I almost ran right smack into her, which would have been awful because like most of the Chinese students here, she is barely five feet tall and I doubt she weighs 100 pounds soaking wet. With Audioslave blaring in my iPod, and sweat dripping off my bald head and stinging my eyes, I was on my 2nd lap around our high school track in the middle of the day. It's hot here now, so hot the surface of the track seems to stick to my running shoes just enough to pull me back and make me feel sluggish, as if I'm [View Full Entry]

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All is well in the Land of the Misinformed and Comfortably Protected, namely mainland China. Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square protests and for obvious reasons I'm not saying much about what this government does or does not do in response. I'm not on anybody's radar and I want to keep it that way. In the back of my head I keep hearing Dana Carvey's deadly accurate impression of George Bush on SNL, with the President at the microphone addressing reporters, "It just wouldn't be prudent. Nope. Not Prudent." If you want to read about how China is [View Full Entry]

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Along with the sixteen classes I teach each week here at my high school (55 kids per class = around 960 kids), I agreed to also teach an additional two classes on Wednesday afternoons for a group of bright, motivated kids for an English Club (EC). They asked Jenny to help me (thankfully!) so we both get together and teach thirty-two of the top English speaking students at my school and we really enjoy these kids because they can express themselves in English fairly well, even though they are in their first year, Grade 1, of high school English. The English [View Full Entry]

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5/19/09 12:32pm Along with adventure travel comes irony. And irony abounds here in our small city of DanYang, China. Everything seems to be going great here as far as teaching, enjoying our city, seeing the other areas of China on the weekends, but last night the internet began to hiccup for a few hours. First we could not get online at all, and then when we did finally get back online it was intermittent, and once it finally seemed to settle down and all was well in cyberspace, suddenly we could no longer even access Google with any confidence. This morning, [View Full Entry]

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Back in sunny, Tampa,. Florida. Back to my most excellent bed. My overgrown yard. Back in traffic. Back to work. Back in traffic. Back at Starbuck's gulping down Venti Iced Latte's like a madman. Back to telling stories to my friends instead of living them. Back to normal life. Back to dreaming of my next adventure! Nothing helps though - my heart and mind are still running through the early morning streets of Pamplona, the excitement of the unknown barreling down on me like a tsunami of people and beasts moving at an astounding pace - then suddenly overwhelming me, enveloping [View Full Entry]

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On the flight home now after a chaotic morning…went out last night for our last evening in Madrid and really had a blast. Started with trying something other than tapas and so we found a place called Doner Kapob, I think they may be international because I think I’ve seen them in other countries and the food was delicious, just what we needed to remind us there is something other than jamon and queso bocadillas (sandwiches with ham and cheese). The best part about the meal were the really cool polo shirts the workers were all wearing with the [View Full Entry]

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We've been enjoying ourselves here in this beautiful city. Madrid is a mixture of the old Spanish culture and the new, hip and young blood that is thriving here on the great food, cheap attractions and entertainment, and a never ending supply of new visitors (like us for instance.) I'm headed off for the world's only art walk in the world which includes painting, sculpture, architecture and nature, in one of Madrid's most attractive areas: Paseo del Prado. I hope to see three museams of global renown: the Prado Museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Reina Sofia National Art Centre. I [View Full Entry]

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Hey! We grabbed another frosty shower and slept for a few hours, went by the local store to pick up some stuff for the road, packed up our backpacks and headed to the bus station with our new friend from New Zealand, Cazz. She is a very flexible traveler having backpacked through several countries over the last month or so and she was the one who told us about the free concert tonight on the beach in San Sebastian. The bus ride lasted about an hour, and we headed towards the beach and a train station where Cazz could store her [View Full Entry]

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Hello from Madrid, by way of San Sebastian, and now we are right up the street from the Puerto Del Sol and a beautiful hostel called Adriano. I will be filling these blogs in when I can more fully describe our trip and I'm still working on getting the pics up, or at least create a link, that you can go to view the fun. The 2nd day we decided to run with the bulls turned into the longest, most soul satisying day I can remember. The day started with us getting up early enough to run with the bulls (again!) [View Full Entry]

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Monday Afternoon. July 10th. Pamplona, Spain. We woke up after some much needed sleep and took freezing showers (again!) and headed over to the Castillo del Toro which is the arena where they have some of the biggest and best bullfights in the world. I took some time to just watch the crowd while Marcus tried to find the bar, Hemingway’s, which is right across the street from the arena and meet me at 5pm. I sat on the street and remembered the times I read Hemingway and dreamed about being in Spain and attending a bullfight, as well as a [View Full Entry]

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