With less than 3 weeks left in China, all my work is piling up. I am constantly either trying to put together brochures to working at the hospital. I spent last week in a little town called, Tiandu, it's Chinese for boring. Ok.. I made that up, but it is not my favorite part of Hainan. The dorm we stay at had no internet along with a long list of negaitve attributes. At first its horrible, but it really isn't so bad there after awhile.

The worst part about the dorm is the location. It's located down a dark alley, and at night, we refer to it as: Death Alley. I was walking through it one night and there were rats running all around. I was soooo grossed out, but the first thing that popped in my head was a song from Aladdin:

"Riff raff, street rat, I don't buy that.." la la la la la

It was a pretty disgusting experience, but at least Disney was there to make it a little bit more cheerful.

My favorite part about Tiandu is the restaurant where we get free food. It is ran my a muslim family with 3 boys who take our orders. They sell the most awesome little coke and sprite glasses that I want to take back home, so the other day, we went over to ask how much they cost. They couldn't believe I wanted to take them without actually drinking it (Normally, they open the glass bottle for you, you drink it, they get the bottle back). One of the boys asked how long till I drink it, and when I said, ummm Forever, they just started cracking up. They then asked if I was taking it back to my "home country." They couldn't believe I wanted it so bad, and they were so sweet and gave me both glass bottles for free! It was definately a highlight.

Part of my job in Tiandu is making sure the turtles we have at the resorts in Yalong Bay are doing good. One of our projects while we were there was to master the art of fishing. We have this 8 ft net thing that all you have to do is: Set it and Forget it and wahhla. fish. The first time we went out at around 10 at night. If there is one thing that will draw a crowd it's foreigners epically failing at putting a net in the ocean. We didn't want to go all the way into the water, so we kept attempting to put it in the surf.. but it would get tossed around so much, it was pointless. These Chinese men came up to me and kept laughing and pointing at the net and me.. I had no enthusiasism. I just stared and said, "I don't know" I thought it was a fitting response because 1. I don't know how to set up a net and 2. I had no idea what they were saying.

The highlights of my time in Tiandu were:

1. Learned how to ride a moped by a hostel owner

2. That same hostel owner let us choose whatever breakfast we wanted at his hostel: I got 4 pieces of toast, bacon, and french fries.. perfect

3. Being taken hostage by a sales woman. She wouldn't let me leave until Emma came back to buy a necklace.. but Emma wasnt planning on coming back. So I sat in a chair, while she sat over my shoulder telling me about where the weather is hot in China and where it is not.

4. Sitting on grass. Real grass. It was a shame that I could only sit on it for a few seconds until mutant red ants started crawling on me

5. Bartering! I'm horrible but sometimes it actually worked..they probably still charged me too much, but, ohhhh well. It's kinda exciting, even when you get rejected.. many times..

6. Trying to figure out what certain stores actually sell. For example, "Do & Me" is a chinese fast food restaurant. "Golden Rooster" is a clothing store

7. Eating corn on the cob at the beach!

I'm back in Xincun for another couple days, so I've been enjoying my bed and free internet, but the only sad part so far, is my turtle, Laurinator died :( She was doing so well, but she just wasn't strong enough.. Hopefully, the other turtles pull through.

I gots to go to bed, but I just wanted to fill ya'll in a bit.