As I was leaving Bo'ao, the innkeeper gave me a ride to the city where I needed to catch my bus, quite an upgrade from the little local bus I had taken on the way there, packed to the gills with people. It was at the bus station that I got my first hint of the difficulties of traveling during Chinese holidays, as I had to wait almost 2 hours for my bus. Part of that might have been because I was taking the express bus, which was the peak of luxury--huge reclining leather seats, minimal music, no stops--all of which [View Full Entry]

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After a long hiatus, here is the continuation of my vacation... My full day in Bo'ao, I decided to go biking. Being able to bike is one of the things I miss the most in Shenzhen (I didn't really bike in Philly either, but I missed it there, too), but the traffic is really out of control. Things seemed slightly better in Bo'ao, and the innkeeper had a few suggestions of interesting places to go. I didn't really have a sense of how fast I normally bike, or what the distances would be, nor did I have a particularly good map, [View Full Entry]

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Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I was busy doing work and other exciting things, and now I am in the midst of battling my third head cold in just over two months in China. Something about my living here doesn't agree with my immune system, but I'd really like to figure it out and stop getting sick all the time. In any case, I will resume regular posting sometime soon. [View Full Entry]

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Okay, sorry for the delay, I have been working literally non-stop (except for sleeping, eating, and Chinese lessons, which seem like work) since I woke up Monday morning. In any case, on my second day in Hainan, I arrived in Bo'ao, where I was to stay in the Bo'ao inn, a very small bed and breakfast owned by an American expat. I spent a while chatting with the very friendly owner, and then set out to explore the beach. On the way was a temple (I don't remember who/ what it was for anymore), and a bunch of Hainan goats grazing. [View Full Entry]

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Due to various internet difficulties, there were a number of blog posts that got written and were not published, so I thought that it would be easiest if I just gave you the summary of my vacation (with pictures!) broken down into however many parts I feel like. The first day of my vacation was National Day, which honestly wasn't very different than any other day except that there were people selling Chinese flags on the street and when I went to the supermarket, there were people watching the festivities in Beijing on the televisions in the electronics department (they were [View Full Entry]

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Today I saw more of China than I had seen before! We took some of our students to Guangzhou to hear representatives from two colleges speak at an international school, and our school provided a bus for us. There was some mention of seeing the city or staying over, but ultimately we were so tired that we decided we wouldn't be able to see that much. But we were hoping the ride itself would be of interest. We didn't realize how long it would take, since it is only an hour between Shenzhen and Guangzhou by (bullet) train, but I guess [View Full Entry]

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I am very sorry for not updating as often as promised. Things have been VERY crazy at work this week, and probably will be up until our break for the national holiday at the end of next week. I'm still not 100% sure what I'm doing for it, but right now my plan is to go to Hainan (the Haiwaii of China) and relax for 8 days. This October 1st is the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party, so it's a really big deal, though I've been so busy that I don't really know what's going on. One [View Full Entry]

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"I'm having a bad China day" is something that I hear with relative frequency. It's hard to describe what exactly they can entail; there is not one specific thing that gives you a bad China day. I guess in some way, it is just a bad day, except being in a foreign country makes all of the little things much harder to deal with. You get ripped off by someone, you are late for work and suddenly everyone in front of you decides to stop and look at the goods people are selling on the street (this is a particularly big [View Full Entry]

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Today I experienced my first typhoon! It actually started Sunday night--I left the building I was in and noticed that it was really hazy, like from bad pollution or a forest fire. I got a call from a friend later in the evening and he suggested I stay in--until then I hadn't noticed, but the whole sky had darkened and there was more or less constant lightening. A little later it started to pour. Yesterday, when I woke up, it was still hazy (though it had stopped raining), so I thought to check the weather and discovered that we were indeed [View Full Entry]

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Teacher's day was Thursday, and I meant to write about it then, but so it goes... I thought my Teacher's Day was going to have to involve going to Hong Kong to get a tourist visa, since my work visa is about to expire and I still don't have my residence permit, but luckily I got an extension and now I will be legal until after my health test is processed. Which meant I got to experience some of what might be my new favorite holiday. Teacher's Day for me actually started Wednesday after work, when a bunch of parents came [View Full Entry]

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