Thanksgiving news!

we will be having thanksgiving here in china on saturday evening! i suppose it will be less than than Rockwell-esque considering the surroundings, but we'll be sure to have fun never the less. some of our beijinger friends have never been to a thanksgiving before, so ross is hilariously driving himself crazy thinking about the exquisite 12 course dinner he'd ideally like to prepare. turkey is an import so it's way too expensive, there will be other little whispers from thanksgivings past however. ross will make stuffing and a pie of sorts, and i will eat them happily. there will be 3 cubans and 1 panamanian girl so we'll definitely listen to spanish music and more than likely dance. i believe this will be a thanksgiving to remember. pictures are sure to follow.
it's gotten very cold now, to the point where the mid-fifties felt pretty warm just the other afternoon. i think we all have a whole lot to be thankful for this year, i sure as f--k know i do! i miss everyone back home a whole lot, but i really couldn't feel any happier here. i want everyone to have a happy thanksgiving and to know i think about home every day and i smile and can't wait to share with you guys again soon :)

silvia in china

There are more pictures of silvia in ross and my cameras than almost anything else in all of china. these really are but a few.

Fall looks like...

this is my first real life autumn. trees suddenly change from green to all kinds of yellows and reds, then within days all fall to the ground. days switch between bright, sunny, and cool; to
gray, somber, short, and cold. the winds have picked up and everyone's dressed in layers.

it's funny to experience the cold in this more constant and unchanging way. miami has cold fronts that hit and dissipate within days, after which we can go back to the beach. i guess i've become wired over time to expect cold weather to follow that behavior. instead, i have 4 more months of this coming my way...

these last 3 pictures are from our weekly outing. we found this place a few weeks ago completely by accident that same day we found the abandoned hotel from a previous post. it's the dorms from a university here in beijing, but the buildings seem to be from the teens or 1920's. they aren't in the best shape but look really european and almost completely out of place here in china. they are really beautiful none the less, and i want to try and see if i can live there somehow in the future

We're all three at ross and my place drinking beer, painting, and watching funny english translation of indian music videos. watch and enjoy:)

so we found this apocalyptic dog park...

ross sees this park which faces an above ground subway station on the way to and from work every day. he wanted to turn it into a feild trip for us and we're all pretty glad he did. the park is super strange and packed full of copyright infringement, chinese weirdness, and mythologically themed kiddie rides. there's a small squatter community that actually lives in the abandoned park and the very back is a small dog park with very big dogs.

the entrance gate, and us photographing crazily in eerie disbelief

that brick area in the back is where the squatters live. just in front of that, on what used to be a race track, is a goat pen...i'm not sure if these are goats, or rams, or sheep. there's another area about 100 feet behind me with piles of corn husks. we assumed that's where the people who live there prepare their corn.

lots of overgrowth, and all kinds of poopy on the ground. you also hear a buzz from the power lines suspended above the park held by giant metal towers hundreds of feet tall on the messy fields adjacent to the park.

i'm pretty sure we'll return, we're also all posting about this neat place in the comping days so stay tuned.