home again, home again.

we are back! and i have to say, no matter how fabulous a trip is, it always feels so good to come home. especially when coming home means tap water that won't make you sick, and toilets you can sit on instead of squat over.

we started out our trip feeling like this:

and after two solid weeks of sight-seeing, haggling, gesturing, exchange rate calculating and worrying about the rash that appeared on my legs around the second day of our trip, we pretty much felt like this:

we survived thanks to a lot of this:

and it was pretty much the best trip to china ever.

china was full of unexpected surprises, most of them good. there was a lot more english around than we were expecting, which was awesome. it never ceased to amaze us how cheap things were, which was also awesome. and everywhere we went felt remarkably clean, especially considering the inordinately large volume of people, and the fact that about 110 percent of them smoke.

i had also forgotten a little asian quirk, which is that asians LOVE to have their picture taken with white people. for the first couple days of our trip we were staying with my friend michelle in hong kong, and kicking around with her and her little baby, simon, so we thought maybe asians just love adorable white babies (see exhibits a and b, below):

but, once we got to the mainland we realized any white person, adorable baby or not would do. we were probably approached at least once a day to pose for a photo. and sometimes people just jumped into photos we were already taking of ourselves (see exhibit c):

when we mentioned this phenomenon to one of our tour guides he said, "yes, this is happen a lot in china."

indeed.

we didn't mind it, actually, unless the photo bombers then trapped us while "making conversation" (read: practicing their english) and trying to convince us to go somewhere with them so we could all "talk together" (read: so they could keep practicing their english). then it just got annoying. after a few times of falling for that trick, we just starting walking away when we heard the tell-tale question, "where are you from?" we'd just shout "the united states!" over our shoulder and skedaddle.

all in all, though, i couldn't have asked for a better time and, as my grammie said, i am so glad AWD came along in time to share it with me. it was a heckuva way to kick off year two together, and there's lots more to share. but for now, i am going to squeeze in one more nap.