thumbs up

Let me start this post by saying I am okay.  I got up without getting dizzy, was able to remember all details of the accident, and minutes later I ran into a friend on the street and told her all the details of our upcoming trip and she had no idea of what I had gone through just 5 minutes before.


A couple of days ago Aaron and I were meeting some friends for dinner who live 3 miles away.  Aaron's dad and sister have been training for a half marathon, so I jumped on their training plan, although there's no formal half marathon event that I'll be running.  So when Aaron and I were going to meet friends and I was scheduled to run 5 miles that day I decided to run to our friends' house and tack on the extra two miles at the beginning of the run.


The run was feeling really good, although I did notice that running this path had a lot more foot and car traffic than my normal routes.  Then......I got hit by a car.


I was running across a large intersection, and I think everything just aligned perfectly so that I ran ahead of the rest of the pedestrians, other stopped traffic blocked my view, and a car decided it was either going to try to turn left or at least get as far over the white line as possible.  And that is when I was struck.  The car clipped me at a slow speed (thank you, Lord) as I was mid-stride, and I landed on my right hand, shooting my cell phone across the pavement and scraping my elbows and  back a little.  I saw the car from the corner of my eye when it was too late and I heard the crowd exclaim OOOOHHHHH!  when I got hit.  I immediately sat up after falling, got up, walked over to my cellphone and glared as hard as I could at the driver.  One thing I have not learned in Chinese yet is appropriate reactions and exclamations for getting hit by a car (note to self: learn how to verbally glare).


Thankfully the lady who hit me was up to date on her blame-shift, get angry at the victim, traffic altercation vocabulary so she immediately got out of her car and started yelling at me.  I left.  I  know, I know - I should've stayed and demanded recompense, but I've seen accidents in China before.  Hours later we would still be be standing in the same intersection with no one budging.  It just would have been too much mafan (Chinese lesson here: mafan 麻烦 = trouble/troublesome).

My thumb's up for a couple of weeks

So my wrist has been hurting from landing on the hard pavement (note to self: if you should ever get hit again throw yourself onto the car so maximum damage is done to the car and I enjoy a soft landing), and after describing my symptoms to my husband we decided I should go to the doctor, since a break in the same area of his wrist led to surgery due to not treating it early.  The x-ray came back normal, but the doctor wrapped me up still to hold my thumb in a good place in case the fracture just hasn't showed up yet.....apparently that's common when this bone is injured.  So I'll be in this makeshift cast for two weeks, get a follow up x ray, and hopefully at that point be cast-less and cleared to run again.


The whole accident has given me a new love and appreciation for Dane Cook's "Struck by a Vehicle."

Has anyone seen my shoes?  I kicked them off in a fit of joy.

New traffic lanes, Part 2

New traffic lanes, Part 1

Like my friend Dave Matthews said so many years ago, "All these cars and up on the sidewalk, people in every direction"...

the dreaded health exam.....

Every foreigner who is applying for a residence visa longer than 11 months has to have a medical exam before they are granted the visa.  This means going to the one building in your city during the 3 hour span that they are open and standing in line for a long time.  You move from room to room to get your vitals checked, an ultrasound (to check your kidneys, liver, spleen), an ekg, an x-ray, your ears, nose, throat, and vision checked, blood and urine tests.  It's pretty thorough.


Aaron really enjoyed the health exam.  Standing in line, he thought of all the funny things he could do or say while going from room to room.  After he had the ultrasound done, he asked the nurse if he was pregnant.  She did not laugh.

Here are pictures from the health exam - and ask Aaron about it sometime.  He tells about it in a much more interesting and elaborate way.

price check.

ticket booth....oh wait. this is where they take your blood.  behind a glass counter.

aaron about to give his urine sample in what he called "the smallest cup ever"

blood test

blood pressure check

Aaron, sad that he has to take an ultrasound
or maybe it was because the lady didn't get his joke.

vision test.  that's right, I'm looking through a "mirror "on
the other wall to tell him about the sign right next to me.

he's wearing the old timey doctor's headband

Nose check

ear check

strike a pose, there's nothing to it.

This week our catalogue came out.  This is a catalogue that is given to people who sell outdoor clothing, not to consumers.  So, we only have two copies for our own personal collection.  Sorry to anyone (our neighbors) who were hoping for their own personal copy to show other people and say that you know us.


Here it is.  The catalogue.  There are pictures in here that I pretty much hate, but I'm still choosing to share this with y'all anyway.  Maybe we'll be able to share a few laughs.

And, remember, you can be anything you want to be in China.

Carava Medium

A land of warriors

Every day, I weave my way through a forest of ever-vigilant warriors with skills honed as fine as a knife's edge. Just the other day, I watched a man waiting for the bus perform the "paint the fence" move from Karate Kid for a good 5 minutes straight, presumably to keep himself in prime fighting condition. See for yourself:

Safety first

As many of you know, safety is my number one priority in life.  Just ask Stacy.  So, today, when I noticed the gentleman in the video below in an unsafe situation and then quickly realize the error of his ways and remedy the situation with an appropriate safety precaution, I was more than relieved.

Here is the scenario you are about to see: a man welding on the sidewalk without face protection. However, only moments into the weld, he realizes the inherent danger and arrives at a safe, practical solution: a homemade welding mask, consisting of a sheet of newspaper to protect his money-maker, with a pair of sunglasses stuck through the eye holes cut into the newspaper to protect (*?*) his eyes.

Safety close-up:

This job site is now Aaron O'Hare Safety Certified.

I am a sport girl.

Football season has started back up, and we are using the slingbox like crazy.
Our teams:
NFL - Green Bay Packers
College - Carolina & Notre Dame

In America on Saturdays we would just have football on all day long.  It was so much fun.  I would make chili, and football would be on while we were doing things around the house, stopping to watch big plays or the games we really wanted to see.  But now, those days are over.  Football comes on in the middle of our Saturday night.  So only when Carolina has a football game, and Notre Dame has one at a different time will be awake for more than one game....and I'm not sure that I'll even be able to stay awake for all that.

But beyond football, this summer we got into the other football...and no, I don't mean soccer.  I mean rugby.  The game that helped start our version of football.  It's strange watching it, because I am so used to the rules of football, that it really throws me off when they don't do things they would do football.....like when they go down in rugby, the guy who hit the ground can push the ball back through his legs to one of his players, who then picks it up off the ground and just keeps playing.  The first time I saw this, I was like what??!  How can that be?  He is DOWN.  But now, I've gotten used to it, and it is pretty amusing to watch the guys with their faces smashed in the ground passing the ball back between their legs.  (Forgive me if there are any rugby fans out there who are dismayed at my lack of rugby knowledge.)

We became All Blacks fans this summer (the New Zealand rugby team) watching the Tri-Nations cup with some Kiwi friends here in the city:

America actually is in the Rugby World Cup.  Our first game is against Ireland.....so Aaron somehow feels conflicted about who to cheer for.  If y'all know my husband, you know why that is confusing to me.  He loves America.  I know he loves his Irish heritage, but not pulling for America?  It cannot be.

New Goal (to be achieved by the end of the World Cup):  Learn the Haka:

Asia's biggest adventure race

Adventure racing is a sport, or actually a "multi-discipline endurance competition," that I have been getting more and more interested in over the last two years or so. No two races require exactly the same combination of disciplines, but most races, which range in length from 8 hours to up to 10 days or more, generally involve at least some combination of trail running, mountain biking, orienteering, climbing and/or rappelling, and paddling.

Recently, I remembered that the biggest such race in Asia takes place somewhere close to where we live, so I looked it up and found that the 2011 Red Bull Mountain Quest would be taking place the weekend of September 3, so Stacy and I bought train tickets and headed out for a whirlwind weekend to check it out.

Stacy and I on the upper lip of the karst

Mostly, I just want to post video and pictures of the event, but I am trying to give enough context to make it all make sense. The event took place in a karst, which is a natural rock feature similar to the Grand Canyon, but instead of being open-top canyons, caves and natural rock bridges have been formed as water flows through the soft limestone.

This specific race has 15 co-ed, four-person teams from all over the world (America, New Zealand, China, France, etc.) racing for three days through the karst landscape. Teams navigate with a map and compass, kayaking, rappelling, running cross country, and mountain biking from one checkpoint to another.

Sadly for us, because of the rugged nature of the course, much of the activity did not lend itself to spectating, but on the race director's recommendation, Stacy and I positioned ourselves to see the rappelling, which was done in pairs off of a bridge. The course director described it as "spectacular," and I would have to agree. See for yourself:

On top of the bridge

The bridge racers must rappel off of: 500 ft. straight down

We arrived as race organizers were setting up the rappel and were able to see the whole event, from start to finish. Here they are rigging the scaffold and the ropes:

See the first team to arrive at the bridge rappel all the way down:

And finally, two teams are rappelling while a third, which has finished the rappel, links up with their other members and begins the trail run:

By the end of the race, we had met some students who were acting as interpreters for race teams, and volunteered to be a part of next year's squad of interpreters. Hopefully they will remember to call us...

playboy in china

In America -

Playboy = dirty magazine

In Asia -

Playboy = clothing brand for men (maybe women? I've only seen men wearing it).

In America

KFC = fast food restaurant, but not the most popular of the fast food joints.

In Asia

KFC= by far the most popular and a high end fast food restaurant, where you go to show your wealth. The one near our house is in the same shopping center as a Burberry, Coach, Louis Vuitton

Check out this article to see what other companies (ones you know are doing it big in Asia) - Huge in Asia