chinese new years shanghai and some other stuff too

I had so much fun in Shanghai over chinese new years. I stayed with a friend from college and her family and it was great to see how they just live in china. It was also nice to finally commiserate about some of the little differences china throws at you. And Chinese new years was pretty crazy. They don't have any regulations about where you can set off fireworks, as far as I could tell, and they let you buy the big fun kind you can't get in the US (unless you have a permit i guess). We went up to the 30th floor of their building and it was a relentless sea of fireworks going on everywhere for hours...longer than you care to stand there and watch. They really know how to celebrate in china but I have to say its not very safety first at all but I guess most really fun stuff isn't.

I left shanghai a few days ago and am now in Xian. Its pretty fun for a city mostly because I met a guy from hong kong, who has been living here for a year and knows all the good places to eat and see. So here is the food section of the tog and I'm not a foodie so descriptions about the food are probably not easy to picture. So first day we went to the muslim quarter and had these sticky rice squares dipped in a syrup, a pork dish that was kind of the consistency of stuffing from inside the turkey, these fatty square noodles with a peanut kind of sauce (served cold), and a deep fried vegetable thing that was kind of crunchy on the outside and gooey sweet in the center. My favorite that day was the pork stuffing dish really good. The next day we went to get some noodles in a different part of town and they were green noodles made out of spinach I think that one was good too. I've also had a noodle soup with wide fat noodles, these boiled white balls that were gooey outside and peanut kind of on the inside, steamed buns with mutton inside, a chinese hamburger which was just a kind of big pretzel tasting bun and pork on the inside and last but surely not least I ate stinky tofu. It actually wasn't that bad really the outside was deep fried in what ever stinks most likely then they serve it in a dish and poor a sauce over it. I thought it was pretty good but I definitely won't seek it out to eat it again.

So as for where to next Its changed in the last few days. I did want to go to tibet then to nepal but it kind of sucks trying to go to tibet. Not that its hard just expensive because you have to book a tour and as far as I can understand you have to have a guide with you the whole time your there. Anyway there aren't many people wanting to go to tibet this time of year so I can't find a cheap tour to go on so my plan now is to head south and be in vietnam before my visa runs out. And I just dropped my camera and now I can't get the computer to read my pictures so sorry I can't post pictures now but I'll try and find a place to get it fixed today and hopefully post some soon.