Last Sunday, after a pleasant walk in the mountains with my dog, I passed by the organic food place in my neighborhood and went to buy some buckwheat noodles. The usually sleepy venue was packed with people, most of them, it turned out, avid environmentalists. In the picture is Mrs. Hu, the store owner (and quickly becoming my personal hero), showing off her trash cans made from trash. She plans to sell them and donate the proceeds to environmental cleanup efforts.

I got into a conversation about trash cleanup. Lots of Chinese throw trash on the ground without a thought. One lady was talking up organizing a group to pick up trash somewhere in Hangzhou. She also runs a big brother big sister like program, and suggested she could bring some of the kids along. Another lady said she had some media contacts and perhaps could make a story out of it.

Mrs. Hu was telling me a story the other day about a foreigner in Western China that started picking up trash himself on the weekends and ended up inspiring more than a thousand people to join him in the process every weekend. Very inspiring to be amidst all the passion.

Here is a ridiculous video I came across. A toddler in Western China smokes an entire cigarette. No good, no good at all.

Ain't our puppy 锤锤 （hammer hammer) a cutie? For more photos check out my friend Iverson's blog.

Yup, the girl in the photo is wearing heels. On my hike up the mountain next to my house this afternoon i saw a handful of ladies doing the same. Style comes first for some I guess. hehe, from their expressions it looked liked they were paying the price. I also saw a few monks walking really slow; very relaxing to watch. As it's Saturday, the path was fairly packed with people.
Orange peels and chewed up sugar cane lined the way, along with a bunch of trash unfortunately. Nearly everyone commented on my dog, who also came along. She's turning into a great friend maker and quite the hiker. The mountain next to my house is called the north peak, but two mountains right next to it are taller so I'm not really sure why it has the name. hehe.

I spent a lot of time looking up last night. I loved watching these ladies set off this lantern. For a while we thought it would veer into a tree and start a fire. At midnight, when the year of the cow officially began, we saw some massive explosions, in the sky and on the ground. You would not believe how long the black cat strands are here. Loads of folks came to our usually sleepy neighborhood to burn incense at the Buddhist temples in the area. The whole event kinda felt like Christmas and New Year's eve wrapped up in one. Roger commented the procession of people reminded him of Christmas mass. Early in the evening I heard little kids in our neighborhood crying because of all the noise, but our little puppy was unphased. I was so proud.

Yesterday we made dumplings from scratch. We also boiled live crabs in the wok. The low point for Roger was when he found out he had been eating crab sperm. The high point for me was learning how to make this awesome vermicelli noodle dish with stir fried pork and shredded cucumbers.

In the picture, that's our Chinese neighbor and good friend on the far left. We call her "Iverson" because she's infatuated with the basketball player. In the middle is Iverson's home town friend, who's nickname is "Camel" in Chinese. The two are both about to go home together for Chinese New Year. Right of my brother is Rachel, the lead chef in the dumpling venture. She's super chill.