Av1

Ah. So. Time for a new adventure I think. It's been a while for this travel blog, but time to break it out so my parents don't think I'm dead. My new adventure began with a tearful metro ride to the train station. Downside to living in a new place temporarily - you have to say goodbye to all your new best friends. All we needed were a few cameras and a film crew to capture our last heart wrenching moments on the metro platform as Kristen sobbed into my bed sheet that I gave her and I pulled my hand from hers to jump onto the metro at the last minute. Train ride to Guangzhou where I missed the last train to the airport for 12 rmb and instead took a cab for 120. Doing ... read more

Hello all! Gave you some halloween pictures of my kids. Thought I would share my chinese progress with you, give you an idea of how it's going. Wrote a mini essay on how I celebrate my christmas back home, while having a chinese character desktop application allows you to make cool looking chinese writing, you have to hope that the first suggested character that pops up is the correct one, seeing as for every tone less spelling of a word in pinyin there are 3 to 8 different characters that could be the word you are looking for. 我的 好朋友问 我怎么过圣诞节在美国， 所以我告诉他； 在早上，我的妹妹气喘我 和我们 去楼下和我们拿我们的袜子。 然后，我们 坐在我的姐姐的 床， 和 我们打开一个礼物， 然后我们 去我们的父母的床和打开。 什么时候我们唇部准备 我们去楼下和坐在我们的客厅。 我们不写名字在我们的礼物所以没人知道那一礼物是他们的。 我们放贴着在礼物。 然后，逐个， 我们选礼物和打开他们。 然后我们做圣诞凡； 火鸡， 土豆， 和我们吃圣诞的蛋糕和巧克力 和馅饼， 和我们喝红葡萄酒。 然后，通常我们睡觉在客厅在萨法。 然后我们看一个新电影和我们吃巧克力 和我们睡觉。 (since corrected) Popped it into google translate to see ... read more

Hello friends! It has been a long time since I wrote, I've been busy doing things worth writing about. Got back this morning from a well earned summer vacation in the most beautiful place in China - Guangxi province, namely Guilin and Yangshuo. If you've ever seen a Chinese painting with a river, mountains, and a tiny boat floating serenely through the middle of the picture, you've seen Yangshuo. So much has happened I though I'd revert to my standby of bullet points of important events. Arrived in Guilin with a coworker from school, Kristen, who coincidentally was from that area and said I could spend a few days at her house. Naively expecting her to live in an apartment in the middle of the city, I hopped on her minibus and realized quickly 'from guilin' ... read more

Hello All! Phrase of the Week: My Knee Hurts! Vocab words: Goldfish, seahorse, shell, bubbles, starfish. So second week of teaching flew by! Just read over my last china entry and it was dreadfully dry, so apologies for that. When I end up at my computer after a long and tiring week I seem to just sludge out some boring junk about my day, when there are much more interesting things I could be telling you. For example: Women in China do not shave. I find this comforting, and something I feel very happy to join in with because I am very lazy. Still amusing to see women with really hairy legs though. In restaurants/food making establishments, there is no need to dispose of unwanted parts of the animals body (i.e. eyes, bones, skin, feet) because ... read more

Hello friends, Welcome to the welcome back entry of Av's travel blog. Apologies to those who were glad to be free of the (semi) constant emails describing every piece of food that Fish and I ingested during our months in Europe but said little about what we were actually doing. If you would rather not hear about my life, please unsubscribe now. I'm not sure how easy this website is to figure out (are you reading this grannie?) so I apologize if you are forced to read these entries. The travel blog website is clearly an easy way for me to avoid personal contact with a huge list of people that have at least a slight interest in what I am doing, so if you prefer a more direct form of communication or a more personalized ... read more