Our Trip to the Rice Terraces in Guilin

We began our trip at the Shenzhen train station about 5:50pm on Friday. We booked three tickets on an overnight train from Shenzhen to Guilin. We had three hard sleepers. This means that there are three beds in a cabin. We booked the two lowers and one of the uppers. The lowers are essential because they're the only ones with a table and enough height so you can sit up without sitting in an awkward position. The upper's nice because you typically have more leg room because there's a place to store bags. That was nice for Matt because Matt's taller than me and Ross. The tickets for the lowers were 249 yuan (roughly $35). Oh yea, there was three of us, me, Ross (an Australian) and Matt (Polish).

We arrived in Guilin before 7am and made our way to the bus station, roughly half a mile's walk down the main road. There are other buses at the train station but those are privately operated and can stop anywhere they want until they're full - not recommended when the bus station's a short walk. It was very cold.

We got to the bus station, bought our tickets and hung around because we had about 30 minutes to kill before the bus left. We bought some drinks and snacks and had an interesting, half-understood chat with the workers. Typically, everyone will ask where we're from. When Matt and Ross say Poland and Australia, nobody really cares. When I say America, everyone smiles and says, "Ohhhhhhhh, ta shi mei gua ren!" That's them saying, "Ohhhhhhhh, he's an American!" It's interesting because that's all they really care about and they assume all white people are American, unless otherwise stated. Me being American gets the older worker excited and talking really fast. The three of us aren't the best Chinese speakers but eventually, I figure out she's saying she wants to hit me because America recently sold Taiwan some weapons and the fact that America supports Taiwan's freedom. It's time for the bus....

We hop on the bus and it's not too crowded, a few empty seats. I believe the ticket was 27 yuan (roughly $4). It was supposed to be a 2 hour ride to Longsheng...and it was. Longsheng is just a transport town. We had to get off here and wait for our next bus to Pingan Village. We had some time to kill so we threw around an Australian football, roughly the same as an American football. We walked around for a short time and saw the local dentist (I've posted a picture of his "office" on picasa). Now, time for the bus.

The bus to Pingan was 7 yuan ($1) each. It took a little less than 90 minutes, which was nice, and we arrived about 1pm. The view was just beautiful. We picked up locals along the way, as well. One guy loaded the bus with freshly cut timber, on top and inside.

The first hour was beautiful views then the last 30 minutes was just a winding road which quickly ascended the mountain, back and forth, back and forth.

Finally, we arrived at the foot of Pingan village. You had to hike about 30 minutes up the mountain to reach the village, the main village in the Longji Titian (Dragon's Back Rice Terraces). Or...if you weren't up for the hike, you could pay two guys 200 yuan total ($30) to carry you to the village, like royalty.

We made our way through the village, crowded with international hostels, boasting internet and western food. This wasn't what we were looking for. We briefly stopped here and there for photos but mainly just pushed through the tourist trap.

Once we got out of town and further up the mountain, the tourists disappeared and the terraces came in to sight, stunning. We played around up here for a while taking pictures with the terraces and the village in sight.

At this point, it had been misty and we had taken the rain gear on and off at least once. For the rest of the trip, we didn't put it back on and just toughed it out. It never really rained but was foggy, misty and occasionally we got sprinkled on. The temperature wasn't too bad, roughly low 50's. It was nice weather to be hiking in.

At this time of the year, the rice was harvested a month ago so there's no rice, no greenery and no water. It's definitely not the best time of year to go but it still made you stare in amazement.

We kept hiking for a while, over terraces, down terraces, back over and back down. We did this for about 2 hours until we came to the next village, Zhanglui. This village was pretty cool. We immediately saw it coming over one of the hills. We walked in on a couple washing their mushrooms in the stream for dinner. The lady pleaded with us to let her cook us dinner and stay at her house for the night, but we had plans to continue to Dazhai village for dinner and sleep.

We started making our way through the village, soon realizing that we had no idea which path to take to continue our trip. As we asked the old lady, her daughter popped out, offering to go with us for a small fee of 20 yuan ($3). We declined, wanting to continue on our own. Unfortunately, this made them unable to tell us the correct path. We headed out on our own anyway.

Surprise, surprise, we got lost. We ended up in the middle of the rice terraces with no path. We had seen another path and knew how to get there so we made our way that way. This was a great accident because this provided the best pictures of me from the whole trip. I was on a lower level than Matt and Ross and they got pictures of me walking in the middle of these huge terraces on the mountain with the village in the background - love the pictures.

We kept on moving and got back on the right track, thanks to a local man and his family who was wildly amused by the foreigners walking through their muddy rice terraces.

Unknown to us, we had just started our 3 hour hike to the next village. Up to this point, there weren't any really hard parts. Most of the path had stones laid down, which wasn't pleasant in the rain but it was pretty easy. It was more of a walk with some stairs. We soon came to a massive climb that just seemed to go on forever. We did stairs for over 30 minutes straight. We were finally sweating and exhausted. We encountered young children going home from school on the path. We assume, since it was Friday, that they spent the week at the school and went to their village for the weekends.

We hiked and hiked. It was starting to get dark but we could just see the next village in the distance so we went quickly to beat the sun. We came to Toutai village. When we got to the village, we arrived just in time to watch the village finish raising the last wall of a new house. All the men in the village were there to help out. Most of the women were there to watch. It was an interesting sight. Their houses are 3 stories tall and they don't have machinery. They still do it the way it was done hundreds of years ago...and not for entertainment but simply because that's the way it's done. We got pictures and video of this. Very interesting.

We picked the hostel that was next to the happenings and decided to call it a day. By the time the men were done celebrating with firecrackers, it had turned dark...as did the whole village. There were no lights and it was pitch black outside. We wanted to walk around and find somewhere interesting to eat but quickly turned around and headed back to the hostel for dinner.

We ate a hot, decent dinner and took our showers. We were exhausted. We went to bed and slept until 10am the next day. We woke up at sunrise just to see if we could see it but it was too cloudy.

So I wrote everything prior to this while sitting in the Newark, New Jersey, airport thanks to a winter storm. I'm going to make the next parts a little shorter, simply for time's sake.

We woke up and went downstairs for a simple breakfast. During breakfast, we were treated to another local tradition. Since the house was raised the day before, they were throwing a type of roll from the top of the house. The people all around were supposed to try to catch these rolls. There was a catch. The rolls were like rocks. At first, I reached with one hand to grab one and it practically broke my hand. After that, I started using my sweatshirt to catch them. The village people were impressed. Ross, however, was able to catch them easily with his bare hands while taking pictures. He said it was just like cricket and it didn't hurt.

After the festivities we made our way out of the village and on to what was supposed to be our sleeping point, Dazhai. It was an easy, 30 minute walk. Dazhai was not so beautiful so we just walked through and caught the next bus back to Longsheng.

In Longsheng, we were able to catch another bus to Sanjiang's main bus station. The ride was almost 3 hours and was on the only road in or out of the entire area. It was a full bus with nothing but local people, everyone stared at us.

Parts of the road had been recently wiped out thanks to landslides and rain. One part had completely given out and fell into the river below. Needless to say, it was really a one-lane road, but not by design.

We finally made it to Sanjiang. From here, we were supposed to take a local bus or taxi to Chengyang, the ancient capital of the area and where the villages are. We got in a local taxi (a motorcycle with the back cut off and a 2 wheeled cart welded in place) and went around the rainy roads for a couple of minutes. After the local bus station said no more buses, we got in a van/taxi and made our way to Chengyang.
This road also seemed quite perilous but it must not be with the way the drivers were flying around corners in the rain. It had gotten much colder since we arrived in Chengyang. There was a cold front coming through and I think it hit during our 3 hour bus ride.

We paid to get in the village and made our way to the first hostel we saw, agreed on a price, added clothes and took off to eat.

The food that night was horrible, the worst pizza we had ever eaten at any point in our lives. Why'd we order pizza? Because we ordered a lot of Chinese food but we still didn't feel full after all of it so we decided on a pizza to be our dessert and hopefully fill us up. It didn't.

The next day, we woke up at 8am so we'd have time to explore before returning to Guilin for the train. We went downstairs and ordered some breakfast. Again, eggs and some meat, nothing special. This time though, we realized we didn't hear the "dragon's breath". That's the sound of the gas under the wok, it's so hot and so much gas it sounds like a dragon.

We poked our heads in the kitchen just in time to see the husband putting lit pieces of wood under the wok. Then he got down on his knees and blew on it to stoke the fire. We realized it'd be a while before we ate.

We walked around the village and made our way to some nearby villages that were less kept up for foreigners.

It was really cool to see everything like it's been for 800 years. I could've walked around villages all day.

We met some local school boys, roughly 12, and played a little basketball with them at the local school for all of the children.

Time had passed and it was time to head back. We got our bags, retraced our steps all the way back to Sanjiang's bus station. We did make one stop at a spot next to the road. A couple raises bees on the side of the road so we stopped and got a big piece of honeycomb to take back for the Chinese teachers at the school.

From Sanjiang, we hopped on a bus to Guilin from here.

In Guilin, we had some hours to kill so we decided to have a nice, big dinner. We walked around for a bit and finally settled on a great place. We ate the best dinner of the entire trip.

We didn't have any problems with communication the entire time until the restaurant. There was a picture of ribs in the menu. The picture showed 6 ribs together and had a price of 8 RMB under the picture. I asked in English and Chinese, how many ribs does 8 RMB buy? Both times, different people said 6, counting the ribs in the picture. We all thought, great. There was 3 of us so I ordered 12 total ribs, 2 orders, so I thought.

During our great dinner, we saw a waiter walk by with 2 ribs on a plate and thought, that's not good. Why would people order just 2 when the order is 6? Uh oh. That would also explain why all of the waiters were amazed when they saw our waiter bring out a plate of a dozen ribs. In the end, we ended up having a little more expensive dinner than we planned but that was ok, it was great and we barely spent any money the entire trip.

We made one more quick detour to Guilin's lake. It was very beautiful, all lit up at night. Next to the lake was a hotel that had a waterfall show at 8:30pm so we decided to stay and see. It used to be called the Lijiang Hotel but had changed names and I never actually saw the new name, oh well. For 10 minutes, water pours from the top and blue lights light up the water. It really isn't that interesting but it sure does draw a crowd.

After the interesting waterfall show, we made our way back to the train station and our trip was over. We soon fell asleep on the train and ended up back in Shenzhen.

It was a great trip. The rice terraces are so much more beautiful and amazing than pictures let show. It was similar to the Great Wall. You really can't imagine how beautiful and amazing a feat it really is unless you're standing there looking at it. China has many, many unique, beautiful places to see and the rice terraces are definitely high on the list.

My Trips to the Hospitals

No, I don't mean that I was hurt or sick and was in the hospital. This last week, one of the assistants in my class had her appendix removed and one of the children in my class had a bad case of the flu (no, not H1N1).

Last Friday, I walked in to school to not find Traci. I was told she was sick and at the hospital. Later, through a game of charades, I found out she was actually having her appendix removed. All of the teachers, a mom and dad from class, Vi and me all went to visit her Saturday night. Everything had gone well and she ended up being released from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon. The hospital was just a 10 minute walk from the school so I visited her during lunch on Monday and Wednesday, as well. Oh yes, after Saturday's visit, Thomas' (a student) mom and dad took us to dinner, great.

I didn't know but a student, Happy, had been hospitalized that Sunday for the flu. I didn't find out until later in the week. The other teachers in the class and myself went to visit him on Thursday night. He was doing much better so we visited for a while. Happy said he missed me a lot. The boys are much closer to me than the female teachers, it's nice. After that, Happy's dad took us all out to dinner. Oh, I forgot, that was my Thanksgiving dinner.

The only thing new with me or Vi is that I bought a new camera. One of Ross's children's parents works for Samsung and got a really nice discount so I went and bought one. In Asia and Europe it's ST550 but the model number is different in America. Anyway, yesterday and last night was spent walking around Shenzhen taking pictures. I will post them soon, the night ones are really cool.

Last Sunday, I went to a golf tournament here in Shenzhen. It's the World Cup of Golf held at Mission Hills Golf Club (the largest golf club in the world). The club has twelve 18-hole golf courses, all designed by famous golfers. One of Ross's children's parents is a member and has a house out there so they gave the teachers some tickets and sent their driver to the school to take us.

The tournament was fun but enjoying the time at the house was even better. We pulled up to a mini-mansion with a Massarati parked out front. We've all heard that in China, performance cars are taxed a minimum of 100%, sometimes as much as 200%. That means this car cost them over $300,000 while the house was priced over $3 million.

The father is one of the largest bbq grill manufacturers in the world. He builds the grills, then sells them to larger companies to put their names on. He has his American headquarters in Atlanta, off 285. His grills are sold in Home Depot and Lowe's, meaning he's doing OK. They're also sold in the top 3 hardware stores in Australia.

We had a great lunch, an assortment of grilled meats and excellent red wine. It was great to sit, eat and relax outside by a pool with a view of a pond and golf course. Not able to hear car horns or construction for a whole day was a new experience.

We'll definitely be going back up there for another dinner.

Also, I've posted pictures from Halloween and more of the kids in my class.

Halloween

We celebrated Halloween at the kindergarten on Friday since there was no school on Saturday. We, the foreign teachers, decided to have fun with it. We all went to buy Halloween supplies one day at lunch.

In the morning, I wore a long-sleeved shirt and placed my bloody, severed hand up my sleeve. We stand at the front and say, "Give me five!" every morning to the kids. When the kids would hit my hand, I'd let the fake hand fall to the ground and I would scream about my hand. Most kids looked at my hand and were scared because of the blood on it. I even got a couple of parents with it.

My favorite part was our morning show. We had borrowed a school uniform and made a dummy with a water balloon for a head. Chris was supposed to throw the dummy from the 3rd floor but was late, so I had the honor. I stood on the 3rd floor while all of the kids, teachers and many parents were in the center courtyard for the morning show. I held the kid up and screamed, "This is what happens when you're a naughty child!" and threw him in the middle of the courtyard for everyone to see. It was silent for a while. Three of my students told the head Chinese teacher that I had killed a student. We showed them the dummy and they saw that it wasn't a real child.

We spent the morning going class to class, dressed up as the living dead, scaring all of the kids. We spent the rest of the morning and lunch putting the finishing touches on our Haunted Hallway. I was able to convince the rest of the teachers that we should make one. It was great.

We took some kids through it and were able to scare them. I have some great pictures of kids in the middle of their scream. Also, I have some great videos of the kids being scared by the ghosts.

It was a great Halloween. Next year, we'll spend more time on the Haunted Hallway to make it bigger and scarier.

My Birthday

This being my first birthday away from all of my family, I took the morning off to relax a little and watch some American tv on my slingbox to make me feel better about being away from home. That night, Vi took me to an Italian restaurant for a great dinner, as is tradition. When we came back, she had bought me a Haagen-Daas ice-cream cake that was great.

We were still tired from the Thailand trip so we spent a weekend at the Sheraton Dameisha Resort, just an hour away by bus.

Days 4, 5 & 6 - Thailand

Day 4 - Day after snakes (I think)

Today we woke up to a slight rain, again. We had arranged for a driver from the hostel to the airport so we woke up and had a lazy morning. We ate the free breakfast at the hostel and took a quick, post-breakfast nap. We got up and began packing our suitcases. We took an hour long ride back to the airport and hung around for a little while before our flight to Bangkok.

The flight to Bangkok was a quick one, which was nice. We arrived in Bangkok and got in a taxi to head to the hostel. The taxis there work a little differently. To avoid being taken advantage of, there's a taxi stand at the airport where taxis line up for your business. You tell the person at the stand where you're going and they write up a ticket, tell you how much and you just give it to the taxi driver.

It was a little over an hour trip, rush hour traffic in southeast Asia is the worst I've ever seen, but interesting to see the different sides of Bangkok. We drove through the more modern downtown and also through the older, poorer downtown areas.

We arrived at the hostel and were pleasantly surprised. We unpacked and went for a walk in search of street food. Luckily, we picked a hostel just a block or so away from a popular market street. We enjoyed some spicy, strange Thai food and some great coconut, Thai sweets.

After a while, we decided to head back and call it a night. We had big plans for the morning.

Day 5 - Floating Market and Drag Show

We woke up early this morning to catch our tour minibus to the floating market. While there is more than one, we went to the biggest and oldest one, Dumnoen Saduak Market. It took about an hour and half drive from the city. We got to the market and got ready to board a long-tailed speedboat to get to the actual market. Here is where I realized that I had left my memory stick in the laptop back in the hostel. Luckily, there was another couple from our hostel who had an extra memory stick and he let me borrow his for the day. Very lucky.

We took a speed boat into the main area then got off at the center of the market. Here, we were free to explore for about 2 hours. You can walk around the area but we opted to share a paddle boat and get a little tour. It's very interesting to see how these people use a paddle boat for everything in their daily life. The real market opens at 4am for food for the locals and closes around 7am to get ready for the tourists.

The floating market was cool to see but wasn't great...just interesting.

We made our way back to hostel and went for lunch. We just ate somewhere nearby the hostel, some more Thai food.

We took a rest then decided to have a fun night out in Bangkok. In China, everyone is amazed by the drag shows in Bangkok so we had to go see one so Vi wouldn't be embarrassed when she returned home.

I looked online and found what was considered the best drag show in Bangkokg, The Mango Room. It was more expensive than I would've liked but the production quality was very good. Some of the men were very beautiful and you would never know they were men without being told. Just look at some of the pictures posted. The one with me and Vi and 2 women, those are both men.

After the drag show we went to an area called Phatong. It's another walking street on the other side of Bangkok from where we were staying. We walked around for a while checking out the markets. We saw many interesting things that should not be written about on the internet. If my blog wasn't already blocked in China, it would be after I wrote what we saw. I'll just say that this area is the seedy, underbelly that Bangkok is notorious for. Needless to say, we left shortly after for the hostel.

Day 6 - Return to Shenzhen

Today we are returning to Shenzhen. Our flight is in the evening but we're not close to the airport so we had another relaxed day. We woke up and ate the great, free breakfast and then packed. We had to check out by noon even though we weren't leaving until 3pm. The hostel held our bags for us while we walked around the area and mailed our postcards.

The previous night we had gotten in a taxi with a great driver. She painted her taxi pink and everything inside was pink. Since she was a woman, her taxi actually smelled nice inside. Also, she loved to dance to club music. She would be dancing at all the red lights. The best part was that she made sound effects while she drove. Everytime she passed someone, she'd go "Vrrrrrrrrrrrooomm" quietly. She was always smiling and laughing, great woman.

Anyway, we called her and she drove us to the airport. She got us there much faster and much cheaper than the last guy, simply because she knew the side streets rather than the suspended highway.

We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare so we wandered around Bangkok's airport. They have one of the nicest airports I've ever been in. Any top of the line store you can think of, they have somewhere inside. Although the restaurant selection is not as varied or as nice as I'd like.

The flight back to Shenzhen was nice and easy. We were able to get a bus back from the airport to nearby our apartment even though it was after 11pm.

Overall, it was a great birthday trip. Thailand's beautiful but I would definitely recommend the islands over Bangkok. We will be returning to Thailand to visit some more islands.

Day 3 Mom...DO NOT READ!

So we woke up this morning to rain, not surprisingly. We made it a lazy morning, slept late and took our time getting ready. We decided since we couldn't enjoy the beach, to do some sightseeing. We had seen a place where a guy does tricks with cobras and even kisses a King Cobra, he's an internet hit.

We found out where this was, luckily just on the other side of the island in Chalong, and hopped on Sasha for a quick ride in a light drizzle.

We arrived at the snake farm and made our way to the Phuket King Cobra Show. It was a little shack with a sunken ring in the middle and a set of bleachers on 2 sides. There was one family joining us for the show.

The guy from the videos and pictures came out and gave a bow. He then proceeded to pull out 3 Thai cobras. These were the 2nd deadliest snakes he'd be playing with. If they bite you, you have a whole 20 minutes before you would die. They're very common all over Thailand, especially in the jungles of Phuket.

It was a good thing we saw this show after our night scooter ride through some jungle areas.

He did some tricks, mainly teasing them and getting them to strike at him. It was pretty cool to watch. The bleachers were less than 10 feet away from the snakes so we were on top of the action.

The handlers then brought one of the cobras in the stands for us to touch. Vi was too nervous to touch it but of course I had to feel. It's cool being that close to something so deadly.

The second snake (3 of them) a new handler pulled out, also venomous, was smaller but would coil up and jump at the handler. If you were bit by this lovely snake, you would have 30 minutes to get help before dying.

This handler, for his finale, bent down as if to kiss the snake but then bit the snake and held it in his mouth. I then went down in the ring with him and took a picture with him with the snake in his mouth.

Finally, the big time. The first handler returned and pulled out a 4 meter (roughly 12 feet) long King Cobra. Wow! The cobra immediately rose up looking for a fight. If this King Cobra were to bite you, you'd have 15 minutes before death.

Oh yea, I forgot to mention. All of these snakes still had their fangs and were still producing venom. How do I know this you ask? Well, they brought the snakes around to show the people the fangs and then got them to drip venom on this metal thing. Just to let us know there was a real danger.

Anyways, after a couple of minutes of playing with the cobra, he set up for the Kiss of Death. He seemed to lure the cobra in to a relaxed state and slowly kissed the cobra on top of its head. I have to say, I was nervous watching this.

We walked around the grounds and saw some more snakes then decided to go get some lunch. Nothing like watching people handle 12 feet long cobras to work up an appetite.

We continued towards the town of Chalong to see what we could find.

We decided to stop at a little place that ended up being a gem of a find. From the outside, it looks like another runned down restaurant ran by locals. Inside, it has an awesome, traditional Thai set up. Everything is off the ground. It's really cool and you should just check out the pictures to get the idea.

The food here was amazing. I had garlic chicken that was incredible. Vi had a seafood Thai fried rice that was also great. Everything was so great we even returned for dinner.

After lunch, we went across the street and Vi got to try her first milkshake, strawberry. She was in love. We've decided that she will put on a lot of weight her first year in America simply because of the food.

Once we had finished the milkshake, we came back to the hostel for a nap. It was still a rainy day so it was perfect for napping.

We woke up from the nap in the mood for some adventure. We got back on Sasha and drove around to some areas we hadn't been before. We did some more shopping and after not being able to find an interesting looking restaurant, went back to Chalong to the place we ate lunch at.

We returned to find that the restaurat was packed with people and there was only one place to sit. The great thing about this place is that only one person there spoke English and everyone eating there were Thai, no tourists. Everyone kind of watched us sit down and the 2 tables across from us even attempted to talk with us a bit and help translate to a waiter.

This time we got garlic prawns, fried catfish in margo sauce (incredibly spicy) and Thai spicy soup with prawns. All of it was amazing. Thai food is great, although unbelievably spicy. We loved dinner and Vi loved the milkshake so much, we had a 2nd on for dessert.

We made our way back to the hostel but we stopped off to do some more shopping. I was very happy with some little things I found for Christmas gifts for the family. We found some interesting things last night that put us in a good mood.

We got back to the hostel, showered and went to sleep. It was a relaxed day but today we're leaving the island and going to Bangkok which should be quite a bit busier.

Day 2 One of the best days of my life

Day 2 started with a quick breakfast at the hostel at 8am. I then rented a scooter so we could explore the island and the other beaches. This was just $6 per day which is a great rate, plus no deposit.

Well, we got ready in our bathing suits and went downstairs to ride the scooter. As I had never driven a scooter, the lady wanted to give me some tips. I listened carefully and got on and hit the gas. Needless to say, I wrecked it immediately. Nothing serious but enough to give the locals a good laugh. The gas is extremely sensitive and the acceleration is incredible. It's so you can zip in and out but they really should give some warning. I've driven similar in China and you have to turn a lot harder there to get going, not with this bad boy. You're at 20 km per hour in a couple seconds.

After a few rides around the building, Vi finally got on. We (me, Vi and Sasha (we named our bike)) made our way to the beach north of us, Karon Beach. We didn't stop because it was a good beach but we wanted to visit a couple we had looked up online that were incredible. Plus, riding the scooter was very, very fun.

We continued up the coast and past Patong Beach, the most popular and most built up beach on the island. We kept going. We did stop along the way and take some pictures from the cliffs because it was just so beautiful.

Next beach was Kamala Beach. We went just past that as between Kamala and Surin was Laem Singh, a small cove, few visit. We walked down the side of the mountain and were happy to see this quiet little cove with 3 restaurants and about 20 people. It was nice.

We decided to go to the restaurant to have some lunch. We both ordered fish, sat back and relaxed. Vi's fish came first. It was huge and delicious. Suddenly, I realized, we misunderstood the menu. Our lunch was going to be very expensive. When we ordered the fish, we thought the dish would be 80 baht, but really it was 80 baht per 100 grams and Vi's fish was over 500 grams and mine on the grill was even larger.

We called the people over and explained the situation. They weren't happy but after enough discussing, they charged us a couple US dollars for the inconvenience and allowed us to just pay for what we ate. Needless to say, we decided to move on to the next beach.

This trip to the next beach was about 40 minutes on the scooter through small towns and away from the beach. It was a beautifu ride. We finally arrived at a beach called Naithon Beach. We read online that not many people go there. We parked the bike and made our way to the beach.

We got there and were amazed to find that we were the only people on a beach that's more than a mile long of perfect, golden sand. This was incredible. No locals, no tourists, nothing. We were so excited. We layed out our massive beach towel and went to play in the water and take a walk. We took pictures and video because it was just unbelievable. It was like out of a movie. Suddenly you come upon this perfect beach that you have all to yourself. We ended up calling our beach as it felt like we were the first ones to step foot here. Wow.

After some time at our beach, we hopped back on the scooter for the next beach up to catch a good sunset view, Nai Yang Beach. This was another 30-40 minute ride that took us away from the beach. We arrived at Nai Yang and rented 2 chairs to put our stuff. We took a walk and enjoyed the scenery.

The beach was a disappointment having just left a perfect beach with nobody on it but we still enjoyed it. We both took naps under the sun as the sun began to be mostly covered by clouds. We woke up and ate some food at a restaurant the sand, which was very nice.

As the sun began to sink, we moved to a better position to view but only to be blocked by too many clouds to really see anything. We decided at that point to head back to our hostel. We began our journey at the bottom of the island and had made it all the way to the top over the course of the day.

We had no idea how far we were from the hostel until we reached the nearest town, 20 minutes away, and saw a sign that read Patong Beach 32kms. Uh oh! We had driven over 50 kms that day. Instead of taking all the winding, small, unlit backroads, I hopped on the big highway.

While it sounds scary, it was actually way better than the small roads. I was able to go faster and it was pretty much a straight road the whole way. Near the end of trip it began to rain on us. We were still a good 4o minutes from our hostel so we just had to push through. This was really ok because it never rained too hard and we were only going up steep hills so far, not down.

On the way up one mountain, we witnessed a bad accident. A girl on a scooter fell on her side and slid down the side of the mountain making a horrible noise. I hope she was ok.

That jolted both of us and on the way down each mountain I was very, very careful and we had no such accidents. The people here can be crazy on these things.

We stopped at Karon Beach, just north of where we're staying, and laid out under the stars for
a while before continuing to the hostel. It was beautiful to just lie under the stars and hear the waves.

We arrived back almost 2 hours after we had set off for the hostel. It was a great day with amazing beaches and a great journey. We ate at the same restaurant that we had before and enjoyed some Thai Phad noodles. We came back, took showers and went to sleep exhausted.

THAILAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Day 1

Well, let me start from the beginning. I don't want to spend too much time on here so I'm going to be brief. Also, can't connect my laptop so pictures will have to wait until either Bangkok or Shenzhen, sorry.

We flew from Shenzhen Airport Saturday morning about 12:30am (an hour later than we were supposed to) and arrived in Bangkok about 2:30am (they're an hour behind Shenzhen). We made our way through customs and picked up our checked bag. We immediately went to find some good because we were very hungry. After we ate some Thai food, we walked around trying to find somewhere to sleep for a little bit. We stumbled in to Royal Thai Airways' VIP lounge. It was so late AND so early that nobody was there so we settled down. We were unable to nap because by the time we had settled down, we had just 40 minutes before we could check-in for our flight to Phuket. We checked in for our flight and went to the gate to lay down and wait. It was freezing cold in the terminal and we were unable to sleep.

This flight was on time so we were excited about that. We flew over the ocean and arrived in Phuket a little over an hour later. Beautiful water!!!!!!!!!! That was the first reaction when landing. Again, we gathered our stuff and met up with our driver from the hostel.

The drive to our hostel was nice. We told the driver that if he took us somewhere he enjoys eating for breakfast, we'd pay. We stopped at a little restaurant on the side of the road where some Thai families were enjoying their breakfast. The food was very good. I had some roasted duck with rice. Vi had a bowl of noodles in soup with roasted duck. We split a plate of fried glass noodles with roasted duck. The duck was delicious, can you tell?

On the table were condiments, like anywhere you go. They were just different here. You had the soy sauce with Thai chilis in them. There was the crushed, dried chili flakes. They did have sugar. Lastly, the vinegar with peppers in it. The best were these little green peppers. I had never seen them before and the driver was eating them in his food by the hand full. I decided to give it a try. Luckily, I didn't try to show off and just picked one and ate it with a spoonfullof rice. WOW! That was the hottest pepper I've ever eaten. My mouth and lips were on fire for the entire trip to the hostel.

We left the restaurant and made our way to the hostel, nothing else worth mentioning happened.

At the hostel, we checked in and got our room. It was an excellent surprise. Our room's great and very cheap. It's about $20 a night. It's called Southern Fried Rice. We couldn't go to the beach yet, we were exhausted. We took a short nap and made our way to the ocean.

Frst, we went to Kata Beach which is just a 5 minute walk from our hostel. It was beautiful but there were plenty of people. Not a crazy amount, but not what we really really wanted. We played in the water and took some walks. The water was a beautiful blue-green. We rented two chairs and spent some time being lazy. It was really nice.

We walked up the street to a little restaurant to get some food. I ordered the cheeseburger and Vi ordered the noodles with seafood. To my surprise, they had Connect Four game boards so I was able to teach Vi a game I used to play a lot in the after school program in elementary school.

We left the beach and came back to shower and change for dinner and shopping. We ate dinner at a really small, local place that I thought was going to fall apart at any moment. We walked up the steps and pointed to some stuff in bags then ordered to some Thai Phad noodles with seafood. The noodles were amazing. They were not spicy but had a peanut flavor to them that made them incredible. It is the best non-Italian noodle dish I've ever had. The other stuff we ordered practically killed us. The first was a mixture of chilis and chicken. It looked very flavorful and it was. It slowly destroyed our mouths though. The other dish was green and served with this vegetable so we didn't think it would be too spicy...wrong. That one also torched our mouths. The spicyness is undescribable.

After dinner, we walked around the area and did some shopping. First for ourselves, then for others. Vi picked up a beautiful dress and I got a new t-shirt that I desperately need. We were still quite tired so we only shopped for a short while and headed back to the hostel to sleep.

Tomorrow would be an amazing day and we'd have an amazing adventure.

Vi's New Job

Sorry about the lack of blogging lately but it's been a pretty uneventful couple of weeks. I'll start with the big news that just happened a couple minutes ago...Vi has a new job!!

She hasn't been happy at her job at the American company and has been looking for something else. She's been doing the job of a business AND personal assistant, sourcer, salesperson and host for visitors. Her boss has been in America the last month or so and she's been quite bored at work. She also doesn't like the environment at the office because it's mainly guys and she doesn't have any friends there. Also, it's about a 40 minute commute everyday for her.

Anyways, she just got back from an interview where the boss hired her on the spot after a couple minutes. There were even people waiting to interview after her but the boss didn't need to meet anyone else, Vi was her girl (she wanted to make sure I mentioned that). It's a Turkish company consisting of 3 women in the same field she's been in, exports. The best part of this job is that it's across the street from our building. It's not even a 5 minute walk from our door so that's great. Plus, I'm no longer tutoring during lunch so we'll both be able to come home for lunch everyday now.

She starts on Thursday next week and now she's building up the courage to call her boss and tell him she quits...this phone call should be interesting. She'll write a blog after a week or two to tell about her new job.

In much smaller news, school starts Sept 1st so I'm looking forward to getting back to school and the kids. I realized that I haven't really explained how's the summer been here so I'll tell you how the summer break was. I spent the summer teaching private lessons rather than resting and vacationing. I taught 3 or 4 classes most days but on Tuesdays 6 or 7. When school starts, I'll continue with some of the private lessons which is nice because I'll be making a lot more money than I was last semester.

My schedule, starting next week, will start with me at the preschool from 7:50-11:30, then a lunch break. I'll actually teach more this semester because I'll be teaching an extra class. I'll have my class, INT2A (INT means international, which means they get a foreign teacher, 2 is the level and A just means which 2 level class) and INTK4. Last year I taught K3 for 30 minutes; this year I'll teach K4 for an hour. Last semester I had a private lesson during lunch but this semester I won't so I'll be able to go home during my 3 hour lunch break and have lunch with Vi...also a little nap. I have to be back at the school at 2:30 and teach from 3:00 to 5:00. My actual classes will be from 9:00-9:30, 9:40-10:10, 10:15-10:40, 10:45-11:10 and 11:15-11:30 in the morning then 3:00-3:30 and 3:35-4:00. At 4:00, we just wait for the parents to come pick up the kids. I'll also have a 1 hour private lesson after school everyday, except Tuesday when it will be a 2 hour lesson. Needless to say, I'll be making $1,000 more this semester than I made last semester so I'm very happy about that.

The last update is that we're taking a trip to Thailand (Bangkok and Phuket) in October for my birthday. I'm now tired of writing so I'll update more on this when it happens.

Hiking in Hong Kong

Sorry about the late post, but as I've said before, accessing the blog has become difficult. A couple days ago, Vi and I went to Hong Kong with plans to visit Tan Long Wan beach, on Sai Kung peninsula. I've seen pictures of it online and it's beautiful but the main reason is because it's harder to get to so there's less people. Anyways, after crossing the border, riding the metro train and 2 buses later, we were at the trailhead. We started walking, enjoying the beautiful views until we came across a lady who looked exhausted and was desperate to know where she could meet the bus. We asked her how far the beach was and she said almost 2 hours away!!

Needless to say, we weren't happy. We ended up hiking up a mountain on the second hottest day in Hong Kong of the year...awesome. I did enjoy finally getting outside and seeing some greenery. After hiking through some little villages, we finally came around a corner and were amazed to see a white sand beach sitting in front of us.

We were exhausted and covered in sweat so we sat in the shade for over an hour and relaxed, enjoyed the view. We were too exhausted to hike to the bus so we just paid for a little speedboat to take us back to the first pier. It was about a 40 minute ride over choppy waters but we got to see amazing islands and expensive yachts.

We will definitely be going back there soon. You can rent a tent for just under $15 per night. It's a beautiful, beautiful beach surrounded by mountains. Incredible.

Victoria Peak in Hong Kong

This weekend, Vi and I went to Hong Kong. While we've both been to Hong Kong, neither one of us have done a lot of sight-seeing there. The most beautiful place in Hong Kong has to be Victoria Peak, which is on the northwest corner of Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong's split into 3 areas, Kowloon Peninsula, The New Territories and Hong Kong Island.

We simply crossed the border and got aboard the MTR train to Mong Kok station in Kowloon Peninsula. It took us a little under an hour on the train but not bad. We stayed at a hostel called City Plus Hostel. It's extremely cheap for Hong Kong, just HK$ 280 (roughly $40). It was incredibly small but clean and the beds were comfortable so you can't ask for much more. It was also located in a residential building. It had an entrance on Nathan Street, by far the most popular road.

We checked in, dropped our stuff off and headed back to the subway. Unfortunately, it had been raining on and off so we hoped for no rain to the area we were heading. We got off at Central on Hong Kong Island and followed the sign to the lower terminus of the tram and got in line which moved quickly to our delight.

We made the very steep climb up the mountain with gorgeous views of the city. We arrived at the top and made our way up to the top observation deck to get a view with the sunlight. We took many pictures and it really was just beautiful. It's unique because I don't think you can get that kind of view of any other huge skyline anywhere else in the world. It's incredible.

We made our way around the mall and checked out all the restaurante before settling on the Bubba-Gump Restaurant. It was also amazing. I haven't had a real burger in a long time and it was great. We also had an appetizer called "A Road Through America." It had fried shrimp, chilled shrimp, popcorn shrimp, hush puppies and buffalo chicken. Vi said that it was the best shrimp she's ever had. I had a burger with onion rings on it and Vi had a baked rice dish with clams, shrimp and fish. It was all very good and it really felt like I was in America, except the view of the Hong Kong skyline from out table.

After dinner we made our way back to the top observation deck to get some great night shots, which we did. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any great ones with us in the picture with my camera so we had a professional photo taken and bought a frame for it there. It was worth it because the picture's great and it's the first framed picture in the apartment and it's motivated us to print and frame more to put up in the apartment.

The trip was great and we headed back to the hostel to get a good night's sleep. We were exhausted after the day.

In the morning we got up and went to a dim sum restaurant for breakfast. Dim sum is a typical Cantonese breakfast that we love. The dim sum was great and we just walked around the area for the next couple hours before heading back to Shenzhen for a nap.

All in all, it was a great trip to Hong Kong. We'll go again soon but to the outlying islands for hiking and relaxing.

Check out the incredible pictures.

An Aussie Burger

Last night some of the teachers and myself went to a sports bar to try to watch Andy Roddick play against Andy Murray in the semi-finals of Wimbledon (American vs British). There, I decided to get a burger. The owner explained to me what was on the burger, pretty normal until he said, "Oh yeah, we put pineapple and a slice of pickled beet root on top of the buger." Well, this kind of threw me as I never would've guessed that, especially the beet root considering I don't think I've ever had beets. Anyways, I got the burger and it was quite good. The pineapples and beet root added an interesting flavor and the burger was quite delicious. I just wanted to share that this is considered a normal burger in Australia. If you were to go to a family bbq, they would all have pineapple and beet root on their burgers. Also, when you say Aussie, you need to pronounce the "ss" as a "z" sound or they're not happy. I was corrected on this many times last night. Just thought the Aussie burger was different and needed to be shared.

Dapeng

This weekend Vi and I went to Dapeng. It's a town in Shenzhen but you would never guess on the way there or once you arrived. It's an ancient town where they built a military fortress to fight against the Japanese Navy in 1394. It was also the site of the first battle of the Opium War. There, the Chinese Army defeated a British Navy fleet only using canons from land and only fishing boats because they did not have a navy yet. The old village area is still the same with the outlying areas being factories everywhere, typical China. The ancient village does have electricity and people still live there. It was really cool to walk around and see people in their everyday life (well, it was Saturday) and just being part of it for a short time. We saw all of the normal stuff: people doing laundry in the streams, people washing clothes in the streams, kids trying to catch animals, most people playing mahjong and older women making things with her hands sitting outside; it was all really interesting to see. Vi was disappointed because she was hoping for something more like Lijiang or Dali, like our trip from last year, but it was nowhere near as touristy.

We ended up staying the night across the street from the village which just happened to be a beach. We didn't know there was a beach there so we didn't bring our bathing suits. Plus, it's been crappy weather all week and it did slow up this weekend enough for us to have a good time in just a little rain. We hadn't gone anywhere for awhile and were really happy we decided to go dispite the weather.

I've already posted pictures and there's a video of the shipping yard that we saw on the way there but we've never had this view of the shipping yard before so I had to take a video. I don't know if it's big compared to others but it is HUGE.

We're planning another trip soon to Chengdu, Sichuan. They still have the quake zone that you can see. Chengdu is where the majority of the destruction from last year's earthquake happened and it's also the home of the panda reservation. It won't be next weekend since that's the 4th of July but the weekend after that we should be going up there, very exciting.

Sleep Talking

Normally I wouldn't write about a dream or me talking in my sleep but I just wanted to share. I've been talking in my sleep quite a bit lately (I've been exhausted) and waking up Vi. Luckily for me she thinks it's funny. The other night I spoke Chinese in my sleep and she was able to understand what I was saying. It was just a simple sentence, "Ta shuo wo." The translation is "He told me". Something easy, yes, but it was the fact that I was actually dreaming in Chinese and even spoke Chinese in my dream. While my Chinese is far from good, it has become decent recently. Ok, that's all. I just wanted to share my excitement. That's all for now.

Update

I haven't posted a blog in a while simply because life's been normal, but still great. I guess the only interesting thing is that my class was cancelled this last week because so many of my kids were sick. Two of them had Hand, Foot, Mouth disease while over 20 others had a high fevers. It was so bad the CDC came out to sterlize the entire room, but didn't bother with the rest of the school. Since I haven't had any students, they've had me bounce around from class to class helping out and filling in for any absent teachers so it's been a normal week, just not with my kids.

The big trip I was planning with a couple other teachers has been cancelled because I've picked up some more tutoring jobs and they want me to tutor everyday during the summer so the money's just too good to pass up for such a short time. I'll probably take a couple weekend trips to some other cities with some of the teachers and Vi so hopefully there'll be some cool pictures and stories to share coming up.

That's all for now, I'll be sure to try to keep everything up to date.

My Crazy Week

This week was a strange one. First, the week started with a working Sunday which is never fun. Then, Monday was International Children's Day, although I don't know any other countries that celebrate it so I'm not real sure what makes it international and finally, we had no power for the entire day on Wednesday.

I'll start from the beginning. We worked on Sunday because we had Thursday, Friday and Saturday off for Dragon Boat Festival so the public schools make up one of those missed days on Sunday, yay.

Children's Day on Monday was really fun and a new experience for me. Last year on Children's Day, I only taught adults so we didn't celebrate it. This year, I was told there'd be a show by our class students and their parents and I was also to create a 3-10 minute skit that should make everyone laugh. Right before the holidays I was also informed I'd be co-hosting the day's activities with one of the moms and I'd only be speaking in Chinese the entire time. Well, they wrote out a script and I put all of the Chinese in pinying (Chinese with Roman alphabet) on notecards so I could actually read it. I haven't learned to read actual Chinese characters yet, but I have begun the process.

Monday morning came and I dressed nicer than my normal t-shirt and shorts to go to school. When I arrived, Meier's Mom (the other co-host) was waiting for me with a purple wig for me to wear. The skits were performed mainly by one student and either their mom or dad or both. A couple skits had numerous kids and parents involved. The skits ranged from famous stories being acted out, singing, Beijing opera, magic, story-telling to cooking demonstrations. My skit was called short because the other foreign teachers were involved but some of their Chinese teachers didn't let them leave their classrooms to help (I forgot to add, my class was the only one in the kindergarten that had parents in the classroom or that did a show).

After all of the shows were over, all of the parents, students and teachers from our class went to a 5-star hotel's buffet. The parents paid for the teachers, excellent. It was a great lunch and one I really needed. I haven't been eating Western food very much because it's so much more expensive than eating Chinese or cooking at home and I've been craving it pretty badly so that took care of that need.

I've posted pictures on picasa from Children's Day, they're not the greatest but they're ok. One of the parents will be making me a copy of the video from the day so I'll post that video online, too. It's obviously longer and I'm not sure where I'll be able to do it since I can't access youtube but I'll figure something out. This way you can all hear my Chinese.

On Wednesday, the school and the entire area was without power. The government shuts off the power in certain areas during the summer for a day in order to save money and electricity. Luckily, I live in the city center so they'll never do it to my apartment area. The parents and Chinese teachers, not the foreign teachers, were told the day before so I only had 4 students show up to school. Needless to say, I didn't have to teach that day which was quite nice. Before 9am my shirt was completely wet from the sweat because it was in the low 90s that day and the humidity here is extremely high, and that's coming from someone who lives in humid Atlanta.

It was a pretty crazy week but luckily it's over and I'm able to sit back and relax finally. It's a beautiful Saturday and when Vi comes back from work after lunch, we'll head to the beach for the afternoon and evening. If it's a nice day tomorrow, too, we'll probably head back to the beach for the whole day. It's just so hard to stay in the city when the beach is so close and it's so beautiful outside.

Until next time...

Pete's Birthday in Wuhan

First, let me start by explaining why I haven't posted in a couple weeks. The blog site has been blocked here and I can't access it. I'm having to go through a proxy server to access my account to post this blog. I can only guess someone posted a blog that wasn't approved for the general Chinese public. Anyways, I'm able to post blogs but can't put any pictures on this site so you'll have to look at my picasa site to see the pictures.

So, earlier this month, a group of five of us went to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, for Pete's 21st birthday. Me, Pete (21 from England), Ross (37 from Australia), Jack (19 from Denmark) and Chris (20 from South Africa) took a weekend train trip to Wuhan.

It's a tradition in England that when you turn 21, you take a trip with friends to somewhere you've never been so we decided to do something special for Pete since he's away from home. We chose Wuhan because we've been hanging out with a local businessman, Jack (we call him Chinese Jack since there's already a Jack), from Wuhan, and he's been inviting us to Wuhan for over a month now. We decided to take him up on his offer.

We left Friday rigth after school to the train station and took a 12 hour train ride to Wuhan. The train ride was easy, trains in China are great. We arrived a little before 6am to a rainy Wuhan. We hopped on a bus and made our way to the area we would be staying. Chinese Jack took us to a small area where we had a traditional Wuahn breakfast. A Wuhan breakfast consists of hot, dry noodles and a form of baozi, steamed bread with meat in the middle. The noodles were extremely dry because of the sauce and we're just so-so.

After breakfast we went to the hotel and took naps until noon. Chinese Jack woke us all up and we took a 5 hour walking tour of Wuhan. The city's quite beautiful and definitely unique in China. At some point in its history, they had Russians, English and even Americans in the city and they all influenced the city in large ways. The buildings and architecture is all very British while another area was very, very Russian feeling. As for the American influence, they had YMCAs and churches all over the city.

On the walking tour we also stopped into a back-alley shop that had counterfeit products (you can see the video) where I bought myself and Pete fake Rolexs for very, very cheap.

After the tour we made our way back to the hotel area and hung out at Chinese Jack's brother's restaurant and bar until that night. That night we watched a soccer championship game, I'm not sure what because I don't really follow it but of course, the Englishman does.

That night we went to a KTV, karaoke lounge, for a little bit but soon left to find a dance club for Pete. This was the most interesting part of the trip. The first place we went into was packed but over 80% guys so we decided to leave and find another place. We walked into 4 other clubs but they had less than 10 people in each one. We were very confused by this and asked Chinese Jack about it the next day and he explained to us that the mafia controlled this area of Wuhan so they decided whose bars would be successful and whose wouldn't. When we walked back to the first club, we noticed that there were numerous people in the Army hanging outside and were shown that most of the guys inside were mafia so we decided to just call it a night.

Sunday was actually Pete's birthday so we went out for a proper lunch. We found a traditional Chinese restaurant and the food was great and extremely cheap; six of us ate for 251 RMB (roughly $35). During the lunch we all tried, and surprisingly liked, frog ovaries. We also made Pete the insides of a goose head and yes, the Chinese people would eat so it's not that strange here.

After lunch we had a couple hours to spend before our train ride back so went to a massage place next door and all got foot massages for less than $3. The massages lasted an hour and by the end of it, they told us we could have full-body massages for just $4 so we decided to stay for another hour to relax a little more. The massages were great and extremely relaxing. We walked around for another 30 minutes before heading back to the hotel to get our bags and head to the train station.

We arrived back in Shenzhen Monday morning about 7:45am which meant our train was late because it should've arrived at 7:20am. We called the school and told them we'd be slightly late, we're supposed to be there by 7:50 to greet the kids. When we arrived the principal wasn't mad but actually seemed happy we went to another city to see more of China.

The weekend was so fun we've decided to take weekend trips for everyone's birthday from now on.

I'll be sure to try to keep the blog updated, even through a proxy.

Flag Raising Ceremony

My school led the flag raising ceremony this last Monday. We have it every Monday morning and my class finally got their chance. I've posted pictures and videos on my picasa site for you to see. Enjoy.

The Fam

It's Saturday night and I just spent most of the day with Vi's family. It started at 9:30 this morning when a car with her aunt and grandmother arrived to pick us up and drive us to Dongguan for lunch with her family. We all met in Dongguan because her father and uncle share an apartment near where they work and it's more convenient for everyone to meet there rather in Heyuan.

We got to her father's and uncle's apartment around 10:30 and I met her mother, father, aunt, uncle, brother (about 19) and cousin (about 16) right away; her sister (about 22) ended up coming a little after us. We all sat in the living room for a little bit and talked before heading to lunch. Her uncle was able to speak a little English and her cousin was better at a little conversation after lunch but other that that, no English was spoken. Her mom had her younger brother teach her how to say, "How are you?" but she was too nervous when she met me to try and say it. Even though she didn't attempt, it meant a lot just knowing that she was trying to learn some English to make me feel more comfortable.

Meeting the family isn't quite like in America. They don't really shake hands or give hugs or anything, it's just hi and that's kind of it, short and awkward.

We headed down the street for the restaurant her aunt works at for lunch. It was an excellent lunch and I tried some new local dishes and dishes from their hometown that I've never had before. I ate dove for the first time and the other stuff I tried I have no idea how to explain. As usual, it was all very good though. Lunch was much better than dinner on Tuesday night. Everyone was laughing and talking and just having a good time. We had an entire room to ourselves and there was a tv in there and Vi's younger brother watched tv pretty much the whole time, which was kind of strange to be eating with the tv on. Her younger brother's in his 2nd year of college so he's roughly 19.

After dinner, we were told to bring out our camera for a picture. Well, Vi didn't tell me to bring a camera and so we didn't have one, this was a bad thing. We went outside and rented a camera, came back and took some pictures. I was happy about this because I wanted to bring my camera and take a picture but I didn't want to be that foreign dork asking everyone to take a picture so I could document this day, since it is the first time I'm meeting her family.

After dinner, we went back to the apartment for a little bit to continue talking. Her family could tell how awkward it was for me so they called a car to come pick up me, Vi, her aunt and uncle and take us back to Shenzhen shortly after we came back. This was when we handed out the hongbao (I spelled it wrong in my last post, this is money given in red envelopes) to everyone. Her family was very nice and it seemed as though they liked me enough and they at least didn't disapprove me, which is very nice. Her cousin commented on my long eyelashes, something most Chinese girls do, and the rest of her family pointed out my big smile and said it was beautiful, that was nice.

Overall, it was a good experience. I'm really glad I got to meet almost all of her family, she has one other uncle I haven't met. They all seem to really enjoy being together and reminded me of being with all of my family. Everyone was laughing and joking with each other, really enjoying each other's company.

Time to catch up

Sorry about not posting a blog in a while, it's been a busy couple of weeks with school and other things.

So the only interesting news is that for Easter weekend, Vivi and I went to the beach, Dameisha. We stayed at the Sheraton that I absolutely love. It's an incredible hotel right on the beach. They have their own private beach which is very, very important in China. You'll see from some of the pictures how packed the beaches get on the weekends.

Other than our beach trip, not much has happened. I got my raise at school so I'm not making 11,500 RMB per month, which is very nice. I'm also tutoring a 12 year old boy named Bill during my lunch break for 45 minutes Monday through Thursday. Bill's younger brother, Stanley, is one of my students at the kindergarten. It's good tutoring him because he was born in Canada and went from K to 3rd grade before returning to China so his English is great. They just want me to work with him so his English doesn't suffer while being in China.

I'm also teaching an extra class on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school from 5:00 to 5:45 with some kids from my class. It's a great source of extra money and the parents mainly want me to just play with the kids and teach a little English. It's nice because I can teach them English they can use, such as complete sentences and common questions and answers so they can actually begin to communicate.

This month, I'll begin tutoring a girl from my K3 class and possibly have classes on Mondays and Wednesdays after school from 5:00 to 5:45 for students from my K3 class. Let me explain the K3 class thing. I have 1 class I'm in charge of at the kindergarten, called International 1A. International means they get a foreign teacher while the 1 means they're 1 level, the youngest students in the school with an international teacher. Once a day, from 10:40-11:05, I teach in a K3 class. The K means they only get an international teacher for 1 class everyday (cheaper) and the 3 means they're 3rd level, so they're about 5 years old. This is a great class to teach and a nice break from the 2 and 3 year olds. I'll be doing a demonstration class for the interested parents next week and we'll see from there if they're interested.

Oh yea, I also I had to go to Hong Kong last weekend to simply get my passport stamped and leave the mainland. My visa's good for 1 year but only in 3 month stays, this means I need to leave the mainland at least once every 3 months. Normally this won't be a problem because I plan on going to Hong Kong for many reasons this time around (hiking, Disney World, sight-seeing, friends) but because we've been strapped for cash while getting settled, we haven't had the chance. Anyways, I was able to simply walk to the border in less than 20 minutes from my apartment. I left mainland China, walked across a bridge and just 3 minutes later, I was at immigration for Hong Kong. Totally, it took me less than 25 minutes from closing my apartment door to getting my passport stamped by Hong Kong authorities.

Once I was over the border, I had to get on a train and go one stop, turn around and come back. They don't allow to simply go across, turn around and come back. Once you're in Hong Kong, you have to get on a train so I didn't have any other choices. It was interesting to be able to simply walk across the border like that.

The big news that I know my family's waiting to hear about is me meeting Vivi's family. Tuesday night I ate dinner with her grandmother, aunt, uncle and her uncle's mother. This was the most awkward dinner of my life for many reasons. One, they spoke their town's language (Heyuan), not Mandarin. While my Mandarin's not great, I can usually understand the basic ideas of sentences and can actually respond in Mandarin. I sat there quiet for pretty much the whole time, not fun. Second, it was the first time the grandmother, and possibly everyone else at the table, had ever been face to face with anyone who's not Chinese so there was this weird feeling. Third, after the dinner, the women left to the bathroom which left me sitting across from the uncle in complete silence for at least 3 minutes. They weren't too interested in talking about me and Vivi because they've already asked her a million questions, they just socialized.

Besides the meeting, when a boyfriend meets his girlfriend's family in China, he must present the family members with gifts, hembao (money) and of course, pay for the meal. I presented her grandmother with 500 RMB (roughly $70) and the other older woman with 200 RMB (less than $30) because she's an older woman and that's tradition. We also bought gifts for the grandmother and aunt. This is simply tradition that has carried over from the days of dowries. In China, when a girl gets married she is seen as leaving her family and entering the man's family so the man must give compensation for the loss of a daughter.

Saturday we're going to Dongguan to meet her mother, father, a different aunt and uncle for lunch. Vi told me yesterday that we'll be sharing a car with her aunt and grandmother on the way there because it'll be cheaper and faster (it's May Day, a large holiday in China so any and all forms of transportation are crazy). I'm not excited about this for 2 reasons: it's cheaper for them because I'm obligated to pay and this means I'll be quiet for an even longer time tomorrow. It will also be awkward in the car, just like it will be at lunch. Needless to say, as much as I want to meet her family, I'm glad this will not be a normal occurrence, there's no words that can truly describe the feelings of sitting at a table with her family members and have no idea what's going on around me at all.

Oh well, I love Vi and this is important for everyone involved so I'm just going to suck it up and keep a smile on my face and be as polite as possible so hopefully they won't be disappointed with Vi's decision. They won't tell her she's not allowed to be with me but I just don't want Vi to get that feeling.

Vivi's Big Weekend

This weekend was/is a time of firsts for Vivi. Saturday, she bought contacts that she can leave in her eyes for a month without having to take them out once. This was a concept she did not believe last year and luckily, we stumbled on a Lens Crafters just down the street that carries these contacts. She had worn the daily contacts before but hated putting them in every morning so she stopped altogether. She's been just wearing her glasses when she has to read and being partly blind the rest of the day. It's been even better being with her and her being able to actually see things clearly now.





The even bigger and definitely more exciting first is the new oven. We bought a little oven for the apartment Saturday afternoon. This is the first oven Vivi's ever used and even the first one she's ever seen in a house/apartment. It was about $50 and it's great. We had originally put a smaller one in our cart but we ran into one of my students' parents at Metro and she told us we'd regret not getting the next size up. Well, we took her advice and got one size bigger, best advice in China, so far.





While we were at Metro, we bought cake mix and sugar cookie mix to test out the new oven. Vivi really wants to learn how to bake so this is the introduction course to baking 101. We made the sugar cookies tonight and they came out great. Vivi even went so far as to exclaim, "I love myself!" because she loved her cookies so much. We had some milk delivered to the apartment from a small convenience shop and we offered the deliver girl a cookie. She happily said yes and absolutely loved it. A big smile came over her face and she said, in Chinese, wow, so great! This, of course, just made Vivi even happier.





We also bought a little set with an apron, oven mit, hot plate holder and a towel. Vivi was really excited about this when we bought it and I wouldn't allow her to wear it until she began baking so tonight was the first night she got to wear it. It really was like a kid on the day of Christmas opening her gift and getting a chance to play with it. This was a really fun night and we've been smiling the whole time.

Next up, chicken wings!

You can see more of the pictures from our first night baking in my photo albums.

Vivi's First Blog!!

So the rest of this blog will be Vivi writing about her new job, I helped edit a little. People seem to be curious about her job so she's going to write a little so everyone can know what it is she does:

I work for an American company as the assistant to the boss. It is a small office but a very good location. I just need to take the train to get there and walk about 20 meters after I get off the train, very convenient. It is very different with America as Nicholas has said. He said it is kind of funny how much we care about transportation in China, all because most of the workers don't have a car in China.

Usually I get up at 7:45 am, work starts at 9:00 am. It takes 45 minutes to get there. I have been the first person in the office the past 2 weeks but not because I get there earlier than the start time, only because the other three workers come late. The boss is very nice and has a very relaxed attitude towards the work start time.

My job is mainly finding the best source for goods in China, which is not hard. It is the exhibition season in April, so I have been busy preparing things for the fairs. I worked over time 4 days straight last week and Nicholas thinks some of the tasks can wait to be completed the next day. I agree with him but I always want to finish as soon as possible.

That's all for now. Hope everyone is doing well.

Ocean Park Xiaomeisha

Friday, yesterday, the school went to Ocean Park in Xiaomeisha. It's like a mini-Sea World. This was a fun day, even though it rained the entire day. I was also exhausted by the end of it. The best part was a stroke of accidental brilliance. Accidental brilliance is when something happens, by accident, that other people would think you did on purpose and think you are brilliant for doing it.

The day started with everyone meeting at the kindergarten as normal. We had been told that if it was raining, we would go next week. Well, it was raining. We, the foreign teachers, did not want to teach and we were praying we'd still go. Luckily, the school decided to go anyways.

The school hired coach buses instead of opting to take the school buses, thank goodness. There was every parent or grandparent for each of my students except one boy, Simon. Simon is probably the smartest student but also is the cause of most the problems in the classroom. Since his parents had to work, he was my responsibility for the day.

We loaded up the bus and headed out in the rain. I was surprised to find it was only about 30 minutes away. We got there, took a big group picture in the front (I don't have a copy yet, I'll get one soon) and made our way in.

The first thing we saw was the polar bear. While I was looking forward to this, it just made me sad. It was poorly taken care of and in horrible conditions. It was in a box the half the size of the bus we were just in. There was nowhere large enough for it to swim and nothing for it to do, just a flat bottom. The polar bear was just walking back and forth, you could tell it wasn't happy and it needed more room to move around and feel comfortable. I like to think that it's only in that area for an hour or two a day for show and there's another place they keep it that's better suited for a polar bear.

Anyways, after that we made our way to the main stage area, where they have the big tank for the show. We sat here for about 45 minutes while the kids ate their snacks and shared. Evidently, on field trips, the kids don't get actual lunches but whatever they can pack in to a bag. Usually this consists of little cakes and candies and maybe some fruit. I ate some interesting Chinese things that some parents brought so overall I had 4 chicken wings, about 30 roma tomatoes, 3 swiss cake rolls, 8 sheets of seaweed, 1 cheese muffin, 4 dumplings, 2 hard boiled eggs and a box of soy milk, by far my least healthy lunch so far.

When the show started, it began with some synchronized swimmers which were interesting enough because they kept their show highly energetic and short. Then some special divers came out. They were more interesting but didn't do anything too grand. The best part of the show were the clown divers. I got a video of a minute of what they were doing but they were very entertaining, Sea World should steal their idea. I'm disappointed I missed filming their first minute because it was great.

After the clowns, they brought out the seals, then the sea lions, followed by the dolphins. Here some of the stuff was interesting but the only really good part was seeing how high the dolphins could leap out of the water, incredible. You can see in the pictures how high they're getting, at least 25 feet it seemed.

After the show, we made our way through the little aquarium they had and eventually over to a ride for younger kids. The ride took about 20 minutes and was very slow and not interesting. One of the kids fell asleep during the ride. I took a picture of her, Iris, because she's just too cute.

We walked around the park for about an hour then got back on the bus and headed back to the school. I tried to sleep on the bus but my entire class began singing English songs and pointing out everything that it's raining on, including each individual car and tree. I guess I should be happy that the parents were so happy the kids were using English and enjoying it but I really just wanted a nap. We got back to the school and we were allowed to go home early. It was a great Friday.

New Pictures

I've posted many pictures and numerous videos on picasa site online, look on the right side of this page under About Me. They're some good ones and I'll post more because I had 7 students out sick Friday and a couple of them are my favorites. Enjoy.

Street Fooooooooooood!!!!

First things first, VIVI'S GOT A JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She'll be an assistant to Ernesto Tovar, the Chief Executive of Gambe Group, a trading company based in Miami, Fl. This means she'll be speaking English all day and all night now. That's kind of funny because English was the class Vivi hated most during all of her days in school, including college. Now, her boyfriend and boss only speak English, how ironic. We went out to a Cantonese restaurant Saturday night to celebrate and had some great beef and chicken. She has been so excited the entire weekend and she's looking forward to tomorrow morning.

Today we woke up to absolutely beautiful weather so we decided to head back to Dongmen to eat street food for lunch and enjoy the weather a little bit. My favorite taste is spicy tofu on a stick, it's great and it's only 1 RMB, about 15 cents. Vivi's favorite food are these cream puff things that have a little bit of seafood in them, although I can't taste the seafood at all. They're also very good. They drizzle this cream sauce over top and some green flakes, I have no idea what the flakes are. The other great options are the sticks of meat. There's a ton of different types to choose from. We had some spicy chicken and some beef meat balls this time, the chicken was excellent but the meat balls were just so-so.

By far the most popular item is a bowl of spicy noodles. Vivi had these today and I usually do but passed on them for the meat on a stick. The noodles are so good and so popular that the tables are all taken and people have to just stand around and eat their noodles standing on the sidewalk (you can see this in one of the pictures). The noodles are great and of course, cheap.

We walked around for a short time because it was just too crowded today, again, check out the pictures. We found a 2 RMB shop (their version of the $1 store) and I found some great toys and prizes for my students. I bought a police car that the boys will love and some of those toys that have water inside with balls and baskets that you press a button that shoots air inside and makes the balls float so you try to get the balls in the basket. I think the kids will love it. I'm going to tell them that all the kids who can sing the song on their own, read the book and know all of the new words and sentences at the end of the week will get one. This gives them a goal and a reason to try harder, for those you usually don't. Also, anytime they're acting up this week, I can pull out the toys to get them back on track.

That's all for now and Vivi's going to write a little something at the end of the week about her new job.

Saturday - The Toilet Restaurant

Today Vi and I decided to make our way back to Dongmen (walking street). There are a lot of shops there with great street food and last time we were there, we saw a restaurant called the Modern Toilet Restaurant and we decided we wanted to try it out.

The cool thing about this restaurant is that you either sit on a toilet for a chair or on a booth (nowhere near as fun as sitting on a toilet). Vi said it's a Taiwan restaurant so they had a bit of everything. I had spaghetti and salmon with a cream sauce while Vi had a Udon noodle bowl. We also had two little sides of fried potato wedges with cheese and bacon bits and a fried shrimp dumpling thing. It was all good. Another interesting part was the food was served in some form of a toilet. The funniest looking dishes were the one that the couple next to us got (that's the picture you see here) and the ice cream. Let's just say it looked less than appetizing in the dishes they were served in, but funny in a way.

I took just a couple quick pictures of the area and a short, 10 second video to give you an idea of what it's like. It was raining and it's cold so we didn't want to stay out very long. The video is just to show you how crowded it always is and how there's always people shouting with megaphones about special deals and prices to attract people in, it's very annoying. You can also see one of the McDonald's and KFCs in the area. I could actually see two other McDonald's and another KFC from where I was standing.

After Dongmen, we got back on the subway to go one stop to our place. We decided to go to Wal-Mart to pick up some extra food for the weekend. Since it's cold, Vi wanted to make traditional Guongdong soup for tonight...I hope I like it. While in Wal-Mart I thought it'd be interesting to get a short video to just show how crowded, loud and busy it always is. After I took the 10 second video, a plain clothed security officer approached me and told me to delete the picture and to not take anymore. Anyways, it's crazy inside that place. We bought a few things and just came back to the apartment to have a lazy end to our Saturday.

My Brilliant Idea

OK, so I have a great idea and am finally putting in to action. First, I should have a part-time tutoring job teaching one, young child English one or two days a week for just one hour per session for 200 RMB, almost $30 per hour. That's great.

Now to the great idea. While at EF in Dongguan, we always talked about advertising an hour where Chinese people could come, relax and have conversation with all the teachers for the low, low price of 100 RMB. This is very cheap in comparison with what the schools charge. I've printed up fliers and I'm going to put them up at our school and try to get them up in our apartment complex and the other teachers' apartments. I'm going to call it Shenzhen English Hour.

The second great idea is that Vivi and I are going to call some nearby companies and see if they'd like to have what we called Life Club. It's where one foreign teacher comes in for an hour, once a week to just have a discussion about a predetermined topic. Companies pay a lot for this service. First I'm going to call the EF that's down the street and find out how much they charge, then I'll just charge a little less. I'm not sure if this will go well or not but it's worth a shot.

I believe one of these ideas should work and all the teachers at the school want in on it because they think it's a good idea, too. This could be great extra income if it all works out. I'll be sure to keep you informed of how it's going.