yesterday we had a faculty field trip; i know, it's a strange concept to me too. we went to a river town, about two hours outside Shanghai, called ZhuJiaJiao.(Jew-jyah-jow) this place is touted as 'the Venice of China' so i figured i'd go on this free trip b/c Italy is more expensive... if this is what Venice is like, i'm not interested! (please understand that that was a joke) ZJJ is pretty boring but it isn't all bad; it's got some nice things to see, it's just that we've seen this kind of stuff a dozen times here.
instead of telling you why it's lame or boring, i'll try to point out the positive stuff b/c we actually had a fun day.
after a very ill fated trip, to the Henan province in 2004, i realized that when your stuck in a bad situation you just have to let go, embrace the lameness, and laugh it all off. so that's what we did; we walked around the town joking w/ our friends and had a pretty good time.
interesting moments in the day:
we shot balloons w/ bb guns
(maybe i'll get a pic of this from one of the other people)
a lot of dogs! this town could better be described as the 'mangy mutt' town. this one dog had a baboon butt and another was trotting around w/ a chain dragging behind it. but strangely enough, we saw three pugs, real pugs. it was the most common/most recognizable breed of the day. they weren't the ugliest pugs i've seen but they were pretty ghetto. i got a picture of the oldest and most haggard one of the day.
the force is strong w/ this one...
um
later we saw a kid being held by his mom, dropping diarrhea on the sidewalk. kids often 'do their business' on the street here in China but this one seemed a notch beyond. partly b/c it's a tourist place w/ lots of bathrooms and also b/c it was diarrhea. i'll spare you from seeing that picture...
other stuff from the day:
they're either lighting these to bring their husbands back or to keep them dead. i'm not sure
they act like they never seen a dude w/ a camera before
i'm not talented at a lot of things but i am very good at catching Bet w/ a funny face before she can stop me!
The Canfields were there too, but they'd been here before so they did their own thing. (L to R) front row: Mandy, Bet, and Channing back row: Jamie, John, me, Thomas, Laura, Dan, and Fawn
yep, it was exactly this interesting
(ok, there's a Flickr update. it's not much, a lot of it's right here, but i said i'd mention when there's an update and i'm a man of my word)
