Xining - Lanzhou

More adventures... in Xining we found the most delicious food we've
had on our entire trip.. which may or may not be because we ate it
straight off our l o n g train ride... but our enormous appetites,
strange appearances, and giggly Chinese certainly amused the chefs!
The owner even walked us to a cheap hotel to stay at (icicles don't
scare us!). Xining wasn't actually the "bitter cold" we expected it
to be for the first few days, although there were chillingly gusty
hints of it's true cold potential by the time we left... time to go
time to go.

Making Dumplings with Train Friend

Before ditching Xining though, we took up our new train-made-friend on
her dinner invitation and had an awesome evening eating way too much
food and trying not to let her Dad get us too drunk! We made
dumplings with her Mom and had a fine time... then Dad showed up,
laughed at us in the kitchen, and began the tradition of taking shots
of "white wine," which is the most potent alcohol I've seen in China.

Toasting Good Company

The daughter said he only drinks when he's happy, so I guess he
must've been very happy to have us over!

After waddling home and taking a night to recover, we hung out with
some of Cheryl's friends and discovered chair-skating...

2-Person Skate-Chair

you sit in a child-sized chair with metal runners on it and get two metal poles to
pick into the ice and propel yourself along... even comes in
two-seater and 3-seater versions! :)

Expensive Fruit-Nut Cake

Later in the day we also decided to sample one of the large (VERY large) fruit-and-nut-cake
looking things... and should have been warned when our blade-wielding
seller kept warning us that when it was cut we had to buy it... our
inch thick, 10 inches high slab cost us 60 kuai. and that's not a
foreigner-special price either! 60 kuai is equivalent to:
1 night hotel fare for 3 in our cheap hotel
3 good meals at our tasty restaurant
1 train ticket from Ningbo - Shanghai
1 large, well-detailed, scroll painting
and many other things that we won't mention. oh dear. at least it was tasty!

Taking our pricey fruit-nut-bar as snack, we wandered trying to find
the fabled "Tibetan dance show" some of Cheryl's friends had told us
about... After asking numerous people and retracing our steps
innumerable times, we happened into the company of a determined guide
in three-inch stilettos speeding across the icy sidewalks ahead of us.
Although still pointed this way and that by passer-by, she was not
deterred until she found us a Tibetan dance show! We thanked her by
giving her a generous portion of our tasty, pricey, treat.

Tibetan Fashion Show?

Singing!

Tibetans, I must say, are striking people. Dark skin and ruddy cheeks, with
very warm-looking, one-sleeve off coats, large hats, and big
necklaces. At our show, half of the audience also looked Tibetan, so
I spent a lot of time watching their weathered features, cowboy hats,
and fuzzy jackets... :) Their origin was also evidenced when the show
became audience-participatory and half the audience hopped up on stage
with full dance-step knowledge! Cheryl and I floundered and giggled
along and Chris took pictures. A good night that we called done at
midnight-ish although the show still seemed to be going...

Now we're in Lanzhou where we've perfected the art of becoming Gremlin
guests at another of Cheryl's friend's houses... mwa ha ha. we eat
all their food and only emerge at night and never leave the house...
that's not entirely true... but the first day Cheryl was sick and
stayed in bed all day (Chris and I climbed a mountain! Although it
unfortunately provided no increased visibility),

Mountain Buddy

the second day I was sick and stayed in bed all day, and the third day we got up at 4am to
get train tickets... and then all went back to sleep... so that day
they kicked us out. Because our friendly host's mom and sister are
coming, so they need space... or so they say..

Now that we're independent, we've located our nearest food sources,
explored the Yellow River (kinda dirty), played the bus-hopping game
(I wonder where this bus goes? let's find out! how about this one?)
which took us to shorter-building land, read Mao ZeDong bedtime
stories, played cards, and have continued to meet many strange
characters in our journeys... including two milk-protein exporters, 2
cute Japanese foreign students who we excitedly talk to in Chinese,
and either the most creative compulsive liar I've seen, OR a
formerly-amnesiac, Caribbean-accented (because he had to learn how to
talk again after the amnesia), Hungarian educated, recently
born-again, recovering drug addict eager to share his stories of the
bad times, 23-year-old, Detroit-native, commercial pilot named Ed, who
is also Master P's nephew. hey, anything's possible.

Off to SamSimon's hometown this afternoon after my class! Every
Thursday morning (my time) for a couple hours, I get to sit in smoky
internet cafes, filled with gaming high-school and college boys,
listening to people in Illinois talk (no microphones in internet
cafes) about cosmopolitanism and globalization and online resources!
It's kinda awesome. Although due to technical issues and people
issues, I'm not actually enrolled yet... but the professors seem to
want me here, so that's cool. I'm feeling excited about the new
ideas, but relatively non-committal as to whether or not I'll finish
out the two-year course... we'll see.