emilyng

One of the teachers at our school has been a photographer for the past couple years, and he wanted to take pictures of Martha and I. They were pretty cheesy, but I still liked most of them!... read more

Although I haven’t had a birthday party in quite a few years, everyone in China really went all out for it! Martha woke up really early and made everyone in the house pancakes and eggs and bacon. She even bought a pan because the only thing in the kitchen is a wok. When I got to school each one of my classes had decorations and performances for me, and during one pretty intense sessions of the kids jockeying for position in the pictures, one kid was hit in the face so hard he got a bloody nose! I took him to the nurse and soon after it was time for lunch. All of the English teachers, the principal, and the vise principal took Martha and I out to lunch and we had so many dishes I ... read more

The Beijing Zoo, famous for it's great, spacious Panda exhibits and it's depressing, cramped exhibits for every other animal is a place a lot of people choose not to see. I do love pandas though, so I thought I'd stop by...... read more

Although it can't be seen from space, the Great Wall is the world's longest wall and the biggest ancient architechture. Martha and a friend from our volunteer house, Sandy, chose a particularly difficult section of the wall to hike. The most fit in our tour group of about forty took at least two hours to get to "tower number six". We started from zero, and as the numbers progressed, we came to less and less restored parts of the wall. The hike became increasingly difficult with every tower we passed, and by the forth tower we were climbing up heavily overgrown paths with more dirts and shrubs than stones. Although we were completely exhausted afterwards, we made it to the top, unlike at least seventy five percent of our group. On the way down, I twisted ... read more

The International Horticulture Expo of 2011 was held in Xi'an, China. Covering more than 1000 acres and recieving over 12 million visitors, the Expo was quite a site to behold. It was supposed to showcase green civilization and promote the nation's image. The site of the expo was Guangyun Lake. The theme was "Eternal peace & harmony between nature & mankind, nurturing the future earth---a city for nature, co-existing in peace". It seems ironic considering how smoggy and poluted Xi'an is, but at least they're working on it. Martha and I went with the music teacher from our school and her daughter, two of the sweetest and most generous people I have ever met. It was beautiful, but absolutely packed, considering there were about 200,000 people there on the day we went.... read more

The school that I work with is so welcoming! I get about 70 "hallo teacha!"s everytime I walk through the halls. It's a primary school, grades 1-6. I teach about four classes a day. Something very different about schools in China are the lunch breaks. At my school the kids get two hours to eat, play, and sleep. There's even a whole other building attached to the canteen with a bunch of beds for the kids. ... read more