TURTLES AT THE FANGCUN PET MARKET

Calling Fangcun a pet market might be a little misleading. The dogs, cats, and fish sold there are in fact intended to be pets. The turtles unfortunately are mostly sold for consumption. Chinese believe that eating turtle meat will increase their longevity. Though most everything we buy in the US is made here in China, a large percentage of the turtles for sale at this market in Guangzhou are bred in the US. Who says we don't have a healthy bilateral trade partnership with China?  

CAN YOU FIND THE MISSING NUMBERS?

These are the elevator buttons in our apartment building. There are no 4's on any floor. It is an unlucky number here because the Chinese word for "4" sounds almost identical to the Chinese word for "death". In a related story, cell phone companies in China allow you to chose your cell phone number from a list of choices, each of which are priced according to the amount of lucky and unlucky numbers they contain. I went for the cheapest option. My number is 134 4444 4444.  

MY FIRST SHOT FROM CHINA

This is the view from the deck of our apartment outside Guangzhou, China. I think pollution and large amounts of air particulates actually make sunsets better here. Our apartment is very nice, though I still get mild vertigo looking out the windows. More photos to come soon.

I GOT MARRIED!!

More pictures and stories to come shortly, but here is one of the first photos I received from my buddy, photographer extraordinaire Patrick Cavan Brown of Julie and I's wedding. She was a gorgeous bride. This was taken inside the Bentley her sister Jessica rented for us.

AUCKLAND SKYLINE

LORD OF THE RINGS HOBBIT HOMES

I am getting near the end of my summer employment with the world's crappiest teen travel company, Rustic Pathways. This week was a complete disater. My group was supposed to do a tree planting service project on the remote northeastern coast of New Zealand. When we arrived we were promptly asked to leave by the ranger who was stationed there because he was upset about broken promises and poor communication from my company. So we basically drove from place to place waiting for someone in the organization to make a new plan. When that didn't happen we took the kids to the movie set from "The Lord of the Rings" movies shown above. It is located on a sheep farm outside Matamata, New Zealand. 

THE KIWI WHISPERER

Meet Robert Webb, a man who oozes passion that I met today. He runs the largest bird recovery center in New Zealand, and has been doing it for the past 22 years. The center will rehabilitate anything with wings, but is especially known for rehabbing Kiwis. It is the only place in the world where you can actually touch a Kiwi. He showed us around today and really made us laugh. I wish the world had more Robert Webbs'.