We heard...

Bee & Jonah and them are coming down for camping. WE ARE EXCITED! We can't wait! 30 days, the countdown begins! Well, we know the weather will be hot, so it might be hard for the babies. But we hope EVERYONE that can go, will go! Can't wait for good times.

Experiment

When we come back home, we want to try the following, each at a different place...

"I'd like a banana split with no bananas please."

"Can I get a caesar salad, but with ranch instead?"

"BLT please, hold the bacon. Thanks!"

blogger now blocked for real

arg! we use a proxy now in order to get onto this blog. thankfully we can still post here, even though for some reason, we cannot post on xanga.

the down side is, we can't add pictures or links anymore.

today (saturday) was the first in a long while that we have ventured around the city. it was a great day-
i slept in till 11 am! (that's cause i stayed up till 4 am watching dramas...)

had xiao long baos (dumplings) for breakfast.

got 3 new pairs of glasses. (2 for me, 1 for josh.) The #1 thing that Shanghai does wonderfully, perfectly
right is glasses! 1 hour, prescription glasses, only $20 a pair. they test your eye for you on the spot, no charge. for any of you who wear glasses, this is a paradise... and addictive place to shop.

had Mexican food at a Mexican resturant. The owner was really nice and we got to chat with him. In all of Shanghai, this guy is a really from Mexico. But where did he live and grow up and go to school? AURORA, IL! Crazy, huh?

Josh is watching the Aliens series in reverse order: yesterday was Resurrection, tonight part 3.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Shanghai Nights

If you guys come visit us we will take you to the following places and activites.

1. eat awesome foods: the food in this town is pretty darn good and it has tons of variety
2. visit hangzhou: beautiful city located off a super beautiful lake. is the home of world reknown longjia green tea.
3. tai kang lu: an awesome artist community that has great restaurants and sells tons of super cute trinkets and clothing, artwork etc.
4. visit neighboring water villages: imagine venice in china (kind of, but on a poorer level, but cool nonetheless)
5. go for a bike ride in the crazy shanghai traffic.
6. mai kao and my favorite: eat breakfast street food.
7. take a weekender to Japan or Korea: whichever you like
8. hit up the fakes market and buy tons of crazy stuff
9. go get something tailor made for you at the fabric market.
10. cook dinner for you ala mai kao.

miss you all much and cant wait to see you all this summer

josh out

Oops...I did it again!

so i went to a constructed tourney today in shanghai. i wasnt too sure what the meta was, but i knew that generally, the meta was the same all around the world...thanks to the internet.

I went with my B/W tokens deck and hoped for the best. I'm going to spare you all the suspense and just say...i won...kind of. in the finals, my opponent offered me the first place prize for the 2 byes at the City championships at the end of the month. i wasnt planning on going to the City Champs anyway, so after a while of thinking and consulting my friend Dennis, i decided to take his offer and accept 2nd place. i dont mind. i told him (Eric) that he better win the City Champs because i gave him the 2 byes! all in all, for $5.50, i won 20 packs of Morningtide and a fatpack of Eventide. i know not the best of prizes but worth it for me. especially because i popped open a bitterblossom, reveillark, stillmoon and bloomtender! More than making up the expense.

here is the tourney match by match

Round 1 vs. BoatBrew
game one: his FOD goes all the way...lame ( in my opinion, FOD going all the way is boring.) Game 2 and 3: my tokens kick it into gear and he cant handle ajani+glorious anthem. at one point in both games he over extended playing both a siege gang and spectral procession right into my....Zealous Persecution. too bad. never overextend. 1-0 (2-1)

Round 2 vs. Mirror Match
Game one: he kicks it into high gear and punches out an army of knight of meadowgrain, KofWhite Orchid and spectral procession. my board is spectral procession, tidehollow sculler and knight of white orchid. he attacks with all of his creatures to activate his Windbrisk Heights playing another Flower Knight. i block all and then BOOM hit him with the Zealous persecution. his board is nearly empty, and my whole army is still there.

Game Two: Spectral Procession and Hideaway land smash face. my main deck Zealous Persecutions seem to be doing wonders! 2-0 (4-1)

Round 3 vs g/b elves
game one: he cant overcome the Bitterblossoms constant stream of tokens. he maelstrom pulses my glorious anthem instead of my BB. little did he know i had one tucked under my Windbrisk Heights. i won with a 3 land hand and not drawing another until turn 6! i'm glad the curve of this deck is so low.

game two: two kitchen finks wittle him down because he is transfixed on my ajanis (and rightly so). whenever he would kill my ajani, i would have one in backup. in that game i played 3 ajanis. the deciding play was on turn 4 i realized he missed his landdrop so i Zealous persecutioned his 2 llanowar elves at the end of my turn. it slowed him down enough for my dual finks+ajani synergy to take over. he used so much removal that game on just those two finks. 3-0 (6-1)

Round 4 vs. Boatbrew and my chinese friend Zhang. i told him i didnt want to play him and wished we saw each other in the finals instead of the semis.

game one: reveillark, reveillark! and figure goes all the way! i lose.
game two: i realized that all of the matches with boatbrew that no one was using volcanic fallout, so i decide to go super aggro and side in all finks and tons of spot removal...the Rock style. two knights and two scullers behind tons of spot removal and yet another ZP.
game three: t1-heights, t2- sculler, t3- knight of white orchid+sculler. his board position consists of two knights, spectral tokens and a figure level 2. my hand is 3 land and Zealous P. i act like i'm in big trouble giving him signs to all out attack b/c of his firststrikers and figure. i make the right blocks and then Zealous Persecution. he slumps down in his chair then nods at me that that was a good bluff. a few turns later, he fails to draw the wrath and i take 2 of 3 from my friend. 4-0 (8-2)

round 5 (explained above)
yay!

deck list:
4 fetid heath
4 windbrisk heights
2 caves of koilos
1 reflecting pool
2 exotic orchard
4 arcane sanctum
3 swamps
5 plains

3 kitchen finks
4 cloudgoat
4 knight of the white orchid
4 tidehollow sculler
4 bitterblossom
4 spectral procession
3 zealous persecution
3 path to exile
3 ajani goldmane
3 glorious anthem

SB:
3 mark of asylum
2 martial coup
1 Kitchen finks
2 celestial purge
1 elspeth
3 wispmare
2 identity crisis
1 zealous persecution

allstars for this tourney:

1. zealous Persecution: this card is the reason BW tokens is the deck to beat right now. it gave BW tokens the edge against rival token decks - GW and Boatbrew. if used correctly it more often than not is a complete blowout.

2. Knight of White Orchid: lets you keep 2 land hands. more importantly though on the draw, he ramps your mana up so that it seems as if you played. first strike came in handy too.

3. Ajani Goldmane+ Finks: your opponent cringes every time they see their hardwork trying to kill the finks go to waste. do they block and see the finks go Super Mario again or do they take the damage? i love giving my opponent difficult decisions to make.

4. WIndbrisk heights: the best land in standard.

i love this deck. it is super fun to play and mega dangerous. wow. its still shocking to see i did this well. basically, i'm just shocked that our group of friends that play magic at home are really this good? between Xay, Johan, Vern and I we have 8 victories. coolness. when i get home from china for good, we should start up a team and really tuned each others decks up for some serious tournaments.

josh out.

The Movies 2

What can we say? Completely excellent in every way. Perfect casting, they connected the new to the old Star Trek universes /storylines /timelines well. JJ Abrams is on a roll, and we can't wait for the next movie to come out.

At the theaters:

1. I brought a camera, to document the experience. Hmm.... Should we bring video recording cameras to movie theaters? Ooops! It didn't even occur to me till I was busted mine out, started narrating, and then the security guard in Chinese is yelling at me: Miss! No cameras allowed...!!!

2. Yes, we do have assigned seats. The ticket seller pulls up a grid, shows you the seats available, and you choose. It's like buying tickets for a concert, an airplane... etc, etc. Or all in short, assigned seats at the movies!

3. You get 2 popcorn options: rainbow colored sweet popcorn. Or the regular salty sort. Most Chinese go rainbow, most Americans go salty.

4. Other interesting things available at concession: dried squid, beer, Pocky, and dried prunes. YUM!

5. Since we went to the matinee show, we were almost the only ones in the theater. It was medium-sized, clean, and felt just like home. YES! Also, we saw a trailer to a Chinese movie that's about kung fu robots. I think it's like a Transformers meets Robocop type action movie.

The Movies

Star Trek came out today here. Right after work, we're going to the movies! I thought I'd write my 'pre-movie' and 'post-movie' comments here.

We haven't watched a movie in a theater here, yet. So I'm excited. We've been to a theater, just never actually bought the ticket and gone inside. (Well, technically, I saw 2 movies while I was studying here in China way back when. But that's too long ago, and the memories are almost gone.)

So here's what I'm curious about:
1) I hear the popcorn is mostly terrible. And I believe it.
2) I wonder how big the screen is, actually.
3) What is the atmosphere pre,during, and post movie?

I only have my average average expecations for the movie itself. As long as it's good, I'll be happy. I don't need spectacular, spectacular.

Birthday Day

Today Josh is 29. Happy Birthday, Dup Dup.

Please stop to think about him for just a second... think about who he is and about your friendship with him. Aren't you happy and missing having him around? I thought so!

I couldn't do anything special at all for him this year. In fact, he's probably getting out of a taxi right now as I write this cause he went to church to lead prayer in worship. (I couldn't go.)

But he knew it was coming. Last year was too over the top, and he knows I can only do super duper birthdays once every 2 years or so.

Josh is so easy to love. He's funny, he's sharp-minded, he's easy going, and hard-working. He gets along with all kinds of people and all kinds of people get along with him. He's 100% real with you and he's a such a simple and naturally, happy guy. He's slow to anger and so quick to forgive. He's easy to please, knows good taste and style, and is shameless to just the right degree. His heart is set on eternal things and you know it when he sings all alone in the room, just him, his guitar, and JC.

My birthday wishes for my better half: That he will grow a little more in wisdom and stature. That he will never fall away from God. That he has and ever-growing capacity to love and befriend others who don't know or understand Christ.

And I hope that he does great in the constructed tourney on Saturday. Fighting!!!

So close, but so far away...

We've been able to get on Xanga for a while now, through a proxy. We can view and read everything, but the down side is we can't post anything!

the job

Teaching here is a very rewarding job. We wish that we could transplant some of you teachers from home and come over here. These days, we don't get off of work drained or tired. We come home and share stories from the day. (Actually, we eat lunch together most of the days now, too.) Yes, at times things are busy, but it's so enjoyable.

For example today. I had to teach the kids the word "negro" because it's in this weekend's story for reading. They know black people of course, but still get a little bit confused about being "African American." So I go into this long tangent on being Hmong American, etc, etc.

Then, when they finally get 'negro' they turn to the only dark skinned girl in our class, an Indian, they ask if she's negro. They don't get it that she's not even close, until I ask a Chinese kid, "Hey! Are you Japanese? Cause you look Japanese! You must be. Black hair, small eyes. "

It was really funny cause they get really embarrassed. Ask a Korean kid if he's Chinese, a Taiwanese kid if she's Filipino... their reactions are really funny! They blush, they giggle, they turn away. And the class thinks it's funny too cause they're like, "Of course she's not Japanese!"

Josh brings his guitar to class every once in a while, and the his students love it. They ask for 'American' songs all the time, like Jason Mraz and Fall Out Boy. (yes, that's the popular music that teens here listen too.) Josh's kids totally like him. I think I would too if I were them.

here's to the coming home count down!

7 Mo Weeks!

can you believe it? its been 8 1/2 months since we left for China. We've had lots of ups and a few downs here halfway across the world but all in all, we feel really blessed to be here. we miss you all at home a lot, but China has been the best thing to happen to our relationship.

I love having my own place. i dont know how i did it all those years (aside from college) without my own place? when we get back to the states we definitely are going to try to buy or rent our own place.

this year has been a super eventful year. we've visited the Great Wall in Beijing, pit stopped in Seoul and Hong Kong, visited all of Vietnam, saw the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xian, experienced life in another country, and served the church in Shanghai, ate lots of awesome foods...too much to say them all

whats on our definitely to do list next year?

1. Korea
2. Japan
3. Singapore
4. Africa
5. Mongolia
6. India?
7. Israel?

josh out

About food!

I like seaweed.

Conclusion: I think I've moved on to the next level of Asianess (as a Hmong person.)

The first time I ate seaweed, I was in 4th grade. We were studying culture or something, and everyone had to bring in a dish from around the world. (Typically, I brought in eggrolls.) But Justin brought in sushi. I took one bite of the stuff, gagged, did the almost-throw-up-thing, then spit it in to my hand and hid the chewed up chunk in my desk.

Fast forward 19 years and here I am. Seaweed in soup, seaweed in salads, seaweed sheets on the side to each with my rice, seaweed crackers, seaweed rice sprinkles. I even bought seaweed at the store the other day to try to cook myself.

Alara Reborn Release Party!

I havent posted about Magic in a long while so i thought i might share with you how i did at the Alara Reborn release party. Enjoy!

Last week i went on a quest...to win my local FNM by the time i leave Shanghai this summer. After having done so well the first two times drafting there i went on a slump of going 1-2 for three weeks in a row. although i wasnt playing poorly my drafted decks were just inferior to the cards these guys were pulling. on to the release party.

i picked my packs which consisted of AAARRR. i like this way of sealed much more by the way. after cracking my packs open, i realized that i had a good Naya deck, actually a really really good deck. here was my deck: Dark Naya (Naya+Black)

Lands - 16
1 jungle shrine
2 esper panorama
2 swamps
4 forest
4 mountain
3 plains
(i know the land total is small but the decks curve and my mana fixing more than made up for this less than normal land total.)

Creatures - 16
2 Akrasan Squire
1 Wild Nacatl
1 Topan Ascetic (foil - Johan)
1 Rhox Charger
1 bloodpyre elemental
1 wholly thoctar
1 steward of valeron
1 deathbringer thoctar
1 bloodbraid elf
1 marisa twinclaw
2 3/4 cip 3 damage to flying creatures guy ( i dont know their names b/c they are written in Chinese)
1 r/w tapper guy
1 r/g landcycler
1 w/g landcycler

Spells - 8
1 executioners capsule
1 obelisk of Naya
1 r/b borderpost
1 aura that gives +3/-3 to creature
1 Oblivion ring
1 bitumonous blast
1 lavalanche
1 colossal might

Planeswalker - 1 Ajani Vengeant
Total cards - 41

after constructing it, i was pretty confident that if i played without making mistakes i could do well, maybe even win it all...i was confident that my creatures would outclass the majority of decks i played.


Match 1: played against the local judge. he is a really good player and i hadnt beaten him yet. He always plays grixis, and was playing it once again but this time with an esper splash.

first game i curved out perfectly t1 forest nacatl, t2 plains ak squire, t3 mountain ascetic, attack for4, he lays down a super 0/8 wall, but then next turn i draw and play bloodbraid elf into wholly thoctar! ouch! his super wall can only block one guy so i swarm in for the win. game two i have him down to 3 life but then he gets out the Esper Akroma...he comes back via vigilance/flying/lifelink (akroma is akroma, shes good in any way shape or form.) game three i check my deck to see if the O Ring is still there to answer his akroma...yep it is...on to playing. i curve out perfectly again with almost the identical plays accept this time i Bituminous Blast his Tower Gargoyle, cascade into Bloodbraid elf, cascading into.....R/B borderpost :( you cant get them all the time...anyway his super wall can only block one guy of the swarm and i have ajani and a fist full of removal to answer any of his threats or defenders. I win. my deck was superior to his and i never once overplayed my cards...he's the kind of player that lives off the mistakes of others and so when he saw that i was playing well, he got totally flustered and i was able to use that to my advantage. he often over extended to kill a creature only to see i had another creature waiting to back it up. (1-0, 2-1)

Match 2: for the first time ever i was in the winners bracket. yay! i play against a guy who is playing a Naya/bant deck.

first game i curve out perfectly again, t1- ak squire, t2 tapper guy, t3- land cycle, t4- bloodbraid elf into topan ascetic. no chance. he was running elvish visionary and every creature he ran out there was met with either ex capsule, or the +3/-3 enchant creature. fast game one. game two, he gets mana screwed out of a blue mana and i easily romp him with a rhox charger and bloodbraid elf into an ex.capsule. win number two! awesome, my first finals match! (2-0, 4-1)

Match 3: i play against a guy i named Chang...we've been playtesting each other out with our constructed decks and he is consistently at the final table. he was really happy to see that i had gotten there as well and congratulated me on that. he's a great guy and a really good player...he's helping me to become a better player. before we sat down to play though he offered me a deal i could not refuse. he really wanted the release party T-Shirt that was awarded to 2nd place and so he asked me if i wanted to draw and take 1st place and the ten packs that come with, in exchange for him getting second place - six packs and giving me a vendillion clique. i thought about it for maybe 2 seconds and then shook his hand. (2-0-1) 1st Place!

i had finally done it! i won a real sanction event. how cool! reading Olivier Ruels starcitygames article about what tier you are really inspired me to become better. before today i was a 3 star player (out of ten - with 10 being reserved only for the hall of famers and most pros being on the 5-7 level), one who plays at the local FNM and plays competantly, but hadnt yet succeeded at the local level. once you win you move on to 4 star player. I had set out a goal to win a local FNM just a week ago...i did not figure it would be only one week before i acheived this goal.

the stars of the deck:

• Ajani Vengeant - of course! his ability to keep a permanent untapped is way stronger than it looks, permanently keeping their best creature out of the game. i never got to use his ultimate, but the lightning helix worked out just fine.
• Akrasan Squire - the early 5-6 damage he puts in makes it feel like my opponent starts out at 15 life.
• r/w tapper guy - his pinging was awesome and the tapping kept so many threats under check. excellent card.
• Topan Ascetic - first time i got to use him, he is so powerful its ridiculous
• bituminous blast- cascade is so good it feels like you are cheating.
• Colossal Might - the best pump spell in the block. just as good as most removal, maybe even better in the right decks.

the MVP - Bloodbraid Elf: she is as good as advertised and then even better. made my curve go from real good to crazy! cascading into a wholly thoctar? absolutely cruel. simply put, every game i got her out i won. yes that is correct, every game i got her out i won. you know how in basketball you need a great 6th man. well BBelf is like having steve nash as your 6th man. she is probably my favorite card from Alara Reborn.

i called mai kao and acted all sad on the phone to make her think that i had lost. then went home to see her...with my secret surprise. when i told her the news she was so happy for me and recorded a long speech of me explaining my deck. how cool. and then i let her open all the packs for me b/c of my dreadful luck...most of the packs where pretty bad, except for one that made it all okay. i popped open a Maelstrom Pulse! she sure is my lucky charm.

in two weeks is the Constructed tourney and winner gets 3 byes at the City Champs later in june. i've been waiting for a constructed tournament, b/c i'm more a player than a deck builder. 2 weeks to find out the meta! yikes.

it feels good to win it. i knew i was a good player but my results never showed it. it feels good to be able to finally turn the corner.

josh out.