first full day of china goodness

so i'm having a bit of trouble posting because well everything on the blog website's in chinese and i can't read it so i hope y'all are enjoying my efforts! it's actually not too tragic because john's out for dinner with a friend and im too damn tired to move so i'm just at the apartment chilling (actually freezing my little ass off while trying to get as close to the electric heater as possible without ripping the laptop out of the wall) and this gives me something to do. basically im sacking out and taking my sweet, sweet time working on this post. it's gonna be chockful of pictures too which is exciting but probably won't happen too often in future posts since i imagine it'll take a shitload of time. by the way, back to the coldness (which happens to be humid coldness by the way, yum!), when im out i've taken to wearing a t-shirt, hoodie, fleece and gortex all together. so basically all the clothing i brought with me. it's so hot, i wonder why all the little asian boys haven't hit on me yet...

anyway, i woke up today at 8 am to the sound of fireworks. fireworks, why fireworks? you might ask. well i don't fucking know but there ya have it. we did a whole lotta roaming around today but before i get into that, i took a picture of a squat toilet. this one was actually pretty nice and clean and not too narsty cause it was outdoors so i guess the wretched stench of it all isn't contained. also be grateful that i didn't take a picture of the one that was full of shit (and yes, i wanted to barf just a little). so behold, squat toilet: oh how cute. an urinal in the ground. with a little basket for your 'feminine products' and feces-infested toilet paper that they don't provide! fantastic.

so moving on from toilets to food, a natural progression...i had my first real meal today since last nite i was still so nauseated by my bathroom experience i barely ate dinner. we had 60 cent handmade noodles in a tiny little joint in the side of a building and well, i took a picture of it. ta da, my first meal in china: by the way didn't that look suuuuper appetizing? especially since the picture immediately follows that of the toilet?
and afterwards we crossed the street and got acquainted with starbucks. the starbucks here are massive and like fancy restaurants.
odd, but i was grateful because it had (note the theme to my posts so far) real toilets! i was very excited by this by the way. how sad. then we wandered partially around this giant lake they have here which is really nice but it was all cold and rainy so i didn't get very fabulous pictures. but here are a few gems:
the lake is super massive so we didn't walk all the way around it today but maybe on a nicer day we will. you can take a variety of boats across it as well but i dont' particularly find that enticing. well at least not those dodgy little ones but maybe this bad-ass double-decker dragon boat i'd consider:

i also made my very first purchase today: plastic sleeve covers, they're all the rage! ok i don't know about that but they have this cartoon character on them from my childhood and that brings me great joy. john says they're for protecting your sleeves while eating; apparently chinese girls here are damn messy eaters. however im deeply saddened because i've already lost one of them!!! it's completely tragic but at least i have this picture to remember the pair of them by.

alright well i'm sure you all wanna see pictures so i'm just gonna post a random whack of them right now, and we're off! this is john john's swanky apartment! )

me on the bus! riveting, i know.

this is some year of the pig...thing. and a bunch of bicycles and mopeds which are huge here. people ride around all day long on bikes wearing ponchos.

this is a nice tree-lined walkway across the lake.

the entrance way to what i suppose is a neighbourhood...

and this is inside the humongous supermarket we get our groceries from:

alright well that's it from me for now! by the way i really appreciate all the comments people have left. (that's also a bit of a not so subtle hint that if you haven't commented yet, get your ass in gear and do it!) it's nice to know people are actually reading this! and now i will go dig into my nestea in a juice box and assortment of pretz sticks ranging from pizza to vegetable bacon flavours. deeeelish.