Zaijian Zhongguo!

Last week here in China. I'm going to miss it. Two nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night and our room smelled like a mixture of chinese food, feces, and the "china smell" (which cannot be described). I gagged a lot, knocked on the door of the room beside us for 5 minutes, threw down my pillow and blanket, and slept there for the night. Apparently the sewage or something conveniently backed up in our bathroom. It's fixed now.

We present our final set of pictures (40) on Wednesday and Thursday. Someone is setting up a website where everyone's work will be up once we get back, so I'll have to pass that link around once I know it. There should also be a gallery showing of the work in Austin at the beginning of the fall semester.

I will be back to turkey sandwiches, swimming, and all things summer on Saturday!

Alright, I'll get this out of the way. As some of you might already know, I ruptured my eardrum last Friday night due to an infection. Went to the hospital and got medicine and I'm not in any pain but I cannot hear out of my left ear. It will heal and I should be fine.

That's the super abridged version.

Less than two weeks left. My roommate and I are going to start a count next week of how many times we hear people say "we're going to hang out when we get home, right?" I'm guessing somewhere between 45-55 times. She's guessing in the triple digits.

I wasn't able to go to the exhibition but it was apparently a success. The man who set up the entire thing was very excited and started it off by shaking a beer bottle violently and then opening it. He cut his finger in the process and had to be rushed off to get a few stitches. Quite an opening act. Here is a picture of my work up. Don't mind the glare.


And here is a picture of the space it was at (in the communications building on the campus):


That's about all for now. Here is a rough draft panorama with that metal counter from last post.


It has rained all weekend.
Megan

Wow, sorry it has been so long. Apparently there was an earthquake in China (?) that caused the internet not to work for a while. And then blogspot has been blocked by the Chinese government. In attempt to find information about the earthquake, my roommate and I googled this:

Needless to say, we didn't find much information.

We went on a tour to a village yesterday. Tomorrow we are having an exhibition of the work we brought with us. It should be fun. They are expecting 200 people. I'll take pictures and post them later.

Lately I've been doing a lot of editing and shooting. Chinese class is super boring and I haven't really learned anything at all.
It's crazy that I've already been here a month.

This morning there was a truck/ice cream truck/nuisance outside our window playing a terrible version of the happy birthday song from 7-8am. It was ridiculous.

Here is one picture. I intend to post more later. This was shot inside a store that makes and sells noodles.



Oh, and I bought a kimono.

Megan

Hello! I have come with some fresh photographs from last weekend and Tuesday. Two panoramas and one diptych (two images beside each other). I also have my tentative artist's statement:

Here are two panoramas I shot at a market about 30 minutes from where we are staying:





I'm not too wild about the second one so it might have to go.

And a diptych of the wheat:


Tomorrow we are going to the Xi'an History Museum. The only plans we have for the weekend is to shoot.

I wish I had something really exciting to write about but I don't. Well - I dyed and cut my roommates hair yesterday and we had a dance party in the hall with our professor.

Megan

It has been a while. We had a packed weekend. We went to Mt. Houshan (2.5 hours away) on Friday and spent the night there. It was very pretty, but very, very, crowded. We took a cable car up to the top and walked around a long time. Here is a picture of the cable car:


Yesterday we went to a village almost three hours away where the people live in cave-like structures under the ground. They harvest various crops throughout the year and just live an incredibly traditional lifestyle. We photographed and a family there cooked us noodles for lunch. It was very pretty and unlike anything I'd seen before. Here is a picture of what the homes were like:



And here is a picture of our entire group at the village (plus some translators and Chinese friends):



I have a lot of shooting to do this week and that's about it.

Hello. We went and saw the famous terra-cotta warriors today:

That isn't a picture of the real warriors, but rather, 2 inch tall replicas being sold by vendors outside. The place was pretty neat, but very crowded with tourists. And very hot.

I finally have a theme for my photography project while I'm here. I'm going to document agricultural sales and production. Doesn't sound crazy exciting, but I think it will be interesting.

This Friday we are spending the night on some mountain (can't remember the name), and I'm not quite sure what we're going to do there but it should be fun.

Xie xie bu keqi (thank you, you're welcome),
Megan

Spent the entire day in front of the computer. Don't have much to show for it except these two panoramas, which are still a work in progress. I really have no idea what I'm doing.





And my roommate cut my hair. Nothing drastic.