Zwischel: in China

The Tai Tais come to lunch

2010-05-25T14:29:00.005+08:00

Happy Tuesday! Last week on this day, the Korean tai tais (Chinglish for housewives) of our Chinese class came to our new apartment for a little housewarming party. We found out the day before our midterm exams that we were moving, so when we went to school I was ecstatically excited and they had to know why! They asked to come over so we invited them to lunch at our favorite Suzhou cuisine restaurant, the Happy Family.

Don't we just look like a happy family? Also pictured are Doug, Tom and our Chinese teacher, Pang Lao Shi. She's the cute little one on the far left. Not pictured is Li Zi Ying, who is taking the picture because the waitress didn't seem to understand the concept of a camera. The Tai Tais presented us with a bouquet of little roses and a red envelope containing a far too generous cash gift! Then we went to our apartment, where we showed them a slideshow of our travels last year and served them coffee, tea, and old cookies. Aww....

You can't see much right now, and I promise a follow-up video coming soon. We're about to make some big purchases (couch, TV) and you want the full effect, right?? We did buy some plants to impress the Tai Tais, but Mr. Chairman is slowly eating them to death. Just telling you now so that when you see some pots lying around with just dirt in them, you'll know what was meant to be there.

The before

2010-05-13T09:21:00.005+08:00

Here's a video tour of the apartment/living quarters we left behind. "The after" to follow soon!

We're moving on Thursday. Also: why am I speaking Chinese mostly with non-Chinese people?

2010-05-09T21:46:00.003+08:00

Tonight Cullen and I moseyed down the hall to visit the Japanese teacher to find out when she wants to move next week because we're sharing a moving van provided by the school to do so. She takes Chinese courses three times a week in a class in the Suzhou New District with other Japanese students, so we were able to have a choppy, somewhat coherent conversation about the move. She wasn't "home" the first time we stopped by, but thanks to the ingenious design of these "apartments", there is a window into the kitchen/dining area/living room which makes the extravagance of privacy seem like one of the finer things in life that only the rich can afford. Since we are only English monkeys to be displayed for the school's street cred and not among the wealthy elite, we live like zoo animals while the random people who stay here (yes, they use this place as a hotel as well, somehow) gawk at us during breakfast, lunch, AND dinner! What better way to make us appreciate what we're moving away from, however; you can't appreciate the sweet without the sour. Anyway, yes, Cullen hoisted me up so I could adequately gawk at her living quarters, but in my defense I only did so once I knew she wasn't home, thus preventing any embarrassing glimpses into her private life as happens to us on a daily basis. If only everyone had the common courtesy to knock before peeping! If you're wondering, what I saw were boxes and signs of someone having had excitedly begun preparations to move.

On the second attempt she eventually came to the door, as she was sequestered away in the bedroom with the door closed, likely hiding from public view. We brought over our calender to aid in the scheduling, and decided on this THURSDAY, which is now my favorite day of the week.

Included is a photo of the only part of this place I will miss (the new apartment building doesn't have an elevator). Also a photo of the propaganda portal, the main feature of the elevator. Communism at work!

WE'RE MOVING!

2010-05-06T22:08:00.004+08:00

I couldn't wait to share the news with our loyal readers, so studying for midterms/preparing for tomorrow's lessons will just HAVE to wait!! We just got the okay to move into our new apartment(s) NEXT WEEK! As you may know, we currently live in the same part of town as all of the indigent, transient, essentially interloping population of migrant workers who all live in ramshackle cardboard boxes that are somehow floating on the contaminated swamp waters of the nearby gravely neglected canal, and must ride the already packed-to-the-gills bus from almost the start of it's route out in the hinterlands with all of them gaping incredulously in our foreign faces for hours and hours until we reach our destination somewhere in civilization. The smell from the sewage plant, which is situated directly across the canal from the current location of our possessions (I will not stoop to recognizing it as an apartment!) will no longer linger on our freshly washed laundry after being hung out to dry; we will no longer have to leave our place of residence at 6:45 AM to arrive at school by 8:30; and perhaps most gratifying, we will no longer have to carry buckets of hot water to our kitchen sink to do the dishes! No sir, the new apartment has HOT WATER FROM THE SINK!!!

I don't mean to sound snobby, but we weren't expecting to move until next Fall, so the excitement of the move is now TEN fold! Included in this post is a photo of the garden on the old campus, the location of our new apartment. At a later date I will post a "before and after" photo tour for your viewing pleasure! 周末快乐！Have a great weekend!!

Meet The Chairman

2010-05-02T09:19:00.008+08:00

At the beginning of last winter a female cat followed one of our fellow foreign teachers home, and he began to care for her. With each passing day, she demanded more and more food until she would only eat ice cream, Kentucky Fried Chicken and bonbons (jk). Well, they had to leave for their Thailand vacation, so they handed her over to a friend to watch her.

When they got back to Suzhou, the one cat turned into six cats! The mother cat is an orange and grey tabby and the father must have been a white cat. She gave birth to three timid white kittens, one matronly orange tabby and one adventurous grey tabby.

Our friend knew that Melissa has an affinity for grey tabbies, so he immediately started encouraging Melissa to adopt that kitten. Well, it didn't take much convincing, because Melissa fell in love with the little guy almost immediately!

Our friend called him Rosco the Rascal, and we call him Chairman Meow (I know, very original...), or just The Chairman. He's about two months old, and so far, his favorite place to sit is on our shoulders after clawing his way up our bodies. He likes to play, sit in our laps, and go dumpster diving for fresh poultry.

A few days ago, he got sick, but I can detail that in a later post. We took him to a vet and everything, but I didn't take any photos. We have to go back in two weeks to administer more medicine, so I'll try to remember to take our camera.

苏州大学 - Suzhou University

2010-04-29T20:14:00.015+08:00

Hi all,

好久不见! Long time no see!

Melissa and I are still alive and are now halfway through our first semester of the Mandarin Chinese program at Suzhou University. We registered at SuDa (this is the totally hip version of the university's name) the Friday before classes were to start. We woke up at the crack of 7:00am, rode our electric bike all the way across town, stood in line and paid about 8000元 each for books and tuition fees for the entire term. That's a lot of red (the Chinese RMB 100 notes are red... I'm so funny with my cross-cultural jokes that I need to explain)!

Melissa and I are absolute beginners, but we decided to take the placement test anyway because we heard that there are different levels within the 'absolute beginner' group. After all, we had been in China for about a year and a half, so we thought we might be able to get into one of the higher-ranking classes. Turns out, we didn't totally flunk the beginner's test, so they put us in a higher-level 'absolute beginner' group.

This group is divided into two classes; one is reading & writing and the other is listening & speaking. Each class is an hour and a half long with a twenty minute break in between, and they are taught by two different teachers. These classes switch time-slots about every day, which is a little strange, and classes are Monday - Friday at 8:30am - 11:50am.

I think the only real problem with this program is that the two classes use totally different text books that are not tailored to their specific topic (i.e. reading & writing and listening & speaking). So, what happens is that we must take two 'absolute beginner' level classes with different course materials and homework. Basically, they're the same class, but with different books. Maybe this is not the case for all of the levels, and maybe this policy will change in the coming years, but it is the case for us during this term.

Melissa is sticking with both classes, but I have dropped one of these classes. I don't really think of it as a failure because of the flawed course structure that I just mentioned. In fact, I think that I am better able to really learn the material in the one set of text books simply because I now have more time to devote to them. Now I don't have to split my attention between the two different 'absolute beginner' textbooks!

It's not so bad though! Just attending the classes at SuDa every day forces us to study, and with studying comes learning! Our classmates are mostly interesting folks from many different countries, and some of them have even given us opportunities to earn a little extra cash on the side (teaching English, get your mind out of the gutter)!

We already have a mid-term examination coming up this week, so we have a lot of studying to do! Wish us luck!

Check Out the Photos!

2009-11-05T11:43:00.006+08:00

Life has been a little slow in China, but that's not to say we haven't had a good time! Our passports are still missing in action, so we still can't do any travelling. On the bright side, Suzhou has plenty to offer in the way of sights and entertainment, which means we have been enjoying our stay here, even without the means to travel!

I updated our Picasa account with many new albums, and I'd like you to check them out and let me know what you think! You can click on the link at the top of the page, or click here. Easy!

Aside from the previously mentioned scenic areas, we got free access to both the Humble Administrator's Garden and Panmen Gate thanks to our new friend, Mrs. Cheung. She's taking us to the Master of the Nets Garden this Saturday, which is said to be nice. It's nice to see these gardens and parks, but it's especially nice not to pay the entrance fees! Mrs. Cheung is able to swing us free admission because she used to work in these gardens, and she still has a lot friends who work there.

Recently, we were invited to Shangfang Hill, which is right next to our school, by a few senior students. I managed to get the Aqeels to go with us, but Melissa ducked out at the last minute to nurse her sore back. Overall, the park was much nicer than I expected. Of course, it helped that it was really warm that day! Check out the photo album!

The next day was Halloween, which was the day of the long-awaited Halloween Party. All four of us teachers had been preparing for this party for weeks. We decked out our apartments, bought lots of food and drink, and organised activities for the teachers and students. As you can see from the photo album, it was spooktacular (cringe)!

Al Qaeda Urges Uyghurs to Rise Up

2009-10-09T10:38:00.015+08:00

Moms, you may have recently read about how Al Qaeda is encouraging Uyghur Chinese to rise up against China. CNN has a fear-mongering article up on their website, which should be taken with a grain or two of salt. They couldn't get a comment from any Chinese official, so they pretty much write about how Abu Yahia Al-Libi hates the Chinese, Westerners, Russians, etc.

Other than the lack of analysis, I was bothered by something else in the article. It mentions how this call to war against China was posted on an Islamist website. Now, here's my problem with this: if I cannot access my own cat's blog in China, how exactly are any Uyghur Chinese supposed to view this video? Never mind that most controversial websites are blocked in China, but the fact alone that an angry militant requires a computer with internet to view this video puts a cap on the number of people who are able to tune in. Remember that China controls all of its media, and will probably not mention this in the news.

Most of China's 8 million Uyghurs live in Xinjiang, but some have ventured into the rest of the country. Does this mean that we should avoid anybody wearing a tunic? Nope. The call to arms is against the Han Chinese, who have been moving into Xinjiang and taking all of the good jobs. So, Melissa and I are not really the targets of violence in the Uyghurs' eyes. Then again, the Uyghur Chinese in Suzhou will probably not rise up at all, due to the fact that they are wildly outnumbered by the Han Chinese. If there are any acts of aggression, they may come in the form of bombings, which have been few and far between in tightly-controlled China. So, according to my speculation, we should be fine here in Suzhou.

I know that I don't comment on the news very much, but I thought that I might try to quell any fear that we are in danger. Sleep tight, Moms!

Suzhou's Less-Seen Sights

2009-10-08T22:32:00.016+08:00

Melissa and I have not done a damn thing since we arrived here in Suzhou one month ago, which is appropriate since we are, technically, tourists here. And since we are tourists in this fine Chinese city, we've done a little bit of touring!

Melissa already mentioned that we jointly bought an electric bicycle, which is AWESOME!!! We got helmets (not pictured) to spoil a little of the fun and also to keep our heads from turning into hamburger... gross. Above is a shot of Melissa in front of Suzhou Health College's new campus, which is where we live and teach.

Above is a shot of Suzhou Health College's old campus, which is where we neither live nor teach. Boo!!

Doug and Tom took us to see a little of the Singapore Industrial Park (a.k.a. SIP), which is an economic district surrounding a gigantic man-made lake to the East of the city center. Lots of rich folk live there, and it's pretty much only accessible by car.

We also went to not one, but TWO old towns! One in Suzhou by night...

... and one in nearby Mudu by day.

While we were in Mudu, we climbed a mountain with a temple on top. The mountain was really crowded with tourists due to the week-long national holiday, so I assume that some of the serenity was diminished.

However, that did not stop us from enjoying our monk-approved noodle lunch!

And on the lefthand side of the moto you'll find...

2009-10-03T18:33:00.006+08:00

So we finally broke down and turned into the walking money-bag stereotype that we appear to be to all of the merchants in eastern Asia and bought an electric motorbike! Or moto! Or e-bike! Whatever sounds less terrifying to the moms. This wasn't a whimsical purchase, I promise you. We started thinking about investing in "clean transportation", as the Chinese government likes to delude themselves into believing that 1.4 billion motorbikes (with another billion waiting for more money-bags to walk by) on the road could really be such a thing, back in Rong Jia Won during the daydreaming phase of our life here in Suzhou.

Cullen, pictured above, heroically carried the bike up to our sixth floor apartment in the elevator to charge it overnight because we were too lazy to look thoroughly for an outlet in the parking area.

Unlike the common misconception about hybrid cars needing to be plugged in, it is true of the motor-e-bike that you are a slave to a well-placed outlet if you want to make it up that hill without suddenly and uncontrollably speeding backwards into other motorists, a car, or in some cases a baby... but that won't happen again, probably. Anyway, we plugged it into an outlet in our apartment that night, but never again. Those three stairs leading up to the elevator lobby are brutal!

She slept in the hall while re-juicing under the door. We slept with one eye open because even within the walls of our apartment building we don't trust anyone! These things are stolen more than Toyota Camrys! Of course there's probably like 5 moto-bikes for every Camry on the road, but that's not the point. Anyway, isn't she a beaut? Photos of reckless joyriding to come!

And we're back!!

2009-09-27T02:52:00.005+08:00

In a turn of events, I've taken it upon myself to author an actual and complete blogpost all by my lonesome, as it seems that Cullen does not share my zest for insomnolence and I feel we owe our dedicated reader an update (Mom, do you even check this anymore?).

We've been in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, for two and a half weeks now, and are enjoying it verily! We are two of six foreign teachers at the school, so it's like, bonus! Washer, refrigerator, modern appliances and built in safety net of sociability right at your fingertips (and it's not even in the contract!). We're not clear on why the school needs so many foreign teachers, as it seems they won't have nearly enough classes to fulfill our contracted teaching hours, but you'll hear no complaints on this end (unless they make good on their threat to make us teach IELTS prep, in which case you should expect lots of complaining in the future). Alas, as our classes do not begin until nearly mid-October, the only things I can find to complain about at the moment are our penury and the fact that Rock does not live/work here and cannot hold our hands this year. Pay day is this Tuesday, however, and Rock is fulfilling a lifelong dream of living the Kentucky high life, so I will grudgingly try to forgive her absence (it will not be easy).

The above photo was taken on a day last week when Tom and Doug, two of the other foreign teachers (who have been teaching at our school for almost 10 years now!), took us around town with the lovely Mrs. Chen (pictured, right). Mrs. Chen is a nationally celebrated calligrapher and, according to Doug, has her work displayed outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was truly an honor just to meet her, and we have the further honor of being her guests at a National Day celebration next week! She promised to take us sight seeing in Suzhou as well, and we will get to see her work on display.

I know Cullen will follow this up with any even more detailed and thorough account of our stay so far, so I will now attempt to fall asleep before the sun rises. Love to you!

Micro-Reviews of Beijing

2009-07-05T18:45:00.009+08:00

Hi all,

Considering that Melissa and I went to Beijing maybe three or so weeks ago, this post is quite delayed. Originally, I wanted this post to have a fun conversation style to it, but Melissa is far, far too busy to write in her own blog. So, without further ado, here are my one-or-two-liners about everything we encountered while in Beijing.

National Centre for the Performing Arts

I’ve heard that the local Beijingers don’t like the look of it, but I’d like to remind you that the Chinese tend to cover their buildings with bathroom tiles. So, I’m just saying… it could have looked hideous.

Decision: 9 out of 10 gasps

Peking Duck

I expected an entire duck for the price, but the taste was juicy, crispy and buttery!

Decision: 8 out of 10 happy stomachs

Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution

Much to my befuddlement, this place has it’s own stop on the subway. If rusty Mao-era firepower and propaganda is your thing, then give this FREE museum a try.

Decision: 6 out of 10 replica grenades

Capital Museum

I loved this museum mostly because I could take high-quality photographs by pressing the camera to the exhibits' glass cases.

Decision: 8 out of 10 old things

Beijing Subway

The lines vary in quality, but they all beat the snot out of any of New York City's subway lines.

Decision: 7 out of 10 F train delays

Forest Park

The name is totally misleading. There is no forest! The only draw was the bicycle vehicles for rent. Even with the fun ride, the whole experience was mildly boring.

Decision: 4 out of 10 snorefests

Olympic Park

This hard-to-get-to location resembles a smoggy abandoned highway. There are many Soviet-style sculptures that weren’t even worth the effort of photography. The Bird’s Nest was already gathering dust and grime, like all other buildings in China (the product of heavy pollution).

Decision: 1 out of 10 plastic bags over my head

Lama Temple

Really nice buildings and statues, but they wouldn’t let me take any photos! I mean, they would allow 10,000 tourists to burn incense inside the buildings every day, but I couldn’t even take one little photo? I wonder what’s worse: lots of smoke coating the relics or my camera's flash?

Decision: 5 out of 10 unused cameras

Beijing Aquarium

It was nice to see some exotic fish, but the place was a little on the mediocre side of the spectrum. As an added plus, they sell cuttlefish balls as snacks.

Decision: 7 out of 10 desperate sea turtles

Forbidden City

This place is excessively large. It has many gigantic courtyards, which are the only things that you can see without handing out extra cash. If you don’t know the history, this place is definitely not a must-see destination.

Decision: 5 out of 10 sore feet

Summer Palace

Although getting there was infuriating, the Summer Palace was my favorite destination on our trip to Beijing. There are many tourists, but the scenery is beautiful.

Decision: 9 out of 10 ambling paths

Temple of Heaven

I bought the all-inclusive ticket that has three little stubs, each of which are torn off at the various sites within the park. It turns out that there are FOUR places, which means that you must pay MORE money to see the last place. When the guard at the fourth site told me this, I literally threw a tantrum at him and stormed off. I went before 9:00am, and the place was packed, which surprised me considering it covers just about three square kilometers.

Decision: 3 out of 10 sucker tourists

First Day Impressions of Beijing (+ Free Stuff!)

2009-06-18T13:00:00.006+08:00

Last week, Melissa and I more survived Beijing than visited it. There are many words that come to mind when I think of Beijing, but ‘volume’ is by far the most meaningful. This is a city where most city blocks are or seem to be over a half mile long, and all the while you are walking, these massive and imposing hero-sized buildings mock your pathetic efforts to get to the next intersection. So yeah, I think that Beijing may be a little bit too big.

Volume aside, Beijing offers many sights, and prompts you to visit ALL of them. Beijing has one of the largest sections in the Lonely Planet guide, and it makes every last place seem like a must-see. Considering this added pressure, we laced up our most comfortable shoes and took to the streets.

We only had half of a day for our first day in Beijing, but it turned out to be one of the most memorable days thanks to a few friends of ours. We rode into Beijing with our friend Kelly, and once we were settled into our hostel rooms, we met up with our friend, JB. We were walking around a park when JB’s dad called to invite us to the Beijing Symphony. What a guy!

So, we scrambled around trying to get ready and by the time we got there, the performance was almost half over! Luckily, we were able to sheepishly enter the performance hall during intermission.

The performance was great, but the National Centre for the Performing Arts was the real show stopper. It looks like a futuristic, giant half-egg that landed in the middle of a man-made lake.

The entrance is before the water, and it has you walk underneath so that you are able to see the water through a glass ceiling. The inside of the actual building is so enormous that it resembles an airport, but it is also one of the most beautiful buildings in which I have ever set foot. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any photos of the main building. Boo!

Afterwards, the generosity continued from JB’s father, as he took us out to a late dinner at the Lan Club. This is where we had our first taste of Beijing Duck, and man, was it good!

Thus ended our first day (and free food/entertainment) in Beijing…

Zwischel: in Beijing

2009-06-04T17:18:00.005+08:00

Guess what? Melissa and I don't have class until the 16th, so we're taking full advantage of the situation by travelling to Beijing for five or so days! We leave tonight on an overnight train, which will be our second attempt at such transportation trip to Yangshuo, being the first), so our fingers are crossed...

We arrive in Beijing on the afternoon of the 5th, and we look forward to seeing things like the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, among the potpourri of other things to do in that gigantic city. One thing that is bothering me about our trip though is the timing... Today is the twentieth anniversary of a certain little incident that happened at TS.

I didn't really know why China's censors were kicking into overdrive these past few months, but considering the momentous anniversary at hand, it's all starting to make sense. Of the sites that don't work anymore in China, I believe this list now includes Youtube, Blogger, Twitter, Tumblr, Livejournal, Xanga, Wordpress, Friendfeed, Flickr and Live.com. I guess I should feel lucky that Gmail still works! All of these social networking sites could be used to disseminate information about the Western view of what happened twenty years ago in Beijing, so the government shut it all down.

So, why would the Chinese government shut down sites that relay information about an event that everybody already knows about? Well, it turns out that most Chinese don't know about it, or have been convinced that it wasn't that big of a deal. It is not taught or referred to by anyone in Chinese society, and when it was happening twenty years ago, the entirely state-owned media spun it so it looked like a bunch of unruly hippies disturbing the peace.

Some people in China do, however, recognize the significance of this anniversary, and they have decided to wear white today as a form of protest. You see, white is the traditional Chinese color for mourning. Even our field director sent us an email last night warning us not to wear white today. Therefore, it came to our surprise that so many students and teachers were wearing white today. Were they silently protesting? Nope. They were just wearing what they always wear! It seems that Yueyang doesn't recognize this day like the rest of the world does, which makes sense considering the control on information.

As I was saying before, the timing of our trip is pretty bad because I fear that things might be a little bit more restricted than usual in Beijing. Tourist sites that may be open to the public may be closed, etc. Also, the weather's supposed to suck... Yeah, that too.

In any case, we will bring our camera and attempt to document the whole experience for you guys, so look out for us in about a week!

Zwischel is Moving to Suzhou

2009-06-02T21:58:00.003+08:00

Hi all,

Right on the heels of Rock's big news comes more big news: we're officially teaching English in Suzhou this coming school year! A few days ago, we received the fully-signed contracts via email, and we were just told by the Vice Dean that we should arrive in early September. It only seems like yesterday that we were entering China for the first time... Exciting!

Geographically, Suzhou is right next to Shanghai and is very close to both Hangzhou and Nanjing, which makes it seem like a really good location, culture-wise. Suzhou's beautiful gardens and water features are mentioned by all of the travel guides, so we are pretty happy with the result. However, according to one of our students, it's not such a great place because it's, "like a delicate woman." Maybe it's a little boring?

In any case, we'll keep you all informed via blogging through this year and into the next! We hope you will keep reading!

Rock's Going to Kentucky!

2009-05-29T20:30:00.003+08:00

Hi there!

We've got some fresh news straight out of the People's Republic! Our liaison at Yueyang Number One Middle School will teach Mandarin this coming school year in America! That's right folks, Rock's coming to America! So visit her, dammit!

Now, Rock's been jealous of our 'free and wonderful' lifestyle ever since Melissa and I got to China, so she somehow found a way to do what we are doing in China, except in reverse. She interviewed against two hundred fifty other teachers at Bizarro WorldTeach in Beijing and was selected as one of sixty teachers to teach in America. Just a few days ago, she found out that she will teach in three schools in Carrollton, Kentucky, and I've got to say that I'm a little disappointed about her placement, but don't tell her that! She's excited as ever to live in the countryside, and we're respecting that by putting as positive a spin as we can on Kentucky. We have sufficiently filled her head with visions of Kentucky Derby horses galloping across bluegrass fields and splashing through rivers of bourbon. That is what Kentucky is like, right?

Anyhoots, she arrives at the end of July, and we're already planning on taking a trip down to see how's she's doing (with our bottomless pockets? umm...). We think she'll be the first authentic Communist to grace that part of the country, so it'd be interesting to see how well she fits in. Aside from that, we're interested in how she does on her driver's test. I've read somewhere that she needs to get a Kentucky driver's license within thirty days, or not at all. So, to prepare for this, she's taking driving lessons here! She pays a single (large) fee for the entire year, and she can go to the driving school whenever she wants. The catch is that she must wait for the countless others in front of her to get their lessons before she can get her ten minute lesson. Sucks, huh? Well, she's got time, I guess.

On an unrelated note, this whole ban on Blogger is starting to chap me all over. I must deal with this forthwith! Perhaps a new weblog provider is in order? I'm starting to seriously think the answer is yes.

Good Lesson Plans

2009-05-25T21:03:00.005+08:00

Hi again,

Melissa and I have been teaching oral English in China for almost an entire school year, and we've come to realize what works in the Chinese classroom and what doesn't work in the Chinese classroom. Actually, it's more of what's the easiest to do in the Chinese classroom... We're lazy!

We received a few weeks of training right before we joined our school last summer. In this training, they told us to divide the class into small groups for something called 'student-centered learning.' This didn't really work for a few reasons...

First off, to be able to accomplish this on a continual basis, we need complete control over our students, which is nearly impossible because a lot of them honestly don't even understand the words that are coming out of our mouths. Secondly, we are not regarded as real teachers by the students because we are not able to give them grades that count. Some students regularly sleep, read magazines, play games, listen to music, talk and generally goof off during our classes all because we don't grade them. We have to discipline them more than any other teacher, but we have the least sway in getting them in any real trouble. If we did decide to grade them, it would only be in the hopes of getting them to take our classes more seriously, and that's a gamble that we don't really want to try due to the fact that we would each have to grade over 700 students. This brings me to my third point, which is that there are over sixty students in each of our classes, so if we want to get them into any group activity, it's a lot of work. This means that we have to make sure the students are actually working (most of them are not), and we have to explain the instructions many times. Lastly, we've found that asking our students to be creative tends to be a headache. Having them 'imagine' anything in a group is a terrible idea because it's not only difficult to explain to the students, but it's also disappointing to hear their unoriginal ideas after all of the help we gave to them.

Okay, so you've heard about what doesn't work. Now, you will hear about what does work for the lazy oral English teacher. First and foremost, competitions are always a plus if they are accessible enough for even the slowest students. Competitions grip our students' attention almost as much as Kung Fu Panda! However, we need to go into the classroom with a lot of energy at first to get them to pay attention to the rules. After that, the hard work is generally over!

Secondly, games that involve the entire class are usually a good idea if the game is easy enough. The students' abilities vary wildly in each class, so we find it best to keep the game simple. When the entire class is involved (or is split into two or three teams), certain students are less shy about speaking. When we involve the entire class, we get the opportunity to force the weakest speakers to participate, who would be overshadowed by the stronger speakers during group-based activities. Most importantly, however, is that games that involve the entire class force our students' attention on us, rather than on their peers. It's much easier to manage a class that is focused in a single direction, rather than a class that is focused in twelve different directions.

We're thinking about posting some of the lesson plans that have worked in the past on this blog in the hopes that they may help someone, but Blogger is blocked in China, so that may have to wait.

What can I say? We're lazy!

Blogger Blocked in China

2009-05-18T16:33:00.004+08:00

UPDATE: I can now justify align, bold and hyperlink text. This proxy business isn't exactly user-friendly! Next stop, pictures...

Hi all,

As far as I can tell, China has decided to block Blogger. For the time being, I'm posting on Blogger through a proxy site that allows me to bypass the censors. It's not ideal, but it works so far (I think). Also, Youtube has been blocked in China for the past two or three months. It's really getting annoying considering the amount of time Melissa and I spend on the internet.

This is the first time that I haven't been able to access my own blog via regular methods, and I've got to say that it's much more infuriating than I originally expected it to be. There are just so many things I'd like to say about this, but the one thing that I'd like to leave you with is that I now hate Jackie Chan.

Growl,

Cullen

Rongjiawan Remembers the Sichuan Earthquake

2009-05-15T10:00:00.003+08:00

As you probably know, an earthquake hit Sichuan province on May 12, 2008, killing over 69,000 people. One year later, all of China remembered this event by organizing a moment of silence at 2:28pm, the exact time that the earthquake began. The reaction to this anniversary at our school, however, was the complete opposite of silence.

The day before the anniversary, a couple of firetrucks rode into school with their sirens blaring. This sound accompanied a cacophony of other loud noises, such as an air-raid siren and the clamor of excited students. It was like some sort of crazy fire drill on steroids! I thought this event noteworthy enough to brave the summery heat and snap a few long-distance shots. Despite this, we later learned that this was simply the practice-run for a real emergency evacuation drill.

Two days later, the school was buzzing with anticipation of the drill. I was extra-excited because I learned that all afternoon classes were cancelled (and I hate one of those classes). Our teacher friends told us to stand outside so we could be there for the beginning of the exercise, but since we're lazy we went back to our apartment instead. All of a sudden, the air-raid siren started blaring once again, which we took to be our cue to go outside, and this is what we saw:

Pretty crazy, right? The recordings are a little bit awkward because the audio picked up all of our banter, but do your best to ignore that. The students flooded out of their classrooms for a long time, even after the video ends. Next, the firetrucks arrived at the scene to set up their hoses:

And this is what happened:

Remember the students trapped at the top of the school? Well, here they are:

And, finally, our hero makes a dramatic descent down the side of the building:

The fire department then decided to demonstrate how to use a fire extinguisher by putting out a bunch of fresh trashcan fires.

I kinda wish they would do that a little bit more often... I feel like trash fires are everywhere, everyday, constantly stinking me in the face! I mean, people around here get rid of trash by setting it on fire! You'd think that the RJWFD would be busy all the time, yet I never see them! Well, after the drill, I realized that Melissa and I were something of a side performance. I should've known!

We were asked by a Hunan television camera crew to give them our impressions of the emergency drill. As you can see from the picture I looked GREAT. And I told them I didn't need any time to prepare any remarks. So I rambled and rambled about how totally wicked awesome the emergency drill was until I knew that if I said anything further, it could only make me look worse. Ahem. Then they interviewed Melissa (she declined to be pictured here), who eloquently restated what I was trying to say. She ended up giving our liaison a little bit more ammunition for the Chinese translation.

All in all, t'was an exciting day.

Cullen

Good Night, Sweet Prince!

2009-05-11T17:53:00.006+08:00

Let us take a moment to fondly look back at our times with hot dog man. If our new banner warms our hearts even half as much as our beloved motorcycle vendor did, then we are in good shape.

Zwischel is adapting to the warmer weather by updating its look. If you have any ideas to make this blog more attractive, let us know in the comments section.

Cullen

Violence Strikes Yueyang

2009-05-07T11:12:00.011+08:00

About a week ago, Melissa and I started noticing posters of a boy's face plastered all over our town. Our liaison, Rock, and her husband, William, confirmed to us that the boy in the posters was a missing child. William said that he could have been taken, maimed and forced to beg for money, like in Slumdog Millionaire. Apparently, that kind of thing happens in China. I found this strange, because I had been led to believe that China is a safe place with little violent crime. Moreover, I had been led to believe that children were revered as precious beings due to the one-child policy. Perhaps I was a bit naive.

Rock came over last night to meet our boss, who was spending the night. We had a lovely conversation about the difference between China and America. Then, a little out of the blue, Rock told us that Rongjiawan is becoming less safe. When asked why, she told us they had found the missing boy. His strangled body had been found in an abandoned communications building just outside of our school's back gate. This news hit us pretty hard. Not only do we live close to that crime scene, but we had seen that child's face on the posters. So, it wasn't hard for us to imagine how he must have looked when they found him.

Rock must have been encouraged by our apparent dismay, as she continued to tell us something even more insidious. She told us that a Yueyang city taxi cab had recently been found with a blood-soaked interior. A few days later, the taxi driver's severed head was recovered. She told us that a conspiracy of Rongjiawan taxi drivers had killed the Yueyang city taxi driver as a message. Apparently, the Yueyang city taxi drivers had been encroaching on the Rongjiawan taxi drivers' business. I don't have any idea where she came up with this information, but it sure spooked the Hell out of us. From now on we will think twice about hiring a decapitating taxi driver.

We did not sleep soundly that night.

Cullen

Chinese Haircuts

2009-05-05T09:38:00.013+08:00

Sometimes your hair grows long and gets in the way of your personal style. Sometimes you're in China when this happens. Recently, Melissa and I experienced both of these. Melissa wanted to get a sweet new perm, and I just wanted to be understood (by the hair-cutter). So it was off to the hair-place!!! But not the one downstairs. Prob mean of us to neglect the barber, but fmeh... don't care.

I got my massage/haircut in Yueyang and I waited for Melissa... and waited... and waited... and waited... and [four hour time lapse] finally the hairist finished! Melissa's perm is super-cool! Hair-man used a little extra TLC on this one. Here's a shot of it:

Ain't she so sweet?!?!? I'm jealous. must... get... perm...

But I got a killer do myself! Wanna see?? It's soooo...

AWESOOOOOOOOOOOOME!!!! My students can't even handle my revived sense of personal style. I now feel like I can comfortably 'rock out' in class. It's like a bright, shiny star of spikes and hair gel.

Also, that is Ronjiawan out that window and not some classy window shade.

Cullen

Petronas Towers: Another View

2009-04-26T11:00:00.001+08:00

The last stop during our Spring Festival vacation was Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia was a pleasant surprise due in part to the fact that it was an unintended destination. We had to leave Thailand earlier than expected, so we decided to see a little bit of Malaysia instead of renewing our passports at the border and going back to Thailand. Besides, we'd just spent two weeks hanging out on a beach, so it was about time we crammed some culture into our vacation. In any case, I've mostly been letting our PICTURES tab speak for the vacation, but I just uncovered this video that I took while standing in the plaza outside of Suria KLCC & the Petronas Towers that gives another perspective to the photos.

According to Wikipedia, the Petronas Towers stand at a height of almost 1,500 ft. and are the tallest twin towers in the world. Much more than this, they are beautiful to behold, especially at night, when they light up the sky with their brilliant white highlights. Beneath the towers lies Suria KLCC, which houses a transportation hub and giant mall. We spent the good part of an afternoon walking around the mall to escape a torrential downpour. The above video was shot just after the rain stopped.

I'll probably start posting more about our vacation because I miss it so damn much. Prepare yourselves!

Cullen

7 Star Park Gets 2 Stars

2009-04-25T12:40:00.010+08:00

We needed to spend our last night in Guilin to catch an early train, and we decided to see what it has to offer. Our Lonely Planet guide (half-heartedly) recommends 7 Star Park as a must-see for any tourist (stuck) in Guilin. So, whilst in purgatory, we decided to give it a shot.

Once the staggering 60 RMB (per person) admission price was paid, we wandered over to the 7 Star Cave. This cave, like the one we visited in Fenghuang, is highlighted in neon lights throughout (although the one in Fenghuang was better). To be honest, the main reason for our entering the cave was to escape the sun. We took many pictures of the cave, which are accessible via the 'PICTURES' tab at the top of this site.

Here is a shot of Melissa noticing a bat fluttering in the semi-darkness.

There was a monkey dragging its butt on a picnic table.

There was a rock shaped like a camel. Or a llama. I'm not too sure.

That was pretty much all we did in Guilin. T'was boring.

Cullen

Li River 360

2009-04-25T12:20:00.007+08:00

During our trip to Yangshuo, Melissa used her masterful bargaining skills to obtain a 35 RMB, hour-long bamboo river cruise, which originally cost 60 RMB! While negotiating, Melissa seemed to be powered by a mix of feigned apathy and just a touch of anger. In the end, it paid off! Take that, touts!!

I shot the above video on said bamboo cruise, much to Melissa's chagrin. Enjoy!

Cullen

Yangshuo is Beautiful

2009-04-25T11:36:00.007+08:00

There's no getting around it. The scenery around Yangshuo is very beautiful. Apparently, Chinese artists have been painting the Yangshuo landscapes for many moons.

To enjoy this loveliness, we took a scenic bike tour through farming communities.

We saw orange plantations.

We sat on the grass.

We spied many-a-mild-mannered water buffalo.

We were not attacked by zombies.

We were hideously sunburned. :D

Cullen

This is a Lovely-BU YAO!!

2009-04-25T10:32:00.017+08:00

There has been one travel destination that has eluded Melissa and me for the longest time. It seemed as though everybody we know has been there, and the Lonely Planet book called it a must-see! What is this place? A mountainous town in northern Guangxi province called Yangshuo!

Our students were testing Monday - Wednesday, which meant that we did not have to teach or anything for five days including the weekend. So we booked an overnight train to Guilin (the jumping-off point for Yangshuo) and packed our crap! We only managed to get hard-seat tickets, so the twelve hour train ride was a nightmare. Hard-seats are booths of two facing hard benches that fit three people each. In the middle is a tiny table connected to the wall, but this addition doesn't provide any extra leg room. Melissa claimed to not be able to sleep, so she spent most of her time trying to get me to sleep (AWWWWW!!!!).

We arrived in Guilin before 6:00am, and were almost immediately intercepted by touts. These touts were trying to lead us to hotels or restaurants, but we found that the touts just kept on coming, no matter where we were. We got to Yangshuo fairly early in the morning by bus and had the unpleasant task of walking the tout-gauntlet to find a decent hostel. In addition to the things listed before, they were trying to push bamboo river cruises, flutes of various make, postcards, books, bike excursions, t-shirts, and more.

The touts were everywhere, but it was easy enough (although infinitely annoying) to dismiss them by saying, "xie xie, bu yao," which roughly means 'no thanks.' However, we ran into one tout who would not leave us alone as we tried to absorb the riverside view. She was followed us over to the esplanade area, casually stood beside us as if she too were taking in the marvellous view and began to hawk her bamboo river cruise. We declined, but she would not go away. It was as though as long as we were there, she would continue her sales pitch. It was SO ANNOYING! Just look at the above picture!

So, the touts almost spoiled the trip for me, but I don't want to sound like too much of a Grumpy Gus! We did soak in some of the better activities, which I will tell about in another post. In all, I'm just glad that we got to cross off the trip from our to-do list.

Cullen

The Expat Choice

2009-04-17T10:46:00.001+08:00

You may have already read the article about Heather Eisenlord's paid leave from Skadden on the New York Times website, but I thought that I would give you guys a little bit more insight. As you may know, I used to work for Skadden as a legal assistant (albeit very briefly), and I worked with Heather on a few things. I noted that a great many readers made snarky remarks in the comments section, directed at Heather and the lawyers like her. As one commenter put it;

$240,000 base pay for being an attorney. That's what's wrong with our society. "Ms. Eisenlord has been an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, a notably grueling place for a lawyer to work." Gee I wonder if it's any more grueling than getting up at 4:00am and working outside in the freezing cold during the winter and sweltering heat in the summer. I'm ready for a re-distribution of wealth.
— Frank, NJ

This kind of sentiment, in my opinion, derives from at least two things. First, this person does not fully appreciate the gut-wrenching difficulty of being a top lawyer at a firm like Skadden. Lawyers do not work outdoors, but their jobs often involve incredible stresses from their clients and their peers. In addition to this, they always work far more than 50 hours per week, sharply departing from the all-American standard of the 40 hour work week. Being a lawyer is difficult.

Second, the style of the article itself is flamboyant, highlighting the author's apparent sentiment of how envious everyone should be of her opportunity. Here's a good example;

For a sixth-year associate at a New York law firm, $80,000 isn’t exactly competitive pay. But for someone cruising around the world, doing good wherever she sees fit and, let’s face it, probably hitting a beach or two, the pay is excellent.

It's true that Skadden's deal of not requiring associates to do pro-bono work is unusual, but these people deserve a good vacation. Skadden doesn't want to lose its talent, but it can't pay the bills if it keeps them on as full-time employees. If Skadden wants to cut costs like this, I say let them.

Okay, here's the real reason I wanted to write this. About a week before my departure, I told Heather that I would be leaving the firm to teach English in China. She told me that in addition to having spent some time off between college and law school to work as a waitress, she was looking forward to taking a long sabbatical to do some travelling. However, she said that her future opportunity seemed quite distant.

Since then, the economy soured, and her dream to live abroad was more or less forced into a happy reality. For Melissa and me, the opportunity was more or less always up for grabs. Obtaining a teaching position in China was a simple task, mostly due to our youthful lack of responsibilities. We cast off our good jobs, our nice apartment and our adorable cat (sorry Coco!) all to find adventure in China. It was sad to say farewell to our loved ones, but we inhaled and took the plunge.

The point that I am trying to make is that the opportunity to live abroad is open to pretty much anyone brave enough to make the effort. For instance, we know a former attorney who is now teaching English in Zhuzhou, three hours south of our location. She made the difficult decision to spend part of her retirement away from her family and friends in order to see more of the world. Things are going so well for her that she plans on teaching at her school for a second year. Life is short, and the world is big! Why not see more of it?

Melissa and I have weighed our options and desires, and we have decided to again seek employment in China as English teachers. We are busy applying to various schools and are hoping for the best. In July, we will come back to America for some much-needed quality time with our incredible families, and we will most likely leave for China at the end of August. We miss everyone very much, and we hope to see you all this summer!

Cullen

Something I Probably Should Have Kept to Myself...

2009-04-07T19:41:00.015+08:00

During the cold, wet and mainly miserable months of the Hunanese winter, Melissa and I developed an exhaustingly boring pattern of behavior. Most of the time, we found ourselves desperate for a movie or television show to watch, because those activities did not require us to leave the loving embrace of our warm heat lamps. You see, the cold was a constant companion. It was always there to make us think twice about showering or to lengthen the amount of time for our clothing to dry. So, we sat, and we watched.

This whole routine became so tiresome that one night I decided that I would try my hand at entertainment! In a crazed frenzy of activity, I created a half-baked sock puppet production, entitled Love in the Time of Primates.

Meet the face of insanity...

I unfortunately didn't get to flesh out all of the back-stories behind the characters, but then again, what more can you expect from a sock-puppet production thrown together in ten minutes? It was a tragic tale of lust, false valor and wisdom among a cast of various primates, all of whom had my hands up their butts.

I'm glad to tell you that the weather has since improved and that the socks have returned to our feet.

Cullen

The Mystery of the Missing Bucket

2009-03-24T11:49:00.012+08:00

Melissa and I got back from a weekend trip to Wuhan late at night this past Sunday. When we got to the staircase that leads solely to our two apartments, we found the gate ajar. Melissa got freaked out because she clearly remembers locking the gate before leaving (the barber actually mimed that she should do this). What was even more strange was that the floors of the staircase were cleaned of the usual filth, and our trash bucket, which was located outside our door, was missing! Somebody took our trash bucket! We opened the door to our apartment and found that all of our possessions were still intact, which was a great relief. The mystery of missing bucket would have to wait until Monday.

We didn't find any leads during day, but come nightfall, the plot thickened. Melissa and I were getting ready for bed, when we heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The pit-pats came to our door and continued up the stairs. When they got to the apartment above us, we heard the door open and then footsteps above us inside the third floor apartment.

Melissa and I have the only sets of keys to the above apartment. It is supposed to be available to the second volunteer foreign teacher. However, we live together in the second floor apartment because we like seeing each other a lot. This means that the third floor apartment is supposed to be vacant. Ever since the beginning of school, I have been going up to that apartment at night to check out any weird noise because I had this craving to catch somebody trying to live there. When this happened, I was itching to go up there to catch the burglar in action. Melissa even came with me because the noises were so distinct!

We ascended the stairs, unlocked the door and pulled it open. Standing before us was an older Chinese woman trying to explain something to us. Melissa asked, "Do you live here?" in Chinese, and she replied, "Yes." I didn't understand any of this, so I walked in a little further to see what was going on. I looked into the study and found it converted into a bedroom. But what was in the bed was the real shocker. A man under the sheets slowly turned over and peered at me, and I recognized him as Headmaster Li!

I apologized to both of them, as it seemed that I had disturbed the Headmaster's slumber. Totally confused doesn't even begin to describe our state as we went back into our apartment. Before going to sleep, we called our liaison, and she promised to ask around about what might be happening. Needless to say, we were agitated.

She called back today telling us that the Headmaster's apartment, which is right below ours on the first floor, is too wet. So, he decided that he would move to the much drier third floor apartment without telling us. Now, this inconveniences us because we have English Corner up there every Tuesday at 5:15pm. He promised to find us a room for English Corner, but we've heard that promise before. Our plan is to not tell anyone to avoid the third floor apartment. The students will probably go up there later today, knock on the door and be met by a confused Headmaster!

So, what ever happened to the bucket that so mysteriously disappeared? As of now, I can only speculate that it now resides in some crappy janitor's closet after being used to clean the floors of the staircase. What a terrible fate for our beloved trash bucket!

Cullen

Rongjiawan Has Fighter Jets?

2009-03-17T14:43:00.006+08:00

During the past few weeks in Rongjiawan, I started noticing some airplane noises in the middle of the day. Now, this is a little strange due to the fact that the RJW skies were conspicuously free of air traffic before Chinese New Year.

Just a few minutes ago, I heard the airplane noise again, and I looked out the window. I saw something grey and very fast streak across the sky. I could tell this was uncommon, as all the students playing in the field were gawking at it as well. When the sound almost disappeared, it started to get louder again, and I looked outside for a second time. To my amazement, the airplane came around for a second pass, as if it were circling the school! In all, it circled the school five times, which allowed me to take the above photo and the below video:

Our little Rongjiawan is growing up so fast! *tears*

Cullen

Singalong at the Nunnery

2009-03-11T20:33:00.014+08:00

On one cold and windy night at Khoune & Khone's Guesthouse, we were eating dinner prepared by Khone and her staff with some of the new guests. One couple was a pair of expats from Shanghai, so we got to talk about China a bit (although our experiences from the countryside differed wildy). After dinner, we were all whisked off (via ancient army-style Jeep) to a local Buddhist nunnery for a celebration that was unidentifiable to me at the time, but Wikipedia has since informed me that it is the sabbath day, Uposatha.

After a wind-swept and jarring ride through Luang Prabang, we arrived at the nunnery. It is located at the top of a big hill that must offer a magnificent view of the city and countryside during the daylight hours.

One thing that startled me a little about this nunnery was that there were so many Lao people! If you walk around LP all day, you might come to the conclusion that it is some sort of a lost-in-the-jungle European city with the number of white people walking around! However, our small group from the guesthouse was the only bunch of honkies at this swarming nunnery! A feeling of 'otherness' crept over me, just as in China. This was a genuine Lao ceremony, and everyone was looking at us like, 'Are you lost? The pizzeria is on the main drag...'

Feelings of otherness aside, I'm really glad that we got to see what this kind of a celebration is really like. There were many novices and nuns walking around with the townsfolk. Some children were watching a cartoon about the young Buddha inside the temple. And...

...there was singing and music! This went on for a while, but I only caught a little bit of it. Melissa found herself as the object of a certain nun's interest, and they talked and talked and talked until Melissa had to painfully excuse herself from the conversation to catch her ride back to K&K!

Cullen

Mandarin Cram-a-thon

2009-03-11T15:34:00.003+08:00

Da jia hao! Cullen and I have made a new friend in town named Xiang Xiang. I managed to somehow invite her over for dinner last night, and Cullen frantically managed to prepare another masterpiece four course dinner while also teaching a class in the afternoon and juggle 30 students at English corner, while I struggled with our crazy washing machine (everything's in Chinese, so for all I know I could be cooking the clothes in there) and tried to figure out where in the heck Xiang Xiang was on campus so I could get her back to our apartment. Xiang Xiang, if you haven't already guessed, speaks no English, which is why I want her to become a permanent fixture in our lives - it motivates us to finally study some Chinese. I've been listening to Pimsleur over the past seven months, but the way that people regard my Chinese is the way I imagine we might regard Edmund Spencer if he were to suddenly rise from the dead and start speaking to us in ye olde English. And they don't speak the "very standard" (as they kindly put it) Chinese back to me, so I don't understand them anyway. I've discovered an awesome new learning tool - www.askbenny.cn. For anyone currently in China who doesn't have access to the amazing and talented Dana for lessons, try this site! I swear I am not being paid by the righteous, ingenious Benny to promote it. You know it's a current learning tool when one of the first things you learn is how to say "Starbucks" in Mandarin.

So, we've been watching askbenny videos and frequenting nciku.com, but it'll take us a while to be the Chinese - English dictionaries you all expect us to be! Hopefully Xiang Xiang won't tire of our pant-o-miming anytime soon, fluency is a ways off I'm afraid...

Don' Be Afeared Tah Cahmmint!

2009-03-10T19:22:00.005+08:00

The other day, Melissa and I finished our last classes and met up to walk the short distance back to our apartment, high-fiving the entire way...

As we neared our staircase, the barber moseyed on out of his barbershop with the incredible timing of a hawk intercepting its prey! He said, "deh deh!" or something like that, and he swiftly patted my junk again! As he did it, he had a sly smile on his face, so the gears in my noggin started to crank out a new idea... Just to test it out, I feigned like I would swat at his nuts, and he clenched up into a defensive position! We exchanged laughs and went about our business.

Later that day, the barber came up and knocked on our door to get the third floor apartment's key from us (he uses the washing machine up there, especially when it's cold out). I gave him the key, and he thanked me with a, "day day!" and a broad smile on his face. Suddenly, he went for a swat at my nuts, but I was quick to block his attempt. I followed up with a swat of my own, which he blocked with great ease. A stalemate!

So, I suppose that it's all just a big game that he plays with his friends (at least I hope so!), and I'm in on it. What have I learned? I'll try not to take things so seriously, and I'll always be on my guard around the barber!

Cullen

Story Time! The One About the Lao Shaman...

2009-03-10T17:44:00.011+08:00

Okay, so here's something that you don't see every day...

We set up a Lao jungle trek through our guesthouse, Khoune & Khone's Guesthouse (highly recommended, although cold at night and during breakfast) with two other brave guests. The cost was $40.00 US, which, to be perfectly frank, was about $35.00 US too expensive for us, considering that we planned on travelling for another 23 days or so.

Anyhoo, Khoune, us guests and a bunch of his staff hopped into the back of a covered pickup truck, which left from the guesthouse in the morning. Our first stop was to be a pretty dern authentic Hmong village (this ain't no Jamestown). Fun fact: the Hmong ethnic group is the same as the Miao ethnic group. Miao is the Chinese name, and Hmong is the Lao name. Rock and William are Miao/Hmong, so when we showed them the photos of the Hmong village, it was especially poignant for them... or not. I don't know!

We saw a bunch of interesting things, such as a 23 year old mother of four, showing off the newest member of her brood...

...a bong used exclusively for tobacco (honest injun!). Michael Phelps should have used the same excuse as the Hmong people...

...and a real-live shaman talking with a bunch of spirits! I don't know what he wanted to say to them, but if it were me, I would have asked for help down! Looks vom-inducing...

Okay, so the above video is more Khoune and a little kid standing a the doorway than actual footage of the shaman, but the next one has a little more action...

Errr, did I say more action? I meant more footage of a dead pig. I felt a little too much like a voyeur taking any footage of the shaman. So as to not offend, my shameful lens often fell upon the dead pig. Between shots of the pig, you can almost get an idea of what's going on. The shaman is standing barefoot on a suspended wooden plank while wearing a black bag on his head. The scent of incense was strong, as everybody knows that spirits love the smell of sandalwood.

I hope you enjoyed the pics and vids! Let me know what you guys think of the videos, and more importantly, what do you think of my future as a cameraman (any tips on capturing the motion picture?)?

Cullen

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Class This Morning...

2009-02-16T15:17:00.006+08:00

Today began like any other day... I let the alarm snooze for twenty minutes, bitterly showered and left for my morning class. As I descended the staircase to the basketball courts, I was met by the smiling face of the barber. He was folding his freshly-washed towels, when I noticed that his gaze had drifted to a spot away from my face. At first, I thought he was staring at the teddy bear that I had in my hands, which would make sense because today is the first day that I used the teddy bear as a teaching prop. But no. As I attempted to move outside of his reach, he beckoned me over for a morning handshake (just what I wanted to avoid) with a more-excited-than-usual air about him. He then grabbed my hand in way that suggested a handshake, but acted as a restraint and firmly planted his other hand on my - ahem. Oh, and he didn't even miss a little bit. It's like he had been finely-tuning his aim for this moment or something. Stunned, I gave a pathetic, little chuckle and shuffled off to class.

Apparently I'm not the first victim of his groping, as I learned that this had happened to last year's male volunteer as well. To be clear, it wasn't a grab, but was more of a pat, like he meant to tell me that he sees me through my pants or something. I don't really know why he decided to do this, but if his goal was to make me feel self-conscious right before getting up in front of sixty-five fourteen year olds, then bravo.

Cullen

Wet-Cold

2009-02-09T11:25:00.009+08:00

As we descended upon the murky swamp of the post-apocalyptic wasteland, a thin and raspy voice with startling clarity said, "welcome to the end of your journey..." Just kidding.

Rongjiawan is in the middle of a year-long project of building a paved road past the back gate of our school, and from the looks of it, they're stuck firmly in the trench warfare/landfill stage. So, this was a lovely sight after our month-long tour of Southeast Asia...

Also, it's cold. Dern cold. So cold that, after teaching Thursday and Friday, we picked up and rolled on down to Changsha to stay in a motel for the weekend. What amenities did it provide, you ask? Well, for one, it provided some sweet, sweet insulation, which is completely lacking in our place in RJW. It is my understanding that the architect of our apartment worked off of the enlarged blueprints of an icebox. Somehow, it's colder in our apartment than it is outside. I need to inform Stephen Hawkings of this phenomenon.

Other than that, teaching is teaching. It doesn't feel any worse than it did before our holiday, which is a little surprising to me.

Spring Festival stories to follow soon... Oh, by the way, Spring Festival is Chinese New Year. Our students got twelve days off between semesters, but we got a month off because our classes don't count and we don't give final exams (which happened over the last two weeks of the semester). We asked one girl what she did during her break, and she replied, "Homework." Figures.

Cullen

New Year's Day Parties Galore!

2009-01-02T10:42:00.016+08:00

Apparently, New Year's Day is the time to party here, not New Year's Eve, so last night Cullen and I split up and visited various classrooms to observe and take part in class parties. I brought along my camera, and in the above photo you'll see one of my classes about to get down to some karaoke! The students really put a lot of effort into decorating the room, which is basically where they live anyway, so it would make sense!

The boys standing in the middle of the room were really into the song, and I have to say this class' boys are actually really into my lessons, too, which is more than I can say for most of my classes! Next I went to another one of my favorite (yes, I play favorites) classes and walked in on the middle of a Congo Line! This kid played the broom for us while we danced.

I stayed in the line for as long as my endurance would last me, and just as they were mobbing me to sing a song or "put on a show" for them, this adorable girl, the daughter of their math teacher, stepped up and danced the Cha Cha!

She's precious, I know. I managed to sneak away from this classroom and found my way to a few more. All the classes demanded that I sing a song, but I'm no one's monkey and stood my ground. My trip to the next class, coincided with the Cha Cha tour, so here's another video of the lovely dance, this time synchronized with pink jacket girl's sister, red jacket girl, because you loved the first one so much!

Such passion! Such grace. Here are a few more photos of the night, and then that's it for a month during our tour of Southeast Asia!

Contact!

2008-12-25T10:48:00.004+08:00

Okay, so after about a week of brooding, Melissa and I finally had to make contact with our liaison. I think it was because we ran out of cooking gas. Anyhoo, Rock told us that Mr. Li told her what he said to us the day after he said it. She said that she was shocked and apologized for it. Well, we didn't want to seem indignant or whatever, and we apologized for associating our vegetarianism with Rong Jia Wan. So, we got into an apologize-off, and I think that we won. You see, she said that Mr. Li was also sorry, but Mr. Li didn't actually say sorry (or anything, so far) to us. So it was Melissa and me apologizing to Rock and vice versa. After a few minutes of trying to get the apologetic upper-hand, we were glad that the weirdness had gone away, for the most part.

Have not run into Mr. Li yet, but I don't expect too much when we do. Maybe a cricket will chirp, maybe more. Who knows...

Cullen

Oh No You Di'int!

2008-12-10T14:50:00.009+08:00

Cullen: Okay, so we were at our town's open market the other weekend in search of dumpling wrappers (this is where the best ones are located). Now, every single time we enter this place (that stinks with the moist stench of death), we have no choice but to witness animal slaughter. And it's not just any animal that's being abused, imprisoned and slaughtered before our eyes. It's countless stray dogs. Usually when we go, we see skinned and gutted dogs hanging from hooks through their mouths with their fur and guts splattered on the concrete below. Also, we are witness to these poor dogs being imprisoned in filthy cages. However, when we went on this specific occasion, it was like it was the day before some sort of Chinese Thanksgiving that serves dog as the main dish.

Melissa: We'll spare you the gory details, simply because we want you to continue to come back and visit our blog without losing sleep at night or waking up screaming if you do get any sleep, but I'll just tell you that it was like nothing I have ever seen in my life, in person or PETA video. It was a week ago or so and the images and sickening cries are still fresh in my mind. Mind you, not a single person at the market winced, let alone seemed to notice, aside from us. This is simply a cultural divergence that we will of course respect and perhaps accept in due time. Yet it rekindled in us an urge to re-explore our inner vegetarians, as we agreed that simply avoiding dog's meat would only quell our conscience as far as we could see, but not what we know to be true: that whatever abuse we were seeing here against dogs was happening around the world, including in our own country, to cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and any other animal that humankind sees fit to eat. As you may know, and as Cullen will never be able to forget as I remind him constantly, I was a vegetarian for five years starting in high school and throughout the entirety of college. When I traveled to Ecuador and lived in Armenia, cultural norms and call for sensitivity overwhelmed my instincts to avoid meat, and so I broke my vegetarianism to avoid offending my hosts. Now seemed like the perfect opportunity to take it up once again, given the inspiring scene at the market.

Cullen: And take it up we did, but before doing so, Melissa told our liaison about what we saw and that it bothered her. I remember Melissa getting off the phone with her and worrying that she took her the wrong way. Melissa told me that she kept apologizing for her people, which was not what Melissa was getting after. Her whole point was not that the mistreatment and slaughter was being conducted by Chinese people, but that it was being conducted at all. In any case, we started eating vegetarian, which really isn't difficult for us to do, as we almost always cook for ourselves. However, a couple of days ago, our school told us that we needed to give a class to about two hundred Junior students from all over the county and judge their oral English competition. This entailed a dinner at a restaurant with some of the school's teachers and a few of the organizers.

We just got back from the dinner and the classes. The dinner had a good number of vegetarian dishes, which was arranged by our liaison and our head teacher. We were surprised by this and are grateful for their accommodating menu. The dinner went fairly smoothly, although they did expect me to pack away beers like a fridge right before my class (about magic, of all things...) to the young Junior students. The oldest teacher was also at the table, and he kept egging me on to eat some of the meat dishes. I think that by not eating meat, it may have been seen as a disrespect towards the purveyors of our meal, as meat dishes tend to be the most expensive. I can also see that vegetarianism is seen as a weakness to some Chinese people, as they took satisfaction in watching me eat a little bit of bacon that they placed in my bowl. So, eating vegetarian at a Chinese restaurant tends to be awkward when eating with Chinese people.

Melissa: After dinner, we gave our "lectures" to about 200 junior students from around the county in one of our school's lecture halls. Cullen, as he mentioned, spoke about magic, and I gave a presentation on ecosystems. One of the English teachers in our school, Mr. Li, followed by thanking us for speaking and illuminated virtues of each lesson: first, he described what he would do with the magic hat Cullen spoke of in his lesson. Then, he added to my lesson that it is our responsibility to protect the environment. Both were welcome and constructive additions to our lectures, I thought to myself at that point. Then, Mr. Li proceeded to discuss our recent conversion to vegetarianism, which went a little something like this:

Cullen and Melissa have decided to become vegetarians after seeing the meat market in our own Rong Jia Wan. They found the treatment of animals in the market to be cruel. Yet Americans are killing Iraqi people in the Iraq war. Americans are in Iraq, fighting and killing Iraqi people. I don't understand why Cullen and Melissa would be vegetarians.

I don't believe that this statement warrants commentary on my part, especially because I wouldn't know where to begin in describing how offensive, uncalled for, and inappropriate those audacious remarks were, not only within the context of this forum, but at all, considering the fact that Mr. Li never broached the subject with us before coming to his own conclusions on the matter. I will say that for as intoxicated as Mr. Li claimed to be, he spoke with astonishing clarity, eloquence, and extent on the topic of our dubious moral code.

Cullen: Melissa really nailed that quote. As he said it, my face lit up with the heat of embarrassment, and I could not bring myself to take my eyes away from the floor. That thought belonged in the heat of argument instead of in our introductions to two hundred young Chinese students. Not only did he spread a great deal of misinformation about us, but he insulted us in front of everybody. After fuming about this for a few hours, my thoughts keep coming back to the way our liaison responded to Melissa the first time she told her about the mistreated dogs. She reacted as if we condemned China; as if she were expected to apologize for the traditional customs of her great and many countrymen.

Melissa: Following Mr. Li's lovely speech, Cullen fielded questions during a Q & A session, and Mr. Li attempted to make small talk with me. Being the type A personality that I am, I found it impossible to smile and nod and ignore the obvious. I asked him if he knew that I was a vegetarian in the United States as well, to which of course he responded that he didn't. Some of Cullen's type B personality found it's way into my subconsciousness and told me not to take it any further than that, although the urge to fully confront him has not been satiated. Stay tuned for further developments, as I contemplate getting all up in his grill.

Hmmm... Western Food, You Say?

2008-12-09T14:00:00.010+08:00

One of our last stops in Hong Kong was dinner at an Italian restaurant, pictured above. In addition to pasta, we had gnocchi, garlic bread, bruschetta, red & white wine, and a trio of cheeses for dessert. That's right folks, we had cheese for dessert. Are we crazy? Maybe, but that's not why we ate cheese for dessert. For us, cheese is practically nonexistent and is only really available in Changsha (more than a two hour bus ride away). So, you could say that cheese is quite the luxury to us, hence all of the nom nom nomming on the cheese. Okay, I'll stop talking about cheese before you all vom on your nice computers.

Anyhoot, the Western food in general really inspired us to cook outside of the Chinese food box. On a trip to Yueyang, we found some Barilla pasta at Wal-Mart and decided to grab some. When we got back to Rong Jia Wan, we found some small tomatoes at a local fruit stand, and we picked up a few kilos of them. Apparently, people just snack on them like grapes, so we got a lot of stares from the folks who saw us with this large bag of 'snacking tomatoes'. Bunch of weirdos...

In all, the only ingredients we could get from our simple, little (frigging, crappy) town were tomatoes, garlic, onions and olive oil (which was way expensive). In addition to the pasta, the basil, balsamic and parmesan cheese had to be bought elsewhere.

We got back to the apartment and got straight to work on our Italian feast. In the end, we made tomato sauce, bruschetta and pasta, and all was right with the world. Until we opened the 'champagne'. This strange Chinese brew is for some reason pink, without effervescence and tastes like watermelon Kool-Aid mixed with rubbing alcohol. The taste... it's hard to forget.

On a lighter note, we also recently picked up a toaster oven in Changsha, which allows us to bake chocolate chip cookies! Of course, we also have to pick up brown sugar and vanilla outside of Rong Jia Wan, but the cookies are droooooool... I've gained fifteen pounds!

Cullen

Look to the Left!

2008-12-09T10:54:00.004+08:00

Hi all,

Sorry about not posting in a long time...

HOWEVER, I thought I would point out the new link to the left. I'm trying to upload all of our photos to Picasa, which Blogger can link to. So, there is now a link to our online albums with lots of pictures. It's under "Our Pictures". I'll load more so it's not just the vacations.

Speaking of vacations, I've been obsessing over where to go for Spring Festival, which is a month-long holiday that starts sometime in January and ends sometime in February. At this point, we want to divide our time between Laos and Southern Thai Islands. We already had to scratch Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, because it would be too expensive to travel there (even though I already bought the Lonely Planet guide... drat!). We're trying to keep the transportation costs to a minimum, as plane tickets are surprisingly expensive.

Until next blue moon...

Cullen

Teachers' Sports Days

2008-11-26T14:00:00.014+08:00

Pain, endurance, strength, speed, embarrassment... Teachers' Sports Days is a grueling competition of massive proportions. Hundreds of the most highly-trained teachers hailing from all ends of the school's campus fight for victory over the course of at least two days.

Melissa competed in the 50 meter basketball carry, and made a truly historic effort. Despite the PE teacher's many deliberate false starts, Melissa's spirit remained firm. It seemed, however, that the Olympian gods on high had other plans for her. In the end, she did not win. Perhaps the gods were keeping Melissa humble?

A day later was my event; the relay race. This ancient and beautiful race was made more grand by the ferocity of the competition. However, I came prepared for victory! Among my equipment was the mythical running shoes from the god Adidas. The powerful shoes were almost too swift for me to handle, but I quickly regained my balance. My opposition ate my dust!

Cullen

Hong Kong: Lantau Island

2008-11-26T13:00:00.007+08:00

Lantau Island lies to the East of Hong Kong Island, but is easily accessible by way of MTR or ferry. It is billed as having a number of cultural attractions and loads of natural activities, such as hiking and swimming at beaches. The two cultural attractions that I wanted to see were the Tian Tan Buddha and the Po Lin Monastery (there is also a fishing village and Disneyland, but since we didn't see those places, I won't comment on them). These seemed like nice, authentic sights to see before we wandered off to take a dip in the ocean.

We arrived by MTR and discovered that we would have to take further transportation to the statue and monastery. We would have to take either a bus or a cable car dubbed the 'Ngong Ping 360' (The cable car ends in a village called Ngong Ping, but as far as we could tell, the village is just a terminus for the cable car. Seriously, it's just a newly-built street lined with expensive souvenir shops). We took the bus (partially out of spite towards the cable car's name), which we later found was a terrible mistake. It was a winding and jerky 45 minute ride up and down many mountains, that I felt should have taken far less time, as it seemed like we were driving in a roundabout way. I just asked Melissa if she wanted to add anything about the bus ride, and she replied, "Just that it made me wanna puke." Well said. Anyways, 45 minutes later, we get off the bus from Hell, already feeling violated by this tourist trap. We look around at the hundreds, maybe thousands of tourists flocking up the stairs towards the Buddha statue and join them.

By this point, Melissa was an unhappy camper. After we had walked up many, many steps to the top, I started to feel a little used. I mean, the statue is big and all, but there were so many people getting in the way of everybody else's pictures that it was hard to enjoy it. I kept telling myself that there must be some saving grace to the Buddha. Maybe it is a few hundred years old? I later found out that it was built in 1993 (it's as old as the students I teach) and that it faces North (towards Beijing), instead of West (towards you know where). Son of a...

The monastery was a lot more interesting than the statue, but that isn't saying much. There were still a lot of people walking around, but there were so many ornate details in the decor that everyone kind of blended in. In fact, that is the thing I remember most about the monastery.

The walls, ceilings and smaller statues were intricately detailed with lots of colors and etchings. They provided a vegetarian lunch that Melissa describes as 'PBBBBBBBT!' Needless to say, no pics were taken of that, but we did agree that we would need to at least try to locate a beach. That, however, was easier said than done.

First, we ended up wandering up a service path, lined with broken televisions and old dog houses. It may seem like an honest mistake, but we were actually hoping to take the path less travelled. We wanted to do some get-back-to-nature trailblazing. So, we went off on the path that nobody was taking (and for good reason). Then, we walked up to a fork in the road, where we discovered that we were miles and miles away from any beach, and many hiking trails were closed due to rock slides.

But all was not lost! Right at that very spot where we stood was the ancient Wisdom Path! Okay, so it's not ancient, or even authentic for that matter. It's a bunch of split trees with Buddhist sayings carved on them, which are arranged in an infinity symbol. Well, as you may have gathered, we did not end up finding any beach, or anything off of the planned tourist areas. So, we were pretty bummed about that.

Maybe we felt like we were wasting our time on Lantau Island because it was our last day in Hong Kong, and there was still so much that we wanted to do. At least that gives us some more incentive to go back!

Cullen

Hong Kong: Kowloon Park in the Morning

2008-11-21T10:53:00.009+08:00

On the second morning, I dragged Melissa out of bed at the ass-crack of 8:00am to take a stroll through Kowloon Park, which was located about two blocks away. The above photo is taken at the Southern edge of Kowloon Park.

Overall, the park is pretty nice, if on the small side (I think it's 6 square city blocks, or so). As shown from the above photo, there were a bunch of birds hanging out around the park. The birds that could get away, however, were penned up in an aviary.

This is a shot of the 'Chinese Garden' section of the park, which is where Kung Fu lessons were taking place for a group of youngsters.

It looked like Tai Chi was being practiced in large groups all over the park. Notice the strange statues around this group. I actually came to the park wanting to see people practicing something that rhymes with talon song (I won't write the actual name, because I don't want our blog to be blocked). I read that these people would be in the park during the morning hours from a book called Lost on Planet China. However, when I arrived, I realized that I wouldn't be able to recognize them if they slapped me in the face. Oh well.

Here is Melissa being brave and smiling for an early morning photo. What a trooper!

I too wanted proof that I was in the park, so Melissa took this shot. Yay!

Cullen

Hong Kong: Dinner Cruise

2008-11-20T19:56:00.011+08:00

I wanted our first night out in Hong Kong to be special, so I went out of my way to book what I thought would be just that: a dinner cruise that soaks up the Hong Kong light show (yes, there is a nightly light show). After taking an evening dip in the hotel pool, we got all dressed up and made our way over to the designated pier and waited for the ship to arrive. It turned out that we overestimated the classiness of the event, as we were way overdressed compared with the rest of the guests that started to gather. Awkward number one!

Once we got on board, we found our assigned seat, which turned out to be part of a large table situated next to the dance floor/stage (with live music) that we shared with a group of rowdy Europeans and a Chinese family. Strangely enough, we preferred the Chinese family. Awkward number two!

The dinner was a buffet of international cuisine, which Melissa and I appreciated very much. However, just after getting our food, we were informed that the light show would be starting momentarily. Awkward number three! So, we scarfed down our plates and joined everyone on the top deck for the viewing. The show was pretty good, but the photos I took didn't really come out very well. So, I hope the above video will suffice. One thing to note about the light show was the amount of Christmas lights on display. Entire squares were decorated to be included as part of the light show. Weird.

After the light show ended, we went downstairs to finish stuffing our faces. While that was awesome, what first was slightly annoying live music quickly turned into an unbearable cacophony of pop-noise, hardly better than karaoke. The trio was made up of two middle-aged women, one of whom sang while the other tried to get people to dance, and one keyboardist. The pain train skewered the atrocious hits of yesteryear, such as 'Don't Cry For Me, Argentina' and 'Dancing Queen', for an entire two hours straight. This would have been awkward number four had it not been for the constant heckling provided by the Europeans and the alcohol provided by the ship's bar.

All in all, the cruise was not what we expected, but it provided a ton of entertainment for the night.

Cullen

Hong Kong: Ocean Park

2008-11-19T21:31:00.015+08:00

Hey all,

For our first full day in Hong Kong, we decided to visit Ocean Park, which is located on the Southern end of Hong Kong. I know this sounds like a touristy thing to do, considering that we could technically go to Sea World or something like that back in the States. Well, we didn't think about that at the time, so back off!

Excuse me! Sorry, I'm just passionate about marine life. Now, on to the show!

Our first stop was a large bird atrium, packed with exotic-ish birds. It was here that Melissa told me that I am a Chinese tourist, because I take about a thousand pictures when I go on vacation. Well, excuuuuuuuuuuse me!

Next stop was the Jellyfish Extravaganza!

After that, we checked out the incredible Chinese Sturgeon!

Then we went to an exhibit that was actually an artificial reef with hundreds of fish, sharks, rays and turtles on display, and the only good picture that I took was of this boring seahorse.

Okay, so this one came out, too. Pretty weird looking, right?

On the other side of the park was the panda exhibit, and to be perfectly honest, it wasn't all that awesome. Don't get me wrong; it was great to see these rare animals, but they were in such a confined space that it was hard for them to live up to my expectations. Also, the one panda that was eating bamboo right in front of the glass got up and moved to the back of the exhibit as soon as I elbowed my way up to the glass. So that sorta ruined it for me. Dumb bear! Look at me when I am taking your photograph!

After that, we managed to see a show starring a flock of dolphins and two wacky sea lions. I say 'managed' because we didn't make the show time to get a seat, and instead had to use all of our cunning to locate a standing view of the show. The show was set to music and featured a tale about how people and animals are supposed to live together in harmony. However, I'm sure that the sea lions would hold their handlers down with their flippers while the dolphins ram them in their crotches, given the opportunity.

This big guy is looking at the worker in charge of feeding him, who is standing to my left. He did a pretty good imitation of the dramatic chipmunk, as he pretty much flung his entire upper body into his stare. You can actually see a small fish in mid-fling heading towards him in the picture. Yum...

Ocean Park was a lot of fun for both of us, and I like to think that the animals had a good time as well.

Cullen

Last Minute Notice

2008-11-19T16:20:00.004+08:00

Strange things are a-brewing here at Yueyang No. 1... I thought that since we missed the sports days when we visited Hong Kong, we were off the hook for the relay race, jump rope, etc. Turns out, we have the teachers' sports day in a half hour from now. It's cold outside and I'm not feeling so well, so I'm not too pleased with this. On the bright side, we have Monday through Wednesday off of next week, so we are trying to plan another vacation. We're thinking Shanghai, but it's tempting to just go back to Hong Kong.

When did we learn all of this information? Why late last night, of course. There's never been enough time to properly plan a trip, so far. Oh well. So, I'll blaze through posting the rest of the Hong Kong photos for you before we take off for wherever!

Cullen

Hong Kong: Around the City

2008-11-19T10:53:00.014+08:00

Let me start by saying that I didn't take enough photos of the actual city part of Hong Kong, and these posted photos don't really do it justice. I kept joking to Melissa that if New York City and Beverly Hills adopted a Chinese baby, they would name it Hong Kong (I'm lame, but I think it's true). Hong Kong is just so busy, clean, modern, trendy and spectacular. The above photo shows how the road is wrapped around a large tree. It seems the city planners would not part with the thing.

This is a shot of Canton Road looking in the direction of our hotel. We spent most of our time walking around Hong Kong in the neighborhood called Tsim Sha Tsui, which is where we stayed.

This is a shot of Melissa standing in front of Nathan Road, which is also in Tsim Sha Tsui. This neighborhood was especially expensive-looking, and there were high-end fashion shops everywhere we looked. Notably absent from the streets was any sign of poverty, not counting the very few beggars we encountered (I counted five). What did annoy me were the many people trying to sell me handbags or tailor a suit for me. What was weird about this was that they were all really well-dressed Indian men. After a while, I could spot them from a distance and prepare my avoidance techniques before I encountered them.

Back to the city. This is a shot of Melissa standing in awe of the Hong Kong MTR subway system. Each MTR stop was like a mini airport. Every stop that we saw had clothing stores and food stores, and they were all impeccably clean. As you can see from the picture, there is a glass barrier that opens when a train comes to a stop to let the passengers in. Behind the glass barriers are flat-screen televisions that show local television programming. Melissa and I agreed that the Hong Kong MTR really puts the New York City subway system to shame.

Hong Kong is actually a very big place that spans an area that includes a number of islands. The above shot is of the Southern end of Hong Kong island, which has many pretty bays with fishing villages and beaches. As you can see, Hong Kong is also very tropical and hilly. The place is just absolutely stunning.

Weird photo above. On our way back from an activity, we hit pretty heavy traffic. As we inched along, we noticed this rather crowded cemetery. Melissa's reaction? "I didn't know there were so many Christians in Hong Kong." Oh man...

Above is one of the only night shots we took. It really doesn't do the city any justice at all. The place springs to life at night with crazy neon signs and many light shows.

I guess we're just gonna have to go back and take more pictures...

Cullen

Hong Kong: Around the Hotel

2008-11-18T13:14:00.008+08:00

Hey, so I know that we're in China, and we're supposed to be living on a budget, but we thought 'What the Hell?' and spoiled ourselves rotten in Hong Kong. We stayed at the Marco Polo Hong Kong Hotel, which is pretty luxurious. It overlooks the water and supposedly gives a great view of the Hong Kong skyline (our room was not a harbor-view room, so I can't actually confirm this). It's also attached to Harbour City, which is a high-end shopping mall with about 750 stores. The above photo shows the lobby. Oh, and there's an outdoor pool.

Here's where we stayed for the three nights we were in Hong Kong. Behind the television is a walk-in closet and to the left is the bathroom. Very important details, I know. We actually picked a great time to come to Hong Kong, as it's not a peak vacation time and the temperature was right around 80 degrees (it was sunny the entire time we were there). Because it wasn't a peak travel time, the hotel gave us a bunch of freebies, such as a free room upgrade and free buffet breakfast every morning.

But the celebration was short-lived, as Melissa started to feel really sick at the hotel and was miserable the entire night! Oh no! So, while Melissa slept in the room that afternoon, I sought out pizza and fried chicken and chocolate cake and a java-chip frappucino (things that are impossible for us to find in Rong Jia Wan).

After tasting victory, I took Melissa to a pharmacy, where she bought cold and flu medicine. We both took this medicine and shut ourselves in for the night after ordering a little room service (lobster bisque).

The next morning, Melissa felt much better, and we wandered downstairs for the breakfast buffet. As you can see from these pictures, we were very happy to find such a familiar and delicious assortment of food!

Melissa and I agreed that the buffet breakfast was one of the best things about being in Hong Kong, not so much that it was delicious, but more because of what it represented. The freedom to choose such a great number of tasty morsels was a great vacation in and of itself. It really helped us appreciate how good Westerners live, compared with most Chinese people. Well, enough about the hotel, and on to the actual city...

Cullen

A Bunch of Stuff Happened

2008-11-17T20:14:00.006+08:00

Cullen: I know that we haven't blogged in a while. So sorry. Me apologisey. We took one look at the results of our survey and came to the conclusion that we had nothing to say diary-wise. However, since we like blogging about our vacations so much, we thought we would take another trip! Okay, so maybe that wasn't the reason for the trip. Here goes...

Our school has been promising us that they would be holding a 'sports day' where we were expected to do a relay race, jump roping and a mystery basketball-type race. Needless to say, we were thrilled to be included in the events while the doctors have been telling us that we should avoid exercise while being treated for rabies. Thanks for caring, administration! Anyhoots, the events had been delayed a number of times due to the constant rainy weather we've been having here in Rong Jia Wan. They finally decided on a couple of non-rainy days last week, which was initially Wednesday and Thursday. We were then told with about 24 hours notice that the sports days would be Thursday and Friday. At last, a long weekend!!!! We pounced immediately and booked tickets to our travel destination.

Melissa: Okay, fine, I'll go along with this, but only because I am your devoted, loving partner, and you are logged in under my account, thus involuntarily putting my stamp at the bottom as the signature of this "conversation". So, after much hassle and several failed bookings on elong.com, we made it to Shenzhen, a Chinese port city only about an hour from Hong Kong, then crossed the border by bus. It was warm, sunny, and palm trees abounded as we made our way to our hotel, the Marco Polo Hong Kong.

Cullen: Okay, I just got back to the computer and Melissa is telling me it's my turn. Apparently, she does not like keeping you guys informed through a collaborative blogging effort. And yes folks, we are blog-arguing in real time.

Well, before we made it all the way down to Hong Kong (which is the coolest city I have ever visited, but more on that later) we had to clear up something. Our last rabies shots were supposed to be on Friday, so we had Rock take us down to the clinic at noon (the day we were to leave). Luckily, we were able to get these last shots. So now I don't have an excuse not to exercise. Rats.

What else happened before we left for Hong Kong? We got new teaching schedules, and I could not be more jealous of Melissa's schedule. She has a four day weekend. Every week! Four days!! And I only have a two day weekend! I'm jealous!

Melissa: Back to the live-blogging argument. Apparently, I do not have my own name-color. I just have boring old blue. Thanks, Cul, thanks for that. Anyway, yes, I have an awesome schedule, but Cullen also had a day off during the last schedule, so he can't complain for a few weeks when my days off have caught up to his. Well, I guess this is all we have to say for the time being until we can get some photos of the trip up, but I concur that Hong Kong was, in fact, the coolest, cleanest, dare I say prettiest city I have ever been to.

Cullen: THAT'S RIGHT. BASH THE BLUE. What did blue ever do to you? I think it's a nice shade... I'm just jealous that you have a long weekend. My day off was a Tuesday. Whoopiddy doo. I still had to plan a lesson for Monday, and now I have earlier classes on Monday. So, now I can't plan the lesson on Monday morning. I literally weep myself to sleep every night in fits of jealousy.

Melissa: Pitiful. For a year and a half I had to get to work earlier and leave hours later than him, and now he's nit-picking over the disbursement of endless free time.

Cullen: Touche. I lose. Anyways, a bunch of stuff happened, and I think we covered a lot of it.

Happy Belated Halloween!

2008-11-03T11:21:00.006+08:00

Hi all,

Melissa and I have successfully eaten our way through many kilos of chocolate, thus signifying the end to the Halloween season. We may have gained a few pant sizes, but we installed a plan to even everything out. You see, we shared the sugar rush with our students by making candy a part of our lessons. So, the students are now that much fatter, thus negating our relative augmentation. Yahoo!

Seriously though, we did feed our students candy last week. I know what you're thinking. You're probably thinking, 'These kids must need bribes to talk because you're such a bad teacher!' Well, you know what? You know what? Yeah? So???

Actually, it wasn't so easy for the students to get the candy. In order to receive candy, they had to:
a) Sit through a lengthy vocabulary presentation on Halloween-related things,
b) Watch the first five minutes of The Nightmare Before Christmas (you know, the part where they sing 'This is Halloween'?),
c) Stay awake as I read them 'The Yellow Ribbon' (a scary story)
d) Rack their brains and write a scary story, and
e) Tell their scary story to the class.

Most of the kids got into it, which was good to see. One of Melissa's students told a good scary story, which I will paraphrase here:

"There once was a little boy who could only say the word thirteen. His parents tried everything to get him to say anything else, but their child could only say, "thirteen, thirteen, thirteen..." They finally tried a psychiatrist, who dedicated much of his time with this interesting case. They worked together in his office, at a local playground and at a park. They had been working together for many months now, and the child could say nothing but the word thirteen. They took a seat by an old well in the park, and the man again said to the boy, "Why do you only say thirteen?" As an answer, the boy pushed him down the well. The boy watched the man hit the bottom of the well and said, "fourteen, fourteen, fourteen..."

After all of this Halloween goodness, we are rearing our heads over Alaska, as we prepare for America to once again disappoint us. I sent in my New Jersey absentee ballot about eight days ago in Yueyang. At least I know that I did everything that I possibly could have done to discontinue the Bush White House's policies. Melissa, on the other hand, did not even apply for an absentee ballot from her battleground state, Ohio. For shame.

Our fingers are crossed!

China: Break Free of Piracy

2008-10-28T14:32:00.013+08:00

On October 21st, millions of Chinese awoke to black computer screens. In a sweeping measure, Microsoft introduced its controversial Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) and Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) programs into the Chinese computing market. All Windows XP computers that were set up for automatic updates downloaded WGA and OGA.

These programs are security measures for use against pirated copies of Microsoft programs. The programs install, determine if you are using a genuine copy of Microsoft's product and if you are not, they start a campaign of annoyance against the user. Every hour the desktop will turn black, making the computer unusable until the user restarts or a genuine copy is installed.

A popular instant messaging service called QQ recently conducted a poll asking its users if they were using pirated software, and about 84% responded affirmatively. Most copies of Windows XP used in China are pirated copies, sold at a small fraction of the original asking price. Even our school computers are operating on pirated versions of Windows XP (we are not affected by the blackout). For most people, the issue with purchasing genuine Microsoft products has been price. Microsoft's products remain unreasonably expensive in China. Recently, more and more high-ranking Chinese officials have been asking Microsoft to lower its prices if it wants to win its battle against piracy.

In the time that I have been here, the Chinese have displayed a limited amount of remorse for the prevalence of pirated goods. In fact, the atmosphere reminds me of the heyday of the Napster era, when users downloaded entire music libraries without a second thought to their impact on the artists. DVDs and software are just as commonly pirated as music was during that time, maybe even more so.

When music companies began slapping individual music thieves with lawsuits and fines, users were at first defiant, but slowly started paying for their music. Just like that initial slap from the music companies, the Chinese are showing signs of anger and resentment towards Microsoft. Some initial naysayers say that Microsoft should not attack individual users, but should instead go after the people that produce and cultivate piracy.

Most prominently, a Beijing lawyer named Dong Zhengwei filed a complaint with the Ministry of Public Security. The lawyer claims that if Microsoft can do this, they have the ability and willingness to spy on the personal computing activities of millions of Chinese. The government has not yet responded to this complaint. In fact, the government seems like it may side with Microsoft's rights to protect its intellectual property. Chinese law says that a party will be guilty of illegal intrusion if that party disrupts the normal functioning of computers by altering operating systems. This law seems like it will take a back seat to the many anti-piracy laws that protect Microsoft.

There has also been a more measured nationalistic reaction to Microsoft's actions. Some are starting to feel that China should not rely on foreign super-companies for their products anymore. Hong Liang is saying that piracy actually hurts China, as the smaller national companies cannot compete in a market flooded with dirt-cheap pirated imports. The sheer number of pirated imports creates reliance upon these foreign products as their name recognition grows.

How does this move by Microsoft tie in with China's economy? Well, it doesn't, unless China takes drastic measures to redefine the nature of its economy. The recent worldwide economic downturn has hit China where it hurts. Thousands of Chinese are losing their jobs as a result of the West's new found frugality. China's economy has long relied upon cheap exports, which makes it extremely vulnerable in times of international economic turmoil, such as this. If Chinese leaders invest in national products and eliminate piracy, which Microsoft has sparked, they can live with far less fear of finding themselves at the bottom of the scrum when the world markets start to tank. Admittedly, this process will take a great deal of time, but it is a necessary next step for a country so rich in manpower.

The release of Microsoft's WGA and OGA may give China another nudge in the direction of investing in itself, as more and more Chinese are exposed to the impacts of external dependence.

Cullen, who is in no way qualified to talk about this, but thought he might anyways...

Phoenix Scenery

2008-10-28T13:56:00.011+08:00

I feel as though I should include these last photos of Fenghuang, as they are pretty to look at and show a little of the iconic sights. The above photo shows the river and a little bit of the unique architecture of the town.

Here is a similar shot, which shows the proximity of the mountains to certain parts of town.

Many of the 'gondoliers' were either picking garbage from the river or were snagging some edible river plants.

The house on the hill belongs to a famous artist.

The town is lit up in neon lights at night.

Many people enjoyed the town at night.

Here is a shot of one of the river crossings lit up at night.

The iconic tower is lit up with the rest of the town.

A shot from my seat at the bar with the live music. It was a pretty good seat.

Cullen

Phoenix Rocks!

2008-10-28T10:35:00.008+08:00

Hi all,

I know we've been posting a crap-ton about Fenghuang, but I have to post this video shot by Melissa in a bar we visited on our last night in town. The bar has live music, and to be honest, they exceeded expectations. Anyways, enjoy the video!

Cullen

Fenghuang: Night Snacks!

2008-10-23T09:43:00.011+08:00

Ah, the evening. A cool and dark wind blows crisply across one's face... one's nose... What's that smell?

Why, it's night snacks, of course! These nocturnally grilled and boiled treats are popular throughout China, especially in Fenghuang. Conveniently enough, a good number of night snack stands opened shop along a road that is very close to our Inn. This comforted me, as I had a strong feeling that the night snacks might turn on me. However, I later discovered that my fears were unfounded, as the night snacks provided us with just the right amount of nourishment to walk around town and see the sights lit up in the traditional neon fashion.

We decided to skip the weird stuff and go straight for the grilled fish, grilled vegetables, boiled dumplings, grilled steamed buns and grilled glutenous rice with pig's blood (yum-o). All of it was coated in a really spicy rub and a lot of oil, which made us pretty sluggish afterwards.

It was at one of these night snack shops that we encountered our first group of friendly Westerners. Up to that point, every Westerner that had I passed returned my greeting with an uninterested glance. However, when I saw a couple of Westerners sitting down for a meal, I marched up them and asked them in my best Mandarin if they speak English. They replied, "Um, do you speak English?" I was both pleased and a little hurt by this revelation (maybe my Mandarin is terrible?). Long story short, they were a friendly couple from Australia enjoying their first night in Fenghuang.

On to dessert. Ginger candy is made all over town by hand-pulling a mass of ginger and sugar until it cools enough to be cut into smaller pieces. We bought a bag of this, which helped sooth our stomachs and delight our palettes. Good times.

Cullen

Decision 2008: Attempt Number One

2008-10-22T23:06:00.005+08:00

It was a rainy day here in Rong Jia Won, which is actually outside of the norm. You see, it's normally just as dark and hazy, but the dust that blows in my mouth makes me squirm as if I'm trapped inside some sort of a chemical toilet. However, when the clouds do decide to burst over this filthy town, I'm just a little bit grateful that it's finally getting a long-overdue bath. If this town were a Peanuts character, it would definitely be Pig-Pen.

It just so happens that the other day, I received my absentee ballot from my way awesome parents. After wrestling about five layers of clear packaging tape off of the envelope (thanks!), I triumphantly removed my prize and then spitefully cast it aside, as if to teach it a lesson for being so hard to reach. The next day, I filled it out (I will contribute to the Obamanation) and printed USA in rather large Chinese characters on the outside of the envelope. Thinking that this was enough for one day, I saved the dirty work for the next day.

During my mid-day break between classes, I walked headlong into the Chinese drizzle, making sure to step in every damn puddle in my way (...) towards what I thought to be the post office. Now, I'm hardly used to the American post office, let alone the Chinese one. So, I wasn't really expecting much success from this trip. I arrived at a horrible little shop called China Post Postal Savings Bank, went in and stood on line with all the other Zhous. I soon realized that this was actually a bank, and I would look like a moron handing the teller my envelope to be mailed. I walked outside looked to the right and saw another building named China Post. I walked into that building, saw a woman sitting behind a long desk and handed her the envelope, knowing full well that I could be making a horrible mistake. She took the envelope, put it on a weighing tray and tried to look up its cost. After a minute, she handed it back to me and blabbered something. I knew I was defeated at that moment.

I may need a little more help than the American spirit the next time I try to mail my ballot. Perhaps I should bring a Chinese person?

Cullen

Fenghuang: Must... Paint... Picture...

2008-10-20T22:00:00.018+08:00

On our way to breakfast, we stumbled across a lanscape painter in the middle of arting it up. You see, we had just arrived at the peak of a small mountain that offers a marvelous view of what Melissa described as 'The Ancient River Town Phoenix'. That's right; we went to breakfast via a mountain path. Our legs are strong!

We attempted to speak some Mandarin to the gentleman, to which he replied, "I don't understand. My Mandarin is not very good." Bwaahhhh? It turns out that the artist is from Singapore, and he speaks English pretty well. Now, I'm not going to pretend to be sorry that I profiled the guy as a Chinese native, as I really do just assume that everybody who looks Asian in China speaks at lease a little bit of Mandarin. It's not like I'm trying to be racist or anything. It would be like assuming that everyone who looks Caucasian in America speaks English. It's just an educated guess, and that's science.

The Singaporean artist was very friendly indeed, and he even gave us permission to take a photograph of his smiling mug with his promising landscape painting. Above and below are two photos of the view from the artist's perch.

Talk about some prime real estate!

Cullen

Fenghuang: The Disco Cave

2008-10-18T21:03:00.012+08:00

On our second day in Fenghuang, Melissa and I went to check out the local cave... via moto! At least our liaison keeps calling it a moto. It looked more like a motorcycle to me. Melissa and I shared the moto ride, and believe you me, it sure was something! The entire time, I dangled my feet off the sides and dragged them along the ground to keep my flip-flops on my feet. Overall, the ride was pretty exhilarating!

Melissa poses in front of the entrance to the cave in the above photo. As you can see, there is a river going through the cave, which is cool. What you may not be able to see in the picture is that there were many falling leaves coming from above, which made for a scenic wait for the tour to begin. I asked if there was a toilet inside the cave, and Rock said, "Maybe you find a dark place." Nice. Turns out there was a toilet inside. So modern!

Now, I have to tell you before you see the rest of the pics; the lights throughout the cave are funkadelic, but the camera makes the lights look psychedelic. Prepare for a mind-blowing trip through... The Disco Cave!

Everyone straps on their roller skates, and I'm thinking, "Lets boogey over to the that rock chandelier," while The Bee Gees echoes in the background. I grab Melissa and we glide past the ancient Miao building, all lit up in ice blue. The guide tells us something about this cave being an ancient home to the Miao people, but we can't stop dancin'!

Whee! By this point, everyone's feelin' the beat. Just look at them go!

Melissa and I stop for a groovy glamour shot. What is the ceiling and what is the floor? I don't know!

We head upstairs to see some more craziness, and the ceiling starts to melt! Whoa! This is getting pretty weird, man!

Suddenly, a blue elephant appears! It's come to step on me!!!

AGHHHHH! A DRAGON!!

Oh no! Melissa tries to escape, as the cave shrinks all around us!

Finally, we get to the end of The Disco Cave. Melissa is completely bonkers at this point. She keeps on screaming something about a 'white deciduous forest' in the rock wall, as everyone roller-boogeys to the exit. As we near the light of the sun, some moron kills our buzz with a rambling guitar solo. Boooooo!

Cullen

Will it Survive?: The Emotional Series Finale

2008-10-16T09:54:00.006+08:00

Mao mi came into our lives with a broken spirit and a whole lot of fleas. We cared for her in the most intimate manner; hand-nursing her back to what we hoped would be purrfect health. But from the start, she refused food and water, as if she was telling us that she was beyond our help. Mao mi passed away last night, while lying next to her warm water bottle.

Yesterday, she seemed to have lost all of her tiny strength. We spent a desperate night searching for and creating a kitten formula to feed her. Although she didn't want any of it, she swallowed what we slowly dropped into her mouth. Despite being the the fussiest of eaters, she was a sweet soul. She purred up until we tucked her into her warm bed last night. She will be greatly missed by us.

Cullen & Melissa

Fenghuang: coffee-coffee-coffee...

2008-10-15T10:44:00.014+08:00

And not just any coffee, but sweet blended iced coffees, called Frappus! Sound familiar to anybody? Okay, whoa! I've gotten ahead of myself here. Let me elaborate...

While back in New York City, Melissa and I developed a powerful addiction to coffee. The long hours we worked left us feeling tired and slumpish (GRE word for you there). But ho! Starbucks yonder! In fact, Starbucks coffee was on every city block and even made its way into our offices for an easier fix of the black stuff. Heck, it was even trendy to sit our butts down in Starbucks and sip on some fancy joe. So, when we came to China and found out that they drink hot water with grass floating in it (they call it tea), we knew that we'd just ordered a heaping plate of cold turkey.

It was in Fenghuang where we fell off the wagon. We were strolling along the narrow riverside path, when we saw a big sign for truffles. As we craned our necks in distant recognition of the word, we caught the whiff. Before we knew it, we were relaxing outside of Cafe Soul, Too sipping on tall cups and discussing the finer points of risotto and cheese with Rock and William, while people-watching. Life was good.

But then again, maybe it happened more like this: We dragged Rock and William into the cafe, forced them to order something, sat down outside, ranted to Rock and William about foreign cheeses, paid a 106 RMB bill and all the while, people stared at us. Yeah, that sounds about right. A Chinese girl even made her boyfriend take a picture of her sitting next to Melissa! That was a little weird.

Anyways, just sitting in the cafe and drinking coffee was one of the better parts of our vacation. It allowed us to feel as though we were experiencing a little bit of the good ol' US of A while on our scenic vacation. We also planted the seed of business venture into the minds of Rock and William, as their families own two good plots of real estate in Fenghuang. We told them that they should create a chain of coffee & ice cream cafes.

It would make sense for them to diversify from the overdone Chinese-themed store, because an express highway from Changsha to Fenghuang is about to be completed (a windy eight hour trip all of a sudden becomes a three hour straight shot). To me, that means that Fenghuang is about to be injected with a greater amount of foreign travellers. We told them that we would gladly act as outside counsel if they promised to give us free coffee. We've got our fingers crossed!

Cullen

WILL! IT! SURVIVE!

2008-10-14T14:41:00.006+08:00

Melissa and I miss American reality television. Chinese television programming just doesn't compare to the endless waves of reality-based bliss that pours from American idiot-boxes. Such a shame.

This is why we have created a new reality show of our own. We call it 'Will it Survive?', and I must say that the pilot episode is showing much promise. You see, in the show, we rescue a near-death kitten from being stomped on by a pint-sized Mao Zedong and give it a second chance for life in our home. The big question is in the title. I knew that life and death struggle could make for quality entertainment!

Okay, here's the back story: We were at the Yueyang train station, and we found this filthy kitten strewn out in front of a trash can. She looked like roadkill and would have become roadkill if we hadn't stopped a huge toddler from stomping her. It was very obvious that she would have died very soon if we didn't do something. We decided to give it a second chance at life. Rock carried the kitten in her hands the rest of the day (even throughout Wal-Mart). We brought her to our apartment to clean and feed her. After three baths with lice-killing shampoo, the water changed colors from brown to not-as-brown. Feeding the kitten has been a chore, as we need to pry open her mouth to pour the water/kitten food down her throat. So, that's fun.

Melissa and I are thinking of this as a catch and release sort of endeavor. There is a rather large cat population around our campus, so we are hoping that this environment will be more hospitable than the mean streets of Yueyang. Until then, we'll grab a snack and watch our new favorite show, 'Will it Survive?'

Cullen

Our trip to Fenghuang: The "Ancient Phoenix River Town"

2008-10-12T23:41:00.015+08:00

While our peers of WorldTeach enjoyed long and lavish trips to the north, like Beijing, or the south, such as Hong Kong during this National Day festival, Cullen and I, ever diligent, so devoted to being on campus to satiate our appetite to work (such voracious teachers of English are we) and do good in this world, repudiated such leisure and abjured extravagant amenities for a more local experience. This includes the laconic duration of the break, as our school granted us a grand total of three days off, Saturday and Sunday included. Why should we enjoy a week off in September for Mid-Autumn Festival or a week off in October for National Day Holiday like everybody else? We shouldn't, because we aren't like anybody else in our program. We have principles, and traveling out of the province on some whimsical escapade to the outer edges of the country most certainly will not be in the cards for us as long as we work at Yueyang County Number 1 Middle School! Take that, you slackers!

Apart from the brevity and relative proximity of this trip, however, it has been the best vacation we have taken in a long time, inside or out of China. We had wanted to accompany Rock and William to Fenghuang for their wedding, but unfortunately we had class until October 2nd and were unable to be there for the ceremony or dinner from September 29th to October 1st. We left for Changsha on Friday October 3rd at around 8:00 AM, and arrived by bus in Fenghuang around 7:00 PM. Rock and William were waiting for us as we disembarked from the bus.

Conveniently, the bus lets it's passengers off right in front of the Grand Phoenix Hotel, or the Phoenix Grand Hotel, depending on which hotel insignia you're looking at at the moment, which is the nicest, and dare I say grandest, hotel in Fenghuang. Rock's lovely sister is also a manager at this beautiful establishment, and she was starstruck enough with our foreignness to put us up for our entire stay in Fenghuang on her dime! See lovely sister below, posing in front of a glamour shot of her loveliness:

Rock and William swept us up to one of their apparently more modest rooms. I'll let the photos do the work for me here:

I know what you're thinking, and it's the same thing that I was: a bathtub AND a toilet! Anyway, we had reservations here through the 6th, but Rock spent most of the evening on the phone with her mom, allowing her to convince her to extricate us from this dream of hot water for more than ten minutes and more light switches than actual lights to the traditional "Asian inn" situated closer to what we came to see anyway: the beauty of a town on the brink of falling into a yet unpolluted river. So we spent a night here at the Grand and then packed up and moved over to our new digs. In Rock's words, "From heaven to hell."

*Those are little shampoo packets on the bed, if you were wondering.

It's not that we were disappointed, really, just saddened. Anyway, the accommodations were not at all why we were there, and so after dropping down our bags, we headed out to enjoy the beauty of the river city.

Unfortunately, it rained the first day. Still, the town was so unique and charming, it captivated us unwaveringly nonetheless. There was much to see and do in Fenghuang, but we also took a trip to a neighboring village where William's extended family lives, and went to his cousin's wedding ceremony. We took the opportunity to get to know the "real China", as Rock and William like to call rural villages, and see some "ancient" homes with historic architecture.

The last picture is of the farmer's market, which was not open at the time. The photo of Cullen and the one right below it are of the kitchen of the house, which has woks built right into the countertop. They are heated by burning wood in ovens below the woks. William's mother's house also has this kind of kitchen. When I asked how they clean the woks, they laughed at me and never gave me a straight answer. This may explain why I felt sick to my stomach for three or four days after we returned to Rong Jia Won...

Many more posts to come about our trip to Fenghuang, stay tuned!

Burners Replaced with Afterburners

2008-10-10T21:34:00.005+08:00

Have you ever seen the movie Top Gun? Honestly, I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember that it showed a few jet-fighters taking off, with their afterburners lighting up and launching the aircraft into the sky. I was recently reminded of this part of the movie after using my repaired cooking range. The flame on the burners was really weak, so I complained to the school, and they got it 'fixed'. And by 'fixed,' I mean cranked up to eleven. I swear to almighty Zeus, the flame is a bright green when I turn it on high.

For the first meal I cooked up some snow peas with eggplant and then pork with black tree fungus (it tastes better than it sounds). I started the meal by burning the garlic to a deep, cancerous brown, followed by a hasty scrape onto the serving platter. Although oil got everywhere, I continued cooking.

I threw in the snow peas, and they died upon impact. A few moments later, the entire bottom of the pan became engulfed in flames, which quickly spread to the snow peas (poor things...). By the time I pulled the pan off the portal to Hell, the flame had shot up about two and a half feet! I swear, I thought that it was trying to escape out the exhaust fan.

After that debacle, I started on the black tree fungus for the second dish. All was going well until about a minute into the frying, when the fungi started exploding like popcorn! Fungus was flying all over the kitchen, rocketing from the wok at an alarming rate! By the time I was done with the stuff, half of it was on the floor.

Afterwards, all of the adrenaline in my system made it hard to use my chopsticks. On the plus side, it boils water lickety-split, so dumplings and tea are now that much easier to make...

Cullen

Celebrating 30 Years of Existence: Yueyang County No. 1 Middle School

2008-10-08T09:09:00.008+08:00

October 3rd was our school's thirtieth anniversary, and to celebrate, the administration decked the entire school out in lots of red ornamentation. I don't know who these girls are in the above photo, but I think that both of us felt bad for them. Their job was to greet cars that came in through the school's main gate. Whoopee! (Side note: all of these photos were taken on October 2nd. We took a vacation from October 3rd - October 6th. So, we missed the October 3rd celebrations.)

Melissa is standing in front of the administration building, which is the first building you see when entering the campus. In the days leading up to the anniversary, there were Chinese announcements over the school's intercom system that told everyone of last minute changes to their class schedules. Two of my classes that week were cancelled without my knowing it. So, I showed up to class and looked like an idiot by trying to start a lesson while the students tried to tell me that class was cancelled. Overall, I was more surprised than upset in leaving the classes.

Awkward! When Melissa and I came back from shopping, who did we find lining the only route to our apartment, but our loyal Senior 1 students. I said 'hi, hello, etc.' while walking, and Melissa got the brilliant idea of giving everyone high fives. Her hand hurt pretty bad after that.

The above photo is the new gym that the administration constructed for this occasion, which happens to be right outside of our apartment. I've heard a few people around campus say that this gym is a huge waste of money, as it is only a symbol of power, rather than a practical addition to the campus. In any case, the students were excited to be out of class for the celebration that marked the beginning of their first real break from school, but not as excited as us!

Cullen

Leading Our Children... Into the Future!

2008-10-07T23:16:00.008+08:00

This lovely Soviet-style, futurist-looking statue greets visitors to our school's humble library (we have yet to see an actual book in there). For the first month, I just kind of just glanced at it in passing, wondering, "What the eff?" every time. That is, until I recently took a closer look at it...

As you can see from the closer-up view of the statue, the teacher and student are riding an iron wave. This is obviously symbolic of their ultimate goal of smelting the seas. Do you see the rather large atom? The teacher has it dangerously placed in her hand, and holds it like a carrot in front of her student. But look again! The first picture makes its meaning clearer: the students here grab at 'the atom' clumsily, like an infant trying to catch a baseball. If I were a student here, I would not be amused by the administration's poorly veiled lack of faith in the student body's abilities.

Or, would I be too busy looking up the statue's skirt? Artsy...

Cullen

The Milk's a Scandal

2008-10-07T22:58:00.006+08:00

Just in case you are living under a rock, China's milk supply was tainted by the plastic additive called melamine, which gives watered-down milk a more creamy consistency. I believe that the milk supply company named Sanlu is at fault. Apparently, they added this chemical to their milk to cut down on costs. Now, their company has 1.3 billion dissatisfied customers.

Melissa and I haven't been affected by the milk, and as further evidence, I give you the above expert witness, who says, "Blurp!" So, in case you were wondering, we're doing A-OK here in Hunan.

Cullen

Rong Jia Won: Fine Dining

2008-10-02T09:29:00.005+08:00

Eating out in Rong Jia Won is always an adventure, but the food here is always Hunanese. We have no alternative foods, not even other Chinese food styles. Boring, yet harsh on your stomach.

A lot of restaurants have statues of big dogs guarding their doors. I know what you must be thinking; "Aww, those Chinese love the little doggies" WRONG! They love to eat them! I thought that dog was a dish that was not served in this area, but apparently, dog is eaten in Rong Jia Won, too. If a restaurant has pictures or statues of dogs, they are served in that restaurant.

I was at a dinner last week for all of the Senior 1 teachers, and after the meal, Melissa told me that one of the dishes was dog. We were separated by some men, who wanted to drink with me (or force me to drink), but they failed to warn me about any of the shady dishes that were served. Melissa's table, on the other hand, was very courteous to her and told her all about what to avoid.

I don't think that I ate any of the dog, but I can't be too sure. I used to not eat any meat at restaurants as a prevention to consuming dog, but I started to eat pork, which is pretty easy to identify. Anyways, I hear that dog meat looks like beef, and some say that it tastes better than beef. Blah!!

Cullen

Rong Jia Won: A Better Life

2008-10-01T12:46:00.005+08:00

This crazy block of a building is the nearest supermarket to where we live. Its name is A Better Life, and it's about a two minute walk away from the main gate and a seven minute walk from our apartment. Pretty close, eh?

Now, as far as supermarkets go, our choices are fairly plentiful in Rong Jia Won. A Better Life has the advantage of being extremely close to where we live. Shorter walk = happy (fatter) Cullen. There is another supermarket that is probably about twelve minutes away that has a greater variety of items (think cheap-as-dirt clothing, weird cell phones, etc.). We've been calling this place Heart Market, as there is a big heart over its entrance. There is a third, but that one's pretty useless, so I won't talk about that one.

Ever since we got here, we've been using the closest market. But then, a few weeks ago things started to turn sour in our relationship...

First, they started to discontinue our favorite food: eggplant. We would cook that stuff all the time if we could. It was very frustrating. It made me seek eggplant elsewhere, such as at Heart Market, where it is plentiful and delicious.

Second, a few Saturdays ago, I went to A Better Life in search of french toast ingredients by myself. As I approached, a trio of tiny hooligans noticed me with great interest. They then began loudly asking (?) things in Chinese to me, to which I said, "Ni hao" and walked on by. They must have thought this was the funniest thing in the entire world, as they started laughing hysterically and followed me into the store. I passed by the security guard, hoping that he would stop them. No dice. I walked into the candy aisle, hoping they would get distracted by the sweets, but they kept on screaming and laughing all around me. I quickly grabbed my things, proceeded to the check-out lane and they accompanied me to the cashier, louder than ever. I exited and lost them as I crossed the street, hoping that they would follow me into oncoming traffic (kidding... or am I?). So, that was fun.

Third, an employee at A Better Life, who was a student at our school, keeps trying to start English conversations that Melissa and I keep needing to repair, as she doesn't speak very well. She has asked us for our cell phone numbers maybe four times now. It's ridiculous. Recently, she literally ran up to us (I could hear a rapid clop-clop-clop coming from behind us) and presented us with a card saying that she wanted to give it to us. She then said that it is for one hundred dollars. We were pretty stunned at first because it was a generous gift, but then we were confused because she kept on saying that it is for dollars (I think one hundred dollars equals something like seven hundred kuai). THEN, she tells us it doesn't have any money on it, but that we need to add "one hundred dollars" to it to use it. Right, lady. Sure. By that time, I had the card in my hands and had noticed how worn it looked. Melissa and I tried to find an exit from this scam, but then she told us that we needed to "help her" by adding our money to it. Melissa and I pitilessly said we'd think about it and made our great escape to the cashier.

In short, I'd now rather walk the extra five minutes to the Heart Market. I'm gonna be so fit!

Cullen

Happenings Around Campus: Mid-Morning Exercise

2008-09-24T13:30:00.010+08:00

Above is a video of the mid-morning exercises that our students perform every single day. Can you see the dedication, the blood, sweat and tears that every student pours into this routine? I mean, just look at the excitement!

This is only the tip of the iceberg, as they also wake up every single day at 6:00 am to do an elaborate early-morning exercise routine. Melissa and I have been too bitter towards the blaring music to go out there and check out the show, but judging by the sounds of it, I'm sure it is phenomenal.

Cullen

Update: When I try to click on the video, it says that it is currently not available. Does anybody else get this message, or does it work okay?

Homemade Dumplings: It's a Lot of Work

2008-09-24T13:09:00.007+08:00

On Saturday, Melissa and I decided that we needed to do something productive... something rewarding... something delicious. We looked at each other and cried, "DUMPLINGS!" in unison. With that, we headed out to the open market to pick up the dumpling wrappers. We picked up about 150 of them and, thinking that would be enough for a week, we went to the grocery store to pick up the rest of the ingredients.

This is the end product of a crap-ton of chopping with the pictured butcher knife. As you may be able to see, I used green onion, ginger, red pepper flakes, salt and chicken bouillon powder. In hindsight, I should have used a little bit of sugar, but the meat mush tastes pretty dern gewd as is.

Melissa and I start on our hour-long dumpling-filling marathon in the above photo.

As you can see from the meat mountain hiding Melissa in the above photo, we had our work cut out for us. We worked throughout the afternoon, but in the end, we had enough dumplings to last all week. We even have leftover dumpling meat to be made into more dumplings later! This was a good idea, because it gives me a break from cooking more complicated dishes and the dumplings taste great!

Cullen

Too Lazy to Cook. Bon Appetite!

2008-09-21T19:42:00.005+08:00

I'm experiencing a general feeling of laziness recently. Above is lazy food in China. This is the only way to get your daily allowances of tomatoes and aromatic crispy chicken!

Has the MSG slowed me down? Has culture shock grabbed me by the throat? Are my students and non-students wearing me out? Wait, that sounds about right. Yeah, that's the one.

I teach Senior 1 students (think of them as high school sophomores) twelve times a week and on top of that have extracurricular 'English Corners' with them. Now, this isn't so bad, but when all of the Senior 2 and Senior 3 students who miss their foreign teachers of past years see me, they automatically want to hang out with me at my apartment.

They don't come over all that much, but when they do, they give very little or (usually) no warning before they knock on my door. What's annoying about these little meetings is that the students are the ones who dictate how long they stay. They know their schedule and come into my apartment thinking to themselves that they have X amount of time, so I should talk about 1, 2, 3 &4 and then suddenly leave.

The students themselves are very nice and thirst for an opportunity to speak English with me, so I'm not against meeting them. However, I just feel like I need a little space, which is impossible on this campus. I live right outside the basketball courts, which is full of students playing basketball all the time. Whenever I leave my apartment, I'm a spectacle and continue to be a spectacle until I get back inside my apartment.

Having said that, I guess I'm experiencing culture shock, too.

Cullen

Our Scenic Trip Back From Vacation

2008-09-13T15:27:00.015+08:00

Melissa and I may have told you about this already, but I thought I might as well document this tale here as well. On the Saturday we were to return to RJW from Wulingyuan, fate decided that we would take the scenic route. We had planned on taking the minibus from Wulinyuan to Zhang Jia Jie, a bus to Changsha and yet another bus to RJW. However, we did not take the China-factor (nothing goes as planned here) into account.

We woke up at 8:00 a.m., left the apartment by 8:30 a.m., took the town bus over to the bus station and left on the 9:00a.m. bus from Wulingyuan to Zhang Jia Jie. We arrived in the Zhang Jia Jie bus station at around 10:30 a.m. after an uncomfortable ride (the seat-back in front of Melissa was broken and the smelly passenger who sat there was basically lying in her lap). Mind you, it was raining constantly that day, which added about five bails of hay to our figurative camel's back.

When we got to the ZJJ bus station I knew that we were on a very strict schedule, as the bus that we needed to catch from Changsha to RJW leaves at 4:00 p.m. I did my best to procure us two bus tickets at the earliest possible time, but my Chinese only went so far. I got the two tickets, but they we for the 1:00 p.m. bus. Upon realizing this, I went from agitated to upset, as I knew that we would have to wing it in Changsha.

We killed a few hours in an internet cafe, got on our bus, realized that we did not have seats together and I proceeded to mime my protests to the bus attendant. After a few minutes of pointing and acting like a baby, the attendant finally moved some people and I got to sit with Melissa on our four hour bus ride to Changsha. About halfway through our ride, we stopped at a rest stop and about half of the bus poured out to use the facilities. I thought it wise to wait a few minutes to let the fellow travellers clear out before I went in. I came out a few minutes later to find my bus driving away. I ran up to the bus, flagged it down and sat next to a terrified Melissa. Lesson learned.

We got into Changsha via the West bus station well after the last bus to RJW left, and Melissa dragged me kicking and screaming over to a noodle shop for some much-needed food. It was still pouring in Changsha, so hailing a taxi to get to the train station was extremely difficult. Melissa took charge of the situation and got us a taxi to the East bus station, which took longer than I think it should have. We got out and Melissa wanted to know where the trains were, and I angrily told her that the train station is not here (I assumed that she wanted to take a bus when she told the driver to go to the East station, but she didn't realize that the East bus station is completely separate from the train station). Not my proudest moment.

Melissa asked some bystanders where the bus to Yueyang is and they pointed to the nearest bus. She asked the bus driver if he was going to Yueyang, and he said, "blah, blah, blah, Yueyang, blah." That was good enough for us, so we boarded and took our seats, fuming at each other. The guy sitting next to me was talking on his cell phone, so I listened in to try to hear if he said Yueyang. Lo and behold, he said Yueyang. I felt much more comfortable at that point.

It wasn't until about an hour into the trip that we noticed something wrong. We saw mountains, and the road didn't look familiar. You see, Yueyang is a very flat area, but I thought that we must be coming in from another area, an area that I had not seen before. The bus stopped in a very dark, random back-alley bus station, and we found ourselves utterly lost. While we tried to figure out where to go, a crowd of people started to form around us. I kept asking them where Yueyang County No. 1 Middle School is in Mandarin, but the few people who seemed interested in helping us just looked at me like I was crazy. That's when it started to hit me. I pointed to the ground, said, "Yueyang", and the man pointed to the ground and said, "Liuyang".

Melissa, rightly so, pulled me away from the crowd to find a taxi (thieves come out at night). We flagged one down, called up our Chinese liaison, and gave the phone to the driver. He talked with her for a minute, handed me the phone and she informed me that we had taken a bus to Liuyang, two hours in the wrong direction (Fun fact: Liuyang is the fireworks capital of the world). Melissa and I freaked out for about a half hour and weighed our options. We could have stayed that night with a volunteer who lives twenty miles outside the city, or go back to Changsha via taxi for 300 kuai. In the end, we decided to go back to Changsha, mostly due to my insistence that we just get this trip over with. It was a two hour ride back to Changsha, and it was already 8:00 p.m.

Our only transportation option in Changsha was the train, so we had the driver go there. He was actually supposed to come into the ticket office and buy our tickets for us, but we hit a traffic jam right outside the station, so he couldn't park. We jumped out of the cab, mid-traffic jam and headed for the ticket window. Luckily, we spotted a girl who looked as though she went to school (these people tend to speak English, if you can find them). We introduced ourselves to 'Lollipop', and asked her to help us buy the tickets. After that, she led us into the station and showed us where we needed to wait for our 11:30 p.m. train to Yueyang. It turned out that we had standing room only tickets. We said good-bye, and she left us to ourselves.

While waiting for the train, we were struck by the sheer amount of people in the station sitting, standing and sleeping on the floor. Among these people was a group of German-looking folk. They saw us and didn't seem interested in conversation, much to my relief (they looked weird). Later, while standing, an Iranian-looking fellow appeared to our left. I think that I thought he was Iranian because he was thin, had dark hair, had olive skin, was wearing a tunic-looking shirt and was peeling an orange with a switchblade. Well, my profile was way off, as it turns out that he is an Italian student backpacking around China. We got to talking, and it turned out that he had the same ticket as us. Yay! A new (temporary) friend!

In China, when trains come into the station, the people who are boarding line up, get their ticket checked and run like Hell to their train. They do this because most people buy standing room only tickets, but take a seat on the train. They do this in hopes that the seat has not been taken. If somebody with a ticket comes to the seat, that person then kicks the other person out of his/her seat.

However, when our train was called, a HUGE line formed, and when the line wasn't going fast enough, the people in the back of the line bum-rushed another entrance to the platform. Since we were in the back of the line, we thought, "What the heck. Why not?" and hurdled over the rows of seats in our way to get to the newly-opened gate.

The train itself looks like it was pulled out of an old movie (think of the train from Young Frankenstein for inspiration). There were already hundreds, if not thousands, of people on the train, and not a seat could be found. Packed together like vertical sardines, we departed at 11:45 p.m. Take a look at the below picture (got from internet) for an idea of what the standing room only train is like, and realize that our train was much, much worse:

We did not have a convenient place to put our backpack, so we kept it with us. A few men about twenty feet away cleared a space above them for our pack, but we were not in the trusting mood. We stood all the way to Yueyang and got off our train at about 1:15 a.m. Probably the highlight of the trip, aside from meeting the friendly Italian, was the discovery of our liaison and her boyfriend waiting for us outside of the Yueyang train station. They had been waiting for us for about an hour, and intended to make sure that we did not get lost again. After saying good-bye to our Italian friend, they took us home via taxi (with a pit stop at the taxi gas station), and we arrived in RJW at about 2:30 a.m. I don't think we can ever thank Rock and William enough for helping us that day.

All in all, we travelled from Wulingyuan to Zhang Jia Jie to Changsha to Liuyang to Changsha to Yueyang to Rong Jia Won. The bolded city names in the previous sentence can be found on this map:

This experience almost ruined our vacation to Zhang Jia Jie National Park. However, whenever I got upset, Melissa tried her best to cheer me up and when she got upset, I tried my best to cheer her up. It was incredibly stressful, but there were many times when I actually enjoyed myself. If anything, we can look back on this experience and laugh.

Cullen

Chinglish: Um, Yeah...

2008-09-11T16:06:00.006+08:00

In this very special entry of Zwischel - The Blog, I will introduce you to Chinglish. Now, as the name entails, Chinglish is a super-language invented by the Chinese. It combines the grammatical structure and randomness of the Chinese character system with very poorly translated English. Hence the name, Chinglish. Melissa and I were informed that the problem is not that China lacks translators, but that China lacks proofreaders. However, after reviewing an incredible amount of Chinglish during my brief time here in China, it is my opinion that China's fleet of English translators are child laborers on summer break from preschool. Of course, I'm kidding (don't block this site, China!).

Above is a photo of an advertisement for some sort of skating rink/small city located within Martyr's Park in Changsha. Below is a description of an abandoned children's playground (complete with outdoor ball pit), called Rainbow City, and its rules. Please read:

Hilarious.

Our Chinese teacher gave us a survival guide that lists certain dishes that we are able to order in restaurants. I don't know what 'strewed chooped fish' or 'cucumbers friend meat' are, but I don't think I want them.

We didn't take a lot of photos of Chinglish, but since there is such a high demand, we will do our best to supply these pictures. Hope you enjoyed the pictures so far!

Cullen

Zhang Jia Jie National Park: Our Last Trail

2008-09-10T20:24:00.015+08:00

Our final descent in Zhang Jia Jie National Park took the form of a very gradual slope. This final trail mostly followed a gurgling stream, which provided a nice soundtrack to accompany the lush visuals of our surroundings. Oddly enough, we passed many cultural symbols of Japan, such as the above yin yang embedded in the stone path. The previous day, we stopped at the 'Friendship Tree,' which tells of a deep friendship between China and Japan. I say that these symbols of friendship are odd because we had been instructed not to mention Japan, as the Chinese generally dislike the Japanese (especially the angst-and-hormone-ridden teenagers we teach).

We sadly had to leave the peaks behind, but we marched on towards purdy greenery!

Above is an example of the floral diversity of Hunan Province. I've said this before, and I'll say it again; it boggles my mind how tropical, deciduous and coniferous plants co-exist here in Hunan. Or maybe my vegetable worldview is immature? I will ponder and get back to you on that one.

A lovely rock bridge affords us safe travel over the mighty, nameless stream!

A monkey! This monkey must have thought that we would not be able to see him if he didn't move, but how could we miss him when he was pointing so conveniently at that sign? Well, we didn't feed or tease him, and we moved on never to see another wild monkey...

Then again, why would we need monkeys, when we could have cement railroad tracks with plants growing between them? Too fun!

There were many 'houses' that dotted the trail, such as the one above. This one came stocked with a black-as-night fish pool (swamp thing lives here?), which you can barely make out in front of the structure.

Ah, the mighty, nameless stream becomes even mightier! The walk across the above bridge was pretty intense, as it was steep on both sides and slippery as heck. But we lived, mostly intact!

As we exited the dense forest of the trail, we were immediately met by more of the purdy mountains that made us want to travel here in the first place.

This large statue of a heart-shaped lock actually has a little bit of a story behind it. One that I do not know very well. Actually, I only know that lovers take a lock and key up to the tops of the mountains, and lock their lock around a railing. They then toss the key off the side of the cliff to seal their love forever. Then, a few hours later, they are arrested for murder. The weapon? A key.

We posed for the above photo in front of the 'lovers' lock' (I'm so clever!), and I proceeded to nearly ruin the picture with my patented almost-smile. Seriously though, Melissa and I were happy to be there with each other, and I do smile a lot, honest!

While exiting the park, we ran into an English-speaking Chinese travel guide who walked us out and led us to a restaurant down the road. He probably knew the owners and was getting them a little business, but he was really nice, as he made sure that the owners of the restaurant got us on the right bus back to Wulingyuan (where Amanda and Andrew live) after our meal. So, we ate, enjoyed and got on the bus.

Turns out that we needed to transfer from one small bus (I think the closest thing to it in the States is a minibus) to another. The ride was spectacularly beautiful, as was the random intersection at which the first bus dropped us off. We flagged down another speeding bus, hopped on and headed for home (while sitting on the floor of the bus). One thing about life in China is that it is very last-minute and things you think will work out, often don't. This is mostly due to the language barrier, but it also seems that my American expectations are also at conflict with the realities of the crusty Chinese institutions at work. However, when things don't go my way, I just remind myself that I'm just a tourist and that every experience should be cherished as such (or at least I try to tell that to myself).

Overall, Zhang Jia Jie National Park was a blast and I enthusiastically recommend it as a travel destination in China. Melissa and I will remember this one for a long time to come.

Cullen

Zhang Jia Jie National Park: The Staircase Village

2008-09-10T13:32:00.007+08:00

So, on day two of our trip to Zhang Jia Jie National Park, our thirst for monkeys got the best of us, and we decided to explore the park's valleys for those little scamps! We traveled back along Golden Whip Stream and found an unexplored fork in the road. The unexplored part of the fork is called 'Laoxi Village' (I think), and every Asian tourist who stopped to ponder it decided against it. Now, if I were feeling reasonable, I may have said, "Nobody wants to go this way. It would be unwise to take this path," but I was blinded by the dazzling monkeys who were swinging through my figurative treetops. What followed was the most beautiful StairMaster I have ever used.

I stayed in front of the posse and took photos like a madman. In the above photo, Melissa, Amanda and Andrew (the two volunteers that live in the area) are discussing a violent coupe of my leadership. Luckily, I was out of grabbing distance. Much to their chagrin, I pretended not to hear their cries of protest, and we pressed upwards.

The first actually dangerous obstacle that we encountered was this natural rock path, which was coated with a thin layer of water and slippery slime. To Melissa's left is a sheer drop of maybe twenty feet to the nearest concrete path. Beyond that is a direct tumble through thick foliage to the entrance of the trail (maybe a quarter mile).

After besting that obstacle, I knew I had the group where I wanted them. It was either see where this trail goes, or cross the slippery path again and trek down the mountain. In the above photo, you can see the second obstacle, randomly placed boulders. We laughed at the challenge as we crossed them.

About a half hour into our climb up the stairs, we came to this strange medieval wall with a gate conveniently placed around the trail. It makes me wonder which came first, the trail or the wall?

What hiking trail would be complete without giant stone playing cards scattered along the sides of the trail? After passing each card, we wondered with more and more fear that we would pass an entire deck of giant stone playing cards. This is kind of jumping ahead of myself a little bit, but at the very pinnacle of the mountain was the Joker card. It seems the joke was on us...

Or was it? After about an hour and a half of walking up stairs (we were actually walking up a mountain) we reached the highest viewpoints offered on the trail. We were able to see sharp rock formations peeking out of the lush forest floor, as shown by the above photo.

In the end, we had panted and sweated, but the effort was absolutely worth the experience. We had not reached the very tips of the mountains, but had ended up at an elevated inner-mountain valley, exhaling moisture at a constant rate...

Cullen

Zhang Jia Jie National Park: Golden Whip Stream

2008-09-03T20:45:00.005+08:00

So, it turns out that all of the little waterfalls that we found at the top of the mountain attribute to Golden Whip Stream, which lies on the valley floor. This was a sight for sores legs (from all the stair descending)!

There were many workers to be found that would carry you around the park for the small price of 300 kuai. We didn't see anyone take advantage of this feature, but since it was raining on and off all day, this guy didn't seem to care that he was temporarily out of business.

We took the path along Golden Whip Stream towards a dining area that, unknown to us, was about a mile and a half away. Stomachs growling, we pressed on.

Above is a shot of the mighty Golden Whip Stream, fully energized by the recent rains. Okay, it wasn't so mighty, but it was whooshing by fast enough to make it look ferocious in this picture! Still, Melissa and I wanted to jump in real bad.

A shot of the sweet mountains in the distance. Being in the river valley was like we were in a cold sauna.

Farther down the path, the river widened and let us take more photos of those mysterious mountains. Lots of people gathered at this spot to take this shot, so it must be a popular one!

Finally! A sign saying "Welcome to Zhang Jia Jie National Park"! We were starting to feel not so welcome until this point... Notice that the sign is a big rock. Kinda unnecessary, but cool.

Melissa is happy to have finally had dinner in the above picture. We ate b-fast at 8:00AM, and didn't eat again until 6:00PM. So hungry! And no monkeys in sight to feast upon! Booooooo.

We had been trekking through the park with our very lucky friends, Amanda and Andrew. They're extremely lucky because they live right next to the park and can enter it for free. Anyways, we enjoyed our first day at the park, and were looking forward to what we hoped would be a less foggy second day. More on the second day soon. Later gators.

Cullen

Zhang Jia Jie National Park: Misty Mountains

2008-09-03T13:26:00.006+08:00

Hi all,

A few days ago, we visited one of the most naturally beautiful areas in China, Zhang Jia Jie National Park, which is located in Western Hunan Province. Unfortunately, when we arrived, the sun was not shining, but in its place was a giant, white cloud. However, we said to ourselves, "We've come this far. Lets see how it goes." And this is how it went:

We decided to take the (pretty expensive) cable car up to the top of the first mountain, which would provide incredible views of miles and miles of spire-like mountains. On a good day. Instead, we were almost completely enveloped in a dense cloud, where visibility was extremely limited. When we arrived at the pinnacle of the first mountain, the situation had not improved. It took us about a microsecond to decide to take a bus over to the much lower second mountain in hopes of actually seeing anything.

The most remarkable thing that we saw on the second mountain was a large natural bridge connecting one spire to another. People were walking across it, but Melissa and I just took a picture of it (above). The weather on this mountain was only slightly better than on the first mountain, but it did get better as we walked down (I guess we were walking out of a cloud?).

We walked down the mountain and encountered more and more interesting things. Or maybe they seemed interesting in comparison with the cloud? Anyways, the above photo is from a small path that shot off from the main path, which hugs the sheer side of the mountain. A number of people are indigenous to the mountains and help run the park, and I believe that the small path led to one of their buildings. However, we did not investigate. Sorry!

On the way down, we passed a number of small waterfalls that were pouring off of the side of the mountain. The above picture is of an area that was carved out by one of these waterfalls a long time ago. The park operators built a very narrow and winding staircase down, which we explored a little. We had to be careful though, as it was really slippery, and the thought of falling down it was more than a little frightening.

We had asked a bus driver how long it would take to get to the bottom of the mountain, and he had told us that it would take thirty minutes. He must have been an Olympic stair-walker, because it took us at least an hour and a half. After the first hour, our knees were shaking!

I think Melissa sees the end of the staircase! What could possibly be beyond this, I wonder...

Cullen

Need to Get Somewhere Dangerously?

2008-09-03T10:26:00.004+08:00

If you need to get to the other side of town, but are not sure if you reeaally want to get there, hop in a taxi tricycle! The taxi tricycle is an interesting invention of local origin. Allow me to explain in such detail that leaves nothing to the imagination: the inventor chops off the rear end of a motorcycle and replaces it with the most rickety wooden carriage he is able to buy/find on the side of the road. Voila! The taxi tricycle is born, dripping with placenta (or is that gasoline?).

We had such a moment where we had to go somewhere, but didn't reeaally want to get there. We had to go across town to start the visa application process at our local police station. Fun. So, we rolled the dice with our lives and took one of these contraptions to get there.

Here is a photo of Melissa riding in the back of a taxi tricycle. You can't see it because of the ginormous sunglasses, but she has the look of utter self-abandon in her eyes. We creaked and sputtered to our destination and paid the driver three kuai, which is something like $0.43. Yaaaaaaaaay.

Cullen

Atteeeeeeeention!

2008-09-03T10:16:00.005+08:00

So, for the first week before school started, the students at Yueyang County No. 1 Middle School had military training. The students got ordered around by military officers and marched all over school. It's every little kid's dream come true!

Cullen

Dumplings for Beginners

2008-09-01T16:35:00.008+08:00

Hi everybody! echo, echo, echo...

Rock and William came over to our place a few days ago to cook us another Chinese classic: dumplings. They brought all of the ingredients, which included the pre-made wrappers, a huge hunk of pork (half fat), green onions and ginger. They're too nice.

So, the first thing that must be done is to take your meat cleaver and chop the bejesus out of the pork, ginger and green onions. After that, you mix in salt and chicken bouillon powder and you get something that resembles the above glob. Yes, you read that right: I said chicken bouillon powder. All of the best chefs use it as a substitute for MSG. Duh, guys.

After icing your arm from the half hour of chopping, you go through the tedious process of filling the dumpling wrappers with the mixture. For me, that simply meant sleeping while pretending to fill dumplings, as shown in the above photo. Melissa, Rock and William are good at filling them. Not me...

After all of the dumplings are filled, you boil them while giving an awkward peace sign. Man, I need a haircut.

After you put your hand down, fill your bowl with a little oil, soy sauce, salt, black vinegar (?!), cilantro and even more green onions. When you ladle in the dumplings, some boiling water will come with them and you get something like this:

I know what you're thinking; "Why the crap would I do all that when I could just buy frozen dumplings?". And then I would return your question with another question; "Why not just order takeout in the first place?". Touche. But seriously, they were really good, and for us, this method is the only option.

Cullen