Updates: Smog, Wedding Photos, Etc...

This is a blog full of updates!
1. Smog update: So, the day after I posted the terrible smog picture, around 4:30, we needed to walk to the convenience store to pick up bottled water.  The smog was just as bad but with a disturbing development.  Ash was raining from the sky.  It was pretty heavy too, you couldn’t look up without getting it in your eyes, and you couldn’t breathe without it going in your mouth.  But we needed to go to the store so we just covered our mouths and looked down.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say a volcano had erupted nearby and we were about to be Pompeii-ed.  Either that, or something huge was on fire.  We also thought it might be coal-related since Huainan is a coal town.  Adam asked Beth on Monday morning what happened and she said the farmers were burning crops and it just happened to be a windy day so the ash blew into the city.  Great!  I wonder how many times that’s going to happen this summer.  I am glad it wasn’t coal-related, though.  The air is completely cleared up now.

2. Wedding photo update: Mandy got her professional pictures back so I asked her to send me a few. 

Announcing the song

Singing

You can see how much everyone is enjoying this

The end of the song

Can you believe this person wouldn't even get out of the way for the professional photographer??

Head cut off!

3. Badminton update: Against all odds, Adam is still in the tournament.  When the tournament is over, Adam will write his own commentary on it.  :)

4.  We finally heard from Mr. Hong via text.  He said he’s feeling better, but won’t be returning to Huainan.  Who knows if we will ever see him again.

5.  Our trip back to America is only 3 weeks away.  We're excited to pig out on all the American food we miss.  The #1 food we miss is Mexican.  There's literally nothing like it here.  They have burgers and fried chicken, and there are some places you can get crappy pizza and OK spaghetti, but they have no concept whatsoever of nachos or quesadillas.  And we're also excited for a Subway sandwich.  Other than burgers, they don't do sandwiches here.

Smudgie is a happy puppy, as always.  I can't wait to buy him some durable toys because he has destroyed all of his current ones.  I have to resort to letting him play with toothpaste tubes and such.      

Smog

The smog around here varies from day to day.  But it's rarely as bad as it was today.  Here's the view outside our apartment on a clear day:

Here's the view when it's a little smoggy.  This is what it's like most days:

And here's the smog today:

I have no idea what makes it so bad sometimes.  But this is only the second day like this we've seen in our 7 months of living here.  If it were like this more often, I'd be pretty depressed and scared for our health.  I hear it's like this a lot in Beijing, so I'm really glad we don't live there.

In other news, Dreamer graduated college and is now back in Huainan.  She won't be working at Guilford, but she'll be around to hang out with.  Friday night we went to a KTV with Dreamer, Mandy, Jiang Lu, Jin Nian and a girl I don't know.  This KTV was not as fancy as the one we went to at Christmas, but I really don't care. 

I've been trying to go to KTVs as sparingly as I can because I'm not a big fan of them.  It's like their favorite thing to do and I don't get it because they always sing the same songs everytime.

On a day when it wasn't smoggy, I took Smudgie for a very long walk.  He was so exhausted, but very satisfied.  You can see how happy he was from these pictures:

 

Badminton and Stuff

There's a badminton tournament going on at work!  Well, it's not taking place at work, but we got to leave work and go to this little gynasium just big enough to fit three badminton courts yesterday afternoon.  Here's what the building looked like on the outside:

And here's the view from the second floor where the courts were:

So it was kind of in the middle of a crappy neighborhood.  Anyways, Adam played against Mr. Xu and won, although we suspect Mr. Xu let him win.

Action shot

I played against Beth, the translator that took Dreamer's spot when she left.  I lost, even though I wasn't as bad as I thought I'd be.  Beth was just better. 

Action shot

Adam will move on to the second round next Friday!  Instead of going back to work afterwards, we just had our driver pick us up at the courts.  But he drove down this crazy narrow alley and when he tried to get back out, he totally scraped his car against the walls and crunched up the front fender.  He didn't even care!  He was just like "meishi, meishi" which is like saying "no biggie".  He obviously doesn't own that car himself.

Our housekeeper made a new dish last night that's basically lima beans and chopped up bologna meat.  Usually she makes delicious food, but this time.... well Adam likes it.

She's made a dish before with potatoes and that same meat, and I swear it tastes just like bologna.  We were walking down the dog food aisle at the Carrefour last week and saw a can with a picture of sliced meat that looked exactly like it.  I'm pretty sure she wouldn't serve us dog food, but I thought it was funny. 

Today we had our last Guilford paid Chinese lesson.  No, we are not fluent now so don't ask.  We were moving too fast for our own good, anyways.  We got more than half way through the big book of Chinese grammer and it was really starting to get overwhelming.  So I think we'll just take this break, review everything over the summer, then maybe forge ahead later.  Here are some final pictures:

She wanted to hold Smudgie: