thanks villanova

so last night i was ranked 198,998 in the espn bracket challenge. i was in the 95.7% of 5 million people. not bad. well after today's games, i quickly dropped. now i'm 1,011,868 and in 78.1%. i picked pitt to be in the final four, so my shot at winning is pretty much over. nuts!! i hope i'm still ahead of president obama.

you tube is blocked

today, you tube is blocked. but blogger is up (for now). who knows how long this will last? i'm still surprised that they haven't blocked this site more. that's really why i stopped blogging. ahhh, just kidding, i haven't blogged because i'm lazy and i like to take naps. plus nothing exciting happens anymore here. well except the earthquake that was pretty cool (only because no one got hurt).

speaking of earthquake ... yesterday in class, we heard a really loud boom (i think it was a cannon going off for a new store), the girls in the front row said earthquake in chinese. so i yelled really loud and made my knees give out. they yelled and said "xia si wo (吓死我)" which means "you scared me to death". i laughed so hard, it was hilarious!!! their faces were awesome.

earthquake in siping?

on friday we had an earthquake in siping. i know crazy??? i didn't feel it at all, i was making a fort with sam and we were running around the room. rach was taking a nap and she said she felt the bed move, i told her she was crazy. the thought of an earthquake didn't even cross my mind. but we had one.

here's our fort (kids got some static in her hair):



here's a little blurb from the news:

According to China Seismological Network Center, the determination of Beijing at 14:48 on March 20, 2009, Siping City in Jilin Province Yitong Manchu Autonomous County, Gongzhuling City at the junction (43.4 degrees north latitude, 124.9 degrees east longitude) in 4.3 earthquake, epicenter depth of about 19 kilometers. Epicentral distance of about 70 kilometers in Changchun City, Changchun City, there is obviously felt. Changchun City School students evacuated to the playground or after school for students to advance. Xinhua News Agency reporters Shao Shou and Zhi She.

sam's trip to the orphanage

today we took sam to the orphanage. it was her first time going. we've been planning to take her for a long time, but she likes to nap when we normally go. so we took her, it was pretty funny.

she sat on the potties with all the other little kids. i hope it inspires her to go when we are at home.



there was a ton of students from our university there. the funny thing was that they all thought samantha was an orphan. that was pretty funny. i just let them believe that i was holding another orphan kid.

it's been a while

i realize that it's been forever since i posted anything remotely interesting, but how do you follow "samantha's tricks"? i figured i'd give it some time before i found something else to post.

we've returned safely from thailand. everyone in china says that samantha and i are black now? is there not a word for "tan" in chinese? they should really have one, because calling people black seems rather odd.

on my way back we had to fly through a few different airports and along the way, i had two thing stolen off my luggage. one of them was my awesome jingjing luggage tag that was ripped off somewhere and another thing was a flip flop key chain that said "samantha" on it, it was attached to her stroller and they totally stole it. jerks! these are things that don't accidently fall off, they have to be purposely taken off.

here's picture of samantha eating bamboo worms in thailand. she kept asking for more, she must have eaten about 50 of those little guys.

sam's tricks

we tried to capture a few of sam's tricks tonight, here's some of them.

track and field day

last week the school hosted the annual track and field day for all the freshman students. it's a pretty big deal, usually the students get 2 days off from class to run around and mainly sit in the stands and cheer. last year they started letting the teachers compete in the competitions as well. last year the foreign teachers only competed in one relay event and this year they piled the events on us. which is ironic because last year we had super speedy seth and sarah on the team. we could have used them this year. i was entered in the 100 m, 200m, 4x100m, a really weird relay race (i ran the 200m), and finally the long jump. needless to say it was a long two days and i'm still trying to recover from it. i'm not sure how i got roped into all of those events, but it was fun. the best part was that we got gifts for placing in each event. so for every event that i got 7th place or higher, i got gifts. i think i got something for everything but the 100m dash (apparently i've gotten slow, or because the teachers i raced against all took off before the gun went off, but i'm not bitter). so i got a few sets of hangers, a blanket, and something else.

our 4x100m team (i think we got 3rd or 4th)


the craziest was the long jump, the last time i did the long jump was in the 8th grade (19 years ago). i came in 5th place for the prelims and then 7th in the finals. not sure how that happened but apparently the other people got better. i jumped 5.07m (16.6 ft), not bad for a little guy. but hopefully i'll never have to do that again.

congrats marguerite!

today we went to our first chinese wedding (not including ours, but i'm not sure that really counts). it was for a student who was a senior our first year in china. the wedding was held in between services at the local 3-self in changchun. the 8 o'clock got out and in went the couple. they exchanged some vows, the choir sang, and then they were out the door. as soon as they were gone the 9 o'clock started up. talk about efficiency!

the only bummer was having to get up at 4:45am, to catch the 5 o'clock train in the morning. i was not a fan of that, either was sam. here's the proof:


here's some pics from today :)