As the days have been turning colder and the daylight scarce, I assume many of you have wondered, “what ever happened to Stephanie and Cody in China?” Well, wonder no more! Its update time, with all the gritty (interesting?) details included. Here we go, time to get excited: In mid September Stephanie made it back home safe and sound, battling Hong Kong hurricanes, towing several hundred pounds of luggage (mostly collectible rocks, I think) and even an overnight airport slumber party. While she was making her way across the Pacific, I, Cody, was heading back north on a day-long [View Full Entry]

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Near the end of June I found myself humming and hawing over what to do when my Chinese visa ended early this fall. I threw around a few options: I could continue teaching English (hopefully at a University this time), become a student (studying Chinese), or travel somewhere else in southern asia (a return to India being my first choice). I went back and forth and forth and back, a bit unenthusiastic about all of my potential paths, and during all this pondering, it never occurred to me that coming home was also an option. When this thought finally entered my [View Full Entry]

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Here we are at the Beijing 2008 Olympics! This first post will just be a quick one, as we can't upload any photos from our camera yet, but so far the Games have been nothing short of amazing. We arrived on the 18th and have already seen lightweight freestyle wrestling and men's beach volleyball semi-finals. Wrestling was INCREDIBLE. If you happened to catch the men's 55kg, you saw the 21 year-old American, Henry Cejudo win gold. We got to see him from his very first match all the way to the finals as wrestling is completed in one day. His energy [View Full Entry]

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One lazy day in Tiger Leaping Gorge (Yunnan province), we started planning our next adventures. As we consulted our guidebook and prepared to travel further south, a nice British lad suggested we check out Xinjiang. Xinjiang - the Chinese province that borders Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, and Tibet and houses the Taklamakan and part of the Gobi Desert, along with the southern reaches of the Siberian Taiga. Why we hadn't thought of this earlier was beyond us, but from that moment forward, our sights were set on the Northwest. Some of our [View Full Entry]

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Panzhihua Panzhihua in southern Sichuan was described to us as an armpit of a city, a necessary but very unpleasant stopping point on one's way from Chengdu to Lijiang in Yunnan province. After arriving in Panzhihua - post-overnight sleeper train - we decided to give the city a shot. This was in part due to the fact that we dawdled a bit after breakfast (who, us?) and missed all of the day buses to Lijiang. There was no way we were going to miss bumping through the beautiful mountainous terrain on the Lijiang route by taking a night-bus, so we found [View Full Entry]

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Our summer travels have officially begun! On June 24th we packed up our apartment, said goodbye to our bikes :( and boarded a sleeper train south. First stop, the province we have been eyeing since before we boarded the plane for Hong Kong. Yunnan. We plan to travel the province for about a month going wherever the wind takes us with a definite stay in Tiger Leaping Gorge (look it up!) After that, who knows! Our only commitment lies in August when we have diving, wrestling, boxing, and track & field tickets for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Life is tough... This [View Full Entry]

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Dear Ms. Halfmann I heard that you'll not teach us next term, so I write this letter to you. Now, I can still remember after the first class you taught, my classmates thought, half a man + half an animal = Ms. Halfmann??! (I'm sorry that's only a joke) I like you very much, you are fantastic and you can make me happy all the time. Although unluckily, you'll go, I think we can keep contact by e-mail. I'll miss you! You are always a good friend and teacher Good Luck! Yours, Spring. (A farewell letter from Spring, class #3. [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday June 25, 2008 The last two Sundays we volunteered with a organization called the Rainbow Project. This org was started by two expat women working for the NGO Ecologia, and has a quickly growing number of expat and Chinese volunteers. So far the main aim of Rainbow Project has been to spend time with the children of Luo Shui, a city where among extensive other damage, a primary and middle school collapsed, taking the lives of over 200 students. Luo Shui is now a tent community, as its inhabitants wait for temporary houses. Rebuilding the city will take years. [View Full Entry]

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It has been 51 days since our last post. 51 days that have been jam-packed and eventful. We'll give you a rough outline of what we've been up to, but you'll find most of the details in the captions of our pictures, one for every day you all have excitedly waited for this update, a whopping 51 in total! We began April with another trip to Qing Cheng mountain. This time using the whole weekend, sleeping in a mountain-top guesthouse, and climbing to the Taoist temple atop the tallest peak. We made the trip with some of Cody's classmates, who all [View Full Entry]

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Simon says ... Well, you’ll have to forgive me if this teacher-fact post lacks the usual flowagocity and flourishes, not to mention pics of vast countryside, lion dancers, and neon-lit caves. Cody and I now find ourselves back in the daily routine here in Chengdu, but the daily routine is still packed with surprises and revelations. These are just a little harder to pick out, now that things like being alert to stay alive when street-crossing, and finding and enjoying various animal “trotters” (feet) in our lunches, just compose another day in the life. The c [View Full Entry]

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