Attention summer student job slackers - I have come to your rescue (for at least ½ hr of your “work” day)! I know that I haven’t written in a long while - I apologize! Here is my explanation. Albeit I have been doing some interesting things worth writing about, the majority of my current existence involves a day to day routine of going to work etc which is really of no interest to anyone (including myself at times). However, I will try my best to write about what I have been doing in this fine month of June due to the [View Full Entry]

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Note: this was written over many several disjointed days so I apologize for any disjointed thoughts and events… Since I haven’t written in a few days, I have forgotten most things I did last week. Looking at my last post though, that is probably best as it removes the majority of rambling that no one really wants to read anyway. Tina arrived at SaiBei Farm on Friday afternoon thankfully as Levi left me alone to fend for myself (I thought I had rid myself of his existence - unfortunately, as I would later find out, that would not be the case). [View Full Entry]

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After a decent sleep (only waking up a few times on Tuesday night), I started my first day of work at Agricorp. When I woke up, I decided that I should probably shave since it had been two days, only to realize that I couldn’t find a mirror in the apartment. Not in my room, the hallway - not even the bathroom. I suppose that Chinese assume that they always look good and as such, there is no need for them. This may be part of the dental hygiene problem solved right here. My suggestion to their health department - increase [View Full Entry]

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Well…what the hell am I doing back here again? For some masochistic reason I decided to send myself back to China this summer but rather than traveling I’ll be working for China AgriCorp - a company that principally distributes semen (from bulls FYI) for ALTA genetics in the US, as well as other dairy farm services. I didn’t realize it until today, but they are quite a major player in the dairy industry here in China, so the breadth of experience should be quite good. This is the first time they have had a student work for them since I approached [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday did not yield anything much exciting as it was raining again. We got moved into our new place just a few meters down from MCA. It was a dingy hotel that was so desperate for patrons that they let us have the room for 40rmb (that would be ~$2.30CDN...) - so how could we say no? It had hot water and beds, so we really didn't complain. After getting checked in etc, we started walking down towards Er Hui Lake (I think that is what it's called at least). It is the lake that Dali sits on, in the middle [View Full Entry]

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Due to the excessive amounts of rain in Lijiang (and the rest of Yunnan province), we decided to forgo our trip to Tiger Leaping Gorge in favour of heading back east to a town called Dali on Monday. After a rather uncomfortable 3.5hr bus ride through gorges, mountains, clouds, goat and ox herds (and the feeling of imminent death due to the lack of road guards beside the cliffs....) we finally made it. We were dropped off on the side of the highway amongst a bunch of rocks. There were lots of taxi guys waiting around to take everyone who wanted [View Full Entry]

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heyhey dedicated readers: This is an account of the street food we ate today. After several days of indulgence (not really, more like ~10$ CDN on food), we decided to cut back. It's a student-budget trip after all, so we put our budgetting skills to work by declaring today a 'street meat only' day. We left the hostel (LiJiang MCA) around 10 am and headed for scenery. We weren't picky with the scenery, as we knew that the surrounding area had a lot to offer. We first went up to Lion Hill, which was okay...not that exciting. Then we went to [View Full Entry]

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After a moderately 11hr bus ride in a rain storm on a "sleeper" bus from Kunming, Thursday night, we arrived in Lijiang around 7am Friday morning. After getting off the bus and getting ourselves organized, we went off to our hostel. Lijiang is split into two seperate cities of sorts - an "old" and a "new". We are staying in the "old" city which is one of China's last chinese looking cities with curved roof houses with clay tile shingles etc. It is really beautiful. The area is in a valley of sorts at the beginning of the himilayan mountain chain. [View Full Entry]

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So today was travel day. We got up around 6ish this morning, checked out of our sketchy room in Huangshan and hopped on a bus bound for Hangzhou. For those of you that are interested, don't do what we did...we went in a circle from Hangzhou to Shanghai to Huangshan and back to Hangzhou. But hey, I was in 4H - learn to do by doing right? Anyway, we took a 4hr bus ride to Hangzhou which as ok (albeit some typically expected crazy highway driving and nice scenery). When we got into Hangzhou around 1130 we hopped into a place [View Full Entry]

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Another night in Shanghai has passed and there is not much to report. Last night we met some guys in the hostel cafe and we ended up talking with them for a better part of the night on the hostel deck. There were two guys from Sweeden (one Chinese...), a french chinese guy (who's muslim???) and a brit who has spent the last two months taking trains from the uk to China....I thought that we were having a UN meeting. It was interesting hearing from other travellers and what they've been up to. As well, one of the guys from Sweeden [View Full Entry]

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