It has come to my attention

That the Chinese New Year is around the corner. It got me thinking about my times in China. I started thinking of one of my first experiences in China. I had just arrived in China. Kami (my roomate) and I were just getting settled into our room in Wuxi. Not 3 days later we were already on our way to Beijing. Now, I won't lie. I was in a bit of culture shock. Here I was a barely 18 year old Mormon girl that lived in a mesa Mormon bubble for, basically her life. So, maybe "a bit" is a understatement. None the less, we were off to Beijing. After riding a sleeping train for the first time.
We got to Beijing. We found our hostel (the one we picked out of the trusty china traveling book), and proceeded to check in. We opted for the cheaper 12 (or something) bed room. A room where we did not know of the other people that would be staying with us. But hey, we were in China, and we would rather spend our precious money on knock off DVD's, and north face crap. So we walked to our room. As we opened the door we saw a room with lots of beds, and almost no people. GOOD! We lucked out. Little did we know that others would filter in over the next week. Before I knew it there was some naked Mongolian man sleeping in the bed next to me. This said naked Mongolian spent the better parts of his day asleep. Which was nice...only he only slept with a small sheet, and really he didn't even like using it. So he just slept there naked. It was hard for me to wrap my head around this naked Mongolian. Like I said before. Mormon bubble. I had never even DREAMT of seeing a naked Mongolian sleeping next to me in a hostel in China. WELL, the story gets better. I had to take sleep aid to sleep in this hostel. As a matter of fact, I had to take sleep aid to sleep anywhere in China. It was best if I didn't have much time to lay in bed and think of what was crawling around. So I took my pill, and fell asleep. NEXT THING WE KNOW. The owners of the hostel come yelling in our room, flip the lights on and start yelling...LOUD! Holy COW! I can't even begin to explain the panic that enters your body when you are awoken in a strange hostel place in china. So I am freaking out. Well it turns out Naked Mongolian didn't pay for all those days he had been sleeping in that bed naked. So he got kicked out, in the middle of the night. Questions? Could the owners not wait 4 more hours to kick him out, thus letting the OTHERS in the room sleep through the night? Its best not to question the motives of the Chinese. I feel like I'm leaving out so many details. Like the questionable man in the room across from us that seemed like a crazy brother to the Al qaeda. He was always talking about how much he hated Bush. Or the bathroom, that was really just a room that looked like this..Only 10 times grosser, with small bugs crawling all over the floor. But the most important part was the naked Mongolian. He was the icing on my first Chinese Hostel cake.

Here are some other pictures I was able to find on the Internet. As you can tell I used google to find them. Who knows where my China pictures are?
Who are these crazy girls, and why did I stick them on here? Well they are wearing those hidden money travel things. I HATED mine. I used it, but hated it. SO uncomfortable. But seeing as how almost everything you don't keep hidden got stolen, it was a must. I actually almost left mine on a sleep train once. You should have seen my roommate Kami's face when we had to run back to the train that was starting to move away (as in leave the train station), find my sleeper bed, and PRAY that it was still there. I though she might have killed me. It was a blood rusher.

I remember one of my first times seeing this. What the hell. WHO EATS chicken feet? Apparently a lot of Chinese people.

This one is my favorite. Not only have a peed in a bathroom similar to this, but I have seen so much worse.

China was so much fun. So fun to walk back down memory lane. Happy Chinese New year!