HI I always look forward to the updates, Andy. I have to print them off for your Gramps, because he doesn't like to read off of the monitor. Yeah...I know. Thanks for doing one of the things you do best. What????
Sorry you were so sick and glad you are better. Hope it stays away and you are very healthy. Glad you got to get away for the New Year and have fireworks. Jessie and family look and sound very nice. A job at the training center, you are taking after Karen. Way to go. Make em sweat. Thanks again for the great blog.
Stay safe and well. Love Angel
Andy, Glad you got to go back to Shaoyang. Thanks for the info, pictures and video. Not bad, hope you remain safe and have your friends back to run around with soon. I think it's great your teaching at the University, congratulations. Enjoy your adventures.
Love it Sir Andrew.....I always get a big kick out of your crazy blob.....oops! blog...That model man photo is a definate for your portfolio. Yep...I totally agree. Love from your "homey" gammey..
Happy New Year Great to see that you are doing well. Sorry you were so sick. I hope that you are on the mend. I wish I could send you some of my chicken soup. We had plenty to share. Be well and happy! Love you, Mim
Anyway, what else can you expect from Chongqing?
Come to Shenzhen, one of the most weathiest cities in China.
New York Times made a list of 'The 31 Places to Go in 2010', and Shenzhen made the list on the 20th.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/travel/10places.html?pagewanted=2
And Shenzhen is foreigners friendly and very inviting!
Wish you the best :-)
OH NO OH NO OH NO Holy k-rap Mr. Wade! Podizzle informed me of your decision to go back to China recently, and honestly, I'm happy for you. You're doing something that is awesome, granted shitty people can ruin that. Hell it's prolly not -as- awesome to you since you're doing it but from the outside looking in it is. For the kids who don't give a crap just start speaking to them in 1337 speak they'll get it as soon as you say ROFL or ZOMG or something they'll be like "Buy WoW Gold" so you can promptly reply "Go fuck yourself" and get arrested and persecuted by the corrupt as system there :D I hope you get your transfer back to the other city/prefecture whatever it is so at least you can have some comforts. NOB OF DOOM!!!!
Comesta Senor Xi Gua Nice hearing from you even if you're bored. The picture of the mountain (the climber) looks like a person laying their head on a pillow. Can you see the profile? I enjoyed your rambling. The humor does come out even if you don't know it. So you're bored ! You should live here. No, actually, I'm too busy to be bored. I'm trying to get my "stuff" together so I can move someday. It will take at least 20 years so I'm getting started NOW ! Gramps is in Colorado at a work site near Greeley. He'll be gone a few days. That gives me a little breather from looking for stuff that he can't find so I can do my own thing. Did your mom tell you we went to a cabin in Georgia in September for a few days vacation just with her? She was very relaxed and happy there and so were we. Keep us posted even if you don't have anything to say. Bye....S' later. Gma D
Glad you have something Andy, I am so happy that you at least have something to do because otherwise you just might have to come home.
Thank you so much for the update. Stay positive and on top of things. You are doing great! Mim
Table Tennis Andy, good for you that I "schooled" you in table tennis, or ping pong if you prefer, while you were home, so you can compete with the locals! I hope you have perfected your "poke" technique (and no, that's not dirty for any of you other readers, it's one of Andy's ping pong skills). Enjoy and be happy. FREE THE DOGS!!!!!
Pictures Wow, your buddy is a pretty good photographer, some of those photos look magazine quality. Those dog heads are... gruesome. Interesting. Good luck in your new school ^_~
Hey, on the bright side, at least you're going to be in the place where they distill China's "most famous alcoholic beverage." So if the place pisses you off too much you can just get tanked.
wow! Glad to see you're blogging again... since facebook's still blocked over here, there's no other way to keep in touch. And this is a one way street because blogspot blogs are still blocked... anyways, I want to say THANK YOU for sharing this terrifying story of your travel experience. Why? Because at the end of my first day (which is more like 48 hours all smashed into one dragging 'day', eh) back I was really feeling like no one on the entire planet knew what kind of misery I was feeling. This might sound weird, but it really lifted my spirits and made me happy to know that I wasn't the only one suffering and that in fact someone else--umm, I guess that's you--had it worse. Okay, that came across really self-centered and downright heartless, but I'm not sure how to say it. Basically, it made me feel not so alone in Hell and in addition made me feel thankful that at least my bimbo wasn't involved in losing my luggage.
So why don't I just tell you my story. Well, I got to the airport almost 2 hours early only to find out as I was checking in that the flight's time of departure had been advanced by an hour...oh and my bags were overweight. So there I was rushing to throw things away (it's not like China doesn't have soap... and those aerosal hairspray cans were illegal anyways). With less than an hour to get through security, I became a nervous wreck. When it was finally my turn to go through the metal detectors, I had only done half of the requirements (I took out the laptop but completely forgot to take off my shoes or remove the keys from my pockets). Needless to say, everyone behind me must have thought I was a first time flyer with a twitching disorder. On top of all this, I was worried that my luggage wouldn't make it because I had to transfer from Toronto. The ticket clerks told me that I didn't have to get my luggage, but I had a strong feeling like they were wrong (luckily, they were right). Anyways, after transfering in Toronto, I was finally on my way to Shanghai. Smooth sailing, right? Well, I had the pleasure and curse of sitting next to a very friendly Chinese woman on the plane. Her English was not too good (but a bit better than my Chinese), so we talked with each other through mixed Chinese and English. The first problem was that she couldn't understand any of the movies, so she wanted to talk with me... so I was constantly putting my movies on pause to listen to her life story, advice about what kind of girl I should date, pictures of her daughter and her dog, why she doesn't like her fellow Chinese people, how lazy Canadian wives are, etc. blah, blah , blah. The second problem was that she wanted to help me get to my destination (Nanjing). This doesn't sound so bad, does it? Well... I already knew how to get to Nanjing... but she didn't like my plans. And so she insisted on accompanying me to make sure I did it right. "Taking the bus at night is dangerous" "take the train"... but I don't like the train for exactly the reasons you mentioned above "oh... but bus no good" "very crowded" oh, and trains are what? empty? Finally, she agreed to allow me to take a long-distance bus to Nanjing, but she didn't think that the long-distance bus station at Shanghai Pudong Aiport had a bus to Nanjing. I tried to tell her that the website told me it did, but she said no. When we got to the airport, I kept insisting I wanted to go to the long-distance bus station at the airport. She kept insisting that I go to a different long-distance bus station in downtown Shanghai. So then she began asking people around the airport if the long-distance bus station at Pudong Airport had a bus to Nanjing. Apparently they all said no. I desperately wanted to go the extra couple of meters and find out for myself, from the people who actually work at the long-distance bus station. But considering that she insisted there wasn't one and that the people whom she had asked agreed with her, I would look like a stubborn, stupid asshole if I persisted in doing it my way. So finally I relented. Okay, let's take the shuttle bus downtown to your preferred long-distance bus station. Well, long story short--her stop is before mine, so she gets off before me with instructions of how to get off the shuttle bus at its terminus, get a taxi to the long-distance bus station, and how to get a Nanjing bus. Well, this story isn't getting any shorter... let's skip to the conclusion. The long-distance bus station that she told me to go to did NOT have a bus route to Nanjing. So NOW what?! I didn't know of any other long-distance bus stations, and I wasn't going to go all the way back to Pudong Airport. So what option did I have? train... ugh... taxi shift change time, so very difficult to find a taxi... waited 20 minutes... finally flagged down one successfully only to find out that I got myself a taxi driver who was one of those shouting-talker types... you know these people right? Everything they want to say comes out of their vocal cords as angry shouting. So here I was thinking this guy is pissed off that he had to take me to the train station and would go postal on me at any moment. Got to the train station and found myself exactly the mess that I was expecting. Crowds of people everywhere... people trying to sell me stuff.... one guy offered to drive me to Nanjing for "500rmb, 300rmb, 250rmb-final offer"... would have taken him up on that offer if I didn't worry that he would drive me off to somewhere where he could pillage my 2 massive luggages, laptop, and camera bag and then leave me stranded on the side of a highway somewhere. So I continued searching for the office to buy the tickets. There! I saw a place that looked like they were selling tickets. But the sign said that I had to walk up the stairs to the second floor to buy the tickets. At that moment--I swear--I drew a line in the sand and told myself that I was not walking up that long-ass flight of stairs with all this luggage and all these people looking at me and all this humidity choking me. I would get on a bus back to Pudong Airport and fly back to the U.S. before going up those stairs! So I decided to just go into the place that looked like it was selling tickets... and it was... (I'll never know why that stupid sign said you had to go upstairs to buy tickets). Luckily, I got myself a hard seat ticket. But then I had to get through all the crowds, security, and (a much shorter) flight of stairs to wait for my train. An hour passes, and the train boards... how to get all this shit on the train? Push, pull, and drag. That's all I can say. Luckily the train was perfect for my needs. It was actually a sleeper car that had been converted into a hard seat car. Basically, everyone sits on the lower bunk and they put their stuff on the upper bunks above. It was perfect. And the people were all friendly and talkative at exactly the level I needed (I didn't need a chatterbox... and no one who wanted to give me advice how about what I should do when I arrived in Nanjing). 3 hours later I arrived in Nanjing. The conductor helped me with my luggage, so I can't complain about this part of the journey. But there were more stairs as I wandered my way out of the train station. I got to the exit... how how to get a taxi. Basically, there was a long line to get a taxi. A bunch of people were walking around the station offering to take people in their unofficial 'taxi', ie their cars... at inflated prices. Considering that it was after 11pm and I began to worry that the hostel I had booked would not have 24-hour check-in, I finally accepted an offer. Now this hostel is noteworthy in Nanjing for being cheap and comfortable (very good, I like it), but notoriously hard to find, as on some random alley. Luckily, my illegal 'taxi' driver was patient enough to search through the darkness and nice enough to get out and ask some people in the area. Ultimately we found it. BUt was it open? YES!!!!! I made it by an hour (they shut down at 12:30am). I had an hour to sneak in some wifi. That's when I found an email with a list of things that I had to get done by Monday in order to prepare for my new job! And that's when I packed it all up and went to bed to try to forget all the madness....
Wow! THis has been theraputic. I almost feel like all of this is somehow... amusing. ANd I hope you now feel that you weren't alone in Hell this past week. I'm telling you what though, if this kind of stuff had happened to me last year on my first day, I would have freaked out. Probably would have pissed my pants and cried in front of everyone in Shanghai. I was REALLY lucky last. And in the grand scheme of thngs, I was pretty darn lucky this year too.
Stay in touch... hopefully facebook is unblocked soon...
[longest comment on a blog ever]
Sorry Xi Gua Sorry your trip started off rocky, put it sounds like it turned out great. That happens often in life. It's nice to be able to make a difference in people's lives, which you have done. Enjoy, be happy and be safe!
Mim commenting Great blog, Andy.... I enjoy every one of them. I love seeing all of the pictures. You look happy and you have a very cute girlfriend. Keep the blogs coming. You have some lurking relatives viewing and enjoying them too. Happy NEW Year!!!
Happy Thanksgiving It's a day late, but you'll get over it. Also my birthday was this week! Anyway, I was shown this clip of the Macy's parade and you should check it out if you aren't firewalled from YouTube: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FdDGbPY2RA0
I am an English teacher living in China! If you have any questions on my teaching experiences or a specific location please feel free to send me a message and i'll give you some information.... full info
Gams D
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HI
I always look forward to the updates, Andy. I have to print them off for your Gramps, because he doesn't like to read off of the monitor. Yeah...I know. Thanks for doing one of the things you do best. What????