More at Confucius

I was talking to my friend Ashleigh and she mentioned how upset the animals in cages made her, so when I went there again I made sure to take better photographs of the place to show you more clearly how these animals are kept. 

These rabbits are so teeny! I reckon they aren't much older than one month.

Poor hamsters stuck in running wheels with no where to move to, just round and round and hung up like christmas decorations :(

I might buy this brown one...

These kittens are also so young, they have really weak meows and can barely open their eyes. They should be with their mother not out on this cold street.

And how funny is this cat's face!!!

Below is a video of the street where one of these animal shops are. Listen to how loud it is. this shop is right next to a beauty type shop blaring out loud dance music in a street full of bright lights and even though it's March...it's still bloody freezing, all the animals are huddled together trying to keep warm but they are still shivering.

The Confucius Temple has this cool little market place where everyone will be receiving their gifts from! And excuse me for being bigheaded but how awesome are some of these photos?!

Production Company Meeting/Dinner.

Another event which happened this month wi=hich slipped my mind was a meeting and dinner that we had with the film's production company to encourage the new working term after the Spring Festival break.  

Peeps from Glory N Dream:

Sin, Phoenix, me, Nicola, Alex, Matt, Jack, Warren, Betty, Ono, Wen, Aaron, Animom Thom

Nicola, Me, Wen and Betty.

Studio girls and UK boys.

All us girls.

Dumpling Day!!!

Dumpling (far right in yellow) preparing veg for making dumplings!

As I mentioned before, we have 2 whole days off, us and the rest of the guys at the studio, so they ALL came around to our apartment and taught us how to make dumplings. 

It was pretty cool. We made veggie ones and 2 diffferent types of pork ones. Jenny and Colour taught me how to fold them properly. 

My perfect dumpling...(centre bottom)

Wicked.

 We played some Wii and laughed with Nayi. It was a nice afternoon, so good to have time off and spend it with Chinese people learning something of their culture rather than us playing the Wii all day and eating Oreos. Good times. I hope we can do it again before we leave.

Wii anyone????

Moon and Nayi.

Colour and Phoenix.

Nothing much else has happened this month, like I said everyone is pretty busy with the film. But here is a couple of other things I wanted to throw in but couldn’t find an appropriate place to mention them!

 

Ono took photos of us.

Phoenix Drew us.

And last but not least. We can order food by ourselves in restaurants now! As long as it egg fried rice or noodle….lol. 

Nayi

Nayi and Matt playing Wii.

CUTE!

There was some drama this month surrounding the rabbit because somehow she cut her leg and it got infected and then it spread to here eyes and her ear! But she’s on the mend now, it did look well gross though. Get well Nayia nd stop biting it!!!

 

As quickly as Betty came to Nanjing, in a flash she was gone again! Bon Voyage! And now our 5 in back down to 4. We had her leaving dinner at the classy Hot Pot place. 

Betty and Alex pouring over the menu. 

You are served a plate of raw vegetables which you cook yourself in a pot of boiling soup placed in your table. You also get a plate of either raw meat or mushrooms in my case which you also cook. Clever...pay lots of money to cook your own meal.

Matt's Birthday

Matt’s birthday was an exciting time, for me anyway because I had to undercover once again to find him a present that would out do his Valentines gift, a comb made of special Chinese wood, very fancy! I went on 2 secret squirreling missions on the back of Warren’s Scooter, I do wish I had a photo of that to show you but you know…undercover! For his 23^rd birthday I got him a traditional Chinese imstrument called a liuqin (lee-oo-chin), which is apparently mostly played by girls….but who cares! 

Matt and his girly Mandolin.

Thom rockin' out on the liuqin.

It is pretty cool…not as similar to a guitar as I had thought, it’s proving quite difficult for him to play but he’ll get there. He is a talented boy. 

Hello Kitty Birthday cake. the manliest of cakes.

For his dinner the Chinese people told us that you must eat noodles on your birthday to give you a long life…I guess it doesn’t matter that we eat noodle every single day we’re here! So birthday noodles it was…it may give you long life but I guess it doesn’t stop you getting pooed on by Japanese sumos…

Betty

A day after we arrived back from Sichuan we had a new arrival, current AIB student Betty le Bon of 2^nd year animation joining us for work placement, just like Matt and Alex had done a few years before.

Betty le Bon...bigger sugar fiend than me???

Unfortunately the weather was shocking when Betty arrived…rain for most of the time she was here and because everyone is so busy at the studio working 12 hour days 7 days a week, this mixture meant that Betty didn’t get to see much Nanjing, mostly the shopping hot spots which we know and can get by on with our minimal Chinese. Warren did however take us to a Temple in Nanjing, his favourite place in the whole of the city. 

Female monks live at this temple and of course theyre all vegetarian so we got to have another vegetarian meal! Veggie miantiao (noodle soup) and “bow-zi”. Yum. 

Visitors buy small wooden blocks and write their prayers on the surface and hang them here. I wish I had beliefs. 

Prayer with incense.

The 7 floor Pagoda. 

The temple had so many beautiful Prayer altars with gorgeously decorated and lit statues of female gods but I wasn’t allowed to take photos of them…I did manage a sneaky one though…sorry for the blurriness and bad angle but I was undercover. 

On the same outing we got on top of the Nanjing wall, the largest city wall in all of China reaching a massive 33.7km long. Find out more here:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Wall_of_Nanjing