My Beautiful City

Harvest Party!

On Saturday the 27th my friends threw a "Harvest" party! We ate sweets, played games and danced. It was a good night!

Arls, God Bless

Let's Do Lunch!

 My favorite restaurant in town, as dubbed by myself, Matt Gordon and John Horn is the "Lonely Lantern". It used to have Chinese lanterns outside but now they are gone.

It has been exactly the same for the last 5 years, which is good and bad. 

It's good because the food there is second to none, but bad because the building and everything just looks old and dirty, and the tables and chairs are uncomfortable. I have great plans for this restaurant; someday I'll be able to speak enough Chinese to talk with the owners, who already know what I want when I come in: Sweet and Sour Chicken!

 

In these pictures I also ordered a ganbian tudou si  (hash browns). Delicious!

-Arls, God Bless

New Pictures for October! (Just me living large!)

Here are some photos from the past couple weeks.

Coming home from the bike ride to Ta'er si Monastery I was sore and tired, but had just enough energy left in me to enjoy the experience of learning how to ride without hands!

A beautiful sunset with the view from my  

15th floor apartment!

 

Sam and I at the weekly Saturday night party we throw for our Chinese friends to come hang out

A Red Panda at the Xining Zoo. I went there 2 weeks ago and was surprised by the amount of animals they had. 

It actually wasn't a boring Zoo! With a ride through the tiger, bear, lion and coyote enclosement I felt like they had some exciting stuff going for them. The craziest part is the bus going through the predator areas has no cages or bars over windows, so if you were stupid enough, you could reach out and touch a lion or a bear! Also throwing crackers to Baboons through their cage was fun.

My best buds at the wedding in Xunhua. During my first few hours at the wedding these young fellas came over and hung out with me, talking and laughing at my broken Chinese! Throughout the rest of my time there I always got an excited Hello from them.

At a local meat market, right on the sidewalk, going through the main street in town. Might look unsanitary but at least most of them are fresh Eh! I think the Good family will especially appreciate this pic! 

When I saw the police boat, I thought of Mark and Kaiser, had to get a pic! Too bad it wasn't pocket sized or I would've sent it to ya! This is at the Yellow River where I swam in 2007 for the annual competition!! They have it every year still as far as I know, maybe I'll have to try again since last time I didn't quite make it all the way across!