On spending a month alone

Don't do it. Tomorrow Daniel comes home after spending the last 4 weeks in China. It has been hard. The longer it's gone on, the harder it has gotten. Thank goodness for family and friends. I've had meals at each parents as well as my grandparents a couple of times. I've had friends help entertain me. Last Saturday I went with some good friends to go shopping, do a session in the Oquirrh Mountain temple, and dinner at Johnny Rocket's in Farmington. Very yummy, I may say. My back door neighbors even sent over some soup. (Thank you Craig & Melissa!)

You never know how much you depend on just having another person present, until that person is gone. I was only able to talk to Daniel once a day, at the end of my day, because of the time difference. This meant that by the time we talked I was worn out, tired, fed up, finished and exhausted. Making for a few whiny conversations on my part.

I've learned a few things about myself during the process. Some things I didn't want to learn. But don't we all have those kinds of lessens? Unfortunately the journeying isn't over yet. He'll have a few more trips to China before this is over. And even then he'll take regular maintenance trips once a quarter or so. Can I just say that, often, being a grown up sucks? Yup.

Another blogger, Kenna, wrote about being safe under her boulder. I must say, she put it well. I can sympathize. I've been hiding on my wingback chair in the TV room escaping into the world of Psych for the last month. I'm on episode 67 or something - in just a month. I think I have a crush on Shawn Spencer. Besides work, and the times I've come out to get fed, I have holed up in my house with my sometimes wonderful, sometimes obnoxious, dogs. I have retreated. But tomorrow I have to get up and come out and be a grown up.

Fortunately I'll have my wonderful, patient, hard working husband back to stand by my side while we battle the foes and challenges that come at us. I'll recharge and we'll be able to deal with the stuff that keeps getting in the way of our progressing to our goals.

I'm glad Daniel has a good job, but I'm also glad that we have been promised there will be no more 4 week trips. Hallelujah.

"The Rock"

or the "Sunday Death March." I don't call many things death marches, but this was pretty close. Fortunately it was interesting to help make up for it.

We went somewhere to see the "wind rock." It's a rock that moves when the wind blows hard enough. It's cooler when you see how big the rock is. There is also a shrine. I  had my fortune told there. It was interesting. It is also the location of a very old city. There is an old city wall  that skirts the south end of the island. It was pretty cool.

Here you go!

 The city wall.

 They've turned it into a really nice park.

 The rock.

 Getting my fortune told:

 You draw one of these sticks out (above) and then you throw these two pieces of wood down (down). 

 If the two pieces of wood land one up and one down, then you choose the right fortune. I had to do it twice to get the right one. Then you pay 1RMB and get your fortune and then however much you pay past that, is how good your fortune will be. Daniel paid 5 for mine.

Then you take your fortune paper to this lady. Then she translates it. Only part of it was in Mandarin Chinese and the rest was in the local dialect. Selena could only understand the gist and a few of the specifics. I'm having another friend translate the rest.

Then we headed to the beach to walk around the boardwalk. We saw this really cool staircase:

 The bottom was walled off so it was unusable, but it was cool.

 Then we walked around this out cropping and found a little cave.

There were aspects of that make me think it was "man facilitated." But it was cool.

There was another cave.

 This tree was very old. Daniel told me how old it was, but I can't remember.

Walking the edge of the wall.

The reason it was a death march? The temperature was over 95 degrees with 90%+ humidity. Daniel was moments away from heat stroke, he claimed. I was believing him. It took us over an hour to cool down again. We were all exhausted for days afterword. I think it was because of the heat exhaustion from that morning. We were only there for 2 hours, but it was a long HOT 2 hours. Not doing that again.

But it was a fun weekend.

We only have 6 more weeks here in Xiamen. We will be having a few more adventure and I'll blog about those. We're going to make the best of our remaining time!

It got better.

After one more mishap, things have gotten better. We knew our tour was to start at 12:30 where they would pick us up in the lobby. So after lunch when the guy in the lobby asked us our name and for our voucher, we thought we were good. Not. About 15 minutes out from the hotel he asks us if we did our Safari (the one scheduled for today) yesterday. I said no, this was what we were reporting for. He said, no, he was picking us up for the city tour. So he pulled over and called his boss.

Daniel talked to the boss and I called the other tour company to let them know there was a problem. After a few demands we headed back to the hotel. The city tour company was being kind of ornery because Daniel was not the one who had booked the tour and so they wouldn't be helpful, but I was on the phone with the Safari people for today letting them know we were going to be late back to the hotel. So we got back, out of the wrong van and into the right van and were on our way.

(I have to say here THANK YOU to my father-in-law who was the only one who had his camera on his carry on. We had 2 iphones between us, but the camera was nice. So glad he got new batteries and let me carry it through the day.)

We drove about 40 mins. through seaside roads and up and down steep hills and into Chalong Bay area. We were taken to the base area of the Siam Safari camp and then embarked on a wonderful adventure. 

 The happy campers in their  souvenir shop clothes headed to the Thai jungle. 

 Riding the tractor up to the elephant part.

 I felt about as tired as I look. I love my new pink shirt though. It's got some really nice embroidery on it. Daniel is also digging the linen clothes.

We rode behind this tractor up a steep hillside.

 I think we were moving about 1 mile per hour. Very slow.

 

We were introduced to Tin Tam who is a 34 year old Indian (Asian) elephant. the pink you see on her ear and truck develop as they age. In the late 1980s Thailand outlawed using elephants for logging and they have all been taken care of in sanctuaries like this one. This one is 18 years old.

This is what you ride on. It's a two person bench atop the elephant's back.

Daniel and I then "boarded" our elephant, "Bho So." She was 25.

 The jungle pathway that looped around. You can see the hat and back of the mahut who is in charge of Bho So. Each elephant has one mahut and each mahut is assigned only that one elephant and they are companions for life.

This is the view from the top of our loop. It Is Chalong Bay at the south end of Phuket Island.

 This is the green of the mountain side.

 The mahut uses his feet, or that hook you can see in his hands, to direct the elephants. Left ear means go right, right ear means go left, and a bonk on the forehead means back up. Their skin is about 1 inch thick. When he bonked her forehead it sounded like hitting a hollow coconut. Didn't really phase her.

 Our mahut took this picture. Excuse the flash and the leaning back. And can you see the little cold sores I'm fending off? Oddly enough tiger balm helps as well as the abreva every two hours.

I'm sorry this is a little fuzzy. But there you have it, we are on elephants. Daniel and I each took our shoes off at one point to feel their skin with our feet. It was amazing. Not really dry or leathery at all. The few hairs that are on their skin feel like a lot more when you touch them. Oddly enough, you can't feel any heat radiating from them.

Then it was time to treat our elephants to thank them for our ride.

 Of course you have to buy the basket of food for your elephant. Pineapple, sugar cane, watermelon, small bananas (which are very good by the way) and banana leaves. They get greedy as soon as they see that basket. It was pretty funny.

 Here we are with Bho So and her mahut. It was an awesome experience.

 This guy would tell Tin Tam "action" and she would pose with her mouth open and her trunk up and then he would flip her ear around your head. It was funny.

"Action"

Well I need to go to bed now so I have energy for the day tomorrow. I'll keep posting as we go.

And the best part of the day was when we got back to our room our luggage was there waiting for us. Drugs, cameras and clean clothes. Yay. we'll sleep well tonight.

Thailand - the adventure begins

I'm going to try to post this EPIC journey as it happens. No pictures yet, and I'll tell you why in a minute. It is EPIC my friends.

We were scheduled to head out of Xiamen at 12:10. We were at the airport in plenty of time, but our flight was about 20 minutes late out of the gate. While we were waiting I felt two cold sores on my upper lip start to form. Thankfully I had the abreva with  me. We knew it would be tight in Hong Kong and when we got off our plane there was a gal there waiting with our names on a paper and she ran/escorted us to our next flight, only to find out that it was delayed about 45 minutes.

This was all because we decided to travel this area during TYPHOON season. That's right. A typhoon had just left Hong Kong swimming and was delaying flights all over Asia. In order for Hong Kong to catch up they were boarding flights out on the tarmac as well as at gates. So we were handed glorified plastic bags to protect us from the rain that was not then falling. We got on buses and headed out onto the tarmac and up the stairs onto the plane. We were 3 feet from the door when a sheet of rain (we were not wearing the plastic bags) hit us and soaked our right sides and we pushed into the plane. Lovely. It was okay though, we weren't cold.

When Daniel got to our seats there were people sitting in them. Once they moved we had time to pay attention to who our seat mate was. She was the funniest ornery old Chinese woman.She tried to get up to go the bathroom while we were taxiing and then again a few minutes after take off and then she went back to her seat (window mind you, tripping over us each time) grumbling in Chinese and then the group of about 8 that she was with started laughing. I'm pretty sure she was swearing.

Then when it was time for the food they ask us chicken with rice or pork with noodles. She said chicken and I got pork and when she saw mine she said "ick." It was awesome.

Then her daughter came and took pictures of her asleep and awake. When we got up to leave we were waiting to get our of our row and she burped behind me. It was awesome. I always love some entertainment on my flights.

When we landed we got through customs just fine and went to the luggage  carousel. No big pink suitcase (mine). Nor any others. So we filled out the form and gave them the information they needed and they said the would send it to our hotel when it came. So we waited up till 11. Nothing. Then this morning we called and asked the front desk. Nothing. We went to breakfast and then gave all the information again to the front desk so they could track it down for us. They called and it still in Hong Kong amidst hundreds of bags that did not go with their owners. Are you jealous yet?

Here are the things that we needed:

Daniel's medication
Daniel's CPAP machine
my cold sore medication
Daniel's exzema cream
BOTH my cameras. Yes this trip so far had only iphone photos.
clean clothes
combs
CLEAN UNDERWEAR!Yes.

So Daniel and I went with his mom to a local laundry mini-everything store and got ourselves some clothes. I got a spaghetti strap dress, a swimsuit (replacement underwear) and a shirt to wear. Daniel got some white linen pants, a white linen shirt and some turquoise swim trunks. Our garments are now hanging to dry on the clothes line the shower after being washed. I hope we get our luggage tonight. But ti's possible it won't be here to till tomorrow. This is a trial, my friends. I real trial. But we are going to do our best and enjoy where we are and hopefully be able to laugh at this story while it's happening as well as in the future.

Check back tomorrow for updates!

I was going to call this a tasty tidbit..

But as you can see, "tasty," is not the word.

Here is a random post about something in China. The rest of the world has toilets that are different from our standard. These are what we affectionately refer to as the "Chinese Squat-Pots." Not my favorite. One more of the "10,000 inconveniences," as my father-in-law calls them, that we are dealing with here in China. Sorry if I offended anyone or if you are squeamish.