Chawaii Part II: Men :)

The next day (Tuesday) was time to move to the hostel that we were going to be staying in for the week—Joes Inn. It was amazing, if you ever go to Sanya, stay there. Joe is so nice! (and he speaks English! Hahaha). He and his wife run it, and it’s very clean and efficient!

Well the morning that we moved hostels, there seemed to be some tension going on between us, and it was extremely uncomfortable, so before we left the hostel to go to the beach I said that we had to have a meeting and fix whatever was going on before we went anywhere. So we ran it like our family meetings at home, and started with a compliment circle. Hahaha. At first Marissa and Shelby felt weird, but then we finished and I started with the agenda. Finally we started opening up and saying what we REALLY thought about things, and everyone felt a whole lot better J

As we headed downstairs, we saw all these American men…and then I said, “Hey! We know him!” and they all turned around. It was our friends from Nanjing!!! They were at District Conference from the BYU study abroad group. We were sooo glad to have run into them. So we all headed down to the beach together and had a blast playing ultimate Frisbee in the water and just lounging on the beach J

Chris, Ryan, Dan, Troy (he has the best mustache in the world), Marcus, Jameson, and Jake, we LOVE them! :D Later we all headed out for dinner. We walked along the beach and decided on a Brazilian barbeque/buffet. It was definitely pricy, but worth it! (Actually, it was cheap compared to America’s, only about $11). The only difference was one of the skewers had baby chickens speared through….head, face, feet, everything…..we didn’t opt for that one….hahaha but man, we had a blast together!


On the way home there was a guy with a microphone and speaker singing songs. Marissa told me to go sernade us, so I walked up and asked if I could sing. I broke out into a loud refrain of At Last, and a healthy sized group conglomerated. Through in some Ingrid and Taylor, and we had our only little party! Then Jameson and i did some duets and then I handed off the mike to Marissa. We had so much fun! :) It’s so good to have lots of friends! Hahaha.

 The next day was Wednesday, and it was a little weird :P Time went by wayyy too fast! We slept till 9 (but of course the boys slept till 10), and then we went and got breakfast from the street venders. They have these really yummy bread pockets filled with leak, and these yummy vegetable baotsa (at least that’s how it sounds when you say it….haha). And of course, delicious fruit J Then we decided we needed to be desperately tacky and buy those touristy Hawaiian clothes, because we can. :D Hahaha. So we haggled down the prices and got them for 20 qui (a little more than $3).

Then we headed for the train ticket station so the boys could buy their train tickets. They were leaving the next day L After what seemed like an hour, we hopped on a bus that went over the mountains. It was a long bus ride (but not as uncomfortable as previous rides!) and so I fell asleep. But by the time I woke up, we were getting off at a stop that felt like we were very high up…except I don’t know if we were because the beach was fairly close. Actually that’s a lie….I remember walking for about 45 minutes before we actually got to the beach…..hahaha. but before we started walking, we stopped for some lunch at a restaurant. It was really hard to find because it was about 4pm, and food places aren’t usually open during that time. But we finished and then headed on a long walk to the beach, but it was well worth it!! The waves were HUGE! I never really knew how powerful the water can be….wow, that was an experience. Half way through I was so stressed out I had to get out of the water, it was kind of pathetic actually…..hahaha. The waves are just so strong and big and full of salt, it killed my eyes. And then while you paused to try and recover, you just kept getting hit with these giant waves!!! Finally I got a grip on myself and headed out to the deeper water to try riding the waves. It was funny though, so I finally got there (where all the guys were) and said, “I made it!” because let me tell you, it’s quite a fete getting that far, it takes work! But anyways, so I was excited that I finally made it, and they all kind of paused and nervously said, ‘oh….well…be careful”. Alarmed, I looked around, to find a couple of the men holding their shorts….apparently the waves are quite strong.

Don’t worry, I kept my distance ;) haha after a couple hours of exhausting swimming, we headed to find a way back to the city. We crammed 6 of us into this tiny little bike house (it’s a little bench house thing built on top of a bicycle. Think emperor’s new groove, and you’ve got it), until we found a bus stop J WE then went on an hour ride back to our area. We decided to get off where our Mexican hostel was so the men could try the yummy food! :D And of course then we had to introduce them to the amazing fruit ice cream!

We then headed to the beach because we heard music! There was a live band, so we made some requests and they started playing “I got a feeling” by Black Eyed Peas, and then took over the dance floor and had a BLAST! After 20-30 minutes of our dance party, (and when all the drunks started coming out to dance with us) we decided to head to the water. Night Swimming! It was great J There were definitely some creepers in the water though…turns out there job is to ‘make friends’ with you, and then they have people in position on the beaches to get you to come get a ‘massage’. The number of brothels I’ve seen in China is ridiculous, and incredibly sad. We did some research on it when we got home, and it turns out that a lot of the woman will live far away and be promised waitressing or office jobs, and then they get there and have no money to get home after they find out what it really is. It’s awful L

But anyway, after the beach we headed home (it was like 1am), so we hit the pillows J

 

Thursday-the men’s last day! So what did we do? Relax J we got breakfast and headed to the beach (1 minute walk from the hostel J ) and went crabbing (or craybing as we liked to call it….haha). You go in the water and scoop up a handful of sand. Shake it a little, and lo and behold you’ve got about 9 little crab shells with little crabs in them! It sounds super childish, but it was amazingly enjoyable….hahaha. We then had chicken fights (aka the men had chicken fights) and they practiced standing on eachother’s shoulders. Later we had lunch at a muslim place (I have one in my city, and it’s my favorite place to eat!) The noodles are SOOOO good! The make them right there in the restaurant! They beat the dough, and then depending on what type of noodle, they’ll either string it or shave it into a boiling pot and vwala! It’s delicious!! Then the boys had to start getting ready to head out. They had already checked out, so all their stuff was in our room. They traded off showering while the rest of us looked at the pictures for the day! J Before they left, we asked if they could give us blessings.

I am so grateful to have met such great men who honor and uphold their priesthood, so when 3 women from random cities in China want to experience the power of the priesthood, they are ready and worthy. It was wonderful! Then they headed out and the three of us felt quite empty…we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves! Hahaha. So we wrote in our journals, took naps, and wen t and got dinner. Then we came back together to watch a movie together, and fell asleep J