I originally intended this post to be a lighthearted continuation of my visit to Hainan, but given the recent tragedy of the earthquake, I wanted to shift gears a bit. So enjoy the pictures which still hold that former mood, but I also hope you continuing reading and see my impressions of the last few days. Part of the reason for putting up this last post (which also explains the haste and sloppiness of the entry, I apologize) is to simply let everyone know, friends and family, that I am 100% fine and unharmed after the quake. To give a few [View Full Entry]

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A few pretty significant events have happened in the last couple of weeks here in China that (fortunately) I was not apart of, but could have very well been. The first occurred a few weeks ago when a fairly severe typhoon struck the island of Hainan. This was just one week before we went there for our vacation. Luckily the storm did not disrupt any of our plans and we had a great time. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Secondly, the Olympic torch landed in Sanya, Hainan last week. We were not aware of it at the time, [View Full Entry]

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Last week I gave a speech entitled: "The End of Loose Money: Subprime, The Credit Crunch and What it Means for China." I gave the obvious, yet necessary disclaimer before the speech that I am not an economist, affiliated with the real estate industry and/or an expert on the material in any way shape or form, BUT I do enjoy reading about such topics and find them worthy of further discussion. I would say that the speech was partly intended to introduce economics-related vocabulary to the students and partly intended to explain the current economic landscape in the United States and [View Full Entry]

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Went to Qingdao for a weekend trip to see some ocean and get away from the smog and bustle of Dongying. The weather turned out to be pretty nice. Qingdao is famous for its beer and beaches, the former coming by the plastic bagful if you are so inclined. No comments in this one, just pictures! Enjoy! [View Full Entry]

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The pictures from this entry cover the last stop on the winter break tour in Beijing up to the first plunge back into teaching for semester number two. My time in Beijing was well spent, getting a healthy dose of international cuisine, cultural/tourist sites and some pretty entertaining nightlife as well. The highlight of the trip was without a doubt Chinese New Year's Eve. A fellow Dongying foreigner who's spent the past couple of years here in China told me "if you're gonna be in China for Chinese New Year, you'd better make it Beijing." Imagine the greatest Fourth of July [View Full Entry]

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Just the bare minimum of explaination for this entry: The cities of Guilin and Yangshuo were definitely the highlight of the trip in terms of scenery and cultural spots, but unfortunately it was also the worst weather of the voyage. For Chinese standards Guilin is a very small city, but nonetheless very famous for its interesting topography and parks. Located in the northeast corner of Guangxi Province, this part of China is speckled with incredibly beautiful sedimentary spires almost everywhere you look. Even smaller than Guilin, the city of Yangshuo lies an hour and a half south and bo [View Full Entry]

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OK, less talk more pictures. Hainan (海南) was great. To give a brief introduction: Hainan is the tropical island off the mainland in the South China Sea. It is called the "Hawaii of China." The island's two main cities are Haikou (海口) on the northern tip and Sanya (三亚) on the southern tip. Although the two cities are just across the island from eachother, they are quite different in feel. Haikou is similar to many Chinese cities: a little bit too crowded, a little bit too dusty and really bad traffic. Sanya on the other hand is absolutley parad [View Full Entry]

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I’m finally back in Dongying after about a month or so of traveling and getting settled back into the swing of things. Over the next handful of entries, I will write about my trip, detailing my experiences in each of the cities I visited and of course sharing the tons of photos I took as well. My last night in Dongying saw the first snow in the area. As I made my way to catch the bus in the early morning hours the next day, a thin layer of snow about two or three inches successfully complicated matters and gave me [View Full Entry]

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It's been a while! The end of fall semester has finally arrived! My apologies for slacking a bit on interesting and exciting entries. There are good reasons for this. First, given the 100+ written exams on top of the four classes of oral examinations, I have been pretty crazy the past few weeks with everything involved in the evaluation process and pretty much learning everything on the fly to boot. The second reason is very simple: Dongying is neither very interesting nor exciting so a certain degree of stagnation setting in is almost inevitable. The first thing that I want [View Full Entry]

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The past few weeks have been hellishly busy. On top of the normal classload and Chinese studying, I gave a midterm to my western culture class and a speech to about a hundred students. I made the test rather easy on purpose so that all of my students would do well on it. As I've mentioned prior, these kids are incredibly busy with classes and homework, so much so that I genuinely feel guilty assigning them excessive homework and making overly difficult tests. To give a specific example, the other day one of my best students told me he has about [View Full Entry]

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