Rest In Peace JD Miller

It's been about three years since I donned the vibrant blue bracelet saying "In Memory of JD Miller  - Love the Life you Live".  It wasn't with me everyday but the majority it sat there on my wrist to spread the message and life of a man who died too young from a sickness he couldn't beat.  Then about 8 months ago my second bracelet, this a red one shouting out "Go China!", became a second symbol for another man who died when death was not necessary.  Last year a student of mine gave me this red rubber trinket and at the beginning of this year he took his own life from the stress of life and feeling alone.  So I wore him around on my wrist as well, helping his memory live on and reminding myself everyday to try my best not to let any other student feel that there is no other option. 
This past Tuesday I was enjoying myself splashing around in the ocean when a large wave came and robbed me of JD's bracelet, pulling it right off my wrist.  I tried in vain to find it but life wasn't going to let me be successful.  As I searched through the waves and the shore I kept telling myself that the bracelet was just an object and that it was more JD's memory that was important, but I still felt moments of despair knowing that one of my most meaningful possessions had been lost.  When I arrived home I looked down at my arm and knew I couldn't keep on wearing the red bracelet because it would always remind me of the blue one that had sat next to it.  So after three years my arm is now free of the lost lives that had been there.  I will still hold both of these man's memories close to my heart and listen to the message of both of their deaths to help the world be a better place in their name.  But I think that maybe that wave was the world's way of telling me that I can't let their deaths weigh on my heart anymore and that instead of always remembering their passing that I need to focus on their lives and my own so that through their experience I can help others in need.

A late start

It has taken me three months and much pushing from people (mainly Cliff) to start my blog up again. The problem sat with the fact that I do not want to take a picture a day any longer but without that, I have no project encouraging me to update everyone on my life in China. But no fear, I have thought of not one but two new projects to put that spark back into my motivation to continue with blogspot. The first has to do with Shenzhen's new metro systems. So upon arriving back in SZ this year, a whole bunch of new lines have opened up and it's creating all sorts of new possibilities for easy to get to locations. The problem is, is that I already have the basic places I go and the basic things I do and don't have any compelling reason to explore these new metro stops. But lucky for me, I love to explore! So, as a benefit to myself and future Shenzheners, I am going to start blogging about all the different metro stops and what they offer in ways of entertainment, shopping, eating, etc. It might take me all year to get to all of them, but that's ok! The other project is a photography project. While in Shanghai, I went to an art gallery that was featuring a photographer. He was really amazing so all his pictures were great, but two stood out to me. They were both accumulations of many pictures, not in collage form but just placed in rows and columns. Each set had a theme. One was all pictures of run down door frames around Shanghai. The other was all pictures of people carrying babies on their backs. That one especially was beautiful. Most of it was older women from the country side with babies wrapped up in blankets on their backs. I loved it. And the colors were wonderful of more traditional Chinese outfits that the local farmers wear. Anyway, since I usually kid myself that I am also an artist, at art shows I often think "I could do that too!" (not in a mean way, but in an excited way that I have a new stolen idea for an art project) and then want to make my own version. So here it goes. I'm going to pick a theme and start taking pictures within the theme and also posting them up on blogspot (as well as still adding tid bits about life and the pictures). Two projects! Yay! And before either of them start, I am going to catch up with short summaries life these past three months.

School
My second year at Di Er Gao Ji Zhong Xue has been amazing. My senior ones are just as great as last year, and though I have not as fully fallen in love with them as my kids last year, I am sure it will soon happen. My kids last year have now moved on to being Senior 2s and I am happy every day to see them walking the halls. I was fortunate enough to be able to teach some of them the past seven weeks but have now changed schedules and am unsure who will be in my classes and am excited to see more familiar faces. With my inability to not be fully immersed in my job (thank you Student Affairs), I have started two new projects at school. First, I have started an open English Club called English Rocks. It consists of about 40 students who show up more or less consistently each Thursday afternoon. Through the club, I decided I wanted to start an English newspaper for the school with me as adviser and the students running the show as much as possible. We started our first edition three weeks ago and it was amazing! The students all worked so hard and I was extremely proud of them. The final result was beautiful. We got over 800 copies printed, paid for by the school thank goodness, and distributed them to all three grades. The newspaper will come out every month and our next edition starts in two and half short weeks. Beyond that, I have also been asked/volunteered to write an Oral English supplement book for teachers to combine with the senior one text book. For each of the twenty four modules I am to write a one page description of how to lead different oral English activities related to the chapter. Regardless to say, I've been quite busy, but have been loving it! Beyond that, if you remember my book club from last year, we are still meeting once a week and have evolved into a game club though our theme changes almost weekly. And I am excited because I will soon be asking five senior ones if they would like to join my new book club for the younger students. I couldn't ask for a better work environment outside of Student Affairs.

Social Life
Being a second year has been interesting and has definitely had its ups and downs. The first week or two went great when the returners first met the newbies. I was my confident outgoing self (I'm glad my rather usual shy and more reserved self decided to hide out for a couple days) and got to meet tons of new people and start making new friends. Then we all moved into Shenzhen and life obviously quieted down a bit. Without taking Chinese class, I rarely see many of the newbies unless I make an effort to. But I have my circle of returner friends plus a couple of the new people that stuck by that I have been able to get closer to and hang out with a lot. I've really enjoyed getting closer with people from last year that I knew, but not as well. So I am content with my life at the moment, it could be better, but it is still pretty darn good. It is hard simply because I knew the Shenzhen of last year where I had my China Family and it's just not quite the same without them. Though, Cliff and Greg are both still here and I am very thankful for them, especially Cliff who keeps me sane. And Marie is in Hong Kong and I get out to see her as often as possible which is really nice and I'm glad I have her. Also, I'm close with Thomas and Jenn, two of the new people, and a few others, and I am sure they will come up a lot in future posts. Basically, even though I have great friends now, I am having a hard time letting go of last year.

Yangshuo
My first thing to do back in China basically was to take a trip to Guilin and Yangshuo, one of the most beautiful places in China. So beautiful they even decided to put it on the back of the 20 dollar bill. Greg and I had talked before we left about the possibility of going and we made it happen! So Greg, his Chinese girlfriend Christina (though we call her Mo), and myself spent a couple days before we had to get back for orientation.
Yangshuo is known for it's river and strangely shaped mountains. During our few days, the highlights were going to the caves and getting in mud baths, boating down the river on a bamboo float, and seeing the rice terraces that included a traditional Chinese dance that Greg got asked to join.
Caves: The caves were a bit cheesy in their Chinese way, great big colored lights flooded every view, but they were still beautiful. The rock formations were incredible.
Boating the River: Definitely either my favorite or second favorite (with the rice terraces being #1) activity of the trip. It was a one hour ride that was splendid. You could sit on the floor of the raft, dangle your feet off the side and watch the scenery pass you by. What could be better than that? We also got out at the famous spot to take pictures of us with the 20 kuai bill and the exact location of the photo.
Mud Baths: Well we all forgot to bring swim suits so Mo and I just went in our clothes. You first walked through a cave which was less gimmicky than the other one and then you got to try out a mud bath and then a hot spring. Both were pretty cool. Though Greg refused to get into the mud bath since we didn't actually have suits. Oh well.
Rice Terraces: These were amazing. Though I was sad we weren't seeing them in the Spring filled with what, there were absolutely beautiful. The first stop on the tour was a touristy set of buildings with lots of things for sale and a traditional marriage dance of the local people. The women in the area are known for having extremely long hair. Not sure if they actually never cut it, or if they all just grow it out really really long. But everyone's hair was in intricate hair dressings since if their hair was actually down it would go past their toes almost. But part of the dance was all the women let their hair down and brushed and retied it. The asked for volunteers at one point and of course Greg jumped at the chance (rather Mo and I pushed him on stage, but he did want to go). The other thing that the women in this area are known for is butt pinching. For some reason, they all like to pinch butts, especially male butts. So Greg got a lot of pinching. Mo and I even got pinched on the way out the door just for fun. After that we had lunch up in the village and then had an hour or two to wander the terraces. We met a nice guy at lunch who also joined us for the afternoon. It was quite pleasant.

Our Hostel: We stayed at Monkey Jane's and I would highly recommend it! The owner was really nice and it had a bar on top with a great view. Plus if you carried 10 cases of beer up the stairs to the bar you got a free t-shirt, not that we did, but you could! The other "exciting" event was that while we were there, there was an electrical fire! It was just a small one so no worries, but it was a bit intense there for a minute. I was hanging out in the front room with some other foreigners when a guy walked past the front door and said "Fire!" and pointed down the street. We all thought he was motioning to some far off place but I got up to go look and the electrical box of the hostel was actually on fire! So I ran back in and shouted "No, really! A fire!" The owner went and grabbed the fire extinguisher and took care of it quickly. So it was all good.


Xi'An
National Day came and went with much excitement. Cliff and I had been looking forward to marking another Chinese city off our list to visit and we fortunately got two of the newbies, Jenn and Thomas, to join us as well! The trip started off quite shaky. It had been our number one goal to get sleepers for the train ride up there seeing as how it was 27-30 hours....and that didn't quite happen. Through some crazy incidents that I am not going to bore you with, we ended up with only seats. We almost canceled the trip or at least readjusted our destination, but decided to push on. So before the ride started we all got prepared for hell on earth and quickly learned the chinese for "Are there any beds available?". 19 hours in (which included playing cards with some Chinese, Jenn and Thomas having to deal with a terrible box under their table, an evil lady sitting across from us, and Cliff never having enough room), a train technician finally walked by us announcing that there were beds! I quickly ran and got us for of them and we enjoyed the last 11 hours getting some rest and stretching out. Our time in Xi'An was great. I couldn't have asked for a better spot. Xi'An is famous across the world as the city with the Terracotta Warriors. What most of us also knew before going was that Xi'An has a cool city wall, that there are a lot of tombs around the city because it used to be capital, and that it's known for a bunch of different food items mainly consisting of lamb. During our stay, we spent a fun afternoon biking the city wall - about 8 miles all the way around in 100 minutes, seeing the warriors and tombs, eating lots of great food - including a 3.8 meter long noodle, and getting to know each other better (though Cliff and I already knew Thomas pretty well but Jenn we had just talked to a few times before the trip). Some interesting things along our way: Xi'An is well known for it's dumplings. There is even a restaurant famous for serving 20 different kinds. So we went one night, and it's a fancier kind of place, so it was over 100 kuai per person. Well the waitress must have had some bad foreign customers before, because she watched us like a hawk. She really thought we were going to dine and dash and hopefully we helped her lose her bit of racism or agism by paying ever penny. Beware of any well visited city in China during the holidays (though everyone knows that). Everywhere was PACKED. At the warriors you had to wait forever in lines to get into each building, a fight even broke out right in front of me between two old women and a young guy who wasn't liking the fact they were pushing through him. We also wanted to go to HuaShan, a famous sacred mountain, but it was going to be at least two hours to wait for a bus and then 3-4 fours to wait for the cable car to take you to the top. Crazy. So sadly we didn't get to do that, but maybe next time. So instead of going to the mountain, we found a driver to take us to JingDi's tomb and then he ended up taking us to Banpo, 6000 year old village relics. The people of banpo we are pretty sure were visited by aliens because they had alien pods that supposedly were child coffins and it discussed in the information that the people had all sorts of signs that the Chinese now thing might be alien characters. But who knows...We had a great afternoon in a park looking at the Big Goose Pagoda too. So Chinese people have quite a unique way of wanting to be photographed. They all want to do some extravagant pose that they think is cute and usually involves majorly touching things they shouldn't. So in the park not only were we trying to take pictures of great Chinese poses, we were trying to take our own as well too. It was a lot of fun and not that insulting since the Chinese didn't think it was weird that we were posing in such ways. Overall the trip was great and a thoroughly enjoyed Xi'An, I think it's one of my favorite cities in China. Sadly, we also did not get beds for the return trip and no beds became available so we spent the entire 27-30 hours sitting. Gross.



Shanghai

I was very fortunate and got a week off again for student midterms. Since it wasn't a general holiday, I felt it was my best chance to get to Shanghai and see Courtney, my college roommate. We had both been in China almost a year and a half and still hadn't seen each other. So I flew out there for a week and in that time got to see Courtney, meet her boyfriend, travel about Shanghai, and jump over to Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing as well. Those are three cities that are all very close to Shanghai and all famous across China for different things (Hangzhou - the beautiful West Lake, Suzhou - it's gardens, and Nanjing - it's history of being a previous capital of China and for the hostile takeover by the Japanese during WWII). My first two days I spent in Shanghai with Courtney and Leo (her boyfriend). Leo owns a Mexican restaurant in an ex-pat part of town that is WONDERFUL! He is also the head chef for the place and throughout the week was always cooking amazing food and making me so jealous of Courtney's luck at finding a guy who loves to cook and is great at it. While I was there is was also Halloween so we celebrated with some of their friends and Court and I helped out at Leo's family Halloween party at the restaurant. We were in charge of helping with pumpkin carving and it was perfect. Who thought I would get to actually carve pumpkins during Halloween in China? That night, Leo's friend also came into town. They had gone to college together in Canada in Quebec. So we had a very cultural week - there were four languages being spoken throughout: English, French, Spanish and Chinese.
My first outside of Shanghai experience was to Hangzhou, followed by Suzhou. Both were great. This was my first time traveling somewhere alone and it was quite an interesting experience. One, I didn't have anyone else to rely on or that I was trying to make sure was happy, so I just did whatever I wanted. And two, I didn't feel like I owed anyone anything or felt like I should be doing something since I was traveling, so I got through things a lot quicker it seemed. But the major downside was also that I didn't feel accountable to anyone else so I didn't push myself as hard to make sure to go see and do everything. Luckily Hangzhou and Suzhou were very manageable cities. I could walk almost everywhere I needed to go and that helped a bunch. Because it sucks paying for cabs and things by yourself. So in Hangzhou I saw the lake, climbed up to the top of a pagoda, went in search of a cave that I never found, and wandered around some parks. It was lovely. Then the next day I took the fast train to Suzhou. There I also wandered around a lot and went to two gardens and another pagoda. One of the gardens was absolutely beautiful with a range of different trees, flowers, and small lakes. The other one was more of a rock garden and was also very pretty but a lot smaller. The plus about the rocks was that you could climb all over them so it was a bit of a physical adventure too. Sadly I didn't get to go on a river boat cruise, it was just going to cost too much with just one person. Then I headed back to Shanghai for the night. The next day was my birthday and it was great spending it in the city. In the morning I went to a couple museums (I would highly recommend the Shanghai Museum and the Propaganda Museum to everyone who goes) and then met up with Leo and his friend for lunch. Afterward Leo had to go back to work and we went to the art district and looked a bunch of modern works that ranged from really great to really crazy to really scary. I'm not quite sure I got all of the messages they were sending, not sure I wanted to get all the messages... Then we met back up with Court and Leo for dinner and celebrated my birthday in style at a delicious Western restaurant. The best part was the chocolate cake at the end, not something you can find very often in Shenzhen.
Next stop was Nanjing. Unfortunately, since it was getting close to the end of the trip, I was by myself, and Nanjing is huge, I did not take as much advantage of this city as I wish I had. I got to see the city wall, climb on top of it, and actually ended up getting stuck up there. It was pretty scary. I was walking along to see how far it was and then realized, as it started getting dark, that I was up there all by myself with one other guy. So I kept my distance and kept looking for a way to get down. About a half hour later I finally found stairs down a creepy gateway that got me out. The day after I went to the museum of the Nanjing massacre and to the martyrs park. Both were great but by the end I was just tired and wanted to go home so I got back on the train and headed to Shanghai. I spent another day there with Courtney before heading home to Shenzhen. I had a wonderful time, more than I can say, and most of it was due to getting a chance to see Court, hanging out in her apartment and eating lots of great food. One of my favorite parts of the trip was just sitting with everyone watching I Love Lucy reruns. It was just so much like being back in America. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday.

Goodbye China! Hello America! It is official, we finished our year in the great country of ZhongGuo. Jess, Andrew and I all had the same flight back from Hong Kong and it was so nice to have people to travel with, especially since it was those two. I can't believe our time is over. It did feel like a really long time, but it also went by so quickly. I feel like this should be time I recap and reminisce about all the great times and such...but I'm not going to. None of this is ending. I still have another year in China. I still will be friends with my buddies from China. So yes, things are changing, our year is done, but it is still a happy time and I'm going to look forward to our future encounters instead of focus on our past events.


Before I left I wanted one last picture of our future art building. It has been great seeing the progress that the construction has made. I can't wait to get back in August and see how far it has come along.


My book club had a final outing for the end of the year. The students invited Seven, their English teacher, and Fuat. Both Grania and Vaan (the students) are pretty much fluent and it's been great getting to know them. I can't wait to have another year to hang out with them.


Continuing with checking off things we've been meaning to do all year, Jenny, Marie and I went to the Lohuo Botanical Gardens. It was quite a bit different from what we were expecting but it was still nice to walk around in nature. Instead of having different sections of plants it was more similar to an arboretum. So we wandered around and got lost quite a few times since we didn't have enough Chinese skills to ask things like "Where is the statue" or "Where are the tall trees we heard about". Fortunately we ran into a random white person who was very friendly. He was a 17 year old German student who was studying abroad for the year. He came in with 3 months of Chinese and was put into a house with a family who spoke no English or German so he had to get fluent quickly. He was able to ask some Chinese people for directions and pointed us in the right direction. There was a small bee farm in the park so we all got to try some honey water and Jenny ended up buying a bottle. We didn't have a ton of time so I definitely want to go back again next year.


One thing that we have been talking about all year and have never done (until now) was to go to Xi Chong beach in Longgang. It was three hours away from anything but it was worth it. When we arrived there was literally no one else on the beach for quite a stretch. It was absolutely beautiful. The water was still a bit cool but we took advantage of having the beach and still went in the water and splashed around. We also flew a kite and Jess and I walked along the beach to see how far we could go. For lunch we went to a local restaurant on the beach where....the entire staff was smoking Marijuana. It was quite comical. For anything we had to get the staff's attention multiple times and even then they didn't seem happy about having to wait on us. Afterward we headed back home. The taxi driver was not happy that half of us were still wet from the ocean but we coaxed him into taking us. Jenni and I ended up crashing at Jess's place since our homes were still a lot further. We made cookies and just sat around and chatted. It was a very nice evening.


Our final family dinner. The family + Jenni headed to Longgang for a final night together before we all shipped of to the states. We had sloppy joes and mac and cheese. Very good. Plus my very first sloppy joe. After dinner I presented a slide show of our time together this year. Then I had my last night crashing in Jess's room so we stayed up for awhile chatting about life and going back to the states. It was really nice having our final time with our group that successfully prevailed through the China experience.


Jess and I were talking just the other day about how China is just a continuous adventure. She commented that she's been living in her neighborhood for almost a year and ended up getting lost just going to the store by taking the wrong bus. Our conversation came to reality this morning when I went to meet up with Jess at Dongmen. I happened to leave my school during rush hour and it was insane! I had to wait for three buses before one had enough room to fit me in (as I was fighting thirty other people for a spot) and then the subway was almost too full to get on! That never happens. Then at the two metro stops that are near a lot of the business buildings just had floods upon floods of Chines men and women headed off to work. There were so many people!


American food! As a final goodbye and thank you I made (with the help of Fuat and some of the Chinese teachers) mashed potatoes, spaghetti with homemade sauce and ceasar salad. I invited all the English teachers in my office and couple of Fuat's friends to come join. I was really worried that they weren't going to like the food, especially my contact teacher Brian who said that the only American food he likes is bread, or that I wouldn't have enough. But everyone said it was really good and we had enough for left overs! Even at one point Brian ran across the room to get seconds yelling "I love American food!!". It was a really fun event and everyone seemed to have a great time. I especially loved Turner, the head of our department, helping out. He was given the job of helping with the sauce and he seemed to be very proud of himself.

I cleared out my bank today. I had to carry over $4000 around before I could get back to my room and hide it away. Luckily I safely made it and got the money back to America and in my bank.


I love being crafty! I sent out an email to some friends asking for things that they learned while in China for instance "Never ask what kind of meat you are eating...you don't want to know". For a going away present I decorated little jars and filled them will all the different things that our grouped learned in our year together. That way we could all look back and remember the crazy place we call China.


The end of the world came and went. It was predicted that at 6pm the evening of May 21st the world was to end. I wanted to have an "End of the World" party and we decided what was better than having a water balloon fight on our final day?? That day Jenni, Gen, Marie and I's friend from Changsha, Jun, was visiting Shenzhen with a friend so they ended up joining us. His friend's name was Xin which sounds like Sheen so we ended up calling him Charlie all day....I don't think he liked us very much. Jenni, Marie and I joined with them for lunch and then Charlie ended up choosing to leave us. Marie also had to go home. So Marie, Jun and I headed to the park and met Andrew to have a waterballoon fight! The onlooking Chinese people thought we were hilarious. Afterward we played frisbee which they also found entertaining (Chinese don't play frisbee). Two ended up joining us to their delight. This picture was taken of one of the children onlookers who believed he had the force. Jenni and I were playing super hero with him but he was always the winner. Next step was to meet up with Cliff and Lisa, and we lost Andrew, and we all headed to the mall for dinner. We were a bit early so we played The Great Dal Mutti outside McDonalds (you've got to have some card playing before the end of the world!). Our dinner didn't end up being that special but at 6pm luckily no one disappeared and the world is still alive. Thank goodness, we were worried.


Last day of Chinese class!! Our last day only had five students, but that wasn't too bad of a turn out...Later was the end of the year celebration with CTLC. It started off with an all you can eat dinner at an Italian restaurant. It was really good! And it was nice to see so many CTLCers all at once...though mostly we stuck with our main crowds. Next stop was a really nice hotel where we had rented out one of the rooms. Sadly the hotel was very stingy with us bringing in our own alcohol and their alcohol was extremely expensive. So we all left there and headed to Coco Park where a lot of the foreign bars and clubs are located. A CTLCer we don't talk to much ended up jumping into our taxi on the way over. He was a little drunk and serenaded us as well as talked to us about his druggie lifestyle. It was pretty entertaining. Our Coco park extravaganza was a bit dramatic. There were a lot of drunk people. The funniest (when looking back at it) part was that someone got stuck in the bathroom for about twenty minutes. It took us three employees, multiple possible solutions, and a lot of yelling through a door to get the drunk individual inside to finally figure out how to unlock the bathroom.


Melissa, one of the second year English teachers, invited me and a few of the other teachers over to her house for a Chinese dinner. We had bitter bamboo (which was ok...), green beans, breaded potatoes and meat. Overall it was a really good dinner. Later I met up with some friends because Genevieve had a whole bunch of friends visiting from America so we were showing them around Windows.


All year I've been talking about hosting a poker tournament and it finally happened! China doesn't really have poker chips so we used Uno cards instead. There were nine participants and Trevor got first place. Everyone had a good time and we're already planning more for next year.


The English departments took Fuat and I out for a goodbye lunch at our favorite buffet. The event started with our contact teacher and a representative from the principal's office giving speeches in our honor and then we each received a book of Chinese paper cuttings. It was a beautiful gift. Later that night Jenni and I got dinner with some people at Windows and then went on a hunt for the green lazer! Every night a green lazer travels across Nanshan and it has been a great mystery for me and some of the teachers at my school as to where it is coming from. Jenni and I took a bus towards it and then had a good half hour walk through unknown territory just trying to find it. We finally arrived at HANS LAZER (a lazer making company). Maybe a little anti-climatic but I was still proud we found it.


My school informed me that they were taking away my last week of teaching. The school had rearranged all the schedules because the students were all starting to take a swimming class for the summer so instead of giving me a whole new schedule for a week they just canceled my class. Most would be happy at this but I was really sad because it meant that I wasn't going to get to say goodbye to my classes. Since I was obviously distraught about all this the other English teachers all gave me 10-15 minutes with each of my Senior 1 classes so that I could get a chance to finish the semester. I handed out awards for all the students who got 150%, gave them some contact information and took a class picture with each group. This is one of my favorite classes, Class 3.


Two things about the bus: sleeping people and the amazing working women. Sleeping on the bus is an art. Especially the part where you need to make sure you wake up before your stop. As for the women, as I said, they are amazing. Some buses have electronic card swipes to collect fairs but all the others have a woman hired to 1. collect money from each person who gets on the bus 2. to announce each stop before it comes 3. to call out to the bus driver if someone wants to get off and 4. to make sure no one rides the bus for longer than they paid for. This would typically be not that hard of a job, but most Chinese buses are packed with at least 40 people so it gets difficult. Most of these ladies days are spent pushing their way through hoards of people trying to insure that they get all the money owed to the bus as possible.


Adventure weekend day two! Jenni and I decided we wanted to have a bbq so I found a park in Louhu that rented family sized bbq pits. Cliff, Andrew, Marie, Lisa, Jenni and I went out and made our own food. We did vegetables, corn, potatoes, hot dogs and marshmellows!! Afterward some of us headed back to Jenni's and watched Gnomeo and Juliet (not the greatest). But we had fun anyway.

Never challenge a seven year old Chinese girl at a piano playing contest

The first adventure of the weekend was bowling in Bao'An. We almost got trapped in an elevator on the way there. The alley is on the 6th floor and there is an elevator that just goes from the 1st floor up to the 6th. Well it didn't want to work for us and therefore shut us in until Andrew pried open the doors. We decided not to get back in it and went and found stairs through the worker's entrance instead.


Thursday I met up with Jenni, Gen, and Dominique (Gen's sister who was visiting) for dinner. Jenni and I were doing our best to think of something fun to do for the weekend so we decided to stop by Walmart after dinner for inspiration/shopping needs. We ended up spending about an hour in there playing with anything/everything we could find. It was great! Plus we found a frisbee and water balloons for our weekend adventures.


After Chinese class we all were meeting up at Windows for dinner. Andrew, Stella and I were early so I sat and tried my best to get a picture of split pants. Worrying about the fact I might be seen as a creeper or child porn creator I stopped after this picture hoping it captures the greatness/ridiculousness of split pants. And if you're wondering, yes, it is completely acceptable for children to go to the bathroom right on the street.


When someone gets married it is customary to give your coworkers and friends little packets of candy. These were two that I got from a guy who sits across from me.


Turner, the head teacher, has been offering me Chinese medicine lately. This particular batch is to help the complexion. You put some in tea and then just drink the tea. It's actually pretty good. There is another type he uses which is a packet of what looks like bbq sauce...I haven't gotten up the courage to try that yet.


Seven (a newer teacher and friend at my school) invited me to play tennis for the afternoon at our school's court. Goodness I suck at tennis. Luckily I only lost two balls over the fence into the garden (we found both later). My hand was sore for a number of days after that from gripping the racket. So sad.


The scavenger hunt actually happened!!! Proof that if you set your mind to it you can accomplish anything. Jess and I spent the early afternoon stopping at different metro stations and hiding lists. Then we met our three signed up teams in Dongmen. This was team Tiger Blood. The first mission of the group was to find/take pictures of 9 of 10 items are the area. Once finished they came back to us and got a clue for a metro stop to go find the hidden list. They were given two hours to find as many of the items as possible and then had to meet us at Windows of the World. There Jess and I sat and calculated the scores while everyone had dinner. Tiger Blood won!!
Some fun things the groups had to do:
Get a video of a group member dancing on the metro
Get a phone number from a new Chinese friend
Take a picture of split pants
Take a video of the group playing tag in a populous area


Friday we all went out for pizza and Greg ran into problems. He lost a contact in the back of his eye. Others in our group are a bit squeamish about eyes so I volunteered to go on a search for the lost item. Sadly I couldn't find it. It wasn't until like an hour later that the contact popped back up and Greg was able to get it out. The idea that you can actually lose something in your eye just scares me and creeps me out. After dinner we went to the Ke Xue Beer Gardens and Jenni and I tried our best to play some games. A bunch of drama happened that night, including a group of people leaving without paying their bill. Luckily looking back on it now, it all seems silly.


Somehow my middle toes have gotten all out of whack. This one lost it's toenail and the other one got an infection. Well the toenail actually finally fell off so it hopefully will be in recovery from now on.


Jenni, Leah, Andrew and I headed to the Windows street food area for a nice Wednesday dinner. Jenni and I have been hanging out a lot more lately, and it's been great! She's a bunch of fun and hopefully we'll be able to keep up our friendship after China.

You know you're in China when....there is a cut off chicken head in the restaurant's bathroom sink

Our final day in Changsha we only had the morning before we needed to catch out train back home. We tried to go to the city museum but it was sadly closed. So we got in a cab and asked him to take us to Orange Island, another site seeing area, and he said he couldn't and we couldn't understand why but then he suggested another place to go so we just said yes because we had nothing else to do. He ended up taking us to Changsha's Windows of the World.... (We've got one in Shenzhen and are not even really willing to go to that one) We got out of the cab because he couldn't understand why we wouldn't want to go and tried to find something to do. Luckily....next door was a large convocation center and it was hosting a dog show! We voted and decided to go. It turned out that the dog show was actually a sales auction for Tibetan Mastiffs. All the Chinese people were very excited to see us because they thought we were going to spend 100s of kuai to get one of their dogs. Jenni actually got one down to 600 kuai (less than $100) for a pure bread mastiff - pretty crazy. The event was slightly depressing because the owners weren't the nicest people to their dogs but it was still an interesting experience. After that we headed for the train station and made the journey home.


Shaoshan is a small village located about an hour and a half ride away from Changsha. It's claim to fame is that Mao ZeDong was born there. So of course we needed to go check out the birthplace of Mao. We didn't know much about the town other than that there was a museum and his original home. We were hoping that we could just take the bus there and it would all be self explanatory. Fortunately, on the second bus of the journey, there were four college students sitting in the back that were very excited to talk to us but as usual had very limited English ability. So another Chinese woman on the bus translated for us and we ended up finding out about the town and the sites that were worth seeing because they had all been there before. Once off the bus we headed straight for his home. It was reported that on even a regular day there was at least an hour wait to get into the house. We joined the mass of Chinese people headed there and played the "lets see how we can stop Chinese people from cutting us in line" game. The best moment was when this older woman literally just stepped under the rope in front of us, after we had been waiting for about twenty minutes. She looked at us and laughed a bit and started talking at us in Chinese. The rest of the time in line was trying to maneuver in front of her. But she'd randomly get very excited about being able to see Mao's home so she'd start singing and just push her way right through the hoards of people. We finally got there and it was pretty cool. He had a nice house for the area but did have his bedroom next to the cow and pig pens. We saw the bed he was born on and learned about some of his family members. After that was the Mao museum. It impressively made Mao seem like quite a stand up guy. As far as the museum says he was very deliberate with his spending and was insistent that all his clothes and belongings be mended and patched as much as possible until no longer usable instead of just getting new things all the time. The picture is of my favorite thing in the museum - Mao's poop chair. The padding lifts up and there is a large hole in the middle of the seat underneath. This chair was the one that he was also sitting on when meeting many high political officials, including Nixon. After the museum it had started raining and was really cold so we decided to give up on the other sites of the area and go back to Changsha. Back at the hostel we got a restaurant recommendation from the receptionist and had one of our best Chinese meals ever. We had fried baozi, a spicy shrimp dish, eel and eggplant, fried rice and oiled potato strings. Each dish was to die for, especially the eel. After we were stuffed we headed back to the hostel and met Ivan, this huge black spider that was hanging out between Genevieve's and my bed. I convinced her not to kill him....but we still slept on the other side of the room that night.


In the morning we were getting ready to leave and this Chinese guy who was staying in our room asked if he could join us for the day. He seemed nice enough and spoke decent English so we said yes. His name is Jun and he is from Guangzhou. We left the hostel and stopped for breakfast at this little noodle shop down the street. Then we headed out for YueLu Mountain, the second most famous mountain in Hunan. We got there and it was already hot so we decided to get a 10 kuai ride up the mountain and walk down. In years past there have been wars fought on the mountain so there are a lot of tombs and memorial sites. So we wandered down stopping at different places along the way. It was nice having Jun with us because he could read the signs and tell us more about the history of the area. Then we stopped at YueLu Academy, the oldest academy in China! It was founded in 976, crazy. It is now Hunan University. Changsha is an interesting place because there are three or four universities all together so there are a lot of college students in the city. After the academy we went to lunch at this really dirty Chinese restaurant. There was trash and oil all over the floor and it just wasn't pleasant but it was the only restaurant we could find in the area. After we finished eating we wanted to go to a museum which housed many things including a 2000 year old preserved corpse! But unfortunately all the tickets were sold out. Instead we went to a famous street in Changsha for wandering around and getting food or buying souvenirs. It reminded me of Lijiang. Jun wanted to go to this poet's house but we weren't interested so we split ways. We stopped at this cute little coffee shop. The owner ended up coming out and chatting with us. He had just opened the place two weeks before and was still getting it started. He spoke almost perfect English and seemed really cool. Afterward we had to go buy some train tickets to get back home just in case they sold out before we left. Then we got dinner at a random place we found on the way. To end the night Jenny wanted to go to the Changsha ferris wheel, which claimed to be the tallest in the world at 390 feet tall (It's not though, not even the tallest in China). We all decided to go and it was completely worth the 50 kuai ticket. To top it all off, when we reached the top, fireworks started going off over the river! Changsha has a big river through one side of town so it was great to see everything from so high up. We then got some snacks and went back to the hostel.


Saturday the four of us met up at the train station rearing to go on a new adventure. We took the train to Guangzhou and then took the high-speed train to Changsha! It went 333 km/hr. When we got there we needed to find a hostel. So by asking around, we found a bus towards a random hostel we found online. One the bus a Chinese couple was helping us and saying they were going to the same area and to follow them. Once off the bus we had to take a taxi so we split up and each got in a car with one of the Chinese people. They both ended up paying for a cab fees! It was so nice! I love Chinese people! So we got to the hostel and it turned out that they only had two beds available. We didn't know of any other hostels in the are that had room so we were willing to share because it was already pretty late. After dropping off our stuff we headed out to find some dinner and found ourselves at a little hole in the wall Chinese place that had the BEST fried jiaozi I have ever tasted!! Hunan province is known around China for it's spicy food, it is one of the main Chinese cuisines. Since we've been eating Hunan food all the times since we've moved to China, we were all excited to have authentic Hunan food. Later we went back to the hostel and found out a reservation had been canceled so we all got our own beds. It all worked out in the end.


This Friday we were all getting ready for a three day weekend for the Chinese May day holiday. At about 3:30pm (while I was in Chinese class) we all started getting texts from our schools saying that the Education Bureau announced that the holiday was going to be extended by two days, meaning that we had Monday through Wednesday off instead. At that point I decided with five days I really wanted to take a trip somewhere. So I messaged people to see if they wanted to join. Marie and the G/Jens said they were in and excited to go wherever it was that we were going. So the next thing was to find a location. I texted Brian and asked where he would suggest going and he said we should go to Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. So that's where we went! The rest of Friday Marie and I spent going to get train tickets for the following day and researching stuff to do in Changsha. We stopped in Dongmen for dinner and Marie suggested that we go try this 4D ride that we always pass on the way to our favorite restaurant in the area. I had secretly always been curious about it as well so we went! You picked a theme out of about 6 different ones (we picked the scariest that we could find) and then you go sit in a rollercoaster car. You're wearing 3D glasses and there is a big movie screen in front of you. Our adventure had us driving/running down scary wooded roads and haunted houses with zombies and Jason coming after us. The rollercoaster car is moving all around and then the room sprays air at you to give it the 4D effect :) It was a bit hoaky but we had a great time!


Fuat and I have been wanting to take Brian out to dinner for awhile to thank him for being such a great contact teacher. So we finally found a day that worked for all of us and took him to a Turkish restaurant in Shenzhen (Fuat is Turkish). The food was really good. We even had hummus!! (Not something you can easily find in China) I was definitely glad Fuat and said we should go there because I had never had Turkish food before. Since he has been to Turkey numerous times and has two Turkish parents he knew all about the food and what to order so I was able to get an authentic Turkish meal. He also ordered us this yogurt drink that is very famous in Turkey. The drink was a little weird because it was slightly salty. During dinner I tried to think of any other drink that I knew of that was salty and the only thing I could think of was tomato juice. But overall it was a very good outing. Plus Brian isn't one to really try many foods outside his comfort zone so it was fun getting him to eat the different dishes.


In class this week I did a future and past lesson. Part of the lesson each group had to come up with predictions for the year 2050. I was interested in the different things they were coming up with so these three days were all pictures of the white board after they wrote up predictions. Click on the picture to make it bigger so that you can read some of them.








Minnie sprouted flowers!! I was so proud of her. She shot up an entire stem of pretty little pink flowers.