Zaijian Zhongguo!

Last week here in China. I'm going to miss it. Two nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night and our room smelled like a mixture of chinese food, feces, and the "china smell" (which cannot be described). I gagged a lot, knocked on the door of the room beside us for 5 minutes, threw down my pillow and blanket, and slept there for the night. Apparently the sewage or something conveniently backed up in our bathroom. It's fixed now.

We present our final set of pictures (40) on Wednesday and Thursday. Someone is setting up a website where everyone's work will be up once we get back, so I'll have to pass that link around once I know it. There should also be a gallery showing of the work in Austin at the beginning of the fall semester.

I will be back to turkey sandwiches, swimming, and all things summer on Saturday!

Alright, I'll get this out of the way. As some of you might already know, I ruptured my eardrum last Friday night due to an infection. Went to the hospital and got medicine and I'm not in any pain but I cannot hear out of my left ear. It will heal and I should be fine.

That's the super abridged version.

Less than two weeks left. My roommate and I are going to start a count next week of how many times we hear people say "we're going to hang out when we get home, right?" I'm guessing somewhere between 45-55 times. She's guessing in the triple digits.

I wasn't able to go to the exhibition but it was apparently a success. The man who set up the entire thing was very excited and started it off by shaking a beer bottle violently and then opening it. He cut his finger in the process and had to be rushed off to get a few stitches. Quite an opening act. Here is a picture of my work up. Don't mind the glare.


And here is a picture of the space it was at (in the communications building on the campus):


That's about all for now. Here is a rough draft panorama with that metal counter from last post.


It has rained all weekend.
Megan

Wow, sorry it has been so long. Apparently there was an earthquake in China (?) that caused the internet not to work for a while. And then blogspot has been blocked by the Chinese government. In attempt to find information about the earthquake, my roommate and I googled this:

Needless to say, we didn't find much information.

We went on a tour to a village yesterday. Tomorrow we are having an exhibition of the work we brought with us. It should be fun. They are expecting 200 people. I'll take pictures and post them later.

Lately I've been doing a lot of editing and shooting. Chinese class is super boring and I haven't really learned anything at all.
It's crazy that I've already been here a month.

This morning there was a truck/ice cream truck/nuisance outside our window playing a terrible version of the happy birthday song from 7-8am. It was ridiculous.

Here is one picture. I intend to post more later. This was shot inside a store that makes and sells noodles.



Oh, and I bought a kimono.

Megan

Hello! I have come with some fresh photographs from last weekend and Tuesday. Two panoramas and one diptych (two images beside each other). I also have my tentative artist's statement:

Here are two panoramas I shot at a market about 30 minutes from where we are staying:





I'm not too wild about the second one so it might have to go.

And a diptych of the wheat:


Tomorrow we are going to the Xi'an History Museum. The only plans we have for the weekend is to shoot.

I wish I had something really exciting to write about but I don't. Well - I dyed and cut my roommates hair yesterday and we had a dance party in the hall with our professor.

Megan

It has been a while. We had a packed weekend. We went to Mt. Houshan (2.5 hours away) on Friday and spent the night there. It was very pretty, but very, very, crowded. We took a cable car up to the top and walked around a long time. Here is a picture of the cable car:


Yesterday we went to a village almost three hours away where the people live in cave-like structures under the ground. They harvest various crops throughout the year and just live an incredibly traditional lifestyle. We photographed and a family there cooked us noodles for lunch. It was very pretty and unlike anything I'd seen before. Here is a picture of what the homes were like:



And here is a picture of our entire group at the village (plus some translators and Chinese friends):



I have a lot of shooting to do this week and that's about it.

Hello. We went and saw the famous terra-cotta warriors today:

That isn't a picture of the real warriors, but rather, 2 inch tall replicas being sold by vendors outside. The place was pretty neat, but very crowded with tourists. And very hot.

I finally have a theme for my photography project while I'm here. I'm going to document agricultural sales and production. Doesn't sound crazy exciting, but I think it will be interesting.

This Friday we are spending the night on some mountain (can't remember the name), and I'm not quite sure what we're going to do there but it should be fun.

Xie xie bu keqi (thank you, you're welcome),
Megan

Spent the entire day in front of the computer. Don't have much to show for it except these two panoramas, which are still a work in progress. I really have no idea what I'm doing.





And my roommate cut my hair. Nothing drastic.

Time for an update. On Friday a chinese girl I met and two of her friends took me out into the rural part of Xi'an to photograph. She translated for me, so it went pretty well. We went to a small wheat farming village and I took a lot of pictures. Here are some: (oh, and the file sizes are smaller so you can click on them and not be overwhelmed)













There are more I would like to post but haven't done the editing. I will be editing a lot tomorrow and working on a panorama I shot. Hopefully it will work out. No big plans this weekend, just relaxing. We've been meeting a lot of great people who have helped us out a lot. Tomorrow we're going bowling with the waitress from kareoke. I hope chinese bowling is a lot different than american bowling. The chinese version of "The Price is Right" is ridiculous and the people get really small prizes like a tea set and a cell phone. It's funny.

Time to sleep,
Megan

I bought a bike today. It was new for $30. Used ones are apparently only available in the "black market" and the whole process is really sketchy. So I bought this bike at a three-story high crazy supermarket. I rode it 2 minutes and the derailleur broke. Took it back, no one knew english, 1 hour later, new shiny bike. The brakes hardly work, the cranks feel like they're going to fall off, and it rattles... but it will get me to class! I'm pretty excited about riding it around campus. Hopefully it won't get stolen in two seconds.

A few friends and I went out to dinner with our kareoke waitress, Winmei, last night. She took us to the best restaurant I've been to so far. It was a cajun-ish restaurant. We had fish, crawfish, beef shishkabobs, and the best corn I've ever had. They gave us plastic gloves and we ate everything with our hands. We are going bowling with Winmei this weekend. She knows a good abount of english and is currently studying it. I think I'm going to give her my bike when I leave if she wants it.

I went to a huge, smelly market yesterday and bought some little fruits I've never seen before. Here is a picture I took of the man who was selling them. The color is weird and off due to my lack of photoshop on this laptop, but oh well.



I'll try to update this thing more often from here on out.
China is still crazy (but fun),
Megan

This weekend was great. Last night we did kareoke. We got our own room and sang too much. It was better than I was expecting. Today we all slept in and just walked and rode the bus around the city. The buses are huge and two stories high. Traffic is crazy and there are bikes everywhere. The taxis are green rather than yellow. Everything is extremely cheap. Eight of us ate breakfast the other day for a total of 3US dollars (21 Yuan).
Tomorrow we start our first day of school. Chinese from 9-11.30 and photography from 2.30-5. Our chinese teacher does not speak any english so I'm not sure how smooth that's going to go. The language barrier here is ridiculous. And then when you try to explain things through actions, they don't understand it either. And they do different motions with their hands to represent numbers. Holding up seven fingers means nothing if you are trying to get seven of something. I thought the whole number/finger thing was universal.
I haven't taken many pictures the past few days but I did manage to catch China's best rat tail:

I hope all is well for all of you,
Megan

I feel like we haven't relaxed for one second since we've gotten here. But this weekend we will have some free time. Today we went to visit the Shanxi University of Photography, where our professor gave a lecture. We brought some of our work and shared it with the students. They really enjoyed it, I think. I don't know Chinese, you know.. but they were smiling and taking a lot of pictures with a lot of peace signs. From there we went to a peasant's house and had a meal cooked for us. It was very good. The food here is nothing like I expected. I expected some resemblance to chinese food in America, but it is completely different. There are a lot of vegetables with spices I've never tasted. Locus fruit/root, cooked cucumber, many different roots, liver, pig's feet, and many other things I have never heard of. No rice, sweet and sour chicken, or eggrolls. It has taken some adjusting, but I am starting to like it more. Every meal is family style and layed out on a lazy susan. Each person gets a small plate and you take a little at a time. There is always a massive amount of food. For beverages, there is hot tea, beer (pee-jyo), and white rice wine (by-jyo). White rice wine comes in a shot glass and tastes like vodka and rubbing alcohol.. it is not good. Here is a picture of what the table has looked like at every meal.



Here is a picture from Beijing that I wanted to post. We drove by the construction for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing and it was incredible. Here is the arena-like structure called the "bird's nest." It was huge.



And now I leave you with this.. me trying to play this really hard chinese game of balancing and throwing this little ball.

Hello! We arrived in Xi'an today. It is good to be here. I feel that while trying to learn Chinese, my English becomes very simple and slow. And I can feel it when I type. We just got into our dorm/hotel and it's pretty nice. There is a strong green color scheme going on. The university is having a celebration for us tonight. Here are some pictures from our time in Beijing.

In Tien'en Man Square, The Forbidden City, and The Great Wall













They like to take pictures of us.

a lot of pictures coming soon, as in today or tomorrow.

Nee Hao! I have arrived! There is no English on this webpage that I can view so I have no idea what I am doing. Today we are going to the Forbidden City and Tien'en man Square and on a rickshaw tour. Beijing is surprisingly clean and pretty, but I've only seen it at night. Will update more later.