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 Chines
e 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 th
ings 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 b
etter 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 custom
ers 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 goin
g to the mountain, we found a driver to take us to JingDi's tomb and then he ended up taki
ng 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 r
estaurant 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 sa
w 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 pagod
a. 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 t
o 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 w
ho 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. Unfor
tunately, 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.
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