Bringing My Blog Back

Hello Everyone! I have decided that is it time for my blog to be mine again. While we have all enjoyed Evan's unique writing style and endless musings on China and the NCAA, he has now fled the country and I think it is time for him to get his own blog.
As always, it has been a long time since I lost wrote, and I am not quite sure where to start. It was really fun having Evan here. Not only did we have a great time, but it was really fun for me to show my brother (who had never ventured outside of North America) another part of the world. Obviously,my first goal of having him here was for him to enjoy himself, but I also thought it was really important to put him in situations where he was a little bit uncomfortable, surrounded by foreign people speaking languages that he could not understand, on dirty, smelly, buses and having to listen to me have conversations with cab drivers and Chinese friends during which he constantly asked, "are you laughing at me?" Sometimes we were. Usually we were talking about something that had absolutely nothing to do with him.
For the first entire week that Evan was here we stayed in Kunming in my beautiful apartment with all of the comforts of home. (meaning I don't think he had to use a squat toilet once.) We went on some day trips, a put my brother on a bike in China (something that requires considerable guts and even greater reflexes), and I fed him a lot of spicy, foreign, and in general "strange" food (although he rejected my offer to buy him a pig foot.) We also played some basketball and frisbee, Evan enjoyed spreading the wonders of BeerDie, and I got to introduce my brother to the good people of Kunming that I have come to know and love. It was really cool for me to have Evan dropped into my world for a little while.
But he was a little bit too happy and comfortable in Kunming. It was not quite weird enough or hard enough for him (except for a bit of gastro-intestinal distress that he chose not to write about in his blogs for fear that his readers did not want to know.) So we went to the long distance bus station and got on a bus. For those of you who have not been to a bus station in China, it can be a bit overwhelming. As soon as you pull up in front of the station people start yelling at you, thrusting papers at you, trying to get you to buy what they are selling or go where they want to take you. For me, I expect this, I know how to walk straight ahead and get them to leave me alone. Evan was a bit more frazzled. However, we got tickets and got on an average China bus with tiny China sized seats, surrounded by average Chinese people. Evan was in China at last.
Vendors got on and off the bus, peddling newspapers and maps, eggs and corn, announcing their products in country-side accented Mandarin. Evan, feeling overwhelmed for maybe the first time since he found me at the airport, asked me if all Chinese bus stations were this crazy. I told him that this was just a small city of 6-7 million and therefore this is a small, relatively-mellow station. Welcome to China. At this point, I told Evan that seeing him uncomfortable makes me happy. Yes, this may sound cruel, but it is true. Because it is not pointless discomfort, it is a feeling that is productive and that he overcame and learned a whole lot from. (Even if he doesn't know it.)
Dali was awesome. When I told the taxi driver on the way to the old town that my brother was a sports broadcasters, he asked if Evan had ever seen Yao Ming, and was disappointed when Evan's answer was "only on T.V." We went on a crazy biking adventure in which Evan's bike rebelled against him from the very beginning and we made our way through small villages and open fields where local farmers (mostly) smiled at us as we passed. We also hiked a 4,100m peak (really high) and stayed in a small guesthouse on a mountain.
We eventually made our way back to Kunming. We spent Evan's last Saturday in China mountain biking with a few of my hardcore biker friends up and down the foothills of Kunming. The entire ride took about 4-5 hours (including the time spent fixing bike chains with the sophisticated tools of rocks, pliers, and the washers that happened to be in my backpack because I was planning to make earrings out of them). Evan only fell down/crashed into strangers/nearly killed himself and others a handful of times. It was a great ride that challenged us both.
The last night that Evan spent in China was phenomenal. We had dinner with a few friends and then eventually made our way to Karaoke, where we sang our hearts and souls out for nearly four hours. I KNEW my brother would love KTV. It is possible that he liked the sing-along slightly more because of the Baijiu that he was peer pressured into drinking. It was a great group of people and the perfect way to spend Evan's last evening/early morning in China.
On Tuesday morning, I brought Evan to the Kunming Airport and he put himself on a plane to take him back to the land of forks and ice water. He was worried about culture shock and readjusting after being in China for only 2 weeks. I don't even want to think about what it is going to be like for me after an entire year.