Mojito

Taken from Email #1, 5/24/11

They love to toast here, they all come around to the different tables and clink glasses with each person. Problem is instead of toasting all at once, they come in groups of 2-5. I think I downed about 50 shots of orange juice last night, which resulted in me getting up to use the bathroom twice in the middle of the night. 

 They also brought in blue and green drinks in wine glasses with palm trees to lunch today, thankfully one of the girls who drinks tested it to make sure it was nonalcoholic for us mormon girls. Apparently the green one was a Mojito minus the alcohol, fun!

Bad hair days

Taken from Email #1, 5/24/11

I'm wearing my hair with it's natural curl, and since it's so humid here, it's even curlier. I thought they'd be all excited to see the three of us with curly hair because no one here has curly hair.... nope. They think it's ugly and funny looking haha. They still love us though. (Don't worry mom, the chinese men aren't attracted to me, so you can be assured that your fear of me falling in love with one of them won't become a reality. haha)

What's that Asian men?  You don't want to date a makeup-less lioness?  How strange.

Fat

Taken from Email #1, 5/24/11

Everyone here is teeny! Yesterday the translator sitting with us at dinner wasn't eating anything, as she passed up one item she turne to us and said "I'm not eating because I'm fat." then after dinner when we complimented her on her dress she said "Really! You like it?!? I bought it because I'm fat." HA. She's like 3/4 my size. Lucky me I'm the biggest one in our group here (and I do not consider myself "fat") and our group is full of teeny dancers who are all still bigger than these Chinese people. It's alright though, they told us it's okay that we're all fat ;).

Me and the "fatty"

This is definitely NOT Panda Express.

Taken from Email #1, 5/24/11

Hmmmm... the food. Where to begin.. well... it's not my beloved Panda Express, that's for sure.

-First of all, they just bring out TONS of different foods and put it on this big rotating thing in the middle (lazy susan) and we all spin it around and take what we want. When I say TONS of food, I mean we were stuffing ourselves trying not to waste it and only ate about 1/4 of it.

-They have tons of different kinds of food out - all wierd. I only tried little bites of everything because I didn't end up particularly liking anything except the fruit and I was still stuffed. It's all food they're very proud of that is specific to this part of China. A lot of the group loves the food, but to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of this fancy cuisine. Luckily, they don't get offended if we don't eat the food we don't like. :)

 -CHOPSTICKS. yeah...... never learned how to use those. Somehow almost everyone else in our group is pro at using them, and the other girls in our group who aren't, either picked it up super fast (thanks for making me look incompetent guys), or just gave up after the first try and used their forks. So far the average amount of tries it takes me to pick something up is about 7. Everyone, Chinese and Americans alike, has some hardy laughter at my expense as my food goes sliding around my plate until half the time I just end up stabbing it with my chopstick to pick it up. I'm determined to learn how to use these difficult little utensils though, even if it takes the whole two months. After all, how lame would it be to come back and still not know how to use them?

-We went to a nice restaurant for dinner last night, with really wierd food. The food we had for lunch yesterday wasn't delicious, but I could definitely eat it. This stuff was nasty. The meal started out with them handing me a plastic glove and sticking a giant slab of "chicken" on my plate (which was blood red and looked like a heart), and then telling me to dig in! mmm yeah... try as I did to find somewhere to bite, all I found was pure fat. I found out later in the meal that the "chicken" was pig foot. I don't recommend it. Our meal also included:
-"soup" we're pretty sure was just hot water and rice
-cucumbers dipped in strange sour sauce
-rice pancake things that looked normal but were most definitely not
-lots of bone-in chicken
-frogs that still looked like frogs
there are two things I don't ever try because I know I'll gag eating them:  fish, and things that still have all their limbs attached. I kind of wish I would have tried just a bite, but then I remember watching the frog fly onto another girl's lap. sick. It was definitely an experience.

Our grand entrance :) Warm welcomes everywhere we go!

-pizza and french fries! that's what we had for lunch today! In this really nice restaurant. It was pretty funny because we all went into a tiny VIP room and then they decided to split us up into the two rooms so we would be more comfortable...

well.. there was one major flaw with that plan...

the translators were all in the half that went in the other room!

 haha!

 

So we all sat around for about 45 minutes, we looked through a menu we couldn't understand, avoided drinking the boiling hot water they gave us, chatted, and waited patiently for our food. Well after a while one of the translators came in and looking at our empty plates, said "You finished your food?!?" Nope, we told him they hadn't brought us food yet. Turns out the other group was almost finished with the giant meal. Our meal included: fruit covered in RANCH, salad, fishy pizza, pepperoni pizza, french fries, and enchiladas with yogurt. ha.

Fruit and ranch - there's a reason we don't have this in America... not so delish.

-I think my stomach is shrinking, remember how I can usually eat and eat and eat and eat? well I can't anymore, be prepared for a skinnier Tiana. 

Our Fancy Schmancy Hotel

Taken from Email #1, 5/24/11

Holy Guacamole! They told us 5-star hotel, but we figured that in China that meant Motel 6 quality at best. I was prepared for squatters, bucket showers, and rock hard beds...NOPE. It's one of the nicest buildings I've seen so far here. We have very nice rooms, big TVs, showers, toilets, and big beds that are uber comfortable. Since I was prepared to live in pretty ghetto circumstances, this was a great suprise! 

When we walked into the hotel we saw a sign up in the lobby saying
"Welcome Artists from Southern Utah University of U.S.A. to LOGOSUN Hotel." 

and then they had it translated into Chinese on the sign next to it! Yeah, friggin TIGHT. They all treat us like talented and famous guests, honored to have us staying there. HA. 

The hotel also gave our whole group cards to use and show people if we ever need assistance inside or outside the hotel.  Hospitality at it's finest!

Wow. These people are crazy generous

Take from Email #1, 5/24/2011

Holy cow the dance company directors are generous!

They already brought gifts every time they came to the U.S. to visit, now they've paid for our hotel and food, I thought that was plenty.

Not for them!

When we first arrived and went to go eat lunch in the "cafeteria", which was a small, pretty fancy room with two big tables for us all and a giant flatscreen TV, among other things, we found out they had just finished building the cafeteria for us the day before!

They made an entire room just for us to eat lunch in every day!!

Not a fantastic picture of it.... but a picture nonetheless. 

...Then after we finished eating lunch they brought out these super nice thermoses for us to use- I never knew a thermos could be so awesome, I'm pretty sure these must be the nicest thermoses in the world, I would explain what they do but I don't really understand it all - but I know they're cool.

Also, when we got back to the hotel one of the girls asked about laundry, how much we'd have to pay to do it- they said they don't want us having to pay for it, so they're buying us a washing machine. do you hear that? THEY'RE BUYING US A WASHING MACHINE. wow. I'm not even going to delve into the amount of/quality of food they give us in this section, but seriously,

I'm living the life here!

Getting there.

Taken from Email #1, 5/24/11

Okay... this one's a  little boring, it's just details about the travel there... if you're going to skip a post, I would recommend this one. :)

Saturday morning we left my house and my parents drove me to the airport in Las Vegas. We ended up getting there an hour earlier than we planned (and we'd planned a lot of extra time) because we forgot about the time change- whoops! Karen, another dancer who we'd picked up in St. George, and I met up with our group there and we flew out of Vegas at 6. We flew to LAX- talk about a huge and CONFUSING airport. Holy tolito. We flew from there to Guangzhou - I think that's how you spell it- and I think our flight was about 13 hours, I slept through most of it - THANK GOODNESS, because Inception was the only movie they had playing the entire time. After we got to Guangzhou (One of the biggest airports in the entire world), we flew to Wuhan, which was when we finally felt like we were really in China :). We stepped off the plane to find the choreographers we'd worked with in April all there waiting for us, along with some of the musicians and dancers working on the production. I think the group that came to pick us up was larger than our group haha. There was lots of hugging and smiling and clapping as we all reunited, there's already so much love between us all :). Wuhan has like... 10 millionish people in it, so it's fairly massive and super packed. We took about an hour to drive to the hotel in the crazy packed traffic (thankfully, unlike India they do have and use lanes here, but they don't blinker much so it's still a little sketchy.) The city is full of skyscrapers, it's a little overwhelming, but I love it already.

The bus on the way to our hotel 

Just a little glimpse into the view around the outskirts of the city

Traffic in other countries is CRAZY.  I don't know how people drive in it... I have an anxiety attack every time I just ride in the back of a bus.

Yangtze River

Absolutely no trombones. ;)  (Really it's no honking horns... but "No trombones" was my first reaction.)