mongolia revisited

I'm on the way to a beautiful tan.

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

She never updates...

I'm not dead, I'm just busy.
I swear!
Last weekend i went to Inner Mongolia.

I:
A. Wrestled a Mongolian herdsman
B. Rode a Camel in the Gobi Desert
C. Rode an ATV and almost killed a group of tourists in the Gobi Desert
D. Went sand surfing in the Gobi Desert
E. Had one of my piercings removed
F. All of the Above

This week I've got four papers due and a huge test tomorrow.

I promise that soon I'll update with pictures and elaborations on the aforementioned activites.

(ps. the answer is F)
(....duh.)

Minidate

Our blog post today comes courtesy of The Dragon Boat Festival.

It was quite the nice treat to wake up friday morning and walk to class only to realize that there was no class to be had. yahtzee!

Since I owe my newly found free time to said festival [it having freed up my friday for study time and opened weekend time for leisure], i suppose i should take a moment to talk about it. What is the dragon boat festival, you wonder? Well, first off, it's today, Sunday June 8th. It's a holiday whose festivites take place mostly in Shanghai where, amongst various other festive things, they race dragon boats. Why? I don't know. I've gotten lots of answers to this question, mostly pertaining to a poet who, a long long time ago, tried to warn the emporer about dangers to the country but, when ignored, threw himself into the river and drowned. Kind of a downer of a holiday, except for the whole no class part. That part rocks.

Whats going on in Beijing besides holidays? Lots more construction. The kind that starts outside my window at about 2 in the morning and continous, uninterrupted, till about 2 in the afternoon. Yay for that.

What else? Well, I'm hungry. I went out thursday night with Mongolian homeboy who apparently has a plan to open a restaurant with lots of vegan options. Whether he is genuinely interested in presenting healthier, kinder, enviornmentally concious food or is just attempting to get into my pants through my 'religion' (as harumi would call it), i don't know. It really could be either. Or both. Or neither, for that matter.

I digress.

Mongolian homeboy is a nice guy, but the majority of our conversations take place in english [with some chinese interspersed]. This is not optimal for the improvement of my Chinese, however, and next time i see him im going to tell him that we have to speak more chinese. Which actually might be today, as he wants me to go and buy his car with him, and eat zongzi, which are sticky rice triangle things wrapped in bamboo leaves and filled with savory meat or sweet fillings. Theyre really, really good, and part of the whole dragon boat festival thing. Not that people dont eat them everyday, which they do. Why theyre special festival food if they are sold everyday in the cafeteria anyway, i'm not really sure, but who cares cause theyre tasty. Back to the Mongol and his friends. I'm a pretty firm believer in the idea that you are who you surround yourself with, you know, the whole 'lie down with dogs' thing. The mongolians i've befriended are all very sweet and very motivated (and talented- we all watched the matou playing video from a few posts ago, right?) so it makes me happy to have found positive friends. In fact, all of China so far has been really good to me, but thats going to take a long time to detail and will be mused upon at a later date.

love you guys!

Badass Mother-watch yo mouth!

this man rocks some serious socks.
his instrument is called a 'ma tou' which means horse's head- the top of it is carved into...you guessed it, the shape of a horses head. take a look.

Follow the link to Liz's video of the mongolian serenade we got over beer and dumplings a few nights ago. the image quality is poor, but the audio is where its at any way. (he really takes off after the second pause.)





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhxPWRjPXC4

<3

ps. a long haired tattoo artist i met a few days ago saw me on the street, smiled and said hello.
oh yeah, hes as good as mine. too bad i have the vocabulary of a second grader. if only my draw lay in suggestive sluttiness and not my razor sharp wit. (those of you who are drawn to my suggestive sluttiness would do well to keep quiet right about now. thank you)