Check Out the Photos!

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)!

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

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!

Good Night, Sweet Prince!

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

Chinese Haircuts

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

Something I Probably Should Have Kept to Myself...

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

Look to the Left!

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

Leading Our Children... Into the Future!

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

Changsha No. 1 Middle School - A Virtual Tour

First off, sorry about not posting on this blog for a while! We moved to site (Rong Jai Won) and didn't have good enough internet access to update Zwischel - The Blog, but all is well (enough) now.

I thought since Melissa and I spent so much time at Changsha No. 1 Middle School (Changsha Yi Zhong) I would give you all a sort of virtual tour through the campus. Try not to be too bored!

Speaking of bored, this first shot is of the campus library, which, like most other buildings on campus, is built in an open-air layout. This is the main lobby of the building, and provides access to all four (or five?) floors. You can actually see a gardener tending to one of the top trellises in the photo if you look hard enough. We always stuck to the first floor media room, so we didn't get a chance to see all of it, but I'm sure we didn't miss much.

This shot is of me acting like an idiot in front of a big metal mural-ish thing. There's probably a better word for that, but I don't know it. Anyways, I'm kicking the metal soccer ball. This is on the second floor of the main teaching building, which is also built in an open-air style.

This is a shot of the courtyard water feature, stocked full with golden colored fish (all alive). As you can see, the 'grass' looks like immature rice plants. I think this may be an homage to the many rice fields in the surrounding countryside.

Next, we go to some sort of garden stocked full with hearty plants, both tropical and not. The thing that struck me about the flora here in Hunan is that deciduous, coniferous and tropical plants live side by side. Weird.

This last shot is of an entrance to another teaching building. Not much to say about it, as the photo speaks for itself. Changsha Yi Zhong's campus is large and pretty neat, for a school.

If you're awake, congratulations! You've made it through my virtual tour! Yaaaaayyyy!

Cullen

Everybody Kung Fu Fought

So, the other day, our Chinese teachers wanted to give us a culturally rich reward for working so hard. They contacted their Kung Fu instructor friend and had him come to Changsha No. 1 Middle School to give us a one hour class. The instructor did a warm up consisting of high kicks and jumping splits, all of which was impressive.

He guided us through a twelve step routine, which actually made everyone break a sweat (but the 100% humidity probably had something to do with that). Above is an action shot of me doing a punch-a-ma-jig to the left.

Melissa really got into the whole Kung Fu thing, as shown from the above photo. After class, she started breaking things in half while uttering a terrifying primal scream. Somebody tried to cut in front of her in line at the supermarket and she knocked the guy out. True story.

~ Cullen

Well, Cullen has just given me administrative rights to the blog, which means he unwittingly gave me license to post incriminating, or just plain hilarious, photos of him in compromising situations. In this case, you see above a photo of Cullen's back, which was at the time doing a beautiful interpretive dance for a presentation he and his group gave to the rest of us about just what it's like visiting the Changsha train station, which we were told would be a chaotic mess. Apparently, there was a lot of pirouetting and sashaying at the train station that day, because as you will see below, Cullen did much of that:

It was a dance that drew gasps, adoration, and acclamation. It also won him and his group key chain type things that go on your cell phone! I must say, it was a riveting and inspiring dance, worthy not only of the key chain, but of the praise of many of our peers, myself included. He received rave reviews. I never knew what a creative and inspired artist he was until this fateful day.
I can truly say I am proud to be a Zwischel. Hats off!

A Stroll in Martyr's Park

Every morning in Changsha so far, Melissa and I have practiced yoga as a wake up workout. However, this morning we decided to check out Martyr's Park, which is right across the street from our hotel, the Jinjiang Inn. The day before, a number of people told us about their interesting experiences in the park, and we had to check it out for ourselves.

The first photo is of us right outside of the side entrance, which opens up to a grand walkway that leads to a large tower, which is quite a sight to see [Editor's note: I look too tired in that picture, so I've replaced it with another picture]. The second photo is of the opposite view, which shows the more interesting aspect to the park. The park is literally alive with morning activities, which includes dancing of numerous types. We saw a Bollywood-style dance instructor lead his students to Indian techno music, managed to squeak past hundreds of ballroom dancers who were torn between focusing on their dance steps and staring at us Westerners and even managed to see a Latin dance group shuffle around to the sounds of Marc Antony.

In addition to the various types of dance groups, Tai Chi groups crowded the park .We must have spotted at least ten of these groups, but the thing is that a good percentage of the pedestrians were silently practicing Tai Chi or some other form of breathing exercise. Runners, joggers and badminton players (playing without nets) added to the activity of the park. Fellow strollers actually were the minority, which provided a sharp contrast to how Americans treat their parks. Perhaps this focus on group activity has something to do with the communistic upbringing of the Chinese? One can only speculate...

Guess what? There is also an amusement park in Martyr's Park, decked out with the pictured roller coaster and ferris wheel. I don't know if we'll work up the courage to ride these deathtraps, but you will be the first Westerners to know if we do.

And wouldn't you know it? Martyr's Park is also decked out with a zoo. Now, the only animals that I saw signs for were crocodiles, cobras and sea otters. Strange, I know. We'll update you when we decide to check this out.

These four photos show the water elements that we ran into, which were all very lovely.

This last photo is of me in front of a set of stairs leading to the big tower at the center of the park. At this point Melissa had strongly stated her preference of not being photographed that morning, so Melissa is not in this photo. In all, we really enjoyed our trip to the park, even though it was brief.

More posts to come...

~ Cullen