Hey Hey and a Big G'Day toya,
 
Just thought I'd drop in for a quick catchup and to say hello.
 
Happily last weekend Luo Wei and I finally got to spend another weekend together. She's been busy hosting a variety of English Competitions at her uni, which of course continue over the weekends.   So Friday night we boarded buses that took us on separate picturesque journeys through the wild mountains that surround both our abodes.
 
Where better to meet than Xian's ancient city walls.
What better to do next than head to the Hostel for a giant club sandwich and an evening full of smiles.
 
We spent most of the weekend out and about shopping for a new jacket for Luo Wei for Christmas (which was her first present). I know she won't have time to read this so she won't know that her main present will be a mobile phone. For the last year she's been using my old Sony and most would know that I lugged that thing all over China for three years. Now the screens about to go, the camera no longer works and you pretty much have to bash it around to get the charger or the ear piece to work.
 
Getting it to turn on is another problem entirely.
That now takes an actual kick start!
 
Saturday night we met up with Ying and his Gal and we headed out for a most deliciously mouth watering Hotpot. We spent a few hours chatting about this and that, much of which was about New Zealand. Some time in the next few weeks Ying will be heading there to visit friends for a month or so. We will probably catchup again during Spring Festival when I head to Kaifeng City with Luo Wei..
 
Ying is from Zhengzhou which is the capital of Henan Province and only an hour away from Kaifeng.
 
While we are on the subject of me having another few months off to travel, I've been told I finish teaching at the end of December and that the new term begins around the end of February. I can't say that will happen and I'm preparing to finish teaching around the middle of January and as to when the new term begins? This is China, no one actually knows just yet. If people actually knew and others found out, that would give the masses the power to plan ahead.
 
My guess is that the powers that be in Beijing are still waiting for the moon to tell them.
 
Like I said in my last blog, my sixth Chinese New Year in China will be spent in and around Guangdong Province eating Cantonese Cuisine and renewing my Passport. There are several villages I want to visit that are full of Hakka Peoples Earth Buildings. For those that don't know what I am talking about check the following pages out. They would have to be some of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life. I saw them in a documentary when I was just a wee boy. A few decades later I moved to China and then to Fujian Province and took a friends advice to go see some strange houses. When I arrived I began jumping up and down yelling paragraphs of strange things my Chinese Driver thankfully couldn't understand.
 
There were the very same houses that blew my mind decades before.
But this time they were real! 
 
Yongding and Hakka Peoples Houses Adventure Part I - Photos 
Yongding and Hakka Peoples Houses Adventure Part II - Photos
Yongding and Hakka Peoples Houses Adventure Part III - Information

Also as its been a few years since I've seen the ocean I think I will spend some time visiting the coast where I can run naked (feet hahaha!) along the beach and build sandcastles.
 
Between now and then I will be a very busy boy!
 
I found all ten years of the X-Files in Xian on the weekend and as it only cost around seven or so Aussie Bux I thought to myself, why not spend some time with Spooky Mulder and Scully the Skeptic. It's been along time between beer and pizza's for us. Wednesday nights were for a decade of my life dedicated to only one thing, beer, pizza, friends and the X-Files.
 
That is actually four things but I'm sure you know what I mean.
 
Though LOST has nearly taken its place, the X-Files still sits at number one on my All Time Best TV Shows list. I also finally found the latest BOND film in English too. The three I found prior were 'in English' until you put the disk into the player. Somehow two of them sounded very much like Chinese and the third sounded very much like Russian and all of which I was assured that were in English 'because it said so on the back cover'.
 
And to keep the Chinese on the ends of their chopsticks.
The Russian one didn't even have Chinese subtitles, they were in Thai.
 
The other night I actually started typing up the blogs for my Inner Mongolian Grasslands and Sand Dune Adventures from last summer but now I just don't know where I will find the time to finish them. Last night I watched half of the first season of the X-Files and with nine and a half still to go maybe I won't ever get them finished.
 
Before I wish you all Pre-Christmas Beers N Noodles I want to send out a HUGELY HUGE or even HUGER THAN A HUGELY HUGE congratulations to Mick Evens who recently turned into a Mr & Mrs with his sweet. It is times like these that sometimes make you want to pack it all in and head home but that second passes and I simply move on.
 
Hoops mate, that would have to be one of the best 'Best Man' speeches ever!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FXFWv8z3w
 
Seriously, the man is now married and I have never met his wife.
In fact there are several friends that over the past four years have married.
Some of which have had kids that I have never had a chance to say Kutchie Koo too.  
 
Life moves on and waits for no man!
Live in a rice field or marry your sweet and have a few kutchie koo's!
A wise man once said, Do That Which Blows Your Hair Back Young Fella!
 
Beers N Noodles toya.......shane

PS: Over the past few years I've only written about 'health' on several occasions, usually when I'm deathly hungover or once or twice when I really was sick as a dog. Thankfully though the 'real' occasions only lasted twenty four hours. For those who have along with those who have never travelled to places like China, Laos or Thailand sit and imagine what it would be like to be hospitalised in such a country for reasons no body can find yet the pain you are feeling is real and so are all the other things that are happening to you.

This beer goes out to one of the Travelpod Greats who at this very moment is laying in a Thai hospital for reasons no doctor can find. Developing country hospitals mean just that...developing hospitals. So click here and read about ScottWoz and then sit back and try to comprehend what would run though your own mind. I'd be freaking out if it happened to me back home and I was laying in a modern sparkly clean Australian hospital.

Here's hoping that it is something simple!
So simple in fact that a few Beers N Noodles can fix it!

When we caught up a few weeks ago I found out that Scott has fallen for Asia in a big way and like me has decided to kick back and stay for awhile. Health huh, where would we be without it! Probably at our parents place being fed pumpkin soup and if your mothers pumpkin soup is anything like my mothers, then thats really not a such bad idea!

I wonder if she could get some through Customs!
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The soundtrack to this entry was the almighty Fear Factory
The album was 'Fear Is The Mind Killer'
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