New changes are happening everywhere I look; within myself, my city and my friends. The semester ending has left parts of the city, especially those near the university empty and almost unused. Many of the thousands of students have returned home to their local city far from here. Like the students, many of the foreign teachers have taken this summer holiday as a chance to travel. I, myself just came back from a two week trip up north. It started with a very early morning train ride to Beijing with a friend of mine, Dusty. We didn’t stay long in [View Full Entry]

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On the 8th of July it was Hohhot's turn to welcome the torch. We went to the central square pretty early in the morning, and twice it seemed the parade was going to go past the square, with all people suddenly moving to one side of it. But actually, the torch hadn't even been lit yet. It was shown live on the big screen but unfortunately, the exact route was never made public and was also changed at the last moment to prevent anything bad happening. So actually, nobody really knew where and when the torch would be. So we never [View Full Entry]

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I'm now on the train heading back to Beijing from Hohhot. We're taking a hard sleeper car, which means that there is a whole car full of bunk beds. There are three layers of beds: bottom, middle and top. We all have top bunks because that's all that was left when we bought our tickets. Our train left Hohhot at 9:23 PM and will arrive in Beijing at 7 something in the morning. It's currently about 10:05 PM which means I will probably have another 25 minutes until they turn off the lights. I'm definitely in very different sleeping conditions than [View Full Entry]

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I am currently writing from a yurt in the middle of Inner Mongolia. (Well, I'm writing in my journal, which I will then type into an online blog post upon returning to Beijing.) Inner Mongolia is an autonomous region in China and a yurt is a transportable circular tent used by Mongolian nomads. Our yurt is made for six people, so Michelle, Gabe, Angel and I fit in it quite nicely. There are no beds, but just a large wooden platform with a thin layer of wool or some other type of material covered by a giant cloth. There is no [View Full Entry]

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Ofcourse we all know about the horrible eartquake that destroyed so many people's lives in the south of China. I happened to be on Qinhua square in central Hohhot for the first of three consecutive days of national mourning, on which each day at 14:28, the exact time of the earthquake in Sichuan province, three minutes of 'silence' is held to commemorate the lives lost. In China this is done by sounding the alarm and all traffic sounding their horns. It was actually a good experience to be there at that time, It really felt like this huge populous country was [View Full Entry]

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I wish I could say the BBQ was a good experience. The first night we arrived in Hohhot at 10 pm. Having just missed the shuttle bus to town we tried our luck with the taxi cabs. Up to this point we avoided taxis because the LP book warns you that they they are the biggest rip-off artists out there. Knowing that, we cautiously appoached the taxi. As soon as we got near the taxi there were 10 other drivers & locals right there to watch the con artist do his work. He presuured us to get in the car but [View Full Entry]

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Okay what better to do after getting BBQed then go to the dessert, right. Or maybe the desert... Well we have seen a lot on our trip but we haven't seen a desert so it looked appealing. Since our Yurt excursion didn't go as planned we were short on time. Unlike most of out trip we decided to go the quick expensive route instead of the relaxed local route. Our time was cut even shorter than planned because the express bus that we took to Bautoa got a flat tire half way between the two towns. Luckily we were only a [View Full Entry]

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The spring is here!!!! It feels like only a few weeks ago that it was -25 at night and -15 during the day. And now; A whole week of +25 degrees! That should be an indication of wha the summer is like around here! Night temperatures still drop to around 5 degrees though, Hohhot being at an elevation of over a 1000 metres. So me and my colleague went out and rode our bikes down south, some 10 km's south of Hohhot is the so called Zhajun tomb. Built over many years, with brick and mud, it stands 33 metres tall [View Full Entry]

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I am sure a nice place Inner Mongolia, I love it! culture and history are different other cities in China. [View Full Entry]

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On Tuesday April the 8th, I woke up to a rainy, cloudy day. Nevertheless, a day off. Seeing that our school's busiest days are the days that regular Chinese have off, we get our free time on Mondays and Wednesdays. And there I was, waking up to some Chinese 'talkshow' radio station at 7 in the morning! Aaargghh! For a good reason though; There was a minibus ready and waiting to take us all on a staff trip into Hohhot's suroundings. Itinerary: Mengnu milk plant, China's most known milk brand, situated for a large part in Inner Mongolia, Mei Dai Zhao [View Full Entry]

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