Blogs from Jiangsu, China, Asia - page 105

Here are more photos from the field trip--cows, milk factory, and buddhist temple. I ran into technical difficulties loading these yesterday. Susan... read more

Fishing, Milk, Buddha Field Trip The university foreign affairs office took us (the foreign teachers) on a field trip for two days (Oct. 14-15). We left the Suiyuan campus and took a van ride about two hours to the Chunhua grazing ground and then to the Weigang Milk Company factory. We had to put on white lab coats and plastic over our shoes, then walk through a room with purple lights before we could look at the cows. I assume this was to protect the cows from mad cow disease. Chunha is a large dairy farm with automated milking machines. I enjoyed it. I like visiting farms. We then went to the Weigang Milk factory to see the raw milk arrive, get pasteurized, homogenized, bottled and bagged. In addition to the glass bottles and milk cartons ... read more

Yesterday I met Pain. Pain is the English name chosen by one of my students to save visiting lecturers from the embarrassment of failing to pronounce/remember their real names and also to encourage the students to integrate with English culture. Pain looks like a nice kid, a bit skinny, long-ish hair swept over his eyes, like he could belong to the Chinese version of Busted, but his favourite band is probably the Backstreet Boys. He knows what Pain means, but apparently he will never regret his choice, not even when he becomes a rich businessman that frequently deals in Britain. It's all very emo-lite. I start teaching on Monday, but I met Pain and some of my other students at a ‘disco party’ in a bar/restaurant/coffee house that the teachers were invited to. It was certainly ... read more

The Pedestrian Mall and Hunan Road After the experience in the fabric store, the Bububu, we walked out past a lot of bikes. Someone had put flyers in all the bike baskets—you know, like the flyers people put on our windshields at home. We walked around the corner and down the street. Hunan Road has big signs, WELCOME TO HUNAN ROAD. All the signs and lights and color make the area very exciting. We walked for a little while, then turned on the pedestrian road. It’s a shopping area with no cars. Each end of the street has a carved arch with stylized lions and other figures. There were bronze statues at the beginning, like the statues in Decatur, GA and downtown Atlanta. These are life size models of old time street vendors. One is blowing ... read more

Well I've been feeling a bit down the last few days, missing lots of people back home and been quite bored and a bit low on money. But I'm feeling better now. This week is national holiday for National Day....Quite how a day lasts 7 days I do not know, but here it does. That means lots of people are not working this week. That means that yesterday when I went to Walking Street it was the most crowded place I have ever seen! So many people!!! I managed to buy a Sim card finally, so now I am able to use my mobile! Woo! Today was fun, although slightly expensive. Adam and I went to Suzhou with Lucy and Cherry, two barmaids from Malones. We basically had girlfriends for the day....We had to hold their ... read more