Last week I got a new tutoring job in addition to the two eight year olds I teach once a week for an hour. I'm currently tutoring a CEO of a major chinese company. The ad on the listserve said "looking for female tutor" and was about this 40 year old ceo who wanted to meet frequently. SHE wanted someone to practice conversational English before SHE moved to Vancouver for business. I was like, oh cool, a female business woman I could talk to about the economy in Shenzhen-- sweet. I applied for the job, got it, and received a call [View Full Entry]

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There's a Taiwanese restaurant around the corner from our Chinese classes. We'd been there once before, and the Taiwanese owner, who speaks perfect English, was really cool with us. He gave us his business card and told us to call him if we ever needed any help, kept talking about what a favor we were doing for China, and gave us the most delicious lemon spiced tea for free. The food was good and inexpensive, so we decided to go back. This time we wanted coffee with our meal. He told us that in Taiwan, you only drink coffee after the [View Full Entry]

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After Chinese class and a brief stint at 3D Bar ("a place where fun nights out go to die" -Dan), Cody and I found ourselves wandering around Shenzhen on a Wednesday evening. We walked aimlessly, imploring China to provide us with some form of entertainment. Due to the severe lack of benches in China, we sat in the filth against a wall to people watch. China instantly came through for us. Within five minutes, a group of Chinese toddlers curiously surrounded us. One of the youngest, a girl of about two with pink crocs and rice smeared on her face, promptly [View Full Entry]

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Election day in China. I prefaced each of my lessons today with pictures of McCain and Obama, the words election, vote, candidates, and campaign. Most of it went over their heads, but they all recognized Obama and shouted his name over and over, mostly because they like the way it sounds, but also because most Chinese seem to think he's "soo good, soo good!" They were praising him before his victory-- I'd love to be able to read Chinese newspapers to see what the Chinese media was saying about him. None of my kids knew who McCain was, and Bush's name [View Full Entry]

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This past weekend a group of us went camping at Tai Long Wan on Hong Kong Island. The metro ride into Hong Kong from Shenzhen is surprisingly easy and fast. It took less than an hour. We then took two buses towards the coast and the mountains-- I had no idea that Hong Kong Island was so hilly and had such amazing beaches! From the last bus stop it was a six mile hike, which took us three hours due to the steepness of the trails, to reach the beaches. The views were incredible! Big Wave Bay is comprised of two [View Full Entry]

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What a good China weekend! I got up early this morning to meet Pearl, one of the Chinese English teachers from my school, and Ian for a trip to Nanshan. We went to Tianhou Temple, which is dedicated to a goddess that protects fishermen. Shenzhen was a small fishing village before Reform and Opening, so Tianhou is sort of like its patron saint. The temple is over a thousand years old, but it's been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times. It's small and peaceful, with the smell of incense permeating the air and a drum tower for the evenings and bell tower [View Full Entry]

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Bright and early on Thursday we caught a bus to Yongding, a town in interior Fujian. The bus trip ended up being about two and a half hours, so we were in Hukeng Village by taxi early. We met some locals who offered us a room in their tulou right away, so we were able to drop off our bags in our very basic accommodations and get something to eat. Our tulou was falling apart in places, with one entire section of wall crumbling. Only half of the circle was inhabited, but it was convenient, close to the restaurants and the [View Full Entry]

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National Day break! What a trip! Our 14 hour train from ride Guangzhou to Xiamen (Fujian) was a blast. The train was packed, and we were all separated because we got our tickets so late. I had to have two women move out of my sweet window seat, and made instant friends with the guy next to me who was a librarian at a science and technology library in Guangzhou. He was a Hakka and told me all about the tulous we were about to go see in Fujian. He got off around midnight, and other random Chinese people squeezed into [View Full Entry]

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One of my students' English names is Undertaker. That takes a close second to Smite. China nearly got the best of us and buried our dreams of a good break. Nearly. The Shenzhen Education bureau has had our visas for about two weeks to obtain our work visas. We have a week off next week for National Day, and most of us were planning on traveling. However, you can't travel in China without your passport because you need them to check into hotels or for obvious reasons if you leave the country. Not knowing when we were going to get our [View Full Entry]

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It's been awhile There's a typhoon coming! A typhoon! Doesn't that sound much more exciting than big rain storm with wind? I was looking for hostels for a potential trip to Hunan (type in Zhangjiajie or Wulingyuan into google images to look at where I'm going - hopefully, if we get our passports back - for National Day break. We have a week off but because of the holiday we have to work Saturday and Sunday! It feels like so much less of a break when they take away your weekend! Check out the description for one of the hostels under [View Full Entry]

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