Ronan Galvin
To be honest, I didn’t want to grow up and get a real job just yet so I decided to travel half way around the world with five buddies to teach English in China and travel throughout Asia. This will blog will be about my observations and adventures while in China and also be a way to keep all the homies back home up to date on my where abouts!RonanGalvin
Travel Blog Posts
December 27th 2010
As I write this, it is currently 3:20 p.m. on Monday, December 26th. I should be at school enduring my 5th class of the day but not anymore! I dunno what I did in my past life but it must have been something good because as of today I am officially done with my semester of teaching (knock on wood)! My semester was supposed to end January 14th but I guess my school actually gets out January 7th and after the 3rd week in December they take one week to prepare for exams and the next week taking them. I was definitely a little sad to say bye to the kids but I made sure to snap a lot of photos and videos of them so I wouldn’t forget them. On the other hand, 6 classes ... read more
December 19th 2010
Ni Hao! That means Hello in Chinese, it sounds like you are saying knee how in English. So after 4 months you can see how far my Chinese has come along! Haha no just playing, my Chinese or pu tong hua as its called is actually coming along really well as of the last 2 months. As I mentioned earlier, Sean and I got a tutor named Jenny who comes by the place twice a week for two hours and we go over pronunciation and forming sentences and she introduces new vocab to us. Its wild cuz in the Chinese language, there are 4 tones for each word and the tone dictates what the word actually means. Needless to say the tones are very crucial in learning Chinese. For Example: Xiè xiè (both 4th tone) means ... read more
November 29th 2010
No. The answer is no. No, I didn’t get to stuff my face all day with Thanksgiving food, no I didn’t get to sit on my ass and watch football when I wasn’t stuffing myself with thanksgiving food, and no I didn’t get to play in a Turkey Bowl when I wasn’t watching football or stuffing my face with Thanksgiving food. Did I miss Thanksgiving and being home with family? Yeah maybe a little. But that did not stop me from having a great Thanksgiving weekend. I started Thanksgiving off by giving my kids a lesson on Thanksgiving and even though they probably had no clue what I was trying to teach them, they must of at least thought the pictures from the floats of the Macys Day Parade were cool (I hope). Whatever though, if ... read more
If China and England had a baby they would name it Hong Kong
Published: November 17th 2010Asia » Hong Kong » Hong Kong Island
November 17th 2010
Whats up world? I don’t really know how to start a blog post so all I could come up with was a cheesy opening line like whats up world. My zags just lost to SDSU tonight so im a little upset about that and figured I would write a blog post to hopefully to distract me. The last two weeks have flown by cuz I have gotten away with two real short weeks of teaching. I got lucky and had a number of classes cancelled due to sports day and the Asian games. When I was a kid at the end of the year we had a day called field day, where all the students had to participate in track events, hurdles, softball throw, etc. Well that’s what sports day is here but in China like ... read more
October 29th 2010
"Swan Bay: The beautiful dedicated to the Pearl River, the Pearl River dedicated to you." Upon coming to China, people told me I could live way beyond my means for a typical 22 year old. Needless to say, I had dreams of living something close to that of a rap stars lifestyle where money is no object and I could treat it like monopoly money. After my teaching training was complete and I had been assigned a school, I was able to check into my apartment that the company assigned to me. I couldn’t wait to check out the view with the balcony, make friends with the hot Asian girls across the hallway, and eat at all the local restraints around my area. I pulled up to the spot and from the outside I was already ... read more
October 19th 2010
After an amazing time in Longsheng, we were headed off to Yangshuo which is one of the most popular tourists sports in all of China. Now that is saying something given how big and how much stuff there is to see in China. After a long bus ride from Longsheng, we arrived into Yangshuo and were greeted by a traffic jam that seemed like it went on forever and sidewalks that looked like Times Square during rush hour. Although it was packed, it definitely had a good vibe going on. We checked into our hostel and met the owner Larry who turned out to be a pretty sketchy because the whole time we stayed there, all he would do was wander into our rooms and try and book trip/activities for us while we were in Yangshuo. ... read more
Hello! Hello! Long Hair! Long Hair!
Published: October 13th 2010Asia » China » Guangxi » Longsheng » Longji
October 13th 2010
Note: please creep the pictures to know what im talking about. So its been about a week since our vacation ended and I am just now getting over my laziness to write another post…so here it goes. For those who don’t know, we got a seven day vacation last week because of the National Holiday in China. The Peoples Republic of China was founded on October 1, 1949 and to recognize that the entire country gets the week off. Its real similar to our July 4th. The fact that I wasn’t Chinese and couldn’t show my patriotism didn’t really bother me, a 7 day vacation is a 7 day vacation. As usual, I was traveling with the other five dudes who came to China with me (Aaron, Nick, Mark, Tim, and Sean). The bell for my ... read more
October 8th 2010
Okay, so last week Mark (war boy) and I went down to the court by his places to play some pick up with the locals and after a couple games we got talking to this guy named Terry who spoke english very well. Anyways, we got to talking and told him how there are 3 of us here who would love to play in a league in China. I did it when I was studied in Barcelona and found that is was a great way to make friends and get into the Spanish culture. Terry, gave me his number and said he would put me in contact with a guy named Frank who also plays at the same court usually, but was away on business this particular day. Anyway, Frank called me up last week and ... read more
October 8th 2010
I would like to start off by first apologizing for the extremely tacky title to my first post but more importantly i would like to apologize for the amount of time it has taken me to get this blog up and working. And due to the high number of requests (pretty much only my mom), I finally got it started. From now on imma try and stay pretty active on it because itll be nice to keep all the people back home updated on what im doing and also, it will be cool to look back on after this experience is all said and done. Anyways, so the first month…shit, i cant believe its already been a month. Pretty crazy to think about because when we (For those who dont know, I came with 5 of ... read more
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