Let the Sarcastic Comments Begin...

You have no idea how hesitant I am to actually blog this story. Dave, please stop reading here.

About a week ago a friend of mine in Yinchuan called me and said that some model agency wanted to meet all the foreign women in Yinchuan and choose 2 to model jewelery for 1000 yuan. Since Shawn and I are considering purchasing a motorbike I decided, why not? We could use the money if this all works out.

So, I went with some other foreign women to go meet this model agency. We didn't know what was going to happen really, but long story short he chose my friend and me.

The next day the model agency decided they wanted me for a different gig on the same day, but instead of just me, they wanted a couple for a wedding photography advertisement show... so both Shawn and I were going to be models in Inner Mongolia for a few days.

They ended up canceling the other jewelery show, so my friend kind of got the shaft on that. Considering how everything was going and how they kept canceling and rejecting people, we really didn't think it would happen.

It did happen.

On Wednesday afternoon Shawn and I got in the model agency's company car with tinted windows and drove to Inner Mongolia. There we checked into our hotel rooms and went to meet the boss of the company who was putting on the show. At this point we discovered that we were being introduced as professional American models, and were under no circumstances to let on that we were just teachers. Somehow, the guy bought it, and we were in.

That night they taught us how to walk down the runway, turn, and all that.

The next morning we woke up at 6am to go get made up. Apparently we were the "main point" of the show, so... that was interesting. We had to wear 4 different outfits and do the catwalk stint about 7 or 8 times, and then got paid. The entire morning was actually quite humiliating, but the mood lightened as the afternoon went on and we discovered that the boss of the wedding photograph company was just a jerk and was upset with the scheduling and performance order, not us.

It was originally going to be 2 or 3 days, but he didn't want to pay us any more (typical China) so our "agent" told him we'd only do the next day or 2 if he paid us for each day. We were under the understanding that we were getting 500 yuan per person per day, but only ended up getting 500 yuan total. We did get free meals, a free trip, put up in a hotel, and got to see the Wu Hai sight (there was only one).

So, after 10 hours of being "professional international models" we went to the only tourist attraction within an hour. We rode the super long zip line in the desert, and also drove a 4-wheeler around in the desert. Shawn let me drive because he could tell I really wanted to, but I had only ever driven automatic 4-wheelers, so the guy kept getting mad at me for being such a horrible driver.

We got back to Yinchuan about 11:30 Thursday night.

And that's about the gist of it. Pictures coming soon.