http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Asia , China , Jiangsu , Zhangjiagang en-us Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:22:45 BST Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:22:45 BST hey so i actually uploaded these like weeks ago..but then when I tried to look at all the pictures before I sent out the entry I couldn't. Totally forgot about until now and I still can't see any pics after the first page but I'm redirected to some site in Chinese..so I'm guessing you'll be able to Anyway here are a bunch of pictures from the May school show tutoring and maybe some other r http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-278315.html So I haven't written since last week when we were all just happy that we weren't anywhere near the earthquake and weren't really aware of how catastrophic it really was. As the number of victims has gone up though and as we found out that so many of the victims were kids it's been extremely sad here for everyone. On Tuesday the day after the earthquake we had a schoolwide ceremony outside w http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-277912.html hey just letting you all know that we're all safe from the earthquake here in zhangjiagang. I actually found out about it on msn around 430 yesterday after my classes. the article on msn said that it could be felt in shanghai which is strange because we are actually closer to the center of it and felt nothing. of course when i searched china in google news google was then blocked from my http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-275646.html hey I brought the letters my 6th graders had written to their penpals this morning to read while I was eating dinner tonight and omg I was actually laughing out loud I'm gonna look through them now as I'm typing this and put up some quotes here for you enjoy haha. hopefully you'll actually think they're funny and its not just because i'm exhausted after teaching tutoring for 6 days straight http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-274456.html here are some more ktv pics just realized i actually could have just added them to the other post but whatever. oh and here's the link to the videos too ktv video playlist tomorrow's may day so we don't have school think i'm just gonna do laundry and hangout and then go to wuxi on friday...we'll see. enjoy http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-271430.html heyy just figured I'd update with news from the the last few weeks...First I went to Fen Si Jia's house the past 2 weekends which was fun. The first weekend me and Candice went out to dinner with her family to a hotpot restaurant in Jianying the city next to Zhangjiagang. I'm guessing we must have hotpot restaurants at home and I've just never been to one but if not..its kinda like fondue whe http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-269278.html it's been a while everything here is good though and I finally have a some pics and videos to upload my kids are all still crazy as usual as you can see from the pics lol but i have managed to get them to participate in hosting flat stanely and in a postcard exchange which are both working out well I rewrote the flat stanely story for my 4th grade classes so they were able to understand http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-262009.html heyyso not much has been new since we got back to school..my kids quickly got back into their normal routine of being absolutely insane lol but whatever..haha. today one of the 2nd grade classes was so crazy when we were trying to play a game that i ended up just stopping the game to play simon says so they could move around and then teach them a song. but they wouldn't even get quiet enoug http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-252587.html ..and we're back to schoolwe started teaching again on wed so it's only been 2 days so far but its actually going surprisingly well haha.I think that a big part of it is that i'm actually expecting the kids to be crazy now and i'm pretty used to just going with the flow which is good. While the kids are definitely still off the walls I've been trying to get them to discuss what they did over http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-248642.html that's happy new year in chinese the actual new year's day was a week ago now..but the holiday is still being celebrated here. well not even celebrated really..everything is just closed haha its getting a little annoying if you can't tell.. as of last wed on the 6th everything here has been closed. all restaurants and stores besides the big chains like rtmart and kfc and thank god our su http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-245767.html finally made it back ..well actually i've been back for 3 days now but haven't gotten around to writing on here cause its freeezing in the room of my apt that has internet lol. i got a space heater today though and i have it right next to me so i can finally bear to sit in this room for more than 5 min haha. k so the trip was amazing everything was a little last minute and there were a m http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-241713.html wow it's been a crazyy past week i'm gonna go backwards so..1 ..not sure what i last wrote on here about my plans for our 6 week vacation as it's changed a million times over the past few weeks but its finally set First I'm going with Alicia who teaches in Changzhou through ciee and her friend and her friend's 2 friends..so 5 of us total.. to the Phillippines for a week and from there Al http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-234306.html heysoo first of all i finally got a few pics of the noodle place and of one of the muslim restuarants i eat at about once a week..they're not such great pics cause i was trying to be discrete since there were people eating who probably wouldn't want me to take their picture lol but as soon as i figure out how to ask if i can take a pic and to tell them that i want to take pics to show you gu http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-231711.html ha. so i'll start with last week. on monday carol very vaguely mentioned that there would be some kind of dinner for foreign teachers that thursday... then on thursday i found out that it was actually just for foreigners living in zhangjiagang in general not just teachers and that we were to meet at the front gate and someone from the school would drive us to the hotel where the dinner was. we t http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-230006.html so i'm back in the office soo annoying..not only do we not have the internet but we have no electricity they've been doing some insane work..like digging up tons of the sidewalk and stuff near our apt building and then today some guy accidently cut our wires it happened around 1230 right before I had to go teach so I just left thinking that by the time I got back they would have fixed i http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-228256.html so yesterday and today have been kind of crazy...we were originally going to visit tiffany and michelle in Xuzhou a few weeks ago but for whateevr reason it didn't work out..then we planned on going this weekend but last week they found out that they had some kind of competition that they had to judge..so they wouldn't really be able to hangout with us if we came. so we planned on going next week http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-225603.html soo once again i haven't written in awhile..things here have been pretty routine though..aside from the fact that we now have internet in our apt. which is amazing of course now that i don't have to plan to go to the office to put up pics and stuff..i'm just lazy and never do lol. anyway my students have been pretty crazy as usual lol..but i think i'm starting to be able to control them a bi http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-224483.html hello..haven't written on here for awhile so i should have lots of stories but of course i forget most of them....haha anyway we went to Wuxi with Fun Shi Ja last weekend which was fun. She told us that she was gonna drive us there but it actually turned out that her parents drove us and then they visited her aunt who lives there while we shopped. Neither of them really speak any English so we http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-219563.html hey soo wednesday was a lot of fun..first me drew and fabrice went to the EF teachers halloween party down the street. we stopped on the way and picked up some random crackercookie type things to bring and then took a cab like a 30 sec. ride to the apt building lol we didn't know it was that close lol. it was raining and cold out and the party was a bbq outside haha but there was a roof http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-216574.html hey..so first of all I just came into the office..and there's a teacher and like 11th grade kid having a mtg in here or something lol. The teachers talking a lot though and then the kid's just kind of looking at the floor and mumbleing something every few min..so I'm guessing he's in trouble..not really sure though lol. Its pretty weird thoiugh cause Candice was already in here when I got here. http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-215746.html its been kind of hard to find time to actually sit down and write a whole entry and put up picsvideos so even though i just uploaded an entry i actually wrote that yesterday in the afternoon and couldn't put up the pics until today..so here are a few more updates and a few more picsvideos from yesterday.1. i figured out that i can buy bread and rolls at the cake store across the street and on http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-214162.html So..everyone wants to know how the singing went on Sat lol..it was ok. Not so much to tell about really though. We went over to the stage area outside around 9am and all of the kids in the whole school were carrying out chairs from their classroom to sit on. The primary classes each have a class set of plastics stools which are light..but the older kids carried out their metal chairs from all ove http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-213886.html it's been awhile since I wrote on here last..so the main updates are 1.Steve got sick over our National Day vacation and had to go to the hospital in Shanghai. He was there for 2 weeks and may have had appendicitis but its kind of unclear..and now he has to go home to recover and will come back at the begininning of Dec.2. Saturday is the school's 10th anniversary so there will be a celebrati http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-211907.html So since I wasn't able to get online in the week before Nanjing..I have many updates which by now are already old haha..but here they are anyway..Monday morning I woke up and my left eye was swollen almost shut. I wasn't that surprised because I've been waking up with one of my eyes swollen every few days and then the swelling goes down by the evening. I've been thinking about what it could poss http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-210084.html here are some more pics http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-209778.html Great time in Nanjing Candice and I got the bus at 930 Tues. morning and were in a random dirt parking lot in Nanjing by 1200. Not sure where we were or if we'd be able to get an actual taxi we got into an unofficial taxi and I showed them the address of the hostel that I had Sharon one of the chinese english teachers write for me in Chinese. As usual in China well at least in large citie http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-208816.html so while I'm trying to upload some videos of the show I'll update you on the rest of the week.Last week Carol asked Candice and Fabrice if a camera crew from the local tv channel could film them for a day. It wouldn't be that weird except hat the reason the picked the 2 of them is that their skin is darker lol anywhere else that would be racist and offensive but not in China. They said that http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-206098.html We left for Shanghai right after my last class on Friday and in a total rush to leave...i forgot my passport that's an annoyed face. I wasn't even gonna mention it here since I still can't believe I did that..but there are so many stories to tell as a result of that only good ones that I have to. So anyway...we took a cab to the bus station about 2min from school and got tickets for a bu http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-204860.html so i've been here forever lol..and i think the waitresses are waiting for me to leave..but i just wanted to upload a few pics from candice's camera..enjoy http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-203974.html So the internet's been down again and therefore I haven't been able to write in awhile. For some reason only skype works which I guess is good..but we can't look at any websites..the computer guys have been working on it though so eventually we should be able to get online for now though its back to the internet cafe lol.so anyway the latest news..Flora called us Sunday morning and asked us if http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Jiangsu/Zhangjiagang/blog-203946.html