ALASTAIR + LALEINIA

  Not everyone can say that they have had a vegetarian lunch with a monk. But we can! We spent last weekend at the Shaolin Temple and the Pagoda Forest. The only thing we knew about Shaolin was from the movie "Shaolin Soccer." The movie was completely ridiculous, so we needed to get more information before we actually went. After a few minutes of trying to pronounce names, we gave up on the research. We did find a picture of these trees that had indents where the monks practiced their finger punching. FINGER PUNCHING! So when we got there, all we could do is pretend to finger punch each other. We found the tree, and of course tried our best finger punch. Without fail, we hurt our precious little phalanges.   I think I forgot to mention, we had our whole grand tour with a monk. A MONK! We couldn't understand him, because we don't speak Chinese, but following a monk was cool enough. He was a pretty fast walker, so we had to keep up with

A lot of people complain about the beds over here, that they're too hard. But for us, we can't complain. It's true, our beds are hard, the pillows aren't fluffy, and the sheets don't stay on the bed. However, we sleep like rocks! It just goes to show that you don't need to sleep on a fluffy cloud to get a good night's sleep. Except for one night... It was about 3 in the morning when I stirred. I felt like something had bit me, but I wasn't too sure because I was unconscious. So I went back to sleep. A few minutes later I woke because my upper lip felt a little funny. I abruptly got up to check in the mirror to see what the matter was. To my surprise, my lip had puffed up drastically! I freaked out and woke Alastair up. He then comforted me and we both checked WebMD to see what my problem was (I always check this site for all our medical needs). It didn't help. Alastair surfed the web a little longer as I iced my upper lip with a frozen piece of brea

Terracotta Warriors. Yes, you have heard of them before, or at least seen a picture of them somewhere sometime. You may not have paid much attention to it at the time, but somewhere in the back of your mind, these are somewhat familiar. Being in almost the middle of China, which happens to be a HUGE country by the way (and would have to be, what with one and a half billion people living here), visiting the Terracotta Warriors would need to be a massive voyage for most. Well, not us, since we are living in Luoyang, which happens to be just five hours away by train (90 minutes by the more expensive fast train). So, on the slow train we headed for our first weekend away from Luoyang! This whole trip to the Shaanxi province was thrown together last minute, so the first thing we did upon our arrival was go in search of a place to lay our heads for the evening. Armed with nothing but a copy of the Lonely Planet and a Mandarin Phrase Book, we ventured out into the rain. Quite