Hi everyone,

My sister wanted me to let you all know that she can't access her xanga account in China.  Please visit her myspace instead:

www.myspace.com/azianartsigirl

Thanks!

Jennifer

today was our fun day! yah! in the morning, we left for an elephant camp about an hour away. once we got there, there was a show scheduled, but first the trainers had to take the elephants to get a bath so they would be "clean". never in america would guests be able to mingle so closely with the elephants (no fences or anything while the elephants walked to the river). i momentarily got freaked out when an elephant started grabbing my sunglasses off my head then stuck his wet trunk on my face. but anyways, then we watched an elephant show where we watched them do tricks like dance to music, play soccer, dunk a basketball, play music, and one elephant even painted a picture (which i thought was quite impressive - a picture of trees with flowers). the younger elephants were especially cute.

then it was time for our elephant ride! we got into pairs and climbed into these seats strapped to the elephants. they took us through the river several times and around the jungle. parts of it were a little scary b/c we'd go down these hills and if you weren't careful, you could slip right out of the seat. they had little towers along the way where you could buy bananas and sugar cane to feed your elephant. we couldn't get any money out (because our wallets were in our backpacks), but our elephant didn't care, he just wanted food. He was pretty aggressive about it so the ladies just gave him some anyways because he was grabbing for it. this earned him a hard smack from our driver, but he still got the food.

after our elephant ride, we took very bumpy ox cart ride to a spot by the river where we ate lunch. they had made us a huge buffet lunch and we could sit and look at the river. after lunch we took a raft ride down the river. this is the same river that the elephants bath and poop in so the water was brown. haha! i saw some elephant poop floating down the river with us (this is after we had all gotten wet when we went through a mini rapid). some ppl were putting their feet in the water so i guess they weren't worried about getting any strange asian foot fungus. the rafts were just bamboo poles strung together and we sat on these little removable benches, but it was very beautiful floating down the river and being surrounded by hills and banana trees.

first sunday in asia ... hard to believe it hasn't even been a week since i left. i think time is crawling by right now. i'm sure it will speed up once i get to china...

last night we all went to the night bazaar to have dinner and to walk around the hundreds of stalls. i saw these really cute pillows that i would have loved to get for our apartment but kim and i dont' know what color any of the furniture is (but i heard we have a blue wall!) ... i'm really looking forward to maybe doing some decorating of my room and our apartment ... of course, can't go all out, but some accents, pictures, and rugs would be nice to make it our own. i also saw these hanging lanterns on white lights that were really cute but refrained from buying anything, at least for now. maybe once i see our place and my room, i can buy a few things when we come back to thailand in febuary for spring conference.

on another note. i HATE finances!!! whenever i came in the summer, i never wanted to be in charge of team finances. and at home, i hate balancing my checkbook and now, i have a system that seems 100xs more complicated than a checkbook. we had a 2 hour finance meeting the other day and my brain just started hurting ... i was so lost. i think i need to hire an accountant ... seriously, i know there must be a logical reason for their system but to me it just seems WAY too complicated - esp. for me who is not going to be there for more than a year and a half ... anyway ....

okay, well i better go. time for breakfast b/f going to an intl home club for the morning.
miss you all!