Technology Makes Lives Better

I've wavered on what to call this blog post: Moving at the Speed of Progress, Making the Most of the Internet, The Blessing of the IT Revolution. However, none of them, not even the title I chose, captured the gravity of what this blog is about: processed meat.

Recently, my brother Isaac, who lives in Memphis, TN, harnessed the power of the World Wide Web to send me a message here in China introducing a mythical culinary delight known as the "hamdog."

Then, using something known as "electronic mail" or "email," I passed the information on to my best friend from high school Jon Bass, who lives in the greater DC area.
















A few days later, Jon used what is known as a "social networking site" called The Facebooks to send me the following deeply moving photo-essay of his own recent hamdog experience:

Step 2: Roll the hotdogs into a protective covering of
ground beef, as seen above

Step 1: Pan fry a hotdog (or 2) and place on top of
ground beef, rolled out flat

Step 3: Wrap the pre-hamdog in bacon, using
toothpicks to completely secure the bacon slices

Step 4: Various words can be used here, but I prefer
"dredge" - in bread crumbs and parmesan cheese

Step 5: Grill your creation and enjoy

Jon said that the experience was a delight and that he would recommend it to anyone, but our legal team wanted a disclaimer about pregnant women and people with heart conditions.

Jon did, however, beg me to warn newcomers that they may slip into a meat-coma partway through the second hamdog and should proceed with caution, in the presence of a certified health professional.

10 minutes and you know about China

I saw that a friend posted this video on facebook about China, and thought some of you might find it interesting.  It covers A LOT of information about China in ten minutes.  If it's too long with too much information - maybe just watch a few seconds, pause it, then come back to it later for a few seconds more...

Dear Jimmy....

I recently started teaching English at an elementary school here in our city to kids after their regular school hours on Monday and Tuesday afternoons.

My Monday class is a class of 20 kids with mixed levels of English, and an age range of 8 to 12 years old.  My Tuesday class (best class in the world) is a class of 7 year olds, who have only had a year of English.  For the first forty minutes of class each week, I take over and teach the kids something - which is actually really challenging for my Monday class because some of them know how to cuss in English, and some of them can't even spell their English name.  So what do you teach kids on different levels that'll keep them all focused?  I still don't know.

After my forty minutes of teaching, we switch to computer time, where all the kids get a netbook, log onto a website, and do 40 minutes of watching videos and responding to questions about the videos (all in English).  On Mondays, I just sit at a desk waiting for the time to pass.  On Tuesdays, I'm up the whole time helping the kids understand what's being said during the program, and helping them learn how to use computers.

A couple of weeks ago, Aaron and I got an email from Virginia (soon to be Virginia O'Hare), who is a second grade teacher in Memphis, with letters from her second grade class to Aaron and I asking us about ourselves and living in Asia......and the fertile crescent - like half the letters asked about the fertile crescent...they must think we live in Mesopotamia.

Ms. Skelton and Mr. O'Hare

So I had my classes write them letters back.  Here are two favorite letters we received from Ms. Skelton.

Here is a letter from one of my students, who insisted on having a boy to write back.  I gave her a letter from Demarcus, and told her to write him back.  She wrote him, gave it to me and told me not to read it.  So I did, when I got home.  

Who is this Jimmy???  She got a letter from Demarcus!

This ATM location: no longer accepting debit cards

Ask yourself this simple question: why remove the ATM when you can just fill it in with concrete?

Pulled noodles

There is a lot of delish-ers (delicious) dishes we enjoy here, that you can't find at Chinese restaurants in America.

One of them is 兰州拉面 (Lan Zhou La Mian, pronounced kinda like Lawn Joe La Me-An) which are noodles made by one of China's minorities (they have 56 people groups in this country).

The noodles are made fresh at the restaurant, thrown into a hot beef broth, and topped with onion, cilantro in some places, soy sauce and chili pepper - though the last two you add yourself to your preference.  They definitely help you warm up on a cold day.

Also, they come with the free entertainment of watching the guys make the noodles.  It's pretty amazing.  In fact I want to learn how to do it.  Forget about pasta makers.

Here are a couple of videos showing how it's done.  I didn't feel like editing them, so hopefully you can tell what's going on.  1st video- stretching out the dough, prepping it for making it into noodles.  2nd video - using his fingers to separate the dough and make noodles.

In the event of an emergency...

Make sure the little guy can breath. Pollution is such a killer...

let's get physical, physical

People like to keep fit here.


And they keep fit by putting in what appears to be child playground equipment in every neighborhood.  Only this is for adults.


Grown women in skirts.  Guys in suits.  People who want to multi-task, such as spinning a prayer wheel while feeling a deep burn in their quads. 


Though these are grown men and women, as my husband put it when talking about the equipment,"It brings out the kid in every adult."


Besides the playground equipment available in every neighborhood, here in China you will find people gathering every morning to do tai chi (a martial art) and morning aerobics, and every evening to do couples or line dances at night, as well as roller skating for the kids.

Check out the video to see them dance 'til they can't dance 'til they can't dance no more, as the music factory of C&C tells them to.


Oh, and I included a little footage of a performance we stumbled upon back in February.

I'll let you guess how it smelled...

Isn't she lovely

China is beautiful.


This past week was the national holiday in China, so we got what they call "Golden Week," which means a week off of work and school.  So Aaron and I took a trip to the mountains, a trip we've been hoping to take for a while.

Here are some of the pictures from our trip.  I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves, although I know these pictures in no way capture how beautiful it all was.

We took the train on the way to the mountains, and a flight on the way out - so you'll see some pictures from the ground and the air.