Top Row: Jordan Glover, Jacqueline Grimes, Bill Brammell, Greg Virgin

Bottom Row: Jennifer O'Reilly, Ashley Sartaine, Laura Chai, Dolly Greenwell, Alicia Paez

From Jacqueline Grimes - June 13th:

We've visited a lot more temples since I last emailed. They're OK. One of them, called the Golden Temple, had giant gardens attached and I really liked it a lot. Then yesterday we went to a huge cave (bigger than Mammoth cave) and then to what was called the "Stone Forest". It had all the rock formations without actually being a cave. I took pictures because it is hard to understand if you don't see it. You go into these little paths and you can get all twisted and turned around. It's kind of exhilerating to be sort of lost in there. The formations are breath taking. Also we've encountered many many Chinese people that want to take our pictures. It's mostly just the blonde people they like to take pictures of, but others encounter it as well. It's like they're taking pictures of some strange creature. I can just imagine them showing their slide show when they get back: "and here is Mrs. Wu and I with the rare and beautiful Americans. They won't stand still for very long, but Grandpa was able to get a great shot of this magificent blonde in her natural habitat" They follow us around and take pictures even when we're walking away or looking at something, or posing for our own pictures. They yell at us the Chinese words for "pretty girl, pretty girl" or "American American". Sometimes they scream "HELLO WHAT IS YOUR NAME" and that's the only English they know, but it's enough to get us to turn around so they can snap a picture.

From Jacqueline Grimes - June 6th:

The internet is not very reliable here. We can't play games because there are only like 10 computers for the entire international student community. It takes it about 15 minutes just for me to log into my email and get the list of messages. To read about 5 emails and write one back to you takes all of my hour break between classes.

I haven't taken a lot of pictures. I didn't take any in Hong Kong because I was hiking up a literal mountain and I didn't want to carry it. I took some yesterday of Kunming though, and the day before yesterday we went to a special minority resturant. Ther was a cultural performance, the highlight of which being some crazy chinese men eating fire and then putting the torch down their pants. I got some cool pcitures of the fire eating, but hard as we all tried we were unable to get a clear shot of the pants-a-fire. At this resturant they also gave massages before the food was brought out. You just have to tip them 10 yuan (about 1.50). I gave my little waitress 30 yuan because it really relaxed me and it was worth probably much more than even that. At the end of the meal they show a gesture of respect by bringing bowls of rice wine (very strong, but very tasty) and kneeling by your chair. If they kneel you must at least pretend to drink the wine because it is a serious cultural taboo to not accept their gift. At our table Dollie and I were the only girls to receive the wine. I'm not sure why they didn't give wine to the other girls. Maybe because we gave them a "big" tip for the massage?

Yesterday we went to a primary school. It was so wonderful. The little children performed songs for us and they were so excited to meet us. They just kept saying "hello! hello! what is your name?!". They were so adorable. They were in 1st and 2nd grade and their teacher said 70% of them played a minimum of 2 instruments. 100% of them played at least 1 (and they weren't bad either...) After the primary school 4 of us broke down and ate at a local pizza parlor. It wasn't very good but we gobbled it up like girls who hadn't been fed in a week. I have already started to lose weight. I don't eat a lot and we have to walk everywhere and up a minimum of 20 flights of stairs (in the high altitude) every day.

This afternoon we are visiting a temple and eating at a resturant that serves food indicative of this province. They bring raw noodles and vegetables and a pot of boiling oil. You pour the oil onto the noodles and it cooks in front of you. According to last years seniors this is one thing that is actually edible here.

From Jacqueline Grimes - June 5th:

It's ALWAYS hot and humid here. It rains everyday but it is still hot. The rain just makes it more humid. The rain makes it smell bad too. (not that it doesn't always smell bad....we see little children urinating in the street everyday)

All the American movies in the theaters are already on bootleg DVDs here in China. We see copies of the new Star Wars on the street every day. WE can't bring it backwith us, but we have a DVD player and watch movies at night and even the new Star Wars DVD works. Some of those that I have purchased don't work, but they cost about 50 cents so it really doesn't matter. We just test them and if they don't work we throw themout and buy another copy the next day.

All of the students have Chinese counterparts - Chinese students learning English- and they are like our guides while we are in Kunming. Today we took them to eat American food because we asked them if they liked pizza and none of them had ever even tasted it. So we treated them to cheesburgers, fries, coca cola and pizza. Later they showed us a beautiful lake called "Green Lake" and tried to help us find a tailor to make Chinese style silk dresses for us. We are going back on Tuesday to get fitted for the dresses and to choose our silk. They are going to be about $US30.

Yesterday we visited a Buddhist temple. IT was so very beautiful. There was a big pond in the center with literaly 1000's of red eared slider turtles. You can walk down the steps to the edge of the water and even pick up the turtles if you like. Here in China releasing a turtle at the temple is a way to send a prayer to the ancestral spirits so in the markets there are a lot of baby turtles for sale. They are very very cute. I took so many pictures of all the turtles. I also found a little wild parakeet hopping around in the temple and took a picture of him too. I only think about parakeets as being in cages, but there he was, wild as can be.

We also ate at a special resturant. AT this resturant they serve a food indicative to this province. Each person gets a BIG stone bowl filled with BOILING hot chicken broth coverd with a layer of oil to keep in the heat. Then you add the uncooked rice noodles and the meat and vegetables you like and it cooks right there at the table because the broth is so hot. It's called "over the bridge noodles" and is a specialty of Kunming. The other students didnt' like it but I thought it was good: like chicken noodle soup. It was very hard to eat those noodles with chopsticks!! This morning my roomate and I didn't go to the breakfast on campus. That is served at 7:30 and we didn't want to get up that early on a weekend. Instead, we went to a small bakery right outside of the university and bought Chnese pastries. These were actually good. Mine was like a sweet pastry filled with lemon custard. AT least I think ilt was lemon. WE don't ever know exactly what it is we are eating. Whatever it was tasted like lemons and it was good.

In class I am learning Chinese and I can speak it in the market place quite well. I learn things like that very quickly. They always seem surprised when I give them a low price in Chinese and then when they give a higher price I say "tai guay" (too expensive!!). Really, though, nothing is expensive here. On tuesday we're hoping to go to the Bird and FLower market where they will have lots of Chinese carvings and paintings and jewelry. I saw some hand carved chess sets that the other studnets got at a similar market in Hong Kong and I'm hoping that I can get at least one of those.

From Jennifer O'Reilly:

China is ... well interesting. For the scholars next year, I have a few bits of advice. First, bring dryer sheet because you can use them in your sheets and pillowcases to keep the bugs away and hang them with your clothes so they don't smell like mildew. You don't really have to bring toiletries because you can buy all of them in Kunming. Bring stuff to do like a DVD player, lots of cards, magazines, books, anything that will fill up time because there is only so much shopping you can do. Make sure you are on facebook before you come, so that you will have something to waste your time on in the computer lab. Oh, and make sure your bring a digital camera because you will take a lot of pictures that you will never wanted to pay to get printed out.

From Jordan Glover:

China is great. Bill, Greg, Jennifer and myself play basketball everyday and some time draw crowds of 30-45 people. The food is hard to get used to but we are managing quite well. Chinese art class is my favorite class. today we are meeting for a 2 hour session to paint bamboo. The mountains are beautiful and we are taking an expedition next weekend to climb them... The people are small but I guess that is expected. Everyday we have language class and the favorite phrase of the trip is Doi chou = "How much" for all of the shopping taking place. I hope all is well in the states. Have a great summer and eat some american food for us.

From Laura Chai:

Kunming is nothing like what I expected. Hong Kong was a huge, modern city--it reminded me very much of New York City. However, from listening to last year's class--I thought that Kunming would be smaller and rural. Since we have already endured one week of China--I feel like I am settling in and getting used to the things that are different about the lifestyle. Our dorm rooms are fairly nice by American standards and luxurious suites by Chinese standards.

There are cars, buses, and bikes everywhere here. Although you seldom find lines on the roads, the rare lines you do find are ignored completely. There have been several times when we have sprinted across the street in front of cars and bikes that have no intention of slowing down. Also--the cab rides are pretty terrifying--our cab driver almost hit a woman the other day, and we all screamed. It is amazing how little some of the people seem to care about others. I find that a lot of people ignore each other and the roads are just one example of that. The other day a man was attacked by a mob of people in front of our campus gate. They left him pretty bloody, and as he lay in traffic, the cars just swerved around him. The police came, but they didn't do much about it. We have seen a couple of fights in the streets since we have been here--and I have seen a man hit a woman a couple of times. I think it's a pretty scary thought to think that as Americans, we could be attacked in the street at any time--but then again, that could happen in America I guess.

The food here is pretty terrible. We have found McDonald's, KFC, the French Cafe, and Teresa's Pizza. The smells of food in China are extremely pungent. There are many times that I find myself feeling nauseated by the smells of foods alone. We have been to McDonald's for dinner for the last two days.

We have an excellent teacher for Chinese art that we all love. His name is Ping, and he is professor at MTSU. He is the most talented, dearest man! It also helps that he speaks Chinese--he even translated KFC into Chinese so we could show it to the cab driver.