Travel adventures in journals and photos from Asia , China

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Tuesday is my new favorite

General and listening comprehension classes until noon and then I was home free. We had lunch at Relish. My noodles were painfully spicy. I got a milk tea on the way back to the dorm to cut the pain.Qiang from English corner texted me. I will come UpCoffee at 3 will meet you there. Or something along those lines. But I do not need a middleaged hanger on who wants me to teach him English while

First Impressions

This is an unusually long entry to start off with as inevitably there is a lot to say about the first impressions in a place like this... then after this they will be a lot shorter with videos etc. when life starts getting more normal hopefully...It seems to have taken far longer to get used to life here than expected. This is not because of the fact that Irsquom getting through four sweatso

first day of classes in english

Today was the first day I had any classes other than Chinese How exciting Of course I still had to get up at 730 for Chinese but I'm getting used to it. This afternoon I had 20th Century Chinese History class. There are five students and one person auditing and we just have it in a conference room in the dorm building. Most of the Culture Classesnon language classesare taught in th

I Love My Kids

I cannot even tell you how much I love my kids. School has been going great so far. It is hard and I feel like I stumble a lot but then one of the kids will give me a smile or come and say Ms. Tharrington will you help me with... and it seems to make it all worth while. They really are GREAT kids. I seem to love the ones who are struggling even more. I think my favorite times during the day are ou

Terracotta warriors rain and on to Beijing

The rain came to Xi'an in full force on Monday. We pushed ahead with our plan to see the Terracotta Warriors site got soaked but were still amazed. Continuing forecasts of bad weather caused us to cancel the climb of Mt. Wa and our plans to spend a night at the top. Instead we flew to Beijing a few days ahead of schedule to see some more sights there before our Friday return to Seattle.The T

Our trip to the beach

So cycling to the beach didn't totally work It turns out that Haikou is a lot bigger than we originally thought We did see a huge park with loads of chinese people flying kites though which was quite interesting. We also discovered a building project that perfectly illustrates how ridiculous the chinese are...there were lorries and lorries full of rocks driving out along a small track out to

New Semester

It's the first day of the new semester and my first class starts in an hour and a half. Before that we have a full staff meeting and a teacher's meeting. We've got two new members of staff and will have lots of parents coming in to pay hopefully My first class is Kindergarten and I'm bricking it becuase these kids are as young as three and I've never taught that age before. One class is aged 3

Church Pledge Animals

I got lost on my way to Mass Sunday as I mixed up which bus to get on. Luckily the cab I used to get back on track cost only two U.S. dollars to take me a nontrivial distance. Mass itself was interesting. The only phrase I understood was the Peace be with you equivalent Zhu ni ping an. Amen is just about the same in any language. After Mass I bought a Chinese bible from the attached religious

the cost of beauty

Week 2 Week 3 I can't seem to keep track. The days blur together and apart. We do not have a calendar even though every day we say we need to get a calendar I like this laissez faire schedule where I don't need to worry about what day it is or what month for that matter. I just worry about time. I am still on two different time zones trying to keep in touch with family and friends. I do get

1st day First and General Impression

This is my second time come to China but actually the first time I come here for leisure. Beside the awkward feeling that i prefer not to describe I would prefer describing the uniqueness of them.Fighting Spirit It is trained by the long queue of the taxi and many of them actually trying to go first. Taxi RallyToilet Door No lock. . In hotel. I am staying in Ibis Chengdu Yongfeng. Chengdu A

I miss the NHS

Today Rachael and I went to the doctors. Pain the neck to get there we left the school at around 10.30am and got back at 6pm. We had to go to Hangzhou to see western trained doctors and there are two buses an hour each with about 30 seats so they book up quickly. We were 45 minutes early and got the last two seats. Anyway at Hangzhou you usually have to wait aaaages for a taxi so need to allow

Datong and around

I left Beijing with the night train a soft sleeper. Was so lucky to be in a departement with two people who spoke English and helped me with putting up my lugage. Train was great but for one reason I'm no real fan they don't really wake you up when you arrive. Only partly as you have to change your ticket into a plastic one and then back to the paper and that happened a bit before we arrived. B

Train Ride to Urumqi

Kayleigh and I started our 3 week adventure by taking a 40 hour hard yingzuo 3082824231 seat train ride from Beijing to Urumqi Wulumuqi 20044400652640840784. At first I thought it was not so bad compared to the hard seat we took to Taishan but then more and more people with standing tickets got on at every stop until the aisle was totally packed. Going to the bathroom was

Final Thoughts on CLS

The last few weeks of CLS passed in a strange haze as we did very little sleeping and a lot of drinking. My host mother originally said that I had to be in by 10 pm every night but on the last two weekends I ignored her and stayed out lsquotill between 3 and 7 am with my classmates. Man I had been missing out The clubs in Sanlitun were super fun. Gay night at Alfa had my favorite music an

Flight to Beijing

Flight at 930am

Sights

A weekend of sightseeing was just the remedy for posttraining blues. We ventured out to Fuzimiao and XuanWu Lake as well as eating a fair amount of tasty morsels along the way. Here are some photos of our joyous expeditions Fuzimiao was exactly what we expected a lovely scenic beautiful Chinese spot ruined by tacky tourism and shops. They were selling small animals as well namely bunnies k

Free Time and a Sleeper Train

Today occurred in two parts.The first part was a free day to do whatever we pleased in Xi'an. This appealed to all of us. We haven't had enough time to wander around on our own. I followed Professor Greg Youtz to Stationary Street which is a road devoted to the tools used for writing and painting but which also has jade and various other traditional Chinese crafts. I did some gift shopping for

Eerste update Xi'an

Hallo iedereenHierbij mijn eerste update vanuit Xi'an. Inmiddels ben ik hier een ruime week en heb ik al de nodige dingen meegemaakt De reis naar China is prima verlopen op Chengdu moest ik wel wat lang wachten en er is daar niks te doen op het vliegveld maar met een uurtje vertraging in Xi'an aangekomen. Daar stond bij de uitgang netjes een meneer op mij te wachten. Hij had blijkbaar haast

In Xi'an

Xi'an is a great place to unwind from the rigors of our adventures further south and west. We are across from the Drum Tower right in the heart of the tourist area and next to the Muslum Quarter. We're taking it easy seeing the sights and enjoying being in the city for a few days before heading out to the terracotta warriors tomorrow and Mt. Hua the next day and then back to Beijing and home.

Chengdu

I decided to leave Nanjing only after a couple days and it was rather difficult to get out of the place. The hostel I was staying at offered to book my train ticket but when she called the computers were down so I needed to either wait or go to the train station itself. I decided rather than waiting in the hostel I would make the quick trip to the train station. I don't really know what I was thin