It must be that as you get older, time flies. Here we are writing our final Blog from Yancheng. We arrived here on 24 March 2008, and will leave Yancheng shortly, on 9 January 2009. It doesn’t seem like we have been here for that long, yet we are about to leave to return home. Even though we were based in Yancheng, we have seen parts of China and will be off to visit Beijing, Harbin and finally Shanghai, before boarding our plane home. Whilst here, we have visited Xuzhou in the north of Jiangsu Province, an ancient Han Dynasty capital; [View Full Entry]

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China celebrated its National Day with a few days holiday, between 1 - 4 October. Our school, for some unknown reason (at that time), told us that they were off for the full week, commencing Monday 29 Sep. As the foreign teachers didn’t want to stay around Yancheng for a full week, we all took off in different directions. We went west, to the centre of China, towards Xian, but stopped at a city called LuoYang, in Henan province. The main attraction of LuoYang is the World Heritage Listed Buddhist Grottoes, just south of the city centre. If you have ever [View Full Entry]

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What a blessing it is to be back in Yancheng. We didn’t realize how quiet and peaceful this town is, until you spend time in the Province Capitals. We were in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province for just on five weeks, then just under a week in Nanjing, our province capital. The pace of city life is all the same. There is constant traffic noise, millions of scooters, rows of buses, volumes of cars and mixed in amongst all of this, a load of pedestrians. If you have not been staying in China for a longer period than a holiday, [View Full Entry]

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Here we are, back in Yancheng for a couple of days, before we are off to Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province. Anhui Province Adjoins Jiangsu province to the southwest, and Hefei, is about 150 km southwest of Nanjing. The holiday was generally good, as far as a holiday can be in china, but it wasn’t until we got back to our school apartment, that our real dramas began. That will be another story. We are sure that one day we will laugh about what happened, but until that day, we are still a bit upset with the widespread Chinese lack [View Full Entry]

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Well, back from our ‘flying trip’ to Nantong, the city located on the northern banks of the Yangtze River, just north of Shanghai. Nantong is only a quick 2 1/2 hour train ride (which took us 3 1/2) south from Yancheng. It was a pleasant change to get some ‘cleaner’ air, from all the farm burning in Yancheng. We have been booking our accommodation from an internet site, which specializes in China accommodation. They have a good range of hotels, but unfortunately, the hotel information on the internet is a bit light-on, so we take a bit of a punt whenever [View Full Entry]

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The school decided to change our teaching schedule, so we finished off our teaching term on Friday 13 June, instead of 5 July. As we had some unexpected time off, we decided to do a bit of exploring of Jiangsu Province, where we are based. Yancheng is south of the middle of the Province, but closer to the east coast. We had read about some Terracotta Warriors in the city of Xuzhou, which is located up in the far northwest of our Province. It is about a 4 1/2 hour train trip away. Not much is written about these Terracotta Warriors, [View Full Entry]

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Daily life goes on. It is fascinating to watch the workers go about their business. Ever day the same thing - sweep this section of road with a stall-type broom, collect rubbish along this section of road, beat the heck out of the rape (canola) bushes to collect the seed, burn the stubble in the paddocks - life goes on, 7 days a week, and generally 14 hours a day. If the workers (that is what they call the casual day-labourers) don’t work, they don’t get paid. Simple. Oh how we long to see some blue sky, smell the clean air, [View Full Entry]

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Hello Australia, et al, It only seemed like a few weeks ago when we wrote to say we had been in China for one month, and now we have been here for two months. Wow, time sure flies fast nowadays. At least we can’t say that we are bored. Nothing is normal in our routine. One of the most frustrating parts of working here, is that we are only told what is happening, at the last moment. Even then, we only get a bit of the picture, so have to try to find out for ourselves what is happening. They certainly [View Full Entry]

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That was exciting, our first trip to Nanjing, the Jiangsu Province capital. We had heard a lot of people talking of Nanjing - how great it was, the history, better for shopping and so on. Many of our students from this Province haven’t yet visited Nanjing and they seemed pleased that we were going there, after only being in their country for such a short time. Well, what a shock! We must have been on the worse bus in the fleet. For a three hour trip, we were traveling for nearly 4 1/2. The driver seemed to take all the back [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, We weren't having much success in loading photos properly into the previous Blog site, so we have switched to this new TravelBlog site. I'll try uploading some photos and see the end result. Hopefully, a better presentation will result. Happy Anzac Day. Click on full screen to view all photos. Best wishes, Graeme & Betty-Anne [View Full Entry]

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