First night in China, part twoskie

I guess I should finish our first night in China. There really isn't much left... We just went back to the Hutong and fucked around a bit before we went to bed. Fucking around naturally included pulling out the digi cams and getting to work on further documenting (every last detail) of our trip. We were very excited about this at the beginning of the trip but by the last day we had definately petered out on our camera usage. There comes a time in every trip, I think, when you've simply gotten enough pictures. Between Melanie and I, there were MORE than enough pictures of the trip by the time we finished the Great Wall trip. Anyway, Melanie got a lot of great candid shots.

Like this one of me on the first night, once we got back from our bar outings. Doing what? Taking pictures of course!

The evening went on like so...

That's Devin giving Harry (no, not the dog, but she eventually got some too) a taste of a fruit rollup. He'd never had one 'cause they ain't got those in China. No sireeeee...

I'm observing the tasting... The look of bewilderment on Harry's face during the whole fruit roll up experience was priceless.

What's a livingroom without mannequin parts?

Look! It's Harry and Devin! And all the perty windows! Harry is standing in the doorway to the kitchen. It's small and a bit narrow, but full of lovely windows.

Here's a shot of those SAME windows during the DAY! Woo!

And if you're standing in the kitchen doorway facing outside, turn to your right and you see the lovely bathroom...

And in the bathroom you will find an example of what we had to deal with all week...

There will be NO reading in here. Just drop yer load and get the fuck out. A smelly porcelain hole in the floor. Not rank...just a little smelly-yes-this-is-a-room-with-a-hole-of-water-in-the-floor-that-leads-to-the-depths-of-human-waste-smell. Yea, like I mentioned before, the plumbing SUCKED. We were lucky, however, that Devin even HAD indoor plumbing. The whole structure of the bathroom was a little strange. It had a big water heater mounted on the far wall with the plumbing for the shower hooked up to it. The shower was not a separate stall, rather it was just one of those hand-held showerheads and...the rest of the bathroom. So the whole room got kinda wet and steamy and there was clear tape over the one outlet that was next to the doorway. A few feet back from the shower area was the toilet hole. A few feet from that, against the wall, were the miniature washing machine and pedestal sink...neither of which had hot water. Okay, enough bathroom talk...

After lots of talking, picture taking and generally winding down, we finally got to go to BED. OH GLORIOUS BED!

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaooooooohhhhhhhheeeeeeaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

Devin had just gotten that couch at IKEA (yes, there's an IKEA in CHINA!) and daaay-am if that thing wasn't comfy! It was nice and huge and came apart in three sections so we were able to move it around and make a wonderful cozy bed. It didn't take us long to fall asleep. We'd been up for about 28 hours at this point.

And last...

The next morning, er, afternoon. We spent most of our first full day in bed. Poor Melanie got sick. I mean pukey sick, poor thing. I guess it was a combo of pure exhaustion and drinking a lot.

Okay, that's it for now.

Oh yea, and I replaced the bar wall drawing with a bigger one, so if you go back to the "First night in China" it should be much better. I'm getting the hang of this. Sorta.