America! oh wait....

So I'm finally home!!!

just kidding.

Still stuck in Beijing til the avalanche back west clears.  We were supposed to fly out yesterday at five, but our flight was cancelled until tomorrow at 5. But! A plus to the delay?  First class tickets!!! wooohooo! I've never flown first class before.  Cannot wait.  Sooooo, I will be back in the states at 5:30 on Friday afternoon.  Just in time for the Opening Ceremonies!!! Wooo!

So our shows in Beijing?  Quite eventful. Well, for me. And not in a good way.  Somehow, over the past week I contracted something resembling, quite perfectly, the bubonic plague.  And No (Mark and Mom), it's not because I wasn't taking care of myself.  I blame it on the Great Wall.  Anyway, this plague included the deterioration of every part of my body except my throat.  Good! you say, right?  Because I have to sing,  so not having my throat hurt is a good thing?  Sure, except that whatever monster was living in my chest decided to not allow me to belt, which is what the entirety of "Teachers Argument" is.    So long story, short.  I had no voice.  It was the hardest 5 shows of my life.  But it made me realize once again, how amazing this cast is.  They all stayed in the wings and cheered me on after the song, and always had words of encouragement for me throughout the whole process.  I love them (for the 4000th time). And I will miss my Fame-ly (copyright Justine Long) so so much.  And now it's over.  No words can really express what this experience was for me.  So I won't try. I'm sure you've all gotten the gist over the past 2 months (:  Thank you all so much for keeping me company! I love you all! FameinChina forever! Can't wait to see you!

No Wonder you're a Wonder

We went to the Great Wall yesterday.  Now.  I didn't really have too many expectations going into this trip because I had heard mixed reviews about it.  People had complained about walking/climbing it, said it wasn't that impressive, there were always too many people there, it was too touristy; You know, the works.   So when we pulled up to the entrance of the Mutianyu section of the Wall and were swarmed by merchants and peddlars, all trying to shove great wall paraphernalia, it didn't help quell the tourist trap fear.  BUT. Have no fear because as soon as we got on the ski lift and saw the outline of the wall along the top of the mountains, all that trepidation dissipated (showing off my verbal SAT scores right there, ehh? haha).  The views at the top were breathtaking.  Mountains surrounded us on all sides and we could catch glimpses of little villages nestled in the valleys.  To make it even better, it was a gorgeous day.  Absolutely freezing, but not a cloud in the sky and blue as blue can be.  We turned right to hike along what appeared to be the easier route.  Along the way we made friends, or maybe more accurately, Jake made friends with two Chinese sisters who were selling snacks and beer.  He used his blonde hair, boyish charm, and stunning good looks (vomit) to get us some beer and snickers bars for pretty cheap.  Once we hit the end of the walking part of the wall, separated by a "do not trespass" sign, which we immediately ignored and hiked a good while past, we hit a deteriorated pagoda and stopped to sing what else? but a couple verses of "Bring on Tomorrow". Just to leave our Fame mark in the universe (:  Later, we found out that another group of our people heard us when they were about a mile away.  Once we turned around, we still had about 4 more hours to kill so we decided to climb up the opposite side of the wall to try to hit the highest point.  I'm pretty sure I have never sweated more in my life.  It literally felt like Field Hockey pre-season training times 45.  There were points of this climb that had about 400 steps straight up (and when i say straight up, I mean COMPLETELY vertical, climbing with hands and feet) without rest.  It was such an adrenaline rush and SO worth it once we hit the top.  I can't even try to describe the beauty that was what we saw.  I'll of course post pictures, but even that won't do it justice. The word "Awesome" in the dictionary, should actually only be defined as "The Great Wall of China".  I hope that you all can see it at some point in your lifetime.  It just makes you feel like the world is so so so big and perfect and beautiful. Go go go! While we were up at the top, these two women from Cambodia reached the summit and as they both climbed up the final staircase, beaming, sweaty and exhausted, the younger of the two said "Way to go MOM!" The woman turns out to be 68 years old.  Honestly?  I'm 24 and I don't know how I did it.  We all cheered and congratulated her, and she was just so happy and proud. They were the sweetest women. It was just wonderful.  HSFJKHDKFJHDUIGUFNG! Literally the best day ever!  When we finally pulled ourselves away from the beauty, and made it back down to the ski lift (the downward descent was actually rougher for me because of my stupid knee), we took a toboggan ride back down to the base of the mountain, which was the PERFECT ending.  A high speed torpedo ride down the mountain of the great wall, with no safety walls on either side and greeted by two ferocious looking Huns at the bottom. Haha perfect. Just perfect.  The bus ride home was spent playing games, teasing each other, reminiscing about the past two months, and of course me crying about how we are leaving china and each other in 5 days.  We ended the day at a Belgium pub with REAL, non-chinese, thin crust, wood-fired amazing pizza and Tsing-tao, my new favorite cheap ass beer.  Could not have been a better day spend with better people.  

Someone really needs to find a way to condense this blog post into a hallmark card.  Pretty sure it is the biggest piece of emotional cheese ever.  I'm just getting to that mushy, life-loving place right now (: I love you all and will see you soooooon!

Internet sucks in China

So I swear I have tried to post before this, but internet connection has been crappy in the past two cities, and now that we're in Beijing, it costs money to use the internet! So - quick little update!  Wuhan? Nice hotel....not much else to do.  That was our relax and sleep in and go to starbucks city.  Fuzhou? Beautiful weather, BEAUTIFUL theatre (our best by far), and dairy queen.  I wore sundresses. I sunbathed on the deck of the dairy queen.  It was heaven.  Now we are in Beijing and I literally think that this city secretly relocated itself to the frozen tundra.  Shockingly cold.  But so far, lots and lots of fun.  The first night we got in late and were CRAVING american food.  Hardrock Cafe was our dinner joint of choice.  We bought the place out.  I had a salad, a veggie burger, macaroni and cheese, and split fries with rach.  It felt so so good.  We were exhausted and crashed early that night.  The next morning we had hotel breakfast (best yet!) with waffles and blueberry pancakes and PRUNES! Then we headed to Tianemin (sp?) Square and the Forbidden City. A beautiful, sunny, freezing day.  Cool sites and beautiful views.  Had famous Beijing Peking Duck for dinner at Da Dong.  It's apparently THE place to have the duck (: It was delicious! And they made us mojito's for 30 yuan.  Headed back to the hotel and then headed back out to bar street, where the girls got separated from the boys accidentally in the cab ride and the evening turned into girls night, which was fine and dandy.  More descriptive details to follow! Love!

life: always keepin' us on our toes

well, well, well. It's been a while (hah how many posts have I started out like that, eh?), and boy has a lot happened.

Let me just say, this profession will never get old....maybe uninteresting is a better word to describe it.  So opening night in Nanning, Eric went on for his first time since he's gotten here.  So much respect for him, learning Tyrone in such a short, short time.  It's not an easy track, but he did great and it added a completely different energy to the show which was really refreshing for us, I think.  Cut to opening of the second act, with the junior festival....I enter stage left, begin to count the students, look at Ashli and Presilah, and see them start to mouth something to me, as the black stage apron curtain begins to descend in between us....what? Not supposed to happen.  I have no idea what's going on, I turn and look center stage just in time to see Richard get hit in the head with the curtain bar, disappear behind it, leaving just me and Jamie in front of the curtain, wide-eyed and completely disoriented....Sooooo....I do my lines? I don't even know what happened.  Pretty sure Jamie and I just went right into auto-pilot and somehow, miraculously, it worked perfectly.  We finished our scene, Caroline and Adam entered at some point for a little staging improv, and the curtain came up just as the junior festival music started to play.  Perfect timing.  I wish someone got it on tape, cause let me just tell you, I don't remember any of it. Hahahaha, again, love my job.

Saturday, Adam was walking down meat street (which is where I ate hammer-head shark. I forget if I mentioned that in a previous post....same street where we found the dog on a meat hook, and half of an Alligator.  The shark meat was freaking amazing, and we had a dessert of candied strawberries on a stick.  Oh! and the best homemade vegetarian dumplings of my life, made my the sweetest, tiniest, oldest chinese woman I have ever met.  10 dumplings for 5 yuan. amazing.) and found a vendor wrapping fruit in a newspaper that had an article about Fame in it.  There was a big group shot of the cast at the end of Hard Work Reprise and then another picture of, who else, but Ms. Bell.  Yup, you know, the star of the show, me, singing "Teacher's Argument" hahaha hysterical and so so so random.  Rachel (our interpreter) translated the caption underneath the picture as "The cast showing emotion during songs".  I think you can find the article online (granted it's in chinese, but whatever), but I need to get the website from Adam.  I'll post it later if I can get it.

Fast forward to Tuesday, our day off....About 12 of us decide to leave the city to explore "the caves" (I don't actually know what they were called) in the rural hills of Nanning, about an hour bus ride outside the city.  First mis-hap of the day, Michael and I miss the first bus filled with the rest of our people and have to get on a second bus.  Problem? We have no idea where we are going or what stop to get off at.  After an hour of me having an internal silent heart attack, we come to our first stop and miraculously catch up to the bus with the rest of our crew on it.  Crisis #1 averted.  We purchase our tickets and head off to the caves.  On our way, Jake spots a monkey, a gibbon, I think.  We walk towards it and put our stuff down to take pictures.  Next thing we know, we are swarmed by gibbons and one steals Adam's entire can of pringles.  We are all hysterically laughing when all of a sudden, we hear Michael shriek as a monkey rips open his bag of juice that he has just purchased for his blood sugar.  3 monkeys haul off with all of his juice bottles.  Jake discovers that he can feed the monkey's oranges and they will come right up to him and take them out of his hands.  Some of us get the monkey's to climb on us.  It's amazing.  We start feeding them the odds and ends of the snacks we have with us; apples, oranges, granola bars.  It's pretty ridiculous how intelligent the monkeys are.  They stole people's cokes and juices, but when I offered them my water, they weren't interested at all.  Not enough of a treat, I guess (:

Things started to turn ugly when the monkey's began to fight with each other.  Next thing we know, Jake has been bit by one on the back.  I went to the bathroom and came back and Jamie had gotten bit as well.  Time to leave the monkey area hah.  Jake and Jamie got hauled off to get rabies shots, and we continued on to hike up the mountain. Beautiful views, I'll post some pictures.  Climbed back down the mountain and toured the cave.  It was pretty awesomely huge and impressive-aside from the cheesy chinese kitschy lights that they hung everwhere.

Bussed home.

Caroline, Rachel and I decided to walk around the mall when we got back to Nanning.  Walked into a couple shops, tried a couple things on, and somewhere along the line, Car put her purse down to look at a shirt, 3 Chinese girls swarmed the shop, pushing us out of the way, giggling, and throwing clothes around, then left.  15 seconds later, Caroline realized they had taken her purse with them.  We tried to find them but couldn't, the mall security got involved, and next thing we know, we're in a chinese police station infested with rats, filing a report, and Caroline is getting finger-printed.  Poor Care.  Could have been worse, her purse only had her ids, credit cards, and debit card in it.  Just very inconvenient.  Seriously. Never a dull moment in China. Hootie hoo!

good movies to soothe the soul

So, Mom, I know you were proud of me, not wasting my money and going to see Avatar....but I ended up going and am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo happy I did.  First of all, it's only 6.50 in China, AND I got to see it in 3D! Apparently that's a 25 dollar package in the US. Suckas.
Dear dad - were you peeing your pants? SUCH a good movie.  I get why mom didn't like it, but you should have! And mom....you should have too. Use it in the environmental club-sends a good message.
Anyway. Chinese movie theatres (specific to viewing Avatar):
*They serve caramel corn instead of buttered.
*We made coke floats with our cokes and hagan daas
*We got whistle magic dust sand timers
*All the sub-titles are in Chinese, so we had noooo idea what the avatar were saying
*Some of the humor didn't convey so there were points of silence, sorta (see next asterisk) were only our group of 5 Americans were laughing, which made it all the more hilarious
*Apparently, watching a movie in China is similar to going to the theatre.  The Chinese find it unnecessary to turn off their phones, shut their mouths, or stay in their seats. But don't worry, Jamie got yelled at to take his foot away from touching the back of the chair in front of us.  The Chinese know how to prioritize.
*There's assigned seating in Chinese movie theatres.  We bought our tickets at 6 pm for the midnight showing, and we got the last seats left, in the second row.  It ended up being awesome being that close though.
*No previews in China!
*They cut out the sex scene. whomp.
Go see Avatar. Killer.
Also, Andy and I watched "Away We Go" last night, with Maya Rudolph and John Kacinski. I think I found my new favorite movie.  I remember seeing commercials for it and wanting to see it, but I don't really remember it getting that rave reviews.  Well that's crap, because it was the sweetest, most adorable, most lovely movie ever.  And John Kacinski is going to be my husband.  Colby, if you haven't seen it, do so immediately.  Rachel and I are watching it again this morning.
On a China note...Jamie and I explored Nanning yesterday.  We winded up sunbathing (yes I said sunbathing, it's about 55 degrees here, and we feel like we're in heaven) on the banks of some river.  Eventually, Jamie ended up taking all his clothes off and diving into the river with all the local oldies of Nanning.  We made many good friends with the other fellow swimmers and had a blast.
On a Fame note....we've been off since Sunday and don't have another show until Saturday. And I'm getting paid for this. My life is so good.
love and miss you all!

New citay, new adventure

Woke up at 5am this morning to catch our flight to Nanning.  Couldn't have been in a worse mood, and that pretty much carried through until I got off the plane in Nanning.  I can't even tell you how amazing it was to see so much green and breathe so much fresh air.  I'll compare Nanning thus far, to a little bit more of a run down version of a Florida city.  It was in the 50's when we got out of the airport which was sooo refreshing after our week of grey skies, smog, and freezing temperatures in Xi'an.  We checked into our hotel today around noonish, all napped til around 3, and then went grocery shopping.  A bunch of people just left to see Avatar, but I'm pooped and spending waaaay to much money, so I decided to keep it a night in tonight and catch up on e-mails, reading, laundry and sleep.
Our last night in Xi'an was a good one.  We had our closing show, and I don't think I've ever had more fun with the show.  Especially the finale.  The house was packed and people went crraaaazy at the end.  Jonas has started doing back flips in the audience and it is absolutely hysterical to see everyone's reactions.  As crappy as we originally thought the script of this show was, we all bring such a wonderful energy to it.  I can't say enough how lucky and happy I feel to be in this show with these specific people.  Eric, our new Tyrone, flew in a couple days ago and has been watching and shadowing the show for the past few performances.  He had such wonderful things so say about it; that it is so great and refreshing to see a group of people so excited and energized about performing, and it was just so helpful to hear that type of compliment.  I think it's been more frustrating than any of us realized to have such a communication barrier between us and the audience, and never really get a gist of how the audience feels about the show. So yea, a big thanks to Eric, for that little boost in our spirit.
We will be having rehearsals with him this week and I can't wait to see what he does with Tyrone.  It's been fun seeing the differences between Dom and JoNathan and I'm psyched to see Eric's take.
Alright, well off to do some laundry.  Hope all is well!

some pixsas of my day

that teeny person is me. I'm standing in the gateway to Muslim Street in Xi'an.  Lined with shops and deeeeelicious little food stands.  Jamie and I shared some kinda amazing naan pressed meat sandwich for 5 yuan.  Can't beat that.                                         

this is me and Jame in the middle of the courtyard of the Great Mosque in Xi'an. Beautious.

Jamie and Rose. Our favorite Tea Lady on Muslim street.



*Night update*
We had our first show in Xi'an tonight.  It's a really nice theatre.  The seats go waaaay far back and I think the sound is pretty sweet.  Some people were thrown off by the acoustics, but I liked them.  We were told at the beginning of the day that our three story towers for the set, would only get to be 2 because of the size of the stage, but our crew is so freaking fantastic, they found a way to make all three stories work.  Yay crew! We had our first big audience tonight.  Not full, but definitely almost.  They were pretty lame though.  Lot's of talking and not lots of cheering.  I'm sure it will get better though.  Tomorrow we head to see the Terra Cotta Warriors.  Very excited. Don't worry, update to come.  Going to watch "Where the Wild Things Are" with Michael now.  Niiiiiight!

a delightfully smoggy day in Xi'an

Our hotel in Xi'an has a gym! and a pool! I never thought my body would be so happy for an opportunity for movement.  Yesterday, Jake instructed a P90X workout for me and Caroline and then the two of us went for a swim, and this morning, Jamie and I woke up and I ran and he swam.  It was a. mazing.
Afterwards, Jamie and I went out into the city to see the Great Mosque. I'm so glad we went. Such a beautiful structure.  It was built in 742 and is still in use by the Muslims of Xi'an today.  We heard some type of prayer service going on while we were walking around outside.  It took every ounce of our beings to be respectful Americans and not peek inside.
To get to the Mosque we had to go down a back alley that was packed with tiny little shops.  Jamie took me into a tea shop that he had explored yesterday and "Rose" (I can't remember her Chinese name, but Rose was the English name she had picked for herself), the tea lady sat us down for a tea tasting and had us sample about 4 different types of tea.  One was a beautiful Litchi flower pod, that blossomed in the boiling water.  It was really tasty too.  We also had a black tea with litchi, that Rose said helps the skin (litchi) and stomach (the black? haha).  We also had the best green tea I've ever had.  It tasted and smelled just like bananas!  I bought the litchi tea, with a tea pot and cup that one of you lucky's gets when I get back to the states.  Guess who you are??? (:  Anyway, it was a lovely time with Jamison.
Now-I'm on my way to our first show in Xi'an.  Our venue is too small, so they have to cut the towers in half! Just a two-level Fame for the next week!
love love love!

coat!

Here's my dream coat.  Here's my dream boy.  Here's us, REALLY cranky after our flight from Shanghai to Xi'an.

pics!

This is one of the buildings in the Yu Yuan (haha givin' you the phonetic sp. since I have no idea how it's actually spelled) Gardens, in Shanghai. Beautious.

lil bit mo'

k so i left off with the french concession.  Bought you all a ton of fun China prezzies. Get ready.  There are pearls everywhere for dirt cheap.  Leather bound journals, HUGE, and reaaally nice, for 25 RMB...a little more than three bucks! Clothes, silk, ughh it's shopping heaven!   After that area, we headed to the Shanghai fabric market, which is a 3 story mall packed with shops selling fabric, clothes, and advertising custom-made everything! I found the most amazing coat on the first floor.  It was electric blue with a high collar and buttons, fitted to my waist, and then flared out.  I was in love with it, but it was a teeny bit tight in the shoulders.  The woman was asking 800 RMB for it.  I said 400 and she laughed at me.  Then she brought it down to 550.  I said 425 and she said 500, no lower.  She didn't budge so I left.  Then we got to the third floor and Adam took me to a lady he had met earlier in the week.  She said if Adam took a picture of the coat, brought it back up to her, and she took my measurements, she'd make it for me in 2 days for 400 RMB.  Done and Done, two days later I picked up the most beautiful coat in the world.  Fit to me and made of blue cashmere (: 55 buckaroos!!!! I feel like Madeleine in it!
After the coat escapade, we walked back to people's square and on our way, Adam and I got squid on a stick.  Amazingly delicious. We also all bought trendy face masks.  True Chinese now.
Let's see.. what else?
Dominique has been on for Tyrone for the past few days because JoNathan had to leave for family reasons.  We miss him a ton. Dom is doing great though! Keepin' it fresh.  The show is going great.  We leave Shanghai tomorrow morning for Xi'an and Tuesday we get to see the Terra Cotta Warriors.  Freaking excited, but bummed about leaving Shanghai.  I really love this city, and it's so huge, I feel like I didn't get to see everything that I should have.
I believe I covered the main points of the past week.  I'll try to keep ya'll updated more frequently from now on.  Gooooodnight!

hootie hoo 2010!

Allllllllright. So it's been a while, ehh?  I don't get blogger on my comp anymore cause I took away the proxy that allowed it.  So now it's updates whenever I get a chunk of time on Rach's comp.  But anyway....China's been cool.  Constantly exciting, let me just say.  Some highlights?
Well,  1.) we got abducted by aliens.  Now what does that mean?  We had our health exams.  I have never felt more violated in my life.  In a very funny sense.  Poked and prodded and clamped and suctioned....hahaha it was definitely an experience.
2.) We found the black market of designer bags in Shanghai.  And by this, I mean we followed tiny Chinese men into deep dark back alley's, up narrow staircases, and into hidden rooms filled to the max with Gucci, Prada, and any other "designer" bag, shoe, perfume, or sunglasses you could imagine.  I got myself a fake Gucci bag.  I'm pretty proud of it.  Never been one for designer names, so I guess if i'm gonna have one, might as well be fake.
3.)  We all went to the French Concession one morning where there is the mecca of all that is holy in food....the american SUPER DINER....it was a diner. with pancakes. nuff said. I was in heaven. Then we walked throughout the back allies of that area, and found tons and tons of cute little hidden shops....

k here's the thing...i've tried to update this thing like 50 times and never have enough time to finish an entry. so i'll leave you with this, and give you part II sometime soon.
happy new year!!!