Blogs from Kunming, Yunnan, China, Asia
May 16th 2012
Today was my last day at the school. ): Amy was super sad, I almost cried. We chilled at break and then played games with her friends (that I gave the names Katie, Sarah, and Jamie too). We played their version of Ninja Ninja Turtle (Duck Duck Goose) and this other game where everyone except one person made a train and the one person left out has to tag everyone behind the first person. The group donated fans for each classroom (which was greatly needed. I probably lost at least 10 pounds simply by sweating so much while teaching). Amy gave me a bracelet on Monday. She gave me a note today saying how I was her favorite teacher and how much she loved me (a scan of the note will be posted on facebook when ... read more
May 15th 2012
These last few days have been pretty fun. Monday I went back to the school that I have been volunteerting at. I also did a language exchange, which was awkward. They basically singled out the few that could speak some Chinese and put us into groups with Chinese students, some speaking English, others that couldn't that well. My group wanted to meet up with one of the other groups that had left the building to go to a coffee shop. It ended up being a lot of fun and tonight there is another language exchange, so I'm kind of excited. Yesterday we went to Yunnan Arts University where we saw a mini drama by two students, ate lunch, and then watched a few films that the students had made themselves. We got to ask them questions ... read more
May 14th 2012
The Chinese do not build elevators in buildings that are 6 stories or shorter. Some of us had wondered, before the trip, why are most Chinese people thinner than most Americans even though they eat a lot of carbs? Well it's probably because they have to walk everyhere. There are steps all over the place and the terrain is pretty hilly. It doesn't take long for that quick relief of flat land to quickly start taking you up or down. That's what we realized, is that we needed all of the food we could get to just maintain the amount of energy that we burn in a day. My apartment here is 6 floors up. The school I work at has 4 floors and to get to any of the classrooms I have to at least ... read more
April 12th 2012
Kunming was a treat. The sunshine made Dor and I very happy, and we even saw stars a few times!! The smog of Chengdu force a depression on a girl who is used to starlight. We visited the stone forest and climbed up through the strange rocks and enjoyed ourselves. Mom again impressed me with how she could eat noodles with chopsticks (which took me nearly three weeks to accomplish without spilling noodles down my front). We walked around the city of Kunming and were helped by a few English speakers (a mother daughter pair who went out their way to help us find our restaurant and order).... read more
January 30th 2012
Yunnan (you non) & Kunming- (coon – ming) We landed in Kunming at 4:45 am and I didn’t sleep at all on the 2-1/2 hr flight. I had a nervous feeling about landing this time since we switched employers and were depending on our last school not to cancel our Resident Permit cards. After our experience leavingIndiaI was almost counting on trouble getting back intoChina. Fortunately for us there were no issues and we cleared customs relatively quickly. After getting our bags we saw a lot of people either waiting for their flight or waiting for the cab line to open. Our flight wasn’t the only one to have landed in that hour, yet for some reason the airport goes out of their way to shut down the cab service at this time. Our solution was ... read more
Special tea purchase in Jinghong and the temples of Kunming
Published: October 17th 2011Asia » China » Yunnan » Kunming
October 16th 2011
(written in Chongqing, 17 Oct 2011) We are on our way back northward and a few days behind in blog posts. All of a sudden the weather is truly October-like in contrast to the tropical heat that characterized our entire stay in Xishuangbanna. We stayed three days in Jinghong with an air conditioned room to deal with the continuing heat. On the last day, before boarding our evening sleeper bus of Kunming, Kathy, Jacob and I went back to one of our favorite tea shops to search for a special pu'er Jacob and Lynn. The shop was piled high with bags of leaves, newly-pressed cakes, and the stones used to press the cakes. The proprietor pressed those cakes with tea from areas we had visited in throughout the region. We tasted three different kinds of pu'er, ... read more
September 26th 2011
I finished my final week of teaching in Wuhan on Friday. The final teaching day was actually Thursday and we combined classes, so I had 2 classes of about 40 students each. Great day of bedlam as I assigned students to various companies that had to make deals with each other, in English. Most students jumped into the game with relish, while others (remember, these were all doctoral candidates) just didn't have a clue. Friday was a thanks and farewell party with much picture taking, gift giving and long goodbyes. You can see some of the many photos taken of the event by one of my students at http://www.flickr.com/photos/67941382@N02/. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get him to edit out the one involving a red dress. While it was difficult to say “goodbye” to my almost 80 students, I ... read more
August 3rd 2011
For this part of the journey and palled up with two couples, Tim and Charlotte and Tony and Heidi. It was like a mass exodus leaving the hostel as we all had been there for a while now. Infront of me was my first overnight bus in China, now I had seen them before and basically it is a bus with beds in, be it they are built on the specs of a Chinese person but I can survive one night of being curled up in a foetal postion, but what I had failed to pay any attention to was how the beds were laid out, which I will move onto later. Our bus wasn’t until the evening so we had a little stop off at a part of the highway which was totally devoted ... read more
Expo Garden and Interaction with Local Students
Published: July 20th 2011Asia » China » Yunnan » Kunming
July 20th 2011
Good morning. Yesterday (July 20), we visited the World Horti-Expo GardenThe World Horti-Expo Garden is a botanical garden center in Kunming. It played host to the October 1999 Kunming International Horticulture Exposition. As an international botanical garden, the Expo Garden has become a significant Kunming landmark. The World Horti-Expo Garden covers an area of 218 hectares and is consisted of 5 indoor exhibition halls (China Hall, the Man and Nature Hall, the Green House, the Science and Technology Hall, and the International Hall), 6 theme gardens (the Tree Garden, the Tea Garden, the Bonsai Garden, the Medicinal Herb Garden, the Bamboo Garden, and the Vegetable and Fruit Garden) and 34 outdoor gardens of domestic participants, 34 outdoor gardens for foreign countries and international organizational and 9 outdoor exhibition area for the enterprise participants. The World-expo Ga ... read more
