***The information provided in this travel blog are the views, ideas, and opinions of the author and not the U.S. State Department nor the English Language Fellow Program.*** Last Saturday I organized a speech competition for the English Access Microscholarship students in Gharm, Tajikistan. I thought I would still be teaching in Gharm at the time, but, as it turned out I could no longer live in Gharm and returned to Dushanbe. I did, however, return for the speech competition to show the director of English Access what a speech competition is and give ideas on how to run it. The [View Full Entry]

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This first video shows the treacherous road to Garm, Tajikistan from Dushanbe. It's literally 4 hours of freaking hell on a dusty, rocky, narrow, windy road. The scenery, however, is quite beautiful, but it's difficult to look at when you are in a taxi with a crazy driver who is weaving all over the road trying to avoid pot holes, cows, and sheep. I actually had callouses on my hand from holding onto the "oh shit" handle! One has to leave from Dushanbe at 6 a.m. to go to Garm and there is NO sleep on this road. It's eyes open [View Full Entry]

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My trip to see the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an was one of the highlights of my time in China, after Tiger Leaping Gorge (Yu Long Shu Shan) and The Great Wall. On the the eastside of the Xi'an train station you can catch a bus that takes you the 7 km to the Terracotta Warrior Site and it costs 7 RMB. The problem is it's kind of a hassle to find the bus and the area around the train station is dodgy...I mean really dodgy. Or you can book a tour with through your hotel or hostel for about 160 RMB [View Full Entry]

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When I started my vacation I knew that I had approximately three weeks to travel around China. The route was from Wuxi to Guilin/Yangshuo (in Guanxi Province), then to Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, and Tiger Leaping Gorge (all in Yunnan Province). TLG was the last stop on the trip, but it was the place I was the most excited about getting to. My friend and I arranged a mini bus to take us from Lijiang to Qiaotao (2 1/2 hours, 50 RMB each) to begin the hike to Tiger Leaping Gorge. When we arrived at the ticket gate we were greeted by [View Full Entry]

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Enjoyed taking random photos of people in the street. The people are what make the place! [View Full Entry]

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My trip to Guilin and Yangshuo proved to be just the vacation I needed. I flew to Guilin from Wuxi and stayed in the Guilin Riverside Hotel. The room was HUGE but the bathroom was like a Cracker Jack box and the water was only luke warm. Guilin was an 'alright' Chinese city with a night market and the Li River running through it, but Yangshuo was the better of the two cities. Yangshuo is much smaller, but somehow it had much more air pollution than Guilin. My friend and I rented bikes in Yangshuo and rode to Moonhill and the [View Full Entry]

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The best times I had in Egypt were in Luxor. The people there were so kind and much different than the Egyptians in Alexandria and Cairo. The people's lives depend on tourism, and of course there were annoying touts, but they were humorous and quite good at telling jokes in English. Some of the touts didn't like it when I spoke Arabic to them because they want to all tourists to be ignorant foreigners who don't know any better. However, when I was bargaining and told touts that I lived in Alexandria (which I did) they loved it, they spoke Arabic [View Full Entry]

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