log out, I can only access emails that have come in after that. I get about 4 emails a day. Sometimes 11. So I can't see old ones, only some of the new ones that come each day. So - I will reply to you once I get home. Right now it is 10:15 AM on Thursday, I have the whole day to myself in Shanghai, and then tomorrow morning is my travelling day. I am excited to come home. I only brought 3 outfits besides my plane ride outfit. So even though I did laundry in Beijing and I had some stuff washed here by the hotel, I just feel a little grungy. Some notes about the tea ceremony. There were 7 of us (the four students from QingDou and Kellie and Rich and me) and we crowded around the table and a little Chinese girl probably about 24 years old had a tray and several jars of stuff in front of her. She had cups in a bowl of water, and got them out by using a tongs. She put them in front of her and washed them out with hot tea, and then showed us each kind of tea she would be using. She then poured hot water over it and tong'ed each person a cup of tea. Kellie and Rich are Mormon, so they don't drink tea - but they were happy to watch the ceremony. And they can drink Herbal tea so they got to participate a little. So anyway the girl showed us how a woman holds the tea cup, and how a man holds the cup. Later Rich kept holding it like a girl on accident and that was funny. Oh, by the way, the girl would speak in Chinese and the students would translate. She said that in China there are more than 1200 kinds of tea. Then she would explain the next tea and the next. In all we tried six teas. The first was Ginseng, and then Jasmine, and then fruit, and I can't remember the others. But one of them, the tea was just this round ball that looked kind of like a round silk worm egg, but was dried grass color. She put it in a wine glass and poured hot water over it. As the hot water softened the ball, it slowly opened opened opened up, and in the wine glass there was a beautiful flower. It was so cool. I got a picture of that. At the very end of the tea ceremony the girl asked which we liked. I liked the fruit one the best. Then there was a little sales pitch and we didn't want to buy anything because it was very expensive. But then the price of the tea ceremony. I saw on the paper as she was explaining, 38. I thought, that's a good price, she's been with us for about an hour, 38 Yuan is about $4.75 US or so. Well, it was 38 Yuan per tea that you tried plus some other fees. So in total it was 288 Yuan. I couldn't believe it. $36 for me, and Kellie and Rich tried 3 teas. So $36 for them total. The cups of tea were not even a shot glass full. Because you were just tasting them. So if you put all the tea I drank into a Starbucks Grande cup it wouldn't fill it. For $36. Here in China you learn to become so cheap because everything is bargained for. The price is always cut in half for something you want to buy right away, so $36 is expensive here. In my opinion. I can't tell you how many things in the market I DIDNT buy because i didn't want to pay that. But oh well, the experience was so so so fun. I am really not mad, just shocked. For a little while we wondered if the students were scamming us, pretending to be friendly to get us to go to the tea place, but in the end we concluded their performance was way way way too good for that. Later along the road, other "students" tried to get us to come and examine their "art" for the "celebration" and within 30 seconds you could see they were selling something. Plus, we got the four students' email addresses, and it was so much friendlier than all that. We just felt a little scammed because of the price.


Last night we ate at PIZZA HUT. It was good. I have to say I am not really a Chinese food person, so the food hasn't really been the highlight of the trip for me. Yesterday was hands down the best day here. I am alone today, so I am going to try and have another great day, but I really need to shower first. Observations on China: In the bathrooms here you have to bring in your own toilet paper. Sometimes if you're lucky there is one toilet paper roll on the outside of all the stalls. But never in the stall itself. In a typical public restroom, there are 2 western toilets, (like we have) and the rest are a flat on the ground urinal looking thing. I call them sitters and squatters. Also, I have seen about five guys with severe comb-overs. I found that interesting. Even here on the other side of the world, bald men are trying their darndest not to look bald. One family, one child. Everyone is allowed only one child. That means, nobody here has a brother or a sister, and nobody has an uncle or an aunt and nobody has a cousin. The internet in this hotel is slower than dial up. Makes me want to kill someone. All the plates in every restaurant are the size of a tea cup saucer. Maybe that's how they stay so skinny? This is where all the junk we buy comes from. People from the north are very blunt. They just say what they mean. People from the south, dance around what they want to say, and never really say it. I want to dig a hole to America. (This one cracks me up, remember being a kid, and wanting to 'dig a hole to China?' So I said, hey lets dig a hole to America. Nobody laughed but me.) I just remembered I left my wallet in my room, how am I going to pay for this internet? Oops. I asked Kasey last night about world news, what's going on out there? She said, Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz broke up, and Cameron blew up at him & Jessica Biel at a party. I love it. Oh, and Kellie and Rich were watching CNN, and they were talking about Taiwan and how great they were doing economically and it was a positive show about Taiwan, and the screen went black for a few minutes and then came back on when the show was over. I should go I guess, I'll write one more time before I leave China forever. Alason, I FINALLY finished Travels with Charley in Search of America. You lent it to me about a year ago. I brought the Heart is a Lonely Hunter - remember I started that one in June when we went Kayaking, but I dont' want to finish it, and I brought The Other Boleyn Girl but I don't want to finish it, so I am going to start The Memory Keepers Daughter. Ideally, I'll finish all these books I started a year ago on the plane ride home. LOVE - Kady Shanghai Nights