Well, not me, but I saw this guy in the park riding his bicycle on a thin wire while another dude dangled off his bike, hanging on for dear life. Just an average day in an average park in China. I was just strolling around the park when I heard early 90’s techno and looked up to see all of this nonsense. At night we took a train to Pingyao. Annie had gone back to Beijing to try once again to fly out (she had somehow worked something out over the phone and should be leaving in a day or two). [View Full Entry]

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ONE NARCISITC DUDE The Soldiers were about one hour from the city by bus. A young girl popped up, out of her seat in front of us (out of nowhere) to talk to us. They always pop out of nowhere like in that scene in “Don’t be a Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood”, when the storekeeper follows the customers around and pops out of that freezer. Anyhow, the soldiers were pretty damn cool looking and similar to what I expected. What was fascinating though was how each one was distinctly different in body size, attire, [View Full Entry]

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Woke up to the sound of the mountain screamers again. Sunny’s roommate let us stay here even though she left, which was pretty nice of him. We got on the train to Xi’an in the afternoon with one small bag of bread, one package of “gourmet” French-style cookies, and a bottle of Biju (hard core Chinese liquor, considerably worse than straight vodka). This particular leg of our journey was thirty hours, and this amount of food for three people is not sufficient given the amount of time. We did not have our own little room like on the first train, but [View Full Entry]

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Sunny has left us (she has gone to Zhuji to be guide for the other group of teachers) and after mourning our loss we went into survival mode. We may starve (she had been doing a lot of translating for us). Tonight we had the saddest dinner of all. We went to this nice looking, clean restaurant, which also meant it was a little pricey (for China). The menu had pictures to point at to make it easy. I, seeing a picture of a scallop assumed a plate of several scallops would arrive, and was quite disappointed when only one showed [View Full Entry]

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Bloody hell! There are people screaming in the morning at 5am from the mountain tops. I woke up (on Sunny’s hard floor) to the sound of bloody screams coming from the window. Behind Sunny’s Apartment is a large mountain and apparently every morning people go up there and let loose. Perhaps this is part of a religious ceremony or some sort of exercise, or maybe people are just releasing stress? I mean I’m not too happy to be up at that time either. Anyhow they do this every morning and although it seems I was complaining about it, this is my [View Full Entry]

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Sam and I attempted to make pancakes, a seemingly easy task. We couldn’t read any of the labels on powder bags. We definitely thought we had found flour, as Sam decoded one of the characters. Then the mixture began to rise and continued to rise, and looked like it might explode. I tried it and thought I might die. Turns out that character meant baking, and our substance was not baking flour but baking soda. And that was the end of the pancake making ordeal. When it cleared up we went to this old temple with Sunny, who got some [View Full Entry]

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We went to West Lake, a famous site here in Hangzhou, on more than one occasion. It is very beautiful and also very large (we got terribly lost on one occasion). We had pizza (not bad for China!) at a pub on the Lake and learned how to play Chinese dice (there probably is a real name for this game). We did a ton of walking around town (5-6 miles) every day. It’s difficult for me to keep up because my legs are so much shorter than Sam and Jackie’s. The beggars here are very aggressive and sometimes follow you for [View Full Entry]

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Sunny told Gordon (the head of ACT) that Sam, Jackie, and I were going to Beijing. I don’t really know why but it all seemed kind of shady. I think it had something to do with not wanting the other teachers in the program to know that we had stopped teaching and would be traveling. Something about having a mutiny on his hands. Anyway, after taking this scary little pickup truck/mini car, we showed up at the ACT/TEFL headquarters. I honestly think the company just outright stole the TEFL acronym and that it has no relation to TEFL in the use. [View Full Entry]

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Jackie, Sam and I are going to travel for the next couple of weeks. ACT is paying for one train ticket (to Hangzhou) and then for our hotel and touring when we get to Beijing. We have to pay for everything else in between (food, travel, hotels etc). Kate, James, Annie and Heather are all going to try to fly home early from Beijing. On the phone it seems they can’t change their tickets but they are going to go out there anyway and hope for the best. I can’t personally imagine leaving early (China is great!) but I guess if [View Full Entry]

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The cops said they were going to be at our hotel at 9am to make sure we were there (opposed to the school) and that we were checking out of the hotel and leaving. So we decided, of course, that we would go to the school one last time at 7am to say goodbye to the kids and give them the little presents we had brought from home for them. We didn’t have them with us yesterday because we didn’t realize it was our last day. I had only brought enough gifts for thirty kids because that is all ACT said [View Full Entry]

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