It's Nikki again, we just finished a rousing round of "Wheels on the Bus", which is Sebastian's new favorite song...both in English and Chinese. It's the only thing that gets him to go to sleep. So, naturally, we sing it about a million times each night.

We went to the Minority Villages today, luckily we were able to convince Lisa to let us sleep in, and go at 11:30, so we ate lunch before heading out.

And what an interesting expierence lunch was, I got to see exactly what my mom and dad were complaining about the last time they went to China. One of the first dishes they brought out was a fish. No, not like somthing you'd get in the states, nicely cut, with the skin off. Instead, we got literally a fish with the head, fins, and tail left on...the works. We all sort of stared in horror, and waited for the next dish to come out. A few more dishes came out, none of which looked very appetizing. A waitress brought out some seasoned French Fries, but before we could eat any, she mumbled an apology in Chinese, and took them away. Our grouped watched as the one thing we actually wanted to eat was taken away. We each ate some rice, and waited for something...edible came along, but nothing came.

Then one of the waitresses brought in a bird-like thing, that looked crispy and tasty. It's wasn't. I think it was duck, and, although it was crispy, it was like eating cardboard. I'm not kidding. While I was chewing, Mia, a little girl in our group from Canada, picked something up from a plate of chicken, that looked like it was prepared similar to the duck. She only speaks French, so she held it up and showed it to her mother, who told us, "Look, Mia found the head!" And sure enough, when I looked closely, you could see that it was the beak, and the little holes where the eyes would be. I looked at the duck, which was still in front of me, and found the head was mixed in with the meat in that dish, too. I'm a pretty picky eater, but this was just plain gross. Who eats something that's still looking at you??? I don't want to have a conversation with my food!!!!!

After finishing up at lunch, which no one ate much of after the head incindent, we went across the street to the Silk Museum. Actually, none of us really wanted to go, because we'd all seen it before. It was interesting the first time, but there's only so much that you can 'ooh' and 'ahh' about. Besides, we'd already bought stuff from the one in Beijing.

We got to the Minority Villages, and they were very pretty. By that time, I was pretty wiped out, though. We'd been walking around all day, and An Ming wanted me to pick him up the whole time. Ryan, when we get back home, you'll find he's alot heavier then Annie. So after the first village, I was thinking, "Okay, this is cool, but I'm ready to go now." It was pretty funny, however, when we got to one of the Villages, (I don't remember which, they all run together after a while) and this guy was singing some native song. I know it's not really funny, but he was trying to add too much power to his voice, and the volume on the speakers was turned up too loud, so it sounded really bad. We ended up calling it "Kareoke Night at the Minority Villages" if that gives you an idea.

Well, it's late, and I'm pretty tired. It was a long day, even though we didn't do much. I'm really excited, we're going shopping downtown tomorrow, which should be really cool. More pictures soon!

~Nikki