The big island so far has been much more condusive to me being naked in the sunshine than oahu ever was. Maybe i should have hiked more on oahu and laid out in the koolaus, but still. its just so easy here. open door, lay down in hammock. smile at alea and jonah when they wake up. repeat.
its rather nice.
i wish i had pictures to show all of you from china and from the past few days, but alas and alack i wont be back to them until i get home next week sometime. youll just have to let your imaginations run away with you until then.
i dont think i ever fully explained the unexplainable beauty of Inner Mongolia to all of you, but suffice to say it left me utterly breathless.
We took the train up on Friday evening, an adventure in and of itself. I'm sure we all recall how much j.filth loves trains, and this train was no dissapointment. It was about a 10 or 11 hour train ride from Beijing to Inner Mongolia, and in order to pass time before bed Kalinda and I did flashcards for shots. Fun, and educational! I slept well that night.
Next morning we rolled on into Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia. From there it was straight out to the grasslands...just a note, i would be giving you all the Mandarin names of these places, but as previously mentioned I'm not on my own computer and the one I'm using doesn't have characters on it. Such a shame. Anyway, the grasslands. Sexy, alluring, rolling, grasslands. Home to sexy matou players and horsemen. We slept the night in a yurt after a day spent being shown various facets of traditional mongolian culture. some people went horse riding, while the vegan in me wouldn't allow me to do this and thusly i wandered the grasslands on my own. so lovely. a storm came upon me in the middle of my wanderings, and drenched me down to my bones. it was beautiful. the men were beautiful. they had long hair, and were mongolian. we smiled at each other across stretches of open plain. that is, until i pinned one to the ground and did a victory dance in the first drops of a grassland storm.
yeah, so i wrestled one of the herdsmen. they were doing some kind of demonstration showing traditional monoglian wrestling antics, at the summation of which i somehow ended up insisting on attempting. after much laughing, i was strapped into some kind of leather vest (i shudder to recall it..) and found myself squaring off with a small, wiry, sun kissed mongolian. We went two rounds, the first of which i was taken down in. The second of which i somehow managed to end up on top of my adversery, in the dust, victorious. i've got the pictures to prove it :)
having made a name for myself with the herdsmen, i was approached all night long with shots of the white pungent liquor synonymous with china in general and inner mongolia in particular. yay for getting toasted under the full moon on the mongolian grasslands.
The next day we awoke and feasted on rice porridge and various pickled vegetables. it made my day. The previous night's dinner had been typical Chinese fare (at least for me, the others had mutton), embellished with yak butter and yak milk tea. While it was exciting for everyone else, it held little interest for me- this is why the breakfast of rice porridge and pickled vegetables (a rarity in pastry and rice heavy beijing) made me so happy. then we hopped onto the bus to go explore Hohhot.
This post is becoming lengthy, so i think im going to take a nap and relate my exploits at a later date. love you all.
jess
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