So Thursday was my 21st birthday (yay!) on which I decided to go to McDonalds (yay!), get some whiskey and Baileys (yay!), and end up spilling water on everything(boo). No, but quite seriously, about 2/3 of a bottle ended up on my computer, school books, and my bed. Not to mention that my homework is doused in it, and I don't feel like recopying it, so I'm turning it in. But it could have been worse. Oh yes, it could have been much worse.

Friday I reconciled myself to begging my parents for money and buying a new laptop here, which is surprisingly cheap. That night, we hit up the good ole 1912 district, aka club central. Let me tell you, there is NOTHING like being the lone laowai's in a Chinese club. Someday I'll do a full entry on this.

Saturday morning I woke up to find my laptop had miraculously recovered on it's own, which is either a birthday gift from Jesus or a sign that my laptop is secretly some sort of biological robot capable of regeneration. 'Cause seriously, I have done so much to destroy this laptop, and yet it lives on. That afternoon I hit up Zhong Shan, a giant mountain park in the middle of Nanjing, complete with ancient Ming Dynasty tomb, Sun Yat Sen's mausoleum, thousands of plum blossoms, a water park, lake, pagoda, and yes...GIANT STONE CAMELS. Chinese people come there to look at the blossoms, mausoleum, and take photos of me (not even kidding).

I'm sure you've seen these camels and just don't know it. (The picture at the top is them). There's this famous photo of them, in the fall at sunset. . Anyways, I decided I wanted to ride them. Now when you see these photos you'll see how big these Ming Dynasty camels are, and how very difficult it would be to get up there, but, well, we'd lost Scott, so we had some time to kill.

And so began my epic climb up the camel. Which was avidly watched and documented by Chinese bystanders (of which there were many). So somewhere in China there are pictures of me attempting to get on a giant stone camel. Probably some pictures of my butt when I got halfway there, and hopefully some documentation of my success.

So if you ever see that famous photo of the camels, please know that I got up there. And that there are a lot bigger then they look in the photo.