xiaofeizhu

Congratulations and good luck!!!

Haha. Hawaii still has a bottle deposit (unless they did away with it while I have been away for the year lol). I think it's pretty good, but when I was back home when they first started the thing, it sucked badly. They would weigh the bag and give accordingly. So you could have say, 164 bottles but they might only pay you for 150 since they don't want to count them all. Also, I don't know how it is now, but you couldn't smash the bottles or cans. I know I had some friends on the mainland going to college who would collect the bottles since they didn't pay a deposit on them, and bring them back home and get 5 cents for them. HAHA! In my home town, and when I was living in Kyoto, there are some stores that have discounts if you bring your own bag. One place in Kyoto would give you a stamp card and everytime you brought your own bag you got a stamp and if you collected so many stamps you could get a dollar off. We always brought our own bags. It's a very good idea, and in Japan i received several free cute pig shopping bags that fold into itself for easy storage. I love them and plan to use them when I get back to Hawaii, too. Who cares if other people think I'm "hippie"...I'll be getting a discount for already overpriced food.

I hate this gaokao. The people who live directly above and below us have students preparing for it. They are really bitchy! Laugh a little too loud and they come up or down stairs to tell us to shut the _ _ _ _ up. Move a chair and it squeaks across the floor after 7 pm and the people below are using their mop handles to tap the ceiling to signal us. I sympathize with the difficulty of it all, but our home has been reduced to hand signals so we don't talk to mess them up. LOL.

LOL, I just thought about how one day, if this really happens, people will start riding planes in their underwear so they don't accumulate "clothes weight"

When You Love Someone - Bryan Adams

I'm sad that no one else wants to post their favorite songs!

I am sorry to hear about your run around. You have been waiting so long already, and I wish they would just give it to you. I hope that they respond to your email and that it's a good response!! Good luck and please keep us updated!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

So how much will they charge? Sheesh. Are we charged by the pound or are we charged by weight classes? I agree with the whole "getting people on the scale thing" 不好意思! What about pregnant women? I know they can't fly in the last trimester, but is it really fair to charge the unborn child? Better start those diets soon. Hey, on the plus side, maybe Americans won't be so obese anymore when the obese people find out they are paying double what they should.

Haha thank you to everyone who wrote back! Made me laugh. To griz326 and Trigg, sorry to disappoint. I mean, there was not enough time to set up the tripod, get a good angle, etc. You know what I mean? When something pops up, you can't just sit around wondering what to do about it! Amanda, you are right! We do have good sex everytime! Haha! That time was extra special :D

Haha, you are too kind. It's actually a crutch. Growing up I had to be smart 'cause my sister is pretty. LOL.

Thanks everyone for your comments! Well, we had 2 rounds of sheet-tearing, neighbor-waking, wall-shaking sex That's all that I can say. Sorry to disappoint, but no picutres were taken. They would have been all blurry anyway, the way we were moving all over. Hahahaha.

Hey guys, we got our interview date!!! July 15!!! OMG!!! Thank you to everyone who has encouraged and helped us along the way!! Thank you in advance for your continued support for preparing for the interview!! My heart is still racing as I write this. Sex time!! LOL. Hubby just planted a juicy one on me! AHHHHHHH!!!!

Congratulations!!!!

Congratulations! It is wonderful to hear the great news! Looks like the pinks are just rolling out these days!

Haha, well, it was a long process, as you all know! In Feburary, we tried Beijing's Japanese Embassy. They told us to shove it where the sun don't shine, even after going there about 10 times, and even after they politely allowed Japanese Citizens to freely apply for the cert. (we saw this happen on several of the times we were there...Japanese dude walks in, "hey I need a police cert" "ok sir, just fill out this form and press your stamp here") Well, when we got the P3 in April, we thought we would give Beijing a try again. They looked at the forms and told us to shove it again. Through this whole time, I had been emailing GUZ, called the (crappy) visa hotline, faxed GUZ once, and also tried to contact the Chinese Embassy in Osaka (said they couldn't do anything since they need fingerprints) So hubby and I decided to take a trip to GUZ to attend ACH where I asked them what I should do since no one was helping me out. The guy at the window was really sympathetic and even asked his supervisor if there was any way around it, which there was not. He suggested that we try the GUZ Japanese Consulate, and if nothing could be done, to contact the American Consulate again (I told him about how hubby even tried getting a visa to Japan). Well, we went to the Japanese Consulate in GUZ, and they were even more rude than the Beijing office. They yelled at us, and wanted to take the original P3 forms (we had not sent them back due to this stupid cert prob). Finally, I asked them to send their supervisor out, since it appeared that the 3 window girls did not want to help. The supervisor came out, and I told her that it is necessary to get the cert, routine procedure, yada yada. The supervisor rolls her eyes and says ok. A Japanese man comes out to take hubby's prints (this guy was the first decent guy we met throughout the whole escapade) and said it would take about 3 months. HOLY SHIT. THREE MONTHS?!?!?!?! That was April 14, so that meant it should have been July 14! I hesitantly sent back the P3, still hoping for a June interview, for the family reunion. When all the K1 visa peeps started getting there interview dates, that's when I freaked and asked everyone for ideas. The consulate called hubby this morning (it was that nice guy on the phone) and said it was done fast because the nice guy put in a word to get it done as soon as possible. So yeah, I say, if at all possible, it's just better to get the damn thing yourself. We actually did find a company that offered "free tour" where you could go anywhere. We just had to pony up 50,000 RMB as a deposit, fully refundable if hubby came back to China as scheduled. Just as a side note, when we called the International Center at our old uni, they said they would be glad to help! I felt an instant excitement, but they followed up with the line "just come by our office and we will help you fill out the forms/contact the police" LOL. I guess they would have been really helpful if we were actually in Japan...not that we couldn't do it ourselves if we were there. Thanks for following up, Darnell. I think Japan is possibly the most horrible country to obtain a cert from, especially if you can't get a visa to go there yourself. I hope others will one day find this post (if they have been in Japan) and benefit from it.

PS.... I never heard of Jane Zhang until now. I am HOOKED. I LOVVVVVVE her!! She totally gave me goosbumps! That's 3 times now!

OMG. I just have started watching/listening, and the one song...°½°üÏà»á - Lovers Tent -Rendezvous...is one song my hubby is ALWAYS singing. LOL! It made me really happy! He loves this song since he is Mongolian. You made my day twice already! (first was by telling me about all these songs, second was with this song hehe)

oh you want to load your ipod ? here's my playlists, I think you'll find some stuff you like - http://www.youtube.com/profile_play_list?user=jim404sea also, there's some good music (but no videos) at a site that uses music to help people learn mandarin - go to china-8.com and sign up for a free account (don't worry, I've never gotten any spam as a result). After you log in to the account, you will see a menu choice at the top for 'chinese songs' and that will take you to a screen where you can pick from 20 pages of songs, 25 songs per page, and save them into a playlist too. If you like superstar, you'll probably also like the ones by Jolin Tsai - I had not idea that there was such a thing as Chinese hip-hop, but there's some really good stuff there, I think. Lots of good oldies too. I got the names of a lot of good singers that I could then search youtube for. And my wife and I's favorite love song of them all is an oldie there, # 15, called 'tears of a lover' ÇéÈ˵ÄÑÛÀá by a famous singer from the 60's called Cài Qín ²ÌÇÙ - she has a voice that makes you want to cry even if you don't know why There's several versions of the same song in my youtube playlists but nobody can touch this woman's voice. neither youtube or the china-8 site is set up to make downloads for your ipod easy, but it can be done My new hero LOL!! Don't worry, the DL is not the problem for me. But now the problem is checking out all these new songs!! So many songs, so little time! HEHE. Luckily Superstar is already in my ipod so I'm one song down, a lot to go!!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! Sounds like the May peeps are starting the string of interviews on the pink foot! congrats again and best wishes!

Thanks for the help!! I can't believe I didn't put in all the information for that question...I checked and rechecked that thing like 25 times!! argh! Anyway, thanks for the Beijing contact info and for the advice. Hope your cold gets better soon! Avis No problem! I'm thinking the same as David, in that it really should not be a problem, but if you are worried about it, you might just want to send them something. Better safe than sorry! Thanks, my cold is getting better!! PS. Fax: (010) 8529-6779 (from within China) HAHA! The fax # was totally on the site!

LOL. I'd totally buy a CFL shirt

I LOVE Superstar! LOL! The other songs are good too. I know hubby likes ÔÂÁÁ´ú±íÎÒµÄÐÄ. I hope more people post...I would love to find new songs to put into my ipod!! Maybe a nice mod could move it to the TC where more people would look at it??

She never did make a good Dior model anyway.

I LOVE Bette Middler. All my friends laugh at me LOL!