Lin'an

I'm sorry I have not posted something since I moved, but I have been busy traveling and working. These are some pictures of my new town, Lin'an. Lin'an is located about 30km west of Hangzhou, and about a 3 hr bus/train ride from Shanghai (I don't know for sure how far it is to Shanghai, I have not made the trip..) But I absolutely love it here in Lin'an. I wish would've come here when I first came to China! There are people my age that I can hang out with and they speak english pretty well. Much better than in my town in Shanghai. The town is much cleaner and much much much much more quiet. It is not overcrowded and it is very pretty. Surrounded by mountains as you can see from the pictures. The movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was filmed near my town. The bamboo forests around Lin'an are bountiful! Yao Ming also had his wedding photos taken right next to my town!! Those are the 2 claims-to-fame in my town!

Right now I am teaching in 4 different primary schools in Lin'an. I work for an agency that places teachers in schools. The company that I work for is trying to get their curriculumn into these schools (and eventually build a school in the town) and I am more-or-less marketing for my company and their curriculumn. I am teaching much less now too. I am only teaching from 9:50-2:30 everyday (4 classes) which is absolutely amazing!! So much better than teaching 6 or 7 classes/day in Shanghai. The kids are much better behaved and its a lot more fun b/c I am really just playing games with the kids everyday!

Many of these pictures are taken from the top of this hill overlooking the town. The town is very small, with only a few supermarkets, 2 kfc's, no mcdonalds, and 3 bars. If you want something that is not local, you have to go into Hangzhou.

I am living on Zhejiang Forestry University on the outside of town. I am teaching one university class on Friday's for students who are potentially going abroad. The class is really casual (no tests, homework, or grading) and I have been told by the int'l office to teach them about western culture and practice their oral english. The class is from 6:30-8:30 on Friday. I am so suprised that the students even show up for the class. Because they will not receive a grade or anything and it is on Friday evening, I don't think I would be attending the class if it were in America! But many of the students seem genuinely interested in the class. I think they enjoy it because I am only 2 or 3 years older than them, so I think they feel more comfortable talking to me.
The picture of the track and football field is from my apartment. My apartment is located at the center of campus (which is really great). The student center is right across the street. I play ping pong there, as well as work-out in the gym they have on the second floor (although the gym is actually 2 big rooms with some random work-out machines!!) I'm right next to the supermarket on campus and the 2 best cafeterias.
The football/soccer field is right across the street and i play there often. Although I am really sick of the way chinese play football. They literally just cut the ball, back and forth, back and forth, and its SO frustrating sometimes (they aren't going anywhere, ...just back and forth!!) And the chinse ARE competitive, but when they play sports, it is always for leisure and not competitive, so i don't try and tackle hard! I have a few times when I'm just fed up and aggrevated with some chinese guy just cutting it back and forth, back and forth, but that usually ends with the guy lying on the ground...

But I have met so many people here! I always have something to do, whether its play ping pong, soccer, basketball, hiking, eating lunch or dinner, etc. I'm more-or-less a celebrity here (especially with the female population!!) This one chinese guy named Zhu, who works in the int'l office and speaks the best english i've heard since coming to china, always asks me every detail about my love life. He thinks the western way of dating is fascinating (i think) and he always tells me how lucky i am because I meet so many girls. I hope i don't corrupt his mind, because the chinese way is MUCH different than ours. But I have found a few cute girls who are out-going...

But the universities in China are absolutely NO FUN!! Every night, the students have to be in their dorm rooms by 11 o'clock. If they aren't in their rooms, they have to find somewhere else to sleep. At 11 o'clock on the weekdays, the university shuts off all power to the dorms....and doesn't turn it back on until 5:30 the next morning!! I have power 24/7, but I tell the students that if that happened in America, I think there would be riots!! And the school has no events or ways for students to meet other students. Its kinda lame for them I think. I tell my students and friends about university life in america, and they are speechless as to all the stuff that students are allowed to do. They're so interested and fascinated by how fun and exciting college is. It's unbelievable really. I could go on and on about this, but i will stop there.

I have learned more about china and the chinese culture in Lin'an (in 1.5 months) than i did living in Shanghai (for 5 months)!! I love it here and it has really changed my view of China!

d








These are pictures from my trip to Beijing. I went there during the Spring Festival for about 2 weeks. Beijing is a completely different city than Shanghai. There are no skyscrapers! The streets are much wider, and the city as a whole is much more spread out than Shanghai. I really enjoyed going there and I was asked by many people: "Which city do you like more?" I would probably say Shanghai, but if I were visiting China, there is much more to see in Beijing. Beijing is more of the "real" China in that it is has much more Chinese culture than Shanghai. I have many pictures from this trip, but these are the few I chose. The first one you see is of Beijing airport. The airport is really neat. I watched a show on television about the construction of it. I was told that many visitors go out of their way to see this airport. It is massive and consists of 3 huge hangers.

Many of these are just random photos. There are 2 photos of the Great Wall of China, which was amazing. I went to the Beijing zoo on one afternoon (I don't really know why! I wanted to see the panda exhibit I think!) I put the picture of the white tiger up there because it was the coolest picture of the zoo. This tiger seemed to be posing for everyone. You should've seen all the chinese people taking pictures of it and "oohhhing and ahhing" at it. And by the way, the stereotype about asians loving to take pictures is completely TRUE! They love to take pictures. When I was showing my friend all of my pictures from Beijing, he told me that he didn't think I took enough pictures. I took over 150!!

The coolest place I went to was the Forbidden City. There is a picture of me in front of it where I am on the sidewalk and its off in the background. I went there on the second day I was in Beijing, took a ton of pictures of it, and when I got back to my hostel, I was messing with my camera and deleted everything I had on accident! I was heartbroken! I thought about going back there just so that I could take pictures of it again! The olympic sites were really neat too. I didn't go inside the bird's nest, but I have one picture of me inside the water cube. I also went and saw the Lhama Temple, The temple of heaven, temple of harvest, Tian'anmen Square, and a few other random places.
What was really cool to see was what they call "Hutongs," which are the old Chinese neighborhoods in Beijing. The literal translation is "narrow street," but they are these clusters of very old homes where people still live, and they are spread out all around the city. It was really neat because you would be walking through a hutong, and then all of a sudden it would stop and there would be a McDonalds on the corner. Where old meets new. Most of the people who lived in these hutong neighborhoods were considerably poor, but it was really cool just to walk through these narrow streets, just wondering around. And don't worry, I got plenty of communist gear to bring home (posters, hats, red mao books, etc.) And I almost missed my flight back home because I went out with these 2 brazilians ( who were traveling the world for 6 months, which is awesome) and an australian girl. We were all in the same room at the hostel that I was staying at. Which by the way cost me $3 us dollars to stay at per night!!
But back to teaching now... the weather has warmed up a bit, but its been raining off and on for the past 2 weeks!

I almost forgot.. Spellcheck

Right down the street from my house。。。














Must be luxuru... I think they may have just run out of room! I've seen some signs that are much better than this one, but I never have my camera with me!

I have been on Winter Break now for about a month, and am bored out of my mind. There is not a lot to do in my town, unless you like: 1. Kareoke 2. shopping (a few places) 3. I don't know what else....
This picture is of a temple (I don't know the history behind it) within the ChuanSha Park. The park is actually right next to my apartment, but its pretty small and insignificant. I actually had trouble finding something to take a picture of unless you want to look at construction!

I have gone into downtown on a few days to wonder around a little bit. I was close to going to a man-made "hill" just outside of Shanghai to snowboard, but after looking at pictures of it online, I decided it would not be worth it. Its indoors and I think that I could spit to the bottom. http://www.wangjianshuo.com/personal/places/shanghai/ski/shanghai.ski-jianshuo-skiing.jpg
I was pretty sick for about 2 weeks with a cold/flu. I haven't been that sick in years, but it made me cancel my trip to Hangzhou, which was pretty disheartening.
I am going to Beijing on Jan. 27th for a little over a week during the Spring Festival. The Spring Festival is from Jan. 26th to Jan. 30th and it celebrates the Chinese New Year (lunar year). Its the year of the Ox! More or less, the Spring Festival is like our X-mas. People go home to see their families and spend time with them. I talked to one guy who was taking a 32 hour train（2 day）ride to his hometown in SW China. I told him that I would tell my family to forget it and I'll see you when I can! He couldn't afford a plane ticket, which he said he would (obviously) prefer. He hasn't been home in almost 10 yrs though!

Well hopefully I will be able to post some pictures of the trip on here.

New Year's 2009

For New Year's Eve, I went out with a few teachers from work. We went to a bar on "The Bund," which is the area in Shanghai along the river. Near the bar that we went to, we saw a Hooter's near by! We did not go in (I regret it now), but I had to get a picture of it. I would've loved to see some Asian Hooter's girls, but we were in a hurry to meet up with these girls that were waiting for us. That is the Bund behind me.

My new ride..

Now I know that you are sitting at your computer thinking, "What a good looking bike!" That's because it is one hell of a bike. I think it was made for a 12 year old boy to ride (its WAY too small for me!) It folds in half. It has rear suspension. The brakes don't work very well. And it makes a lot of noise. It does help out a lot though!
Devin gave it to me for my birthday (along w/ a bottle of Beam!). I think he got me a smaller bike because I needed a bike that would fit in the elevator so that I could take my bike up to my apartment, where it would be safe. I need to find me a sweet little lady friend to ride on the back with me!! And I'm looking for somewhere to take it mountain biking!

Birthday

I am now in my apartment with a hangover, listening to the UK vs. West Virginia game. These pictures are from my birthday. These were taken at the art gallery/show I went to with Devin. In one of the pictures, there was this little chinese girl who danced around on a stripper pole! My landlord, Jackie, brought me a cake around 12 in the afternoon. When he came over, I was listening to the uk vs kansas st. game. I was drinking some brown water and he thought I was crazy for drinking so early. I told him that we usually drink bourbon when UK sports are on. And its my birthday, and I explained to him that, in the states, we (or most of my friends!) drink on our birthdays! He didn't want to have one with me. I received 2 cakes on my birthday. Both of which were very good, but had fruit all over them. The chinese eat fruit as a dessert. Most of the meals I have had in China conclude with watermelon, strawberries, kiwi, etc. They love it!
Devin picked me up and we met up with a girl that Devin knows who got us into this art show in downtown. It was alright. There were a bunch of strange looking foreigners there. A bunch of artsy looking englishman. It was "presented" in english so at least I could understand it. It was benefiting AIDS and there was an open bar, so I decided that I would donate and drink to people with the HIV. It was a for a good cause, so I indulged.
We then had dinner and went to a sports bar called Malone's. We had some drinks there. Two of Devin's friends met up with us. They don't really drink very much! I drank 3 pitchers before they finished 1 drink. They make me look like a raging alcoholic! But I had a steady buzz going for most of the day. So my birthday, chinese style, was fun. I think I''m going to celebrate with some of foreigners next weekend.