Here is just a selection of what china has given me, which i will most surely miss. [View Full Entry]

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With Mary off in Toyko and Eli and Jaime in Borneo, I was forced to attack China's tiger leaping gorge with some new travel pals. Having spent my time in Dali half independent and half with my new English friends Emily and Katherine (both english teachers in Guangzhou, so there were hours of competing in memorable chinese stories....emily won with the story of rats running over her head just before going to bed). Moving on to Lijiang meant the possibility of meeting up with several CTLC teachers who were also planning on making Yunnan their favorite Chinese province. After a few [View Full Entry]

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It's spring Break and ALL of China has hit the ground running. Plane tickets are three times the usual. Trains are all booked. Hostels can charge ungodly amounts for a bed that lacks a mattress and a shower that lacks hot water (even though they claim hot water). Chinese merchants can get away with anything this week.....it's May holiday. Just as in October, the government of China declared May 1- May 7....holiday. I doesn't matter that the days are Tuesday to Monday....that is when holiday is...done. Most of my teacher friends had to work Sat. Sun and then Mon., an 8 [View Full Entry]

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An old friend from Rome, Rena, once wrote the top ten things she loved and hated about India after spending 7 months there. Here is your top ten lists for china. What I love about China. 10. Street food. No matter what it is (pig ear, dog meat, or ???) is always good and cheap and just want you wanted. 9. Communal eating at meals. Gone are the days of order envy. Whatever your friend orders, you get to try too. Theres always too much food and you if you don't like something, just go ahead and spit it right onto [View Full Entry]

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Tired of the same old pampered way of life (escalators to our destinations, lunch in our cafeterias, street food at ever corner, warm beds with only the occasional cockroach or mosquito, affordable bottled water at every bodega) mary and I planned to challenge ourselves and our friendship. Would we still be friends after one of us (me) forget to bring her own bottled water? Would we still be friends after one of us (me) wasn't a girl scout and therefore lacked any ability to properly build a fire? Would we still be alive after hiking for 2 hours, carrying all our [View Full Entry]

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I'm not the one who named the mountain the "penis mountain." I'm not the one who works at the evolution of sex in China musuem. I'm just the one giggling in the pictures. Let's just say, in a country when everything is censored and dating is forbidden until you graduate from high school, I was quite suprised when Mary and I arrived in the nearby drab town of Shaoguan. The afternoon fog never wore off, nor did the staring at the only two foreigners in town. We arrived on a four hour late train and marched right over to the nearest [View Full Entry]

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Life in between the trips and parties and parades is what my time in china is all about. The inbetween is my frustration, satisfaction, education and what consumes me. Frustration The staring....we all know I'm not Angelina Jolie....I mean I'm close in looks, but not in achievements. I have no adopted children, no People's sexiest man 2004 boyfriend, and after June 2007 no future prospect for a job. But regardless, I am stared at too no end. I have taken to wearing sunglasses in buildings! Which has led to a few almost falls. How do the stars see those sneaky little [View Full Entry]

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Would saying it "was too good to be true" be too cliche' to say right now? Might you see where this is going. The "price was too right" for our upcoming weekend with a Chinese tour group to China's second largest island (behind Taiwan?!?!) to be spelled out in long days along clear beaches sipping coconuts and perfecting our already pretty perfect tans. We embarked on our journey with high hopes, each of us being exposed in minor incidents to the idea of the Chinese tour, that we would prevail. As soon as we touched ground. we had plotted, we would [View Full Entry]

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Vang Vieng is where tourist live the good life. The town is a tourist creation. The only street is lined with bright neon lights, shops lined with "beer lao" t-shirts, pancake vendors and western resturants. Where else in SE asia can you lay in a bed, at a resturant, order banana pancakes and watch endless reruns of Friends starting at a dawn and ending sometime in the dark. It was crazy.....these restuarants were a craze among the backpackers. There were filled early and stayed that way late. It was sometimes hard to find a bed. If you are not catching up [View Full Entry]

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Being that March 8th was International Women's day, it was only naturally expected that we would celebrate in a grand way. My seventh grade office kicked off the women's day celebrations early by ordering a 15inch size cake, having it delivered to the office, sending the bill to our office leader (a man), and serving up cake slices the size of my entire head to all the women. There was much giggling and devouring......it would be a long celebration. The chinese are unexplainable and funny quite often, but somehow the men tend to be alittle easier to handle or understand. The [View Full Entry]

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