Company Sports Day

This weeks: Story of the Week, comes to you from the Company Sports Day
There I was standing in a line with my right and left leg strapped to 1 other English speaking whitey (Chris for those of you who know him) and 8 other Chinese teachers/ company workers. They called it a Caterpillar race. As I strapped in, I looked around at the other two teams and heard them chanting yi, ar, yi, ar, while moving their right and left legs up in perfect synchronization. I also recognized these same teams as being the ones who were practicing under the eaves of the Cafeteria and Gym while everyone else was hiding from the torrential rain under whatever cover they could find.

As for me, I had been pulled into the race last minute (MY race was the 16X200m). Okay "pulled" isn't really the best term to use maybe. I think the conversation went more like this:

Chris: Hey J, Sarah's not here, do you want to compete in the Caterpillar race
J: (not knowing what exactly a catapillar race was) Sure!!!

So I guess I jumped in with a sense of excited naivete really.

As the ref said "something, something, something, BANG" the other two teams took off down the race course at an alarming speed, their 20 legs moving seamlessly to the beat of yi, er, yi, er. They were striding like gazelles, gliding along as if they were Siamese dectuplets who had had to walk this way since birth. I was agaw!

My team on the other hand was barely moving. None of us had practiced at all for this race, we had Chris the tall German as our fearless leader calling out yi, er... or left–right... or something.... and we were taking steps the size of a caterpillars. As we slowly made our way down toward the cone that we then had to go around, only to come back the way we came, I see the other two teams go yi–ering by us .... IN THE OTHER DIRECTION... their legs still drumming to the rhythm.

Our team slowly made our way down to the cone. There were a few stops along the way for us to regroup, and try to begin again–this time on the same beat, only to be off in the next second. I felt the rope sawing through my flesh as I tried to keep my feet moving forward and backward in the same timing as the person in front of me to no avail. The crowd that had gathered was now cheering us on with a loud "giyo–giyo!" And I think I saw Jackie and her mom pointing and laughing as we passed by. Actually I may have even had a whole conversation with them as our Caterpillar slowly slanked by their post along the course rope.

We made it past the finish line to loud cheers, high fives, and a race time marked by the sundial. But our team as a whole was jovial in spirit. We laughed, I said stuff in English they didn't understand, they said stuff in Chinese I didn't understand, I then said hen hao a few times in return.... and Chris and I went jogging off to our next appearance: the 16X200m race.

Other highlights from the sports day included:

-being required to come in on a Saturday as one of our school holiday make-ups
-the opening ceremony march with people dressed in costumes that may have vaguely represented 2 mice (mickey and minnie I suppose), Tigger, and some very bright pink something that I couldn't categorize.
-a new hat for me from the flee market
-wearing the new hat with my workout cloths for the rest of the day
-getting free food from a selection of different food vendors
-seeing my Kindergarten kids perform their "morning exercise" routine
-and playing volleyball in the gym until we got kicked out by the "renting Police"

<~Here's part of the opening procension. The two in the middle are my Kindies! :) Oh! I'm so proud.. :)

This week we're taking a field trip to the Animal Safari park with the kindergartners. This includes driving a van Jurassic Park Style directly through the habitat of the lions and tigers and bears (OH MY!). All of us K1 and K2 teachers will be helping out with the P1 classes (think 2.5 to 3 year olds), since apparently the second part of the excersion requires a lot of walking.

Today I taught my Kindie's the beginning of Blondie's "one way or another" song. I think it's important that they know about the hazards of stalking at an early age.

The gang and I are trying to figure out costumes for a Halloween partay some of our kids are having on Saturday... current ideas are: Carebears, Ducktails, the Wizard of OZ. There are 6-9 of us who are all trying to dress in a theme. We'll see what theme wins.

Reporters Journal II

Okay.. sorry these are so late.. but they're still entertaining.. so check it out eh?

Here are some on bike riding in Yangshuo:







and on rafting down the Li River

Reporters Journal I

3000 feet in the air:


and then the landing...

"James and the Giant Peach" or "4 white girls and a crashing balloon

My story of the week comes from a Hot Air Balloon in Yangshuo–Guilin

Picture yourself, a young Chinese child, living in a small farming community between two small town/cities in "inner" china. One day a giant, colorful, floating balloon comes around one of your funny looking mountians–the ones that rise up like pinnacles from an otherwise very flat land. It is odd to see this balloon, but you call hello at the 4 white girls who are hanging over the edge of it. They hollar hello back. They're floating very close to the ground, and the balloon is floating quickly toward the houses in your town.






Picture yourself in a balloon on a siteseeing flight over the mountains between Guilin and Yangshuo. You've already finished using up your camera batteries while floating about 2,000 feet in the air. There were two other hot air balloons up at the same time as you, and you can see one far down below where it has already landed and the crew has begun to fold it up. Your Chinese balloon guide who doesn't speak any english, but doesn say "Hello" everytime he wants to switch spots with someone to move to a different side of the basket seems to be in a holding pattern waiting until the right time to land your balloon in the same location as the other balloon. Slowly your balloon begins to descend toward the ground. You're moving away from the balloon on the ground in an arc around one of the mountains. You figure that you will do a spiral descent (don't worry it's a technical term) around the mountain, and land after a full loop, next to the first balloon on the ground. As you come around the mountain with camera's (that hadn't gone battery dead) at eye. You're getting pretty close to the ground, and you're about to make a pass over a small community with lots of farming fields. Suddenly you hear small voices coming from below: "hello, hello" they call! You think it's a little odd that they're so excited to see a hot air balloon considering there must be tons of tour flights that go up each week. But you hollar hello back at them as you continue your descent. Suddenly there are more and more people hollaring "hello" up at you. You call hello back and wave. The balloon seems to be getting very close to the ground, which is great for better pictures (it was slightly foggy out and the views from up high were a bit mutted), but not so good for clearing the tree that is fast approaching.

Suddenly the four white girls in the giant floating colorful balloon go crashing through a tree. They're headed downward towards the crops of your town... you run in the direction of the balloon, still calling hello!


You crash through a tree. Luckily, you're not in the front of the basket. Laura on the other hand may have come out with some leaves in her mouth. The pilot tells you to bend your knees. Okay the pilot says some words in Madarine and then makes the motion of bending your knees. You know that they told you before you took off, that when you landed you would have to bend the knees, but looking out of the basket you see only cement houses, small ponds, and farm land. You don't think that this looks like the place you're suppose to land. The pilot keeps shooting fire up into the balloon. But the balloon seems to have it's mind set on descending... it's been a long day and it's hungry. You hit down into a rice field... a rather muddy spot to land... but bounce up again.
You see the balloon appear again, rising out of a rice field. It barely clears some of the houses in your town. This is the most exciting thing that's happened in a while so you continue to run after the balloon. The balloon is rising again, but not very quickly. You see it crash through another tree. The four white girls arn't saying Hello anymore. But there does seem to be loud confusion coming from the basket. The balloon starts falling quickly toward the ground, right toward your grandma's field. You run faster to keep up.

You rise up just fast enough to clear the first set of houses. But this whole rising thing just isn't the balloons style. You crash through another tree, and by this time the balloon is determined to make it to the ground. The pilot is once again motioning for you to bend your knees. The balloon hits the ground, bounces a few times, and the basket falls sideways.

You see the balloon hit into the ground. You see four white girls and a Chinese pilot all toppled upon eachother. The four white girls are exclaiming something. Everyone in the village is coming out to see the spectacle. The four whilte girls continue to yell.

The balloon pilot is yelling at you to get out "get out 1 by 1." The people below you are saying they can't move, they're squished. You can't move, you're squished... the pilot continues to say one by one. Finally the ballon basket rights itself and you're able to pull yourself out of the balloon. The 3 or 4 people you were hollaring hello to have multiplied into 40 or more, and there are suddenly 15 children all trying to climb into the balloon. Next to you is an old lady who has one pant leg pulled up, is in a half squat position and is yelling lots of words in Chinese while pointing at you, your ballooon, and then to her crops. Apparently she's not very happy about having a giant Balloon and 4 white girls come plowing through your field and ruin your crops. Suddenly your knowledge of Mandarine is reduced to hello (ni hao) and I'm sorry (duebuche) and the numbers 1-10 that you practice with an eight year old boy who has pulled himslef into the basket next to you.
~~~~This is my story of the week from our Hot Air Balloon Ride over the mountains in Guilin County. Needless to say the kids were really really excited to have a hot air balloon to play on. Apparently the wind (which i couldn't feel) was too strong, and we were landing too quickly. Our crashing point was approximately 9 NINE miles! away from where we were supposed to land, and it took the balloon company 1 local director, and 45 minutes to figure out where we had crashed down, to come get us. Gude times in CHina! The kicker is that I realized as were were about 2,000 feet up in the air–"Hey! We never signed any kind of paper saying that we acknoledged that Hot Air Balloon rides can result in injury and sometimes death." You gotta love China-land. TG we're all perfectly okay, and we left the scene without a scratch, but with a very good story, and some fun video footage.


Along with this, our 5 day vacation in Yangshuo was amazing! It was so refreshing to be out of the city. To see mountains around you and out across the horizon. We rented bikes almost every day as our mode of transportation. One day we went on the Mud Caves tour. After walking around underground through all these caves, you end at a mud hole.... and YES you do get to go play in the mud. And by play, I mean submerge yourself completely. (Jaime Lienskers and Rich, you guys would have loved it!). Next to the mud hold was a "clean water" hole that you could go in to wash off. Needless to say, we were all finding small nuggets of dirt in our scalps for the next few days!


On another day we rented bamboo boats and floated down the Ni Long (?) river. All of us Americans were in our swim suites, jumping off the rafts and swimming, while half the Chinese people we passes had covered themselves in a full outfit of plastic wrap. Apparently they don't swim when they float down a river.

Now it's been back to work for a week. On Monday I get to tackle the task of giving Kindergarteners a test! :( and trying to explain to them that they can't look at eachothers papers, and they can't help eachother.

My Fashionista
In the meantime: we've started school, and I have offically been "Teacher J" for 2 weeks. Wow! My classes are primarily for non-native English speakers (aka the Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese kids) to teach them English. I do have a couple of native english speakers in each class, and one of my girls--Katherine-- who is origninally from the U.S. is now aptly named "My Fashionista." I've now been surely told that the following tops are like wearing white after labor day, except that everyday in the world is after labor day, so in other words, I should never wear them.... my: green and blue button down western shirt, my green Sherwood t-shirt, and my Alaska t-shirt (sorry Nicole, I still think it's the uber-coolest!). I am however allowed to sport my plain whilte polo. To explain more fully, Katherine has started telling me each day whether or not she likes my shirt. The first day it was a bash on my western shirt..... "Teacher Janai," she said, "I don't like your shirt." Being an optimist, I asked her.... "oh? you LIKE my shirt *smile*?" "No," she stated more firmly, then with pronunciation in full "I DON'T like your shirt." Well that was that... each day thereafter she proceded to tell me whether or not my shirt was a fashion faux pas. :) I've started just reminding her that's it's a good thing she's not wearing the shirts of mine that she doesn't like. haha

In the same class I have another girl, Julia, who is also a native english speaker. She recently asked me if I stand up at the front of the classroom all day!? and what I do at night when I go home from school. I told her that I slept because them kids tired me out. :) She laughed.

Third Time's A Charm
Meanwhile, we've been playing musical apartments here at the LQ (living quarters). After living in our "temporary housing" for about two weeks, (which also meant living out of an exploding suitcase), we moved into what we thought would be our actual apartment (28-101), the night before we had to be out of our temporary housing. We breathed a sigh of relief as the last bag was unpacked in our rooms, and we could finally relax knowing that This is where we would be living for the rest of the year. Well just about as soon as that Sigh had been exported, we had to suck it back in. The very next day, we got a call at school saying that they had accidentally assigned our aparment to two groups (one of the groups being us, and the other being a couple, with a baby, and the mother being pregnant and having requested a 3 bedroom first floor apartment) and that we had to move AGAIN! I guess you just can't argue with the baby card. So we took another day out of the time that we were suppose to be spending setting our classrooms up, and preparing lesson plans to go home and pack back up everything we had just unpacked the night before. The upside? The company was paying for movers to move ALL our stuff---and we insisted that it not be the same movers that thought moving my closet meant dropping it off the second floor balcony instead of carrying in down the stairs). True to fashion even more complications ensued including a heavy downpoor of rain, the movers upping their prices, the company not wanting to pay the new price and deciding (after one whole truckload of stuff had already been moved) that we didn't have to move after all. Well, it all got worked out, we DID move, and NOW we are Finaly in OUR apartment. :) Another upside? This apartment is WAY nicer than our old one: not as many bugs, hardwood floors throughout, 6-panel doors, and clean newly painted walls. I think the total rent is coming to about $280/month for the apartment! pretty sweet. Of course this move also means that my former mailing address is changed, check the bottom of the e-mail for contact info updates.

One Fish Two Fish, Dead Fish Float Fish
We have a river running through the SMIC property (it goes right between the high/middle school and elementary schoool.) There's always dead fish in it, and I think I would grow another head if I jumped in. This means that we probably won't be racing kayaks down it anytime soon. :) and by "won't" i mean "will" and by "kayaks", i mean "steamboats." Okay that really made no sense. The even more amazing thing (besides the fact that I would grow another head simply by jumping in), is that we see people FISHING in this river! Now why spend the time waiting for a fish to bite, when you could simply run along the edge of the water with a net and scoop up enough to feed 5000.

All You Can Eat, All You Can Drink, and a REAL Live Indian (not the native american type) engagement party!
Who could ask for more on their 24th birthday. Yes it's official, I've reached that age, which, my friend informed me, she always thought of as the offical-grown-up-age.... Now all I have to do is get my party-van-soccer-mon-van back, pop out a couple of 10 kids, and find a hubby hub..... HAHa...just kidding... well about everything but the Party-van.. that thing was a pretty sweet ride. :) Anyway. yes for my birthday we ended up at this Indian Resturant, and it just so happened that there was an engagement party there the same nite. The engagement looked very arranged ( i.e. the girl looked to be about 18 and the guy looked to be about 45) but everyone was dancing (and making our group of 16 dance with them). There's a tall guy named Dan from Tennessee that hangs out with us. And the Indian people just loved him because he was so tall... we're talking 6'7" or something. I think the line of the nite was when one of the Indian engagement partay guys said something along the lines of..."if only I could be you, you are so tall!" He was truly in awe of Dan's vertical accomplishments.

After dinner we returned to the LQ (living quarters) to feed our newfound T.V. addiction... yes it's Sergent Winters to save the day–Band of Brothers. I think the guys are still having a hard time with the idea of watching a war documentary with so many girls.... but since it's my movie.. they've had to get over it. :)

Oh yes, and I got a great B-day gift from the Chinese government (I told them they really didn't have to get me anything, but they insisted)– they passed me on my Visa Entrance Interview... apparently they're going to let me stay.

Work 4 weeks, Take one off....I could get used to this :)
So we've only been working for 4 weeks, and already the October Holiday is upon us. I'm not sure exactly what the october holiday is for, but I do know it means we get lots of mysterious China-land "treats" like Mooncakes with fillings, and we get a week off! Whoohooo.... Hip hip hurrah for the october holiday.

For the last half of our break we have about 12 of us that are heading out to Yangshuo. It's a "small"? city/town in interior China that has the "famous" funny looking mountians. Okay so I admit, I pretty much let everyone else plan the trip and all I know is that I'm stoked because it has... HIKING (oh my! do i remember how?) and hot air ballooning! and rock climbing! and i'm oh so excited to see some "outdoors" again. The biggest thing I miss here in Shanghai is that even though we're "out of the city" in Pudong, there's still no outdoorsy stuff to do. The land is completely and uterly flat. So when we have super wonderfully marvelous days, and my first thought (in SLO town) would be "ooh go for a hike" "go play beach volleyball" "go surfing" "go to the beach" there's none of that here ;(. We can go spend money at the fake market...... or have clothing custom made at the fabric market. So anyway... i'm beside myself with excitement that the Wikitravel said Yangshuo has all this outdoorsy stuff to do!

China-Land the Early Years

China Land: Shanghai–The City of 18 Million People and Quite Opposite from The Last Great Frontier of Alaska

So we've arrived!

The plane flight was actually pretty good. Since we flew out at 1:30AM we actually slept for most of the flight. There was also some pretty darn good airplane food. Korean Air definitally treats their economy passengers better than most American Carriers I've flown on. Chris and had a cool noodle-like dish called: Bibimbap. I'm sure videos will be posted on the Blogspots (address's to be supplied at the end of the e-mail.)

Hmmmmm...... okay I'm getting tired. Let's hit up the main points.

Things that I've been happily surprised to find (mostly because Shanghai is as western as western as you can get in China-land):
•Non-Fat Milk (who would have known that they would have milk at all! I had prepared myself for 3 months not to have any milk. The quality in taste of this milk is yet to be determined, but it did suffice to be consumed with my.... American Cereal that I ate this morning. Sorry guys.... you can't eat china-food all the time... they don't even really have "breakfast food.")
•Cold Soda

Things I didn't even realize:
•You can't flush anything "extra" down the toilet. There's apparently a reason that all the bathrooms have waste baskets in them. This is of course true in the "fancy" flush toilet bathrooms... I havn't had the pleasure of experiencing the "holes" yet.

Things that I knew, but so far stilll find overly comical:
•The driving is crazy. I'm amazed that every pedestrian, and every bicyclist isn't pancakedness-roadkill-meat.
•"Click-it or Tick-it" would be a completely foreign philosophy. I'm still getting used to not even having the option of wearing a seatbelt (not really a good thing when combined with things-I-knew-but-so-far-still-find-overly-comical observation #1 of crazy driving and pancakeness-roadkill.

I'm sure there's more that I'm not even thinking of right now.

In other news:....

The school seems pretty cool. I've already discovered and put to use the all weather outdoor track, tennis courts, indoor pool, and soccer field. Our Kindergarten group is fun because there's only 8 of us under one head-overlooker type guy (Teacher J is in charge of the Kindergarten department). So since there's so few of us, and because he's just such a friendly guy, he's been totally willing to take us on field trips to IKEA and different furniture warehouses to get our Apartments outfitted with stuff.

Funny Story Time with Janai

Chinese Movers are crazy : So apparently it's really really cheap to hire, and since I had a bed and really large closet to move, we decided to hire some. Well I missed most the excitement (and you can see the rest of it at the blogspot in the little movie Sarah made) but basically my furniture took a few falls... and by falls I mean they dropped my closet off a second story balcony thinking that the "ropes" and by ropes I mean short towels, they had around it to lower it down would hold it. Well aparently not so much... I think my closet experienced it's first (and hopefully only) freefall in the moments after this. Other funny mental images: crazy guy stacking 3 drawers on his back and then trying to walk through a doorway (ya the drawers go tdented too). The guys (C and E) are having a bunch of stuff moved on Thursday.. hopefully their experience is better. We kept the mover poeples card so we knew who NOT to hire.

A new kind of competition: Tally started: who gets asked to be in the most number of pictures with random Chinese people or their newborn babies. I'm at 2, Sarah's at 1, and I think Laura has 2 to her name. Oh and Dan (the man with the plan who is like 10ft tall and from Tennessee) has at least 2. They love him because he's tall.

Theme Park China-Land Hospital: So the other day all 40something of us new teachers got carted off to the "foreigners hospital" to have our physical examinations. :) We didn't really know what all kinds of physical examinations they would be doing... so the whole thing was one big surprise. So imagine this: your number gets called... you go in and give your "medical history" paper to one doctor...... they type... then say next seat... you scoot over give the paper to another doctor.. .they type and say go to room ***. Here they give you a robe in exchange for your clothes... go to room *** . Behind each door is a new surprise as to what's going to be "examined" since they don't tell you What you're having done to you next,, all you know is what room number you're to go to... it was like a ping pong game or something... i went from EKG around the corner onto a little rizer thing for a x-ray... down the hall to the left to have 2 viles of blood drawn... back up the hall to the right where a bunch of suction cups took my heart beat... around the corner for an ultra sound (i'm not pregnant and aparently I still have my liver and kidneys...phew)... around to the next room for blood pressure.. and the whole time you're wearing little blue plastic booties over your shoes and passing all the other China-Land Hospital goes in their robes and blue booties. Okay.... well I had fun anyway... but I enjoy giving blood and finding out that my liver hasn't migrated to my foot. :)

In Other News
Mandarine is Hard: i've got down thank you (xie xie) yes-ish (duwe) your welcome (i think(debuche)), and we thought we knew how to say SMIC School which is what we tell the taxi drivers so that we can get home... but aparently we don't even kjnow how to say that since our taxi ride was much round-abouter and longer.. and not so much to the SMIC School when we told the taxi guy that.


We start teaching in 2 weeks, today was the first day John actually started talking about WHAT we're suppose to be teaching, and what we're going to use to teach (mom you'll be excited.. they use Total Physical Response methods... that's cool right?). We've also started deciding how we're going to decorate our rooms. Since my room for this semester is completely walled with white tiles, and the floor are these blue sponge lego tile things, i'm goign to do Alaska/Antartica/North Pole-ish. There'll be lots of Penguins.. and maybe a Polar bear or two. I'll throw a monkey in as well for good measure.

Our 1 week vacation is coming up soon, and the brain-storming of where to go has begun. Last I heard Mongolia was a posibility.

Bargaining is fun. It's not anything that I was ever really into in the US, but it's pretty much required here so that you don't get ripped off.

The other teachers are fun. There's a lot of poeple from Texas, and they use the phrase Ya'll way too much. You can hit me if I start saying that.

Alaskan Adventures

So we made it to Alaska safely. On the plane ride up, Nicole and I both had Middle seats one row behind eachother. Mine had a business women who looked about my age sleeping with eye pad thingies over her eyes.... and a football-player-esque guy on my left who decided to sleep leaning way to the right.... I had only gotten about 1.5 hrs of sleep the night before so I kept doing the nod off thing and katching myself before i slipped off to the left into unknow-business-ladies lap. :) Luckily from Seattle to Anchorage Nicole and I both got to move over to the window which meant: a) better sleeping b) better views when breaks in the cloud cover allowed it.

When we got into Anchorage we were picked up at the airport by Nicole's parents who were completing their final day in Alaska, and went and had lunch with them and my Aunt Kathy (who lives here in Anchorage.) After lunch Nicole and I were promptly swept out the door, into my aunt's little Nissan pickup... and directed to a hike (eagle river?) while the weather was nice because apparently you never know if the next day will be rainy.

The hike was really cool... and on the way out went along a wide river that Nicole and I both agreed looked like something out of a nature film... we kept expecting to look over and see a bear fishing in the water. All along the other side of the river it's banks swept up into huge moutains... seriously beautiful! G didn't hold back up here. :) Unfortunetaly the most wildlife we saw were misquitoes...... and we saw Bear Poop.... we've decided that if anything this proves that had we been at that same spot at a different time, we would have actually seen a bear... soo it follows that we have practically seen a bear. :) haha. I told Nicole to touch it to see if it was still warm and we could track him.... she wouldn't....LAME.

That nite on the way to take the aunt and unkie Gunkie to the airport we saw Mooooosees.... just chomppin' on grass like it ain't nothing. So now we have seen some actuall actual wildlife... no wildlife inferred by droppings :)

so after one day the talley is:
- 4 Mosses
-200 Misquitoes
- 1 pile of bear poop
- 1 pile of other poop


Now we're off to hike flat-top :)

-------

Alaska II: We American's sure are Gawkers!

Okay so many of you already know this... I mean there will be an accident on the other side of the street, but both sides will be backed up with traffic because Everyone is slowing down to catch a peak of the "excitement." Well up here in Alaska territory (they call it "the last frontier" and judging by the land to population ratio I would have to say I think they're right) I figure this--- track with me back to the S.A.T's where you had to do comparison matching ---- Alaska is to Wildlife as Hollywood is to MovieStars. Meaning that people stop at any cost to Gawk at the wildlife. This I mostly realized after Nicole and I went careening off the road (mom, did I say careening? I meant turned on our blinker and slowed slowly and in plenty of time to turn into a nice large vehicular pull-off area) because we spotted..... you guessed if folks... the wildly amzing...... Dall Sheep. Okay well seriously.. these things look like your everyday goat, but our MilePost Travel Book (which tells you what to watch for every second of your drive through Canada and Alaska in relation to the mile marker you're at) told us that on this stretch of road we should keep our eye out for Dall Sheep. And since Nicole's and my trip up here will ultimately be ranked by how many talley marks are next to each animal on that list... I figured... we should go above and beyond for any extra talley's we might encounter. So by this point we had already slowed slowly with our blinker on and pulled off onto a safe vehicular stopping area for 2 Dall Sheep that we saw eating grass precariously close to a cliff (that might I add was also precariously close to a busy highway should they fall off said cliff) and we had just taken off again when I spotted, not one... not 2... but what I would not hesitate in proclaiming to be a HEARD of Dall Sheep Chilling down in this mud flat (now everyone knows that you're NOT supposed to go into the mud flats because there are areas that can be like quicksand and you may not be rescued before the tide comes in--my mom can tell you about a girl this happened to if you havn't heard) but they didn't seem to care even after we snapped a few more photos and told them to get out of the mud flatts.

Okay so that's probably enough about the Dall Sheep. So I'll continue on with our Alaska trip as a whole.... (because I havn't told you guys my self-centered focus of these e-mails which is: so that I can remember what the heck I did once a week goes by). So here goes...

On Day 2 we took off to go hike Anchorage's Flattop Mountain. Thusly named because well... the top is pretty much a giant flat tableness. Like the peak part got blown off by the wind. Here's another comparison for you-- Flattop Mountain is to Anchorage as Bishop's Peak is to San Luis Obispo. Basically I guess everyone hikes it. It was a sweet hike..... it was windier than the windy city once we got to the top, but the magnificent view of 3 giant snow covered peaks in the distance that all swept down into a green valley, made me not worry so much about getting blown over while trying to photograph said peaks. But really, the site was AMaZing! All the mountains here have such grandeur, they get so high so fast.... it's ... well I couldn't do it justice.

That afternoon we hit the road with my aunt's pick-up truck and headed down toward Seward. On the way we stopped at just about every lookout point the trusted MilePost had to offer... saw one skraggly Dall Sheep that appeared as if he had seen better days... and no whales. We stopped off just before Seward to see Exit Glacier. It's one of the most viewed glaciers because it's a short 10 minute walk from the parking lot, whereas most others you have to take a boat out to see. Of course all along the glacier are signs saying don't get too close... as it's an active glacier, parts of ice can Calve or fall off at any moment. The Lonely Planet book put it this way: "Despite all the warning signs, some folks still cozy up to the face of the crackling, calving glacier for photos. Please note that this glacier has removed such people from teh gene pool beofre, by dropping large chunks of ice on their heads. It's a great spot to explain global warming and natural selection to the kiddos." We then took a picture of a whole family crowding around the glacier to touch it and take pics. ha

So after this I had a delicious Teryaki burger at the Salmon Bake resturaunt and we headed into the Town of Seward to find somplace to camp.

Day Three (3):

Woke up in our lovely camping spot.. right next to the bay which also had the Grande Peaks sweeping up to it! (I've decided that one of the best things about Alaska is that it takes two of my favorite elements: the ocean, and towering moutains, and puts them right up next to eachother so that you can have both at once!). We had reservations for a Kenai Fjords sea tour that day.. so we pretty much just got ready and headed over to that. We get there and find out that the seas have been a bit rough and the swells may be too big to get out of the bay, and they may have to do a shortened version of the tour which would also cut out our being able to see the Aialik Glacier and Humpback whales. but after totering around in the Resurrection Bay for a little, our Captain decided that we could make it, and we headed out into open seas. The ride got pretty bumpy (8 -10 foot swells) and many aboard were promtly making the throw-up bags prove their worth, but we made it around the Aialik Cape into Aialik Bay. This bay has about 4 different Glaciers that can all be seen from it and which all originate from the HUGE Harding Icefield. We got to pull up right by the Aialik Glacier and then we just hung out listening to it and watching it calve. It's wierd to hear ice cracking and moving.. it was like there was a thunderstorm happening inside the glacier... and then every once in a while a giant piece would break off and fall down into the ocean below with an even bigger crash and more thunder-like noises. The face of this glacier is about 1 mile long and 300-400 feet tall. Ice falling from the top made quite a splash!

On our way out of the bay we got to see 3 Humpback whales. They teased us a little blowing water with their blow-holes and waving their tales in the air, but unfortunentaly we never got to see one breach. Still neat to see Whales up close and personal though! And even more fun to race the other tourist from one side of the ship to another each time the whales dove and re-appeared in a completly new location.

After the 6 hour boat tour, sustainance was in order so we headed over to Cristo's Palace to use our 20% off coupon. AND just to prove that is is a small world after all, our waitress had actually lived in San Luis Obispo for a while. She said she lived in her van down by the ocean and did rock climbing every day! crazy!

That night Nicole and I decided to go on a leisurly hike up this mountain we'd been hearing so much about (well we heard about it twice, once in the guide book, and once form our aunt) and which we'd been staring at for a whole day.... (it was right up the street from our camping/parking spot.) But I think that, once again, Lonely Planet does a much better job describing this mountian than I:


"According to (rather suspect) local legend, grocer Gus Borgan wagered $100 in 1909 that no-one could run Mt Marathon in an hour, and the race was on. Winner James Walter clocked in at 62 minutes, losing the bet but becoming a legend. The 3.1 mile suffer-fest quickly became a celebrated 4th of July event and today is Alaska's most famous footrace, pitting runners from all over the world against the 3,022 ft-high peak. In 1981 Bill Spencer set the record at 43 minutes, 23 seconds. Many runners take twice as long, and eahc year several end up with brokken bones after tumbling during the hell-bent decent. ... (there are 3 routes to the top, easier, not so easy and) Though the runner's trail is painful- think Stairmaster with a view -- its accomplishment earns you serious street cred, which is really the reason you're doing this to yourself. No matter which path you take to the high point, however, be sure to hike (or slide on your butt) down the gully's scree."


So now that you have this image in your head, Nicole and I of course had to earn our street cred. I mean seriously, how could we ever show our faces in the town of Steward again if we didn't hike up the "runner's route." Well stairmaster with a view this hike certainly is, except you take out the stair part of Stair-master and just add a lot of mud and scree (loose rock.) The first 200 ft was really more like rock-climging than hiking... and as Nicole dodged the rocks that kept breaking off as I climbed up above her we wondered just how a bunch of people would all hike this at the same time. Fast-forward to the top.... We made it! Whoo hooo... street cred earned... and in only 1 hr 28 minutes. We did take photo stops, breathing stops, and my legs won't go anymore stops though. As our award--and to help save our knees we decided to take the "maintained trail" down (the easier one).. of course it took us trailblazing halfway down the side of the mountain to even mysterioulsy find said "maintained trail" on the other side of some bushs by a stream, but we did end up making it down to civilization again-- and THAT only took us 2.5 hrs. HA. By this time it was 1AM... you gotta love the fact that the sun never really sets up here in the summer.... so the whole time it was kinda like dusk.

Day Four (4):
Swing through the Alaska SeaLife Conservation Center. - Highlight: birds that fly underwater! Puffins, and another type.. i forget the name.... but they seriously fly underwater... it's amazing a slightly eery to watch.

Head out of Seward. Stop by Exit Glacier again to do the longer hike that takes you all the way out behind the glacier and onto the Harding Icefield where you can do Ice climbing and hiking and camping etc. This is where we spotted 5! Five bears! One was just a tender little guy chillin' about 40 feet down from the trail below us.. chompin' on some grass like it ain't nobodies business. And then just a littl ewhile longer we spotted a Mama bear leading 3 little cubs across the meadow! The cubs were just the cutest things ever, and ran in that haphazard galloping lobing style that makes you think they hvan't quite figured out how to orchestrate that many appendages into movement at the same time. We took lots of pictures... ooohed and ahhhed ... and got closer with the binoculars.

After this we headed back up the Seward Highway... and now we're back to the top of the e-mail and careening vehicles for Dall Sheep viewing!

Sorry this got pretty long. If you're crying right now because you can't stand to leave... you can continue reading below about our first few days in Alaska. You can also do this if I was a terd and didn't send you the first e-mail. And if you're totally lost.. my name is Janai.. Hi... and I"m in Alaska for 10 days! visiting my Aunt Kathy John-Again, with my cousin Nicole. Welcome to my dialogue. :)

Oh! So here's our running talley for Alaskan Wildlife:
Nevermind, it's out in the truck.. but here are the important ones:
3 Humpback Whales
7 Black Bears
1 Heard of Dall Sheep
2 Dall Sheep on a precarious cliff
1 skraggly Dall Sheep that may have died from old age by now
2 Bald Eagles
6 Moose
2 rocks of Sea Lions
1 Calving Glacier
1 Thing that had a high pitched squeel, was running away from the bears, and might have been a Marmot
and lots of birds


Next Edition: A flight around Danali and Mt. McKinley, Ice Climbing, Trapper Creek, Moose and More!

--------

Alaska III: A Career Change

So National Geographic Photographer is still holding as number 1 on my "dream jobs" list. But being a Seagull just got bumpped down to #3 and Gravedigger, I'm sad to say, is not longer in the top 3 (there's a story that goes along with this... but that's more of a tangent than a segue and will have to wait to another time.) My #2 dream job is now to have my pilots license, own my own small plane, and fly tours out of Talkeetna around Mt. Denali. The perks? On my days off I can fly myself into the uncharted territory to go downhill skiing, rock climbing, ice climbing, backpacking, and mountaineering. Sounds great doesn't it?

So Day Four (4):

Nicole and I spend all our money in the REI in Anchorage, no intereste! sales! = wonderful! We leave in time to head back up the Glenn Hwy (?) pointed straight toward our 7:00pm appointment for a flight around Denali with a glacier landing. The excersion was amazing! Unfortunentally we didn't get to actually fly around Mt. McKinley because it was too cloudy, but we did weave in and out of all the peaks that surround it. It is the neatest thing to see these miles upon miles of land that hasn't been invaded and subdued with roads, and houses... and well... mankind. Our pilot was quite the unique Alaskan. He had on bright blue pants (that were made out of that same material that got overused in the 70s, the one besides tye-dye) and a hawaiin shirt. He was 23, had been flying since he was 14, and owned his own plane that he used to fly himself into all these areas we were flying over to do outdoorsy stuff. (dream job right there.) So along with all the history of that part of Alaska, glacier descriptions, and helping us understand just how high all the peaks we were flying between were, he also told us about his climbing/hiking expeditions, and told us to watch for a ski-pole he lost as we flew over the specific peak. I can't really describe how other-worldly it was... but I have lots of pictures that may try to do it justice.

So after that Nicole and I headed up to Trapper Creek (which according to our pilot has approximately a whole 12 people living there, and only 6 in the winter) to meet our Aunt at our new Uncle-John-Again's cabin. The cabin is beautiful, 3 stories, and on a whole lot of acres, and came complete with a hot tub and freshly baked Banana bread and Apple bread.

Day Five(5):
Went back into Talkeetna to putz around the town. Then joined our Aunt and John-Again's sister Shirley for some good-ole' local theatre, a play entitled "Off the Map." Whitty (the daughter kinda reminded me about the dialogue between the Gilmore Girls) and George reminded me of Mathew from Anne of Green Gables. Then back to John-Agains cabin to find out that a bear had been there, flung the trash can of bottles halfway across the yard, knocked open the front door, and stolen a bag of chicken feed from the back of John-Agains truck. Said bear then returned at approximately 12:45am just outside of Shirley's windown on the bottom floor. Apparently she got out of bed to see what was making a noise outside the window and came face to face with a bear. She then chased him from window to window along the bottom floor... and eventually made his exit through the potatoe patch. Unfortunentally, said bear probably won't live through the week. (we thing it was a brown bear.)

Day Six (6)
Head of of Talkeetna for Hatcher Pass which is a very long gravel road that goes between the Talkeetna/Willow/Trapper Creek part across to the Wat-su Valley (Palmer, Wasilla, and the Matanushka Glacier. We stopped at an old Mining town just past the top of the pass. It was probably one of the prettiest minning town's i've seen as every building was painted silver with red trim. And judging from our tour guid and all the little "informational signs" we read, the miners had it pretty good for miners.

We left the minning settlement and headed down to Palmer and on up to the Matanuska Glacier where we would be ice climbing the next day. All we had to do was find a camping spot for the night which we decided to do within the privately owned Matanuska Glacier Park. After much wandering around on the gravel roads that weave through the park, and following signs and no signs that kinda told you where to park (they're not very into putting the $15.00 people pay to get in, back into upkeep on the park) we decided on campsite 9 3/4. It had an endeering name after all, and gave us a whole meadow all to ourselves! Whoohooo. OH! and on our wonder's through said byways of Matanuska we came across a HUGE moose and her two little uns. Serisously this thing was BIg... and it was standing right in the middle of the road. They were so still when we first came upon them that I thought they were oversize cardboad cut-outs of Moose that the park had put along the road---like big pictures of what we were supposed to be looking for, but blown up oversize so the little old ladies who forgot their viewing glasses could see them. Anyway... so we spent a wonderul night at campsite 9 and three-quarters (which had three picnic tables and two outhouses for one supposed camp-site.) then .....

Day Seven (7)
got up the next morning to go Ice Climbing out on the glacier. We chose to perfect time to go too b/c Nicole and I ended up being the only two signed up for that day. And the MICA people that we went on a climbing adventure with decided to let one of their other guides out to play on the ice with us... so we had the two of us, and two guides. Needless to say NIcole and I got a lot of climbing in--7 walls en-total. The first two were simple climbs that weren't even quite straight up and down. Then we did one climb that had an overhang at the top. I made it up and over just fine... but on the way down I think I still hadn't quite figured out how to use my cramp ons (and really I was kinda surprised that my face hadn't made acquaintences with the ice on our hike out to the climbing area) but as I was being belayed down over the overhang i slipped and flipped upside down. Nicole was laughing so hard at me dangling off this overhang with my icepicks in hand, that she almost missed even getting a picture of it. :) The next climb we did we got belayed down into a canyon-esque area right over a stream that was flowing form a waterfall right next to us, then we climbed out. The last 3 of which were pretty hard because they angled against you..... and we had water running off into our face the whole time becaues it was kinda a bit of a waterfall. It was in an area that they call "The Scoops." Those were fun because they were challenging and really made you work. Plus there was a little deep stream at the base of the climb that you had to get over before you could even start climbing. It was amazing and beautiful and really second-worldly hiking around in these glaciers because you felt like you had tumbled into another world. If you looked away from where the terminal marane was back into the glacier, all you saw were rolling hills of blue and white ice. It was like the Ice Queens castle in Narnia or something.... but you didn't fear for being turned into stone. :)

Now we're back in Anchorage, and we've got a day and half of our trip left. Today we're going to head down to Girdwood and do a hike that you get to take a hand tram across a gorge. We're going to try to catch the Bore Tide somewhere down in Turnagain Arm (it's a giant wall--from 6-10ft-- of water that flows down the arm when there's an extreme change between the low tide and the high tide. Apparently there's even surfers that do down and ride it... if they can stay with it, that's like catching a 2 hr wave! wow!).

Current Animaly Count:
1 Bear Poop
3 Bear snout prints on windows
5 Bear footprints
7 Black Bears
9 Moose
3 Dall Sheep + 1 Heard Dall Sheep
2 Bald Eagles
3 Humpback Whales
Numurous: Stellar Sea Lions, otters, puffins, common Miures, and other such birdlike creatures.


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