FYI

Firstly, apologies in advance for Josh's explicit post that follows! (You know how he and his bowel movements are.)

And now mainly, the best way to reach us is this: call us through Skype through these phone numbers:

Select China as the destination country. (Country code is 86)

Our apartment: 021-6453-9174
Josh's cell: 150-2691-0484
Mai Kao's cell: 150-2691-0484

Try it sometime! We'd love to hear from you!

This week.... Our first batch of mail going out. Coming to a mailbox near you soon... China Air Mail!!!

Yellow Riot!!!

Lastnight, Mai Kao and i went to a punk concert. there was a Clash tribute band and let me tell you, it was SUPER AWESOME! if a clash tribute band is playing a gig nearby you MUST go. i cannot tell you how great the show was. it was in dingy place with tons of sweaty people, and the energy was off the wall. i realize this isnt the "ideal" for many, but if you want to see good punk, you cant go to stadiums. the feel of the soundwaves of distortion blasting off your body? nothing like it.

lately, my poops have been small, but they are super sticky. like i'll poop just a small turdlet, but it will totally smear the toilet! its weird man. i'll flush the toilet multiple times and that wont be enough to wipe the poop.

i cant wait for my box of shards of alara. its the most powerful set to come out since ravnica. ravnica is super powerful, how can you tell? b/c people are still playing ravnica based decks and bombs in this years extended. If shards has alreadymade a dent in Extended, it will totally dominate standard next year. so i cant wait for my box. that way i'll be all ready to duel you guys next year.

with my booster box i am going to have my own 8 man booster draft here by myself. i want to extract as much fun out of the box as possible. its going to be a standard 8 man draft with 8 total rounds. i will post the results in typical Josh Xiong analysis style.

peace for life.

jquan.

Huge hotpot

This hotpot kuas was so good. It's made out of fish and has zaub qaub in it... so tasty!! Look at the size of the pot compared to Josh's head.

I've taken up horseback riding in China!

Check it out!

Guitar

I got a perm!

Well, not really. But when the hair person said that, I was like, "Perm??! No thanks!"

Actually, what I really got was a permanent wave in my hair. I wake up, wash it, and go! It's pretty awesome. My hair is so straight that the haircuts I've always wanted would never work on me. So a light wave in my hair did the trick. (Leave it to the Asian hair pro.)

Boy, I wish you girls were here with me. I went alone yesterday, but it would have been so fun to go with you. I had a really cool stylist. This coming from someone who really doesn't go to the salons a lot. One of my colleagues here recommended this place. (Sidenote: Every guy that worked there looked like he came straight out of a Korean or Taiwanese drama. It was... weird with out Josh.)

Next time you see her...

Riley, we love you!

Please give her a hug and a kiss for us.

The lastest picture we've seen of her is on Johan's blogger. *sigh*

We climbed a mountain!

Yes. It's true. We climbed a mountain. Not like... with ropes and pegs like in Cliffhanger. But like... we hiked up this bad boy:

Mt. Huashan : 'The Number One Precipitous Mountain under Heaven'
One of the five sacred mountains in China.

Here's another shot:

All in all, it's absolutely not what we expected. Conclusion: We'll never climb a mountain again, unless you pay us.

Why you ask? Well, mountain climbing is not glamourous in any way. It's way more grueling than you expect it to be. And all you have to show for it, at the end, is nothing but the chance to say, "Hey. I climbed a mountain."

I'd like to take a moment to give a shout out to none other than Josh (aka Doodle.) The climb was basically all stairs, with a few flat paths here at there. The angle was on average... oh... between 50-85 degrees.

1/4 of the way up (FYI: the peak we climbed was over 5300 ft) and he was about... to die. He has a bad knee anyway, so we should have known better. But by then, we were some 1.5 hours in to it. I didn't want to turn back yet.

With a combination of the smog, being overweight, elevation, and not so great health, it was miracle he made it half-way. By then, I refused to turn around. (We started getting really grouchy and fighty by then, too. You know, high-stress situation and all.) I almost broke... I almost believed that we had no choice but to turn around, but I thought it would be seriously frightening going back down. Josh said he could not go on. But he had no choice, being halfway up and halfway down a mountain, and all.

3/4 of the way through, we met 2 Vietnamese guys that just... good Samaritans, SE Asian love? We don't know. It baffles us, but they were so loyal to us. They helped us get through the rest of the climb. They would pull us up when our legs were going to give, they waited for us even though we majorly slowed them down. And the crazy thing... They smoked cigarettes while climbing, and spoke almost zero English.

We made it to the top, and our 2 friends were waiting there for us. They were SHOCKED, yes, capital letters shocked that we made it. They thought the climb was so deadly tough, that we would unflinchingly turn around.

So that's our story. The view was beautiful. It was coldish. Took some pictures. And rode this very long, and scary looking cable car back down the mountain.

The End. Check out our Flickr pixes for more.

Not so serious post!

So, reading your Xangas has been very rewarding and fulfilling for the both of us. Keep up the posts, mans!!!

1 politics comment: Yij Second pointed out the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats in one of his recent posts. I know that most people really don't KNOW the difference between the big two parties; that it comes down their philosophy about the role and control of government in our lives. Good job man!

Anyways, sorry we haven't posted in a while. We've got lots and lots of pictures. So keep checking!

NEWS: Josh got a new guitar. He paid 700 RMB ($103) for it, a bag, picks, strings, a capo, and a great feeling in his heart. He has been so lost and lifeless without a guitar. I don't think he should go for too long of periods without it again. So our apartment is filled with his singing (which his voice is a little rusty these days) and his discovering old, awesome worship songs and Elliot Smith.

Josh speaks: I am also enjoying playing my new guitar on our new couch. We bought it from Ikea. It's pretty sweet. Umm... Now that we have furniture in the house, it feels a lot more like home and it feels a lot more comfortable. It's pretty cool to have a place of your own. I know this sounds kind of sad, but this is the first time Mai Kao and I have ever had our own place together. It's pretty nice.

I finally found a place that sells Magic cards. I only bought 2 packs. Why, you ask? CAUSE THEY"RE 38 RMB. $5.60 a pack!!! DANGGG. That's expensive.

We're also in the process of finding as many cool places to go, so when Sarah comes here, she'll have an awesome time in Shanghai.

Peace out.

Our job

We are thankful because God has brought us to this place. At this point, it seems like we'll be questioning and struggling with our reason for being here up until the day we actually leave the country... What we do know though, is that little by little, we have to pay attention to everything we do, and every moment we have and what God has to say through these things.



We've been reflecting these past few days, and we are thankful to be living in a non-Christian community. Johan posted this in Xanga... that we all should be more aware about our outlook as Christians to non-believers and how we are perceived when we represent Jesus. Of course this was in the context of politics... but it's exactly what Josh and I are were talking about just yesterday, in the context of life!

Keep the faith, friends. Live meaningfully!

Ba Guan'd

We've never had a real professional, paid-for massage in our lives... So we thought, why not?

Josh had a fantastic Thai massage and he so highly recommended it, I decided to get one the day after him. The masseur (Hans) came to our room and casually mentioned that if Josh wanted, he could get a Ba Guan treatment while I was getting my massage. For $7, why not?

Ba Guan is a really popular and ancient Chinese treatment that is used to clean your toxins and get your blood and energy flowing. It's the thing where they take a glass jar, light a piece of cotton or a match and stick it on your back. Lucky, Hans had just the regular plastic ones with a suction pump. It was much easier... and less painful.

It didn't hurt Josh at all. People with lots of toxins will get dark purple spots on their backs. It turns out Josh is a fairly toxin-free guy! He only had one dark spot, as you'll see in the pictures. He did get this mysteriously NASTY side effect though-- water bubbles under the skin. They say it's supposed to go away after a week. But we're not so sure... And we're too scared to pop them!

Enjoy the pictures.

Holy Xi'an!

Xi'an was awesome! the city is pretty awesome. its a nice combo of old time china with some modern stuff. Will post more in later. first some questions.

how did HC3 go? full run down.
how are things at home? Church?
MN peeps how youz doings?
dlaab peter can you write me a good descriptive reply on how you won the tourney? congrats by the way...you are always way too underrated. thats why i always try to kill you first in Multi.

Thanks for the package Hluas Pang Foua. its always super cool to get stuff from the states. now that we got our address book we can send all our friends stuff from China!

we have tons of pictures that we will post once mai kao gets home from work.

highlights from Xi'an.

1. riding bikes on top of the wall. super cool.
2. good eats.
3. getting a full body massage and suction cup medicine therapy from a Christian massuse named Hans. yes, folks, his name is really hans. those little chinese boogers are strong!
4. hiking the craziest mountain i've ever seen. there were times when we were hiking on an 80 degree incline! all we had were 3 inch wide foot steps and rusty chains to drag ourselves up! we climbed up literally thousands of steps.
5. visiting the terracotta warriors...cool history stuff.
6. taking a long as heck train ride that was super uncomfortable. 20 hours. we were so blasted, we flew back home.
7. apparently, you cant buy round trip train tickets in china. you can only go oneway and then try to purchase tickets returning. we tried to do this and the train tickets sold out so we opted for the faster and 10 times for expensive route in flying.
8. the hostel we stayed in was super nice. it was better than most hotels we've stayed at and the concierge service is amazing!
9. had a fun time with bleu.
10. mai kao and i prayed for HC3 and the band on top of the mountain. a shout out for jesus and the friends from china.

okay thats it man.

josh out.

People at HC3.

We know that a lot of our friends and family are at the HC3 Conference. We're thinking about you guys. You probably are still on your way there, or already tuning up your instruments to get tready to play right now. Have an awesome weekend... and tell us all about it.