Goodbye, Stinky Street.

Woot-woot! We're back home! I'm Raising the Roof. I'm doing the Running Man. I'm doing the Cabbage Patch. And the Calypso.

I actually don't know what "the Calypso" dance looks like, but the Black Eyed Peas talk about it, so it must be cool. I'd better look it up on YouTube.

Whoa. I can access YouTube now!!! Weird!!!!! And, in case you didn't read my novellas/posts for the last three months, I couldn't access any blogs. (My sweet, sweet friend Jenny took my e-mail blasts and put them onto my blog for me while I was gone.) Or Facebook (which was fine with me). All of them are against the law, baby. The Chinese call it "The Great Firewall." I think that's funny. You can get this thing called a VPN, which helps you get around the internet laws, but apparently it's $80 per year (not bad, but we weren't going to be gone that long), and not terribly reliable.

But now I'm back! From outer space! I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face!

Sorry. I'm hyper.

So. It's been a few weeks since I've written. I have many, many things of which to blog. So let's get to it!!!

And you're just going to have to wait to see pics of Beijing. I'm re-sizing them. It's a long process. Especially when your hubby takes around 500 pictures within two days. :)

Leaving Stinky Street was bittersweet to me. Do I miss the smell? Uh, no. But I miss the vendors. I miss the excitement that built when they were setting up for their evening sales. I miss how friendly everyone was. They're good people; they really are.

At sunset one day, Ben took this picture of one of his favorite buildings, which we could see from our kitchen window. I really do love the way cities look - rooftops for miles. It's amazing.

Look - photographic evidence of the feathers and bird poop that I had to clean off my eggs every day:

I wanted to take pics of some of my favorite Stinky Street-ites before we left. It was awkward. I would point to me, then pantomime an airplane flying, complete with sound effects, and then say, "May-gwah [Mandarin for America]." Then I would point to my camera, point to me, make a camera clicking pantomime, and then point to them, to ask if I could take their picture.

I'm amazed at how much you can communicate with a little bit of acting.

Most of them would refuse to look at me, or they would wave their hands at me and laugh and laugh and laugh, turning away. They're cute. I would compound their giggling by aiming my camera, and yelling, "Chezzzzzzzzz-uhhhhhhhhh! [what they say instead of "cheese" when posing for pictures]." Giggle, giggle, wave, wave...

Here's one of our guard dudes. He manned the gate leading into our neighborhood:

The fruit guy and his wife who worked right outside our gate:

I swear he had, like, three doppelgangers I saw in Beijing. I kept pointing them out to Ben, saying, "That looks just like the fruit guy!!!" We seldom bought fruit from him, because he wouldn't let us pick out our own fruit. He was always trying to sell us bruised bananas and apples. He didn't seem to take it personally that we got our fruit elsewhere, though. He was always friendly.

My favorite checkout lady at the corner store:

The Chinese that pose and smile, always give the peace sign. I've noticed that the Japanese show the peace sign and have serious faces. The Chinese show the peace sign and smile. Interesting.

She used to be really sullen, but I warmed her up, and at the end, I could always get her to smile.

My cackling banana lady. She was not about to get her picture taken:

Which is a shame, because she has the cutest little crinkly eyes.

My egg gal:

My two vegetable ladies:

This is what the hairdressers all along stinky street do after they wash your hair - they hang their towels to dry on racks, and then re-use them over and over and over again. It gave me the heebie-jeebies:

Stinky Street was smelly and so very, very gross, but in the most endearing way possible.