An attempted new look

As you may have noticed already, I'm back into blogging. I've been trying to update all of my links and whatnot that I display. Well, a few days ago I got a haircut and was thinking that if I can improve my image, why not try to improve my blog's image? So I started searching for a new look for my blog and I thought I had found it. I saved my old template so I wouldn't lose anything, and put up the new one. I didn't like it. So I changed it back. Of course, most of the stuff on the sidebar of my blog was instantly lost. For example, the wicked awesome map pinpointing Shiyan's location. And now I can't find the website where I originally got those maps. I'm so upset! I'll never change my blog's appearance again! Not really, but I'll definitely be more careful next time and back up all the custom pictures.

On a side note, there are two girls coming into town tonight from Wuhan to visit Angelyn and Jessica. I haven't met them but I've heard they're crazy hilarious so there could possibly be some zany pictures on the way soon.

And now the fun story of the day. Every Friday the guys try to get together for lunch. Oddly enough, we call it Guys Lunch. Every week a different person gets to choose the restaurant so today we were eating across the street from the medical college. After lunch I was walking with John and William through town and we passed some people on the sidewalk selling various things laid out on a blanket. This is a perfectly ordinary thing to see here, especially as winter comes on and a lot of people migrate from the north and/or west to warmer regions. It's also perfectly common for people to yell the one English word they know as you walk by, trying to attract your attention. Today that word was "tiger." We were walking and this guy starts going "tigerrrrr, tiger, tiger, tigerrrrr" over and over. Sure enough, we look down and he's got a dried up tiger paw for sale on his blanket. It was pretty huge! I'm not sure where this guy was migrating from for the winter, but it must be a cool place if it has tigers. Does Tibet have tigers? I'll have to Google it. The guy also had various other pieces of wild animals like a furry goat skull. We didn't buy anything because we weren't sure if we would be supporting the poaching of endangered animals or not. As I was leaving for lunch I contemplated whether or not I should take my camera. I decided nothing fun would happen on an ordinary day like today. I will never leave my camera at home again. After we had passed by, we were standing around talking in front of the bus station and we noticed that the peddlers were now in an argument with the police. They had drawn a large crowd already so we figured we could hide in the back and catch the action. They yelled back and forth for a while and then the police left. I'm not sure what happened, maybe the police wanted them to buy a permit to sell things on the sidewalk or maybe the police just don't like nomads hanging around town. In the end the police were back in their car and the others were sitting back on the sidewalk.