Oct 19 2013:

Our plan for Saturday was to go to the Qingyan Ancient Town, I believe it’s called. It’s on all of our lists to do here! So we met at about 8 am to head into town and try to find another bus over there-

Except on the way over I got extremely nauseated and no longer wanted to do anything but curl up in a ball and preferably die.

So we all got off half way through town [I had been hoping it would go away. I’ve had stomach issues several times now in China but usually stops while I’m sitting but since it still increased on the bus, I didn’t want to try and keep going], Katie grabbed some sweet brown rice and we headed home.

Abby and Greg headed off down the street, promising to call later and see about doing something tonight. The ride home for me, was more than miserable and I’d honestly call it a miracle that I made it back to our apartment without any issues.

Katie had some energy when we got home, however, so she decided to try out our heater. Nicole said it was a heater, but we’re not really sure. We’re pretty positive it’s a hot pot cooker thing. Mostly just heats up on the top and all you know? So she fiddled with that, then tried to connect us to the internet but couldn’t do anything more than what I had already tried numerous times. After that failure, she turned to the TV.

And eventually, it turned on! There’s a secret switch on the bottom that needs to be flicked before you hit the power button, it seems. She pulled out the clicker and fiddled around before we found an English possibility. And there’s a USB port on the other side, so we put my thumb drive in and checked it out! Which works, totally works.

However it only takes certain formats, which is totally weird. I only have a few movies in the format, but hey it works! Pretty exciting!

Katie took a two hour nap while I read and tried to eat but had absolutely no appetite, not every for that especially sweet and delicate bread loaf I had bought to eat for the day. Seriously, it’s still in the wrapper. I had no desire to eat it all day with the stomach funnies. It was very distressing to me.

Once she was up, she wanted to do something. So she started teaching me chess!

Yeah she won, obviously. But it was a little more interesting and made us think some. We’re not really required to use too much of our brain here which is a bit frustrating to us both, so she’s trying to read classics and I try to do lots of everything, but this should help us a little bit as well, I hope!

Then we walked up to the school to eat. Not too choice. I had a drum stick. Yes, they use their chopsticks for that as well, sort of. Or they scoop it up in a spoon and eat it that way. Finger food is definitely different- I’ve seen little of it on the streets. Mostly it’s meat and you’re given a plastic glove to eat it with!

But yeah. Then we headed back, grabbed some more bread and such, and then got home. We had an hour or so, leaving time to read before Abby and Greg stopped over for an evening movie!

They’d had an awesome day we were definitely jealous of- they found this Flower and something market with all sorts of everything. It was so frustrating to know I had felt like crap and hadn’t been able to have an adventure like that. For the second weekend in a row I basically sat around the apartment… Lame. Relaxing, but so lame.

Anyways, we fiddled around with options before finally deciding on The Truman Show which I’d heard about but never actually watched. So that was pretty interesting! Katie and I curled up on the comfy corner with her huge blanket. I had a weird coffee tasting chocolate cookie… odd, and chewy caramels. Abby and Greg shared their orange flavored popcorn with us! Yes, you heard that right: orange flavored popcorn. But it was pretty good. In a very odd way! Haha…

They left soon after that, and Katie still had energy so we spent a minute or two literally jumping on the couches and then she nearly broke the TV before finally sitting down and talking for a bit. We read scriptures, and we’re off to bed!