What She Said

As you can see I have not posted much lately. To be honest I am under the weather with a cold and just don't have the energy to think or write about anything other than my chinaonthemove.net stories. My BCF, Kelly, is kicking butt still and keeping her blog up to date while also managing to write story after story. She is pretty awesome. So, for those of you who really want a China update, look at Kelly's blog at chiiina.blogspot.com. This should give you a good idea of what I have been up to lately. I will try to catch up soon. For now I can say that in spite of a cold Shanghai is pretty cool. More later...

This one's for you Dad!

Hi Dad- Sorry I could not get in touch with you yesterday. The internet comes and goes and I couldn't figure out how to load more minutes on my phone to send you a text. I sent an email but not sure if that went through either. Since you and Mom are following the blog I figured a post here would definitely get to you. So, a little late...HAPPY FATHER'S DAY! I COULDN'T ASK FOR A BETTER DAD! I love you and miss you.
xoxo- Dawny

Terracotta or KFC??

We visited the Terracotta warriors recently. They were pretty cool. They were warriors...and they were terracotta- yep, nuff said. If you visit this historical site I suggest you start with Pit 3 and work your way back to Pit 1--it is the most interesting. Or you can be super time-efficient and just visit Pit 1 and then head to KFC outside for an early lunch.

Kung-Fu Panditos

I dig Kung-fu movies (or Wushu as the locals call it)--I am no expert, of course, and my knowledge is pretty much limited to Jackie Chan and Jet Li. For those of you who haven’t seen it, I highly recommend The Legend of Drunken Master. The final fight scene is amazing. Anyway, back to the point…my classmate, Vianey, is doing a story about a wushu academy here and I shot pictures for the story. The story will probably get posted sometime next week, but in the meantime I want to share some of the images with you. They start them young over here. Crouching tiger, hidden youth.

Find My Stuff at chinaonthemove.net

For those of you keeping up with our class website I want to tell you about a cool feature. With one click of the mouse you can look at all the work I have done on this trip. On the right-hand side of the home page, about 2/3 the way down, there is a section called travel blogs. There is a link called Dawn Jones-Garcia’s travel blog. Click on it and you will see all my stuff: articles I have written, multimedia pieces I have created, photo galleries with some of my images, and stories (written by classmates) with photos I have taken. Check it out…everyone is doing great work over here.

My meeting with a farmer

I was fortunate to get an interview with a local farmer while in Beishe on Thursday. This is the sort of activity that I live for when traveling—I love meeting the locals and experiencing a bit of their lives. I only got to spend about an hour with this gentleman talking to him about his crops and life as a farmer. Afterwards, he invited us (my professor, Tracy, and classmates Kat and Liang) to his home for a little while. We were all glad to be there and it was another good reminder that we are indeed foreigners in this land. He was pretty excited to have us at his house and it didn’t take long for news of the Meiguo’s arrival (pronounced May-Gwa, means Americans) to the neighbors. They all showed up to see the strange animals on display. A good time was had by all. I am currently working on a multimedia piece from this interview but in the meantime I figured I would share some images. The last image isn't that great but I want you to get a feel for how hard he works. He tends 3 fields the size of the one his is pictured in--he does everything alone and by hand.

Goin' to the Country

We went to the country on Thursday to get a look at life outside the big city. We visited the village of Beishe, in the Township of Jiaodao, in the district of Chengcheng, in the Province of Shaanxi---what??? Anyway, here are some images from that trip.