The Longest (read: Best) Winter Break

Our Winter Holiday lasts from January 8th to March 8th.   That is a long time for holiday.  Some students are happy to go home and see their families (though most admit that two months with just their families might be a bit much) and some students are trying to find jobs so that they can stay in Loudi.  Kirby and I on the other hand are finishing packing for our trek around China.  We're starting out in Hong Kong and then we're gradually making a misshapen circle all the way around China.  We're going Loudi -> Hong Kong -> Guangzhou -> Guilin -> Yangshuo -> Loudi (so my parents can see it) -> Fenghuang -> Dehang -> Hengyang -> Harbin -> Beijing -> Lhasa, Tibet -> Chengdu -> and then home to Loudi.  Basically we're going southeast to east to south to far north to far west and then back to south.  This means the blog will be pretty barren while I'm gone, though long stretches of no updates are pretty common on this blog.  But it also means there are going to be a thousand amazing pictures when I get back.  

Just to get everyone in the mood for this trip, I'm gonna leave you with a little anecdote my friend sent to me.  It's a positive message about travel and hopes for the future...
      So I jump ship in Hong Kong and I make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice...

Apartment Fun

      Finally my apartment has water again!  I haven’t taken a full-fledged shower in days and I certainly haven’t washed any of my clothes in probably the last two weeks.  A couple of days before Christmas the toilet in my bathroom began to have problems so I deemed it “out of order.”  A few days later, Emily was taking a shower and leaned on the pipe accidentally cracking it.  Now it’s no toilet and no shower. Since the pipe was cracked and was spraying water everywhere, I had to shut the water off in my bathroom.  What I didn’t know is that shutting off that pipe also stops any water from getting to the rest of my apartment.  Kirby figured that little tidbit out only after putting her dirty clothes in the washing machine (which is oddly located on the balcony outside my apartment) and pouring soap all over them.  This means walking six stories up and six stories back down every time I want to use the bathroom.   It also means that when I do want to wash up a little in my apartment, I have to shove my head underneath a loose hose hanging off my bathroom wall, turn on the valve, and release freezing cold water to wash out all the soap and shampoo.  It’s a rough process. 

     So why in the world has it been broken so long?  It’s not for lack of attention to the problem (though it does seem to be lack of effort to actually fix it).  At least once a day I will either get a call saying the maintenance man is coming to my apartment or he will just randomly show up…usually with one or two other guys in tow.  One of these guys was a specialist there to deal solely with the shower problem.  He came three times before finally realizing that the brand wasn’t the kind he usually worked on and so refused to come back.  One man was there to fix the toilet.  He worked for about 30 minutes and then walked out the door telling me that it was now fixed.  After days of this routine, people coming in and out of my apartment and me running home from meals and class to try to meet them, I finally came to today.  Today, the college maintenance man came alone since everyone else had either given up or refused to come anymore.  He worked, he drilled, he tested, he smoked in my bathroom (jerk), and finally he got the shower working.  Looking satisfied, he threw his cigarette into the toilet and pressed the flush button to send it on its way.  The water filled back up the brim of the seat.  Still broken (thanks for the help toilet-oriented maintenance guy from before).  But now at least I have a working shower and water running in my apartment.  It’s still an arduous six stories up and six stories down for bathroom breaks but I’m just about used to it by now. 

Plans for the Winter Holiday

Why do we need new coats you say?  Maybe we just wanted to treat ourselves to something nice.  We work hard, we deserve it…back off!  Just kidding, we need new coats because we have a long, cold trip planned for February.  And we have an equally long but not so cold trip planned for January.  Our college gets out for Winter Holiday on January 8^th, usually this holiday is about 40 days long but this time it’s closer to 60 days long.  We’re planning on traveling over to Hong Kong on Jan. 8^th for a few days before heading back into mainland China and to Guangzhou, Guilin, and Yangshuo.  Then I’m taking Mom and Dad on a tour of Loudi, the place I currently call home.  After that, Mom and Dad will head north to Beijing and I will head south to Dehang and Fenghuang.  Then Kirby and I will meet up with Emily, who will be freshly returned from America, and begin our trip north too.  Our first stop is Harbin, so called “Icy City” since it is the coldest city in China with an average annual temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  It’s a perfect location for the Ice Festival which is when the city basically builds another city made entirely of ice.  Ice buildings and ice slides litter the landscape.  But it’s cold…really cold…freezing cold.  So that’s why we bought new coats.  After a few days in Harbin, we take the train (we always take trains, I haven’t been on a flight in China yet) over to Beijing for the Chinese New Year.  Chinese people like to repeat a quote by Chairman Mao in which he said “If one has not been to the Great Wall, then you are not a real man.”  Erik flies into Beijing on the night of the 12^th, so we four will become “real men” on a rugged, unrenovated section of the Wall called Simatai.  After squeezing all the sights and fun out of Beijing, we’ll take a 45 hour train into Lhasa, Tibet.  We’ve got a 4 day tour booked there.  The only way travelers can get in is to join a tour.  In fact, they only just recently opened up the border to travelers at all, it was previously completely blocked off.  We’d like to go to Everest base camp but we don’t have the time or money.  The closest we get to that peak is Nam-tso Lake, the highest salt water lake in the world standing at a little over 4700 meters above sea level.  When we leave Tibet, we’ll go back to China and into Chengdu.  From there, we plan on visiting LeShan Mountain and seeing the massive Buddha that sits on the river shore there.  Its toe is taller than the average man and it took 90 years to build. 

                Just to reiterate the need for the coat…Harbin will be about 10-12 degrees, Beijing will be around 25 degrees, and Tibet will be about 11 degrees.  We’ll be gone for two months.  It’s a long, cold trip.  We’re all very excited.  Extremely excited actually.  I’d like to leave to tomorrow morning if I could. 

Christmas and New Year's

   The thing about this blog is that you’re really not getting every story.  I wish you were because there are a lot of really good small ones but I can only remember the more major events since I don’t write regularly.  If it’s any consolation, I’m writing more regularly in a journal I’ve got going but that doesn’t help you much.  Maybe when I get back I can fill you in on the little things.  I say that because I’m having a little trouble remembering what all happened during December.  There was this…and that other thing…and that thing or two in Hengyang…plus that place that we went to with that person that time…lots of stuff really. 

                Most of December passed with us doing work.  My schedule for the last 4 or 5 weeks has been 25-30 hours of classes every week.  Not a ton but enough to take up a significant portion of my time.  It’s good though since my new classes were all English majors.  Their English is miles above the students I had prior to them so it made my classes a lot more fun.  We work out of the textbook sometimes (but it’s boring).  We do classroom activities the rest of the time.  Anything from movies to discussions to playing tag outside (I have videos).  I’ve made a lot of little student buddies from these last few weeks.  Last week was finals week.  My final was easy, really easy I think.  All they had to do was write a 1-3 minute speech and present it to the class.  Some were great, others not so much.  It’s surprising how much stage fright Chinese students have.  It’s really evident how much emphasis is placed on rote memorization rather than creativity.  If you walk outside of the rules a little bit, they freak out.

                I’ll try to do this in mostly chronological order.  On December 23^rd, our friend May from Hengyang had her wedding ceremony.  For her wedding, we all met in a large hotel reception area.  The decorations were nice and the people were happy, but the ceremony itself was nothing too religious.  It seemed more like a collection of people speaking about how happy they were for the couple and then the couple themselves speaking about how happy they were to see everyone.  A couple of kisses later it was all over.  But the customs surrounding it were pretty cool.  As soon as we walked in, cigarettes were shoved into our hands.  They love cigarettes over here!  I’m not kidding…love them.  The entire wedding party continuously handed them out to us in celebration.  When the bride and groom came around visiting the tables, every guest received at least two cigarettes from a man following them who was carrying a tray full of cigarettes.  In the center of our table was a large bowl.  When we sat down it was filled with candy and boxes of cigarettes (apparently expensive ones).  I left that wedding with 18 cigarettes.  The meal was the standard multiple courses with all of the dishes brought out and placed on the lazy Susan for everyone to pass around.  I don’t know a whole lot about Chinese weddings, but the meal seemed to be a very nice one.  The MC (because that’s really what it was, no priest or anything) was the hotel manager I’m pretty sure.  There were some elements about the wedding that almost made it seem like a game show.  Bright lights, lots of people taking the microphones, and loud noises all the time.  It was fast too.  Two hours after we arrived it was all over.    

                Christmas came along soon after that.  Emily came from Hengyang to spend the holiday with us.  Kirby’s mom sent her “The Christmas Story” and we watched “Home Alone” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” on the computer.  It really sets the mood, especially since we didn’t have a tree.  The Wal-Mart here has a few Christmas decorations but we decided against buying much since we’re planning a trip for the Winter Holiday.  This time Kirby’s mom was the one who mailed over the holiday food.  But we didn’t buy the chicken for this meal.  Just stuffing, potatoes, and mac n’ cheese.  It was all delicious, except that for 3 days I was terribly sick.  I had to lie in bed during the entire 27^th…just awful.  On top of that, my bathroom pipes burst.  And the heater in my bedroom went out.  So every time any of us needed the restroom or a shower, we had to climb six stories (which meant that I got to make that trip weak and nauseated…woo hoo!).  The heater’s been fixed since then but my bathroom is still broken and my apartment has no water.  The maintenance men keep coming but there’s always one little detail that they miss and have to return the next day.  At least the college is paying for it and not me.  I lied in bed hurting for a few days until I made a partial recovery on the 29^th and resumed my classes to administer the finals.  However, on the last day of finals I somehow lost my blue folder that contained grade sheets and all of the finals for one of my classes, so that’s fun.  I’m working it out but that’s just annoying. 

                I skipped over this a bit but on December 24^th, we attended (and performed in) our school’s Christmas pageant.  The students had worked months on preparing dances and skits complete with costumes and music.  They were great dances too.  They seemed to come from all over China and the neighboring countries…the costumes alone crushed our pathetic rendition of Jingle Bell Hop that Kirby and I sang.  Twenty-one groups performed in front of us, all of them impressive.  Plus, some of the groups were our students so that made it even better.  I’ll post a link to the Christmas pictures at the top.  It’s worth mentioning the dinner that we went to right before the pageant.  A couple of hours before we had to be at the school, our Dean invited us to a dinner at a semi-nice restaurant.  We all crowded into a private room (they always use private rooms here) and took a seat.  The President of the school and some of the other top officials had decided to join us, and I was sitting to his left.  Now for some reason the officials of the school are obsessed with knowing how much Kirby and I can drink.  That would be somewhat fine in a regular situation but the Chinese are not good drinkers.  Their technique is all wrong.  Every drink is a toast and a full glass…of something like red wine or white liquor, not just beer like regular people.  So after a full meal and several alcohol-related challenges, we impressed the leaders enough for them to relent and we soon left for the pageant.  Still though, the President continued to ask me if I were feeling alright from the drinking.  To which he gave a slightly disappointed nod when I reassured him that I’m just fine.  Seriously, they cannot drink over here.  But you do have to respect the fact that they persist.  They complain that their “head is swimming” after two drinks (by which I mean Dixie cup-sized glasses) but they keep right on chugging along. 

                New Year’s Eve came quickly after.  The “Eve” part really isn’t that important to the Chinese.  They prefer to celebrate on January 1^st rather than the night of December 31^st.  For New Year’s Eve we went out to KTV (karaoke) with our American friend Dan and his students.  Dan is a teacher at the other college in Loudi.  After singing and dancing in an awkwardly intimate setting for a while, we made our way down the street back to the infamous Night Impressions and Vogue Club.  The place had a sizable crowd so I bought us a round and we took a table to settle in and get ready for the countdown (it was about 11:20pm at this point).  We drank, we laughed, and suddenly the DJ started the countdown from 10 (or “shi” in mandarin, the whole thing was obviously in mandarin).  No one passed out Champagne, which I can forgive.  But literally three minutes after yelling out “ONE!!!” and confetti bursting from the ceiling, the bar was empty.  I am not kidding…12:03am the place was empty.  I have photos.  Everyone just got up and left.  What were they celebrating?  “Alright we made it into 2010, let’s get out of here and get into bed.”  It was a really weird sight to see the mass exodus of previously partying people.  So we did as the Romans did and left too.  We met back up with Dan’s students at a small restaurant down the street.  Starving, we devoured 6 bowls of soup and about 80 dumplings between the 7 of us who were there.  The cops came in and laughed and played with us for a while.  Police seems like a very relaxed profession over here.  We soon left and went home…honestly, a little disappointed.

                Today we did a little bit more traditional celebrating though by making dumplings with our friend Helen.  The Chinese make dumplings for New Year for good fortune and luck.  We got there just in time to help roll the outer coverings flat with small rolling pins (which I’m terrible at) and to fill those coverings with the pork mixture they had made and fold them up (which I’m much better at).  The whole family was there.  Helen, her husband, her daughter Francesca, Helen’s best friend and her husband, their son, Helen’s parents, and Helen’s husband’s grandmother.  It was a big gathering, really fun too.  Right in the middle of it though I had to run, literally run, home because the maintenance man had finally come to fix the water in my apartment.  False alarm though.  He had brought the wrong part.  I returned back only to find that everyone had just finished the meal.  Not to be deterred, I resolutely ate the leftover dumplings and drank the homemade wine while playing guns with the two younger kids in the living room.  Afterwards, the three of us (Helen, Kirby, and me) went out shopping for a purse and some coats. 

Catching up November

                   It’s late night now, 12:23am.  Not so late I guess, but late enough that the VPN I have to use in order to connect to my blog is up and running smoothly.  You have to wait until the rest of China is sleeping if you want the internet to work the way the internet should.  I’m gonna skip the part where I talk about how long it’s been since I’ve posted anything.  By now I would assume you’re used to it.  It’s been a fairly busy couple of months though so maybe you could forgive me this time. 

                When we left off last time, it was the beginning of November, we were well into autumn, and I was trying to figure out our Thanksgiving plans.  Well, autumn here is a weird season.  The weather gets colder and people start to wear their coats and sweaters.  Although, it seems like the Chinese almost think their coats are a part of their clothing.  No matter how hot it gets in a room, they refuse to take their coats off.  Especially the girls.  And they love to fret over how we’re either “not wearing enough clothes” or else wearing too thick of a jacket when all along the boys are wearing thin track jackets and the girls are wearing hats and mittens complete with multicolored, plug-in hand warmers in the shapes of small teddy bears; both genders have on layers of thick, woolen long johns.  Those are the fashionable types.  Some people just give up and walk around in obvious (at least to me it’s obvious) pajamas.  Full-on pajama outfits; the kind that is like you’re wearing a suit made out of a quilt.  Who needs dignity when you’ve got comfort?  Also, never put your coat on the classroom floor.  It’s apparently far too dirty there…no place for a durable jacket to be lightly laid down for a short period of time.  My students freak out if you sit on the ground or lay anything on it.  I rolled on my classroom floor once just to spite them.  They were all greatly spited.  The Chinese have a very odd perception of what is and what isn’t “dirty.”  However, they also have some pretty awesome ideas on the cold.  From time to time you’ll see a table that looks like it has a blanket as a tablecloth.  Most of the time these tables hide a small bucket of burning coals underneath.  People scoot up to the table, cover with the blankets, and warm by the fire.  The coals are cylindrical and short with holes bored in the center.  I see them everywhere from food stalls on the street to a huge stockpile of them underneath the stairs in my apartment (which seems a bit unsafe).  It’s apparently a common heating method.  The cold really didn’t come about until winter though.  The weird thing about autumn is that the trees in Hunan don’t change color.  They don’t even lose their leaves.  They stay permanently green.  It’s a strange feeling to not see the colors change and the plants around you die out for the season.  It’s the same scenery with different weather. 

                Thanksgiving was actually better than expected.  We received a package in the mail stuffed with mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and, well you know, stuffing.  We toyed with the idea of butchering a chicken, then we moved onto a duck, before we finally decided on just buying small rotisserie chickens.  So that was our Thanksgiving dinner.  Instant food and small chickens as we sat in our living room/dining room/front door/sitting room/hallway.  It was good though.  Delicious really.  Sometimes we get a little sick of Chinese food.  I want some heavy Western food.  And don’t be fooled, the Western food over here is as far off from actual Western food as the Chinese food in America is from real Chinese food.  We ordered pizza from a so-called “Western Restaurant” once and it came to us lacking both tomato sauce and real crust.  Don’t lie to me…this isn’t pizza.  Actually, we didn’t even get to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday because I had to teach 8 hours that day.  We had to wait until Saturday.  We still had leftovers for a couple of days in true Thanksgiving fashion though.  That pretty much caps November so I’m going to start a new post and start into December.

Now into November

So that last entry brought us up to about October 10^th.  Not a ton happened during the rest of October.  It was mostly just work and making new friends.  We’ve really become comfortable here in Loudi though.  We have our favorite restaurants now.  We just tell them the general category of food that we want and they bring us a dish.  It’s working out pretty well.  And we have our favorite bars.  Since that nightlife in Loudi post, we’ve actually found a much more relaxed place named Free Bar.  The owner and everyone else loves us there so we can’t help but go.  We’ve learned some Chinese drinking games and taught some American ones already so we’re doing our part to contribute to the poor Chinese drinking culture.  The Chinese are sad drinkers.  Kirby and Emily are phenoms to these people.  Yes, it’s unbelievable that mere girls can drink a whopping 6 ounces of beer in one night.  We’re basically superheroes to them…it’s good. 

Halloween came and went.  We didn’t do much to celebrate besides show the college classes the Thriller music video and hand out ridiculous amounts of candy to our primary school classes. 

That basically brings us up to November.  Emily’s birthday was this past weekend so she came out to Loudi to celebrate.  We took her to the circus…a Chinese circus.  Of course the circus followed the long tradition of zero safety measures here in China; which is risky since the circus still consisted of tigers and other dangerous animals.  We’ve got a great photo.  We also took Emily to Free Bar where the employees instantly loved her.  So much so in fact that they bought her a hideous hat as a gift…they tried though.  Plus, they made her a birthday cake out of watermelon, apples, and tomatoes.  They love to eat fruit when they drink over here.  Emily just went home yesterday; we went with her to Hengyang to seek out American style pizza.  We found a restaurant that came pretty close (they had everything but tomato sauce on it), so we settled. 


Now it’s November, it’s about 70 degrees here today but it’s supposed to snow on Friday.  The weather here is all over the board.  We’re gearing up for Thanksgiving in China (we’re going to do what we can).  That’s it, guys.  I’ll try to get some more photos up soon. 

The Golden Week Holiday

Has it really been since September 22^nd that I’ve written anything here?  That’s no good.  At least I added the pictures of Golden Week so you could check those out.  So let’s do a quick run-down of what happened in October and we’ll try to catch everyone up to current.

October went very quickly.  October 1^st kicked off National Day and marked Day One of our Golden Week vacation.  It was a rocky start because Kirby and I changed our plans about ten times.  We constantly had to make allowances for not knowing exactly how much time we had off (thank you University faculty) and not being able to book train tickets (thank you poorly put together Chinese rail system).  But eventually we did manage to put ourselves onto a 20 hour train bound for Xi’an, the former capital of China.  When I say “former capital,” I mean the real deal ancient China.  In fact, Xi’an is the only Chinese city with a fully intact city wall surrounding its center.  So on our first day there we biked around the wall to take in the city.  On bike, the whole trip took a little over an hour and a half.  The wall was built with rough brick but it looked like it could easily weather another thousand years if it needed to.  How did the wall survive so long you ask?  You probably didn’t ask, but I’m going to tell you because I asked.  Xi’an has never been attacked by an invading force.  Lucky. 

So that’s what we did on the first day.  On the first night, Kirby and I put together a motley crew of travelers and backpackers and we took off for dinner and the bar.  It turns out that Kirby and I know more Chinese now than we thought as we ended up ordering the dinner for the table…which is a pretty impressive trick among basically strangers.  Then we asked the hostel’s reception for advice on nearby bars.  The best bar in Xi’an was located two blocks from the hostel.  Even with the unimpressive name of “Club 1+1,” it was one of the most impressive clubs I’ve been to.  Complete with lush sofas, choreographed shows, live statues, and a swimming pool (that’s right), Club 1+1 lived up to its reputation.  After a long time of soaking up local color, the group decided to head home.  Luckily, we were all sharing the same home that night.  On the way back, a few people decided 3am is a good time for food (which, to be honest, it is).  College drunk food means Taco Bell or pizza to me, but evidently Xi’an has a different idea.  Everything was closed except for food stalls on the streets (during the day time these stalls crowd the streets and frequently take up full roads).  Tonight, there were just the two that we passed.  Just the two greatest food stalls ever.  One offered up delicious fried rice, complete with a huge leg of chicken.  The other offered perfectly stir-fried vegetables with your choice of sauce (I went with the peanut Thai sauce, I have no regrets).  The only sad part is that these stalls seem to only appear past midnight.  Look for them during the daylight hours and you’ll find nothing there…no traces.

That’s ok though, because the next day we went to the Muslim Quarter (read: greatest gauntlet of street food ever).  Given that I’m not entirely sure about the names of the foods and the fact that you wouldn’t know what I was talking about anyway, let’s just say that the buffet of kabobs, flour cakes, boiled/stir-fried/flame-kissed vegetables, and wide array of mystery meats mixed together to create a tiny pocket of ecstasy in central Xi’an.  To make it even better, the main tourist shopping alleys are located in the Muslim Quarter.  When I say shopping alleys, I don’t mean the overpriced Rolex galleries or Louis Vuitton stores (they’re there too).  I mean the shady, “where did you possibly get this stuff?” type of markets.  It gave us a good chance to practice our Chinese bargaining skills and the ever-sharp (and previously mentioned) shopkeeper deathblow technique.  We bought a few gifts along the way but nothing too big; it’s still early in our trip.  If we buy souvenirs now then we’ll have to hoard them for 8 more months until the long road home. 

On the next day, we were forced to leave our hostel and move to another part of town near the city gates.  No big deal; it’s Golden Week and the place is crowded.  The second hostel is much more cultural and had a nice, traditional look about it but the atmosphere didn’t allow you to meet too many other backpackers.  Still, the Xiangzimen Hostel was worth seeing.  We then traveled to another hostel the day after that; one much farther outside the city.  It was located near Da Yan Ta…or Big Wild Goose Pagoda.  The Pagoda is surrounded by a huge park which includes the largest music fountain show in Asia, as well as the second greatest gauntlet of street food ever.  At this new hostel, which had changed names causing us to walk an extra 20 minutes in a circle, we discovered a whole new set of friends including two Irish girls, two English guys, and three Americans.   It was a good group and, because the hostel wasn’t well-located, we spent the nights talking and drinking until the late hours in the lobby.

Kirby and I had meant to stay for 4 days in Xi’an.  Due to the trains and the crowds though, we ended up staying 6 full days.  The first 4 were great but the last two dragged on.  The weather became cold and wet.  Our friends left for their next destinations.  It was as sad as a vacation could be (which is still pretty happy).  Near the end, we visited the Terra Cotta Warriors.  It’s an impressive sight and unbelievable to think that such a thing existed under people’s feet for so long without ever being found, but it was just a little bit disappointing.  More because you tend to build it up in your head before you get there.  One cool fact though…the main tomb of the Emperor still hasn’t been opened because the traps that have been set are too dangerous.  The slaves and engineers who built the tomb were killed and buried in it to preserve the secrets.  Think Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  You know at the end when they have to go through the gauntlet of traps (how many times can I use the word “gauntlet” in this post?). 

Finally, we boarded the train at the end of the week and began the trip home.  One quick story about the ride home.  As Kirby and I were walking along towards the dining cars, we met two British foreigners and sat down to talk with them.  As we were there, a Chinese conductor passed our beds (we were in a sleeper car) and picked up Kirby’s cell phone so that it wouldn’t be stolen.  Seems a nice enough gesture.  But then he passed us and began to question if we had lost our phone (this was being translated by some nearby Chinese).  Not having been back to our bunk, we said no.  He never even showed us the phone, which would have cleared up the whole thing.  We had to return to the bunk, realize the situation, and then find the guy to beg the phone back.  And he was irate!  What was he mad about?  The punk stole our phone!

Alright, so then we arrived home safe and sound.  And exhausted.  But happy.  Let’s call this the Golden Week Entry.