Well we have been back teaching for 4 days now and it has been a good week!!!!! On Tuesday, we were advised that our students have exams on Monday, Nov 9th- Wednesday, Nov 11th so we don't have to teach, that makes it a 5 day weekend!!! We quickly think in our head where do we want to go now, CAMBODIA!!! We have wanted to go to Angkor Wat since we left the USA(it was on Amazing Race last season) On Tuesday, later in the afternoon, Cherry, Pete's Class Coordinator, said that teacher's may want our classes before the exams to prepare the students more. Then on Wednesday Catherine, Head of our English Department, asked what days we wanted off in order for us to book our flights since we told her we wanted to go ... read more

Alarm was set for 5:10am, but Pete woke up at 5:07am so we got up a few minutes early. We packed the night before and showered so we could just throw on clothes and get out the door. We turned in our room key and then we were out in the street by 5:15am. It was still pitch black outside and now we needed to get to the busy street to hail a cab. As we turned the bend in the street we saw a few people getting in and out of cabs. I wondered at this time in the morning were the people still out from the night before or just up very early like Pete and I. In Chengdu it is a known fact that cabs are hard to come by during busy times ... read more

We left in the van at 7:20 on the dot from The Loft Hostel. There were 5 of us on the tour from 2 hostels; Pete and I, a couple from Montreal and a guy from Japan. As we arrived at the Panda Base it was around 8am, opening time. Once we got in our driver, who doesn't speak English, lead us around to the different exhibits. The main/ONLY reason we came was to hold/sit with the panda bears for 1,000 kuai=$146.41 per person. This is the ONLY place on Earth that you can do this. Yes we could have seen and did see Panda's at the San Diego zoo, but not as many as this place in Chengdu and you can't get near them at SD Zoo. We got to the the feeding of some ... read more

Now it is time to update everyone what has happened over the past 10 days. First, Pete went to TWO trade shows, which he will update the blog about, so I had girls weekend at our place. Cali, Staci and I all came back to our apartment after Chinese Class on Friday afternoon to hang out for the evening. Cali and Staci didn't think they would survive the van ride back to our apartment since the school driver was driving very aggressive, like they all do in China. We have all learned to get in and get ready for the ride of your life. We went out to dinner not far from our apartment had a few beers. Staci and Cali are both vegetarians so I also ate no meat for this meal. The look on ... read more

The alarm went off at 4:30am as we decided on our last day we would take the hour drive out to Sunrise Peak and watch the sun come up. We went down the the lobby to check out the weather before we made the drive and it said Windy each hour so we decided to go since no rain or clouds were in the hour by hour forecast. As we got on the scooter the forecast was correct it was WINDY!!! We made it out to Sunrise Peak in record time of 50 minutes and got there around 5:50am. The sun was scheduled to rise at 6:31am that day per the list at the box office. We started to make the trek up the peak that has over 600 steps to climb. As we walked up ... read more