Feb-June

After my big trip in the winter things went back to normal. Back to school, teaching and just trying to get through the year. Don't get me wrong I love China.. if I didn't I wouldn't have lived there for 2 years already going back for a 3rd. But it does wear on you. You start to miss the simple things. Like a clean, not rank smelling bathroom. That doesn't have a waste basket filled with unmentionables and a floor soaking wet in what you hope is water. Or not needed to roll up yur pants so they don't hit said liquid. Or not hearing spitting, and not just a small I have something in my mouth I want to get out... I mean luggie champion hockers (sp?). Or not getting stared at EVERYWHERE you go. You know... the small things, that's what I miss when I'm out there.

The only major things I remember happening where birthday parties and stressing out about whether or not I would still have a job. Yeah... that part sucked! Had to get re-evaluated twice and for a while I was sure I was out of a job O.o But in the end I was good to go for the next year. I headed home with Shedisha the day after we finished teaching. We were so ready to be out of that piece!

Random pics from that time....

also known as zebra on the loose in HK Disney O.o

More pics

This is how you people get yur post cards.... hard at work O.o

Catching up on some reading by the pool.

Beach Phuket, Thailand

Floating down a river in Vietnam

In Vietnam during the New Year

Rediculously long come back

Hello anyone who might be actually looking at this. I wasn't able to update this in forever because the int

ernet in China is lame. Not only do they block blogspot, which causes me to use a proxy just to view the site... but the internet speed is also th

e pace of a snail. So in short it make

s it near impossible to deal with this blog. Hopefully this will change soon.

As of this moment I am actually home in NYC. I am on

my usual summer vacation. A lot has happened since the last attempted blogging. I think I left off with the story at about over a year and half ago. So yeah... don't know if I can re cap all that time but lets attempt it. I may get lazy and use photos to help me out.

Angkor Wat! Siem Reap, Cambodia

After coming back to

China I had 3 days to pull mys

elf together to the tra

vel to the SEA(South East Asia) tr

ifecta... Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. We didn't get to go to Laos but we had about 2 and 1/2 weeks

and a budget we went sevearl

y over O.o (sorry

Ma). I've decided I won't bore you all with long winded stories, I'll post pics and give some background.We started in Thailand. It was the cheapest option to fly into Thailand for the night, then head to Cambodia, then Vietnam and then back to Thailand.

Floating Village in Siem Reap, Cambodia My fav pic ever!!

At our hostel in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia

Enough motor bikes for you?

O.o

At the national museum.

Part of the Palace in Phnom Pehn

At the genocide museum... no smiling in this place.

Beautiful sunset over the lake area.

Dec-Jan

Well... I said I was sad that I couldn't go home to be with my friends and faimly... a week or so later I made it home! :) I found a pretty decently cheap flight and flew out on the 1st. So It was new years day for over 24 hours... flying back home is always weird. Left at like 1pm jan 1st, got home at 9pm jan 1st. But I didn't tell anyone I was coming. Well I actually broke down and told Jess, but other than that no one knew. So I got off the plane at JFK and it was a staggering 20 degrees. I say this because I was in Shenzhen in my...what was chilly for me... 60 degrees. I must say 40 degree difference sucks!!! So I hope in a cab, I knew I was home when I saw my driver was an African dude who's english was crazy hard to listen to and I had to direct him how to get to my home. I called my home as I stood outside. My dad picked up... I told him to come downstairs cause I forgot my keys in china (which I honestly did). He said "are you shittin me"... i love my parents. I told him to just look out the window. He some how got my mom to come downstairs... miracle of god really. She looks at me... mind you it's dark, she doesn't have her glasses on and why the hell would I be there. She says "who the hell is that" I can't help myself to yell back "what do you mean who the hell is that". Then I was getting choked by hugs and that was the end of the surprise.My spent a few days with some of the guys, and a couple of days with Jess and Eric. I was only there for 9 days but it was fun..... until.... I got sick. Alex decided to give me a parting gift... but it went away once i got back to china. Here are some pics of hang out time. I also met Ade and Reggie for the first time, always great to meet fellow maplers!

They were defiling the barbie dream house -_-

Yay Guildies!!!

Hm... jess takes all the pics so you can't see her here -_-

Yay for almost a year later

Hello all,

I am finally back. At first it was just me being lazy, then China blocked blogspot so I couldn't access it at all... but now I am back. I think what I may do is run through the last year in a few entries with some pics for those of you who missed stuff. Then hopefully I'll post every month or so like I should be doing. -_- Fun part... having to think back to dec and jan O.o ... well here goes!

Yeah... neglect.... i know...

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't written an entry in a long time. I would say... oh I was super busy, or... oh I lost track of time with my blog; but that's not true. I've just been lazy that's all, and my head has been full with all the things happening here and thoughts of missing home so it was just hard to sit down and write something. But here I am, and I guess with no real purpose to this entry but to ramble about anything that comes to mind.

Well last I wrote about Hong Kong, so shortly after that was Halloween. That was interesting! Here in China unless you are a student who had a foreign teacher at some time you have no idea what Halloween is. So as I walked down the street in my oh so awesome zombie costume (courtesy of Rachel)... I basically scared most people who looked at me. And I'm sure it didn't help that I was not alone and it was not only a group of weigouren (foreigners) but scary dressed ones at that! We all took the metro to get to the Halloween party and i swear to you we never had so much space in the train car. No one would really stand any closer than 5 feet of us. I still think we should dress like that everyday to have ample metro space! The party was pretty cool too, though it was held in a mall and we were the main attraction for everyone. It was basically like being in a zoo exhibit!

Then after that I went on a small vacation. Students here all participate in military week. Boy do I love military week!!! Because I don't have to teach :) and the week before that I had Thursday and Friday off because of midterms. It was a sweet 10 days off. So i grabbed a bag and Rachel and took a bus to Guilin, to then head to Yangshuo. Now... the bus was something interesting, it was a sleeper bus. Now at first it's strange but I would SO ride one of these at home if we had them. I think I'm gonna write a letter to someone about that....

So we took this crazy bus for 15 hours to Guilin and then a 2 hour bus to Yangshuo. Now if you don't know this place you do, you just don't know it. Ever walk into fast food Chinese places and see a painting of some dude rafting down a river between really tall pretty mountains. Well basically that's where they got the idea from.

So yeah, it's by far one of the most beautiful places EVER!!! If you ever visit China go here, I totally loved it! I only stayed for a few days but it was well worth it. Also I basically went spelunking in a cave, that was fun and a whole other story O.o

Then came Thanksgiving which started me into missing home real bad. I've lived at home my whole life up until now, so yes that should make it easy for me to miss home quickly. But you must understand something... if you know anything about me you know i LOVE food!! So what is my favor tie holiday you ask.... Thanksgiving!!! So not only did I feel that I missed out on some essential food, but also helping my mom peel potatoes the day of, and the yams. And shucking the corn, and waiting and praying the food would be done faster. Then sitting to eat the best meal ever! Going back for seconds... and not for another full plate... just turkey and mash potatoes.... Oh how i love thee!!! And then taking a glorious food coma nap to only wake up and eat more mash potatoes. Yeah... I missed that terribly. Now don't get me wrong, we did have a dinner together here. Most of the teachers in my program got together and each brought something to the dinner. It was nice but it still wasn't what my Thanksgiving is.

Then after Thanksgiving I figured it was all down hill from there. Soon it would be Christmas, another holiday that I've always been home for and then the New Year... which made me miss my friends terribly. But after some thought and alone time I realize I can't have it all. I like it here and I'm having a great time! So being sad is just what it is, all the better for when I go home. I will go back with a new appreciation for everything... especially bathrooms O.o I'll take a pic of that soon so you can see what I mean. But for now all is well and I will keep on trucking and make this the best year ever!

P.S. - It's gonna be the year of the Ox, lucky me :)

Hong Kong

Yesterday I went to Hong Kong. I went because I wanted to buy a new small digital camera and Hong Kong is the place to go if you know the price and how to bargain. So I went with Shedisha. Getting there is kinda a trip on it's own. Hong Kong is not part of china so you need your passport and a valid visa to get back into china. You literally go through customs and fill out forms. A teller stares at you as if they are going to say "this is not you..." and not let you through. But in the end I made it with no problem. There are these people there with thermometers that run up on you and point it in your face to make sure you don't have AIDS or something! O.o Shedisha told me she got scanned on the way back last time. I was almost hoping they would... I mean come on Shedisha and i should be prime targets for some crazy foreigners disease... but alas not this time.

We walk over the river in a totally enclosed walkway to Hong Kong. At this moment you are in no man's land. You're not in China nor Hong Kong. Rachel suggested we do a dance, but I think I will save that for the next trip. I was on a mission and I had places to go. We arrive on the Hong Kong side just to go through the whole give papers and passport routine again. Which I found kinda silly cause you seriously can't go anywhere once you pass through the first check point. But I guess it's just procedure. So they stamp my passport a few times and now I'm officially in Hong Kong.

Now I understand that this may be really cheap of me, but we need to get rail passes and those damn things cost $39. Oh yeah Hong Kong uses their own version of a dollar for those that don't know. So yeah I thought that was ridiculous. Especially while in Shenzhen I never pay more than 10 kuai to go from one side of the city to the other. Here I just wanna get to the city center area and they wanna rape me with a $39 price tag, and that's just one way. O.o We buy our tickets and head into town. Now sorry Gary if you read this but at first I thought you were named after a train station. But thank God it was Kow Loon Tong and not KaLung Tang, but it did made me laugh for a bit.

We go to meet a new friend of Shedisha's. She went the previous weekend to get her hair done by a wonderful African lady. Shedisha was there so late that the lady made her dinner and let her stay the night. Her name is Mary. When I go back I will definitely take a pic with her, she's really pretty too! She speaks French and has a wicked accent, it's pretty cool. So we meet with her for a bit to use her comp. She promises that next time we come she will cook us some jalaf rice, not sure what it will taste like but Shedisha swears i'll love it. So Mary tells us where the best places to go shopping for cameras are. So we head off to there.

To sum up the whole shopping thing we basically walked into several stores asking for the camera I was interested in, what's the price, and what does it come with. All of them are out of the price range that I was willing to pay which was quite discouraging. Until we stumble into another store and the dude there finally was the first person willing to bargain with me unlike the previous stores. Oh before I forget, nearly everyone speaks some bit of enlgish in Hong Kong which definitely was a welcome break from trying to buy things with my limited mando. He tells me a price much closer to what I wanted to pay so I go check a few more stores and decide to get it from him. I was originally gonna get a Cannon since I like thier cameras and that's what I am used to. I paid for the Cannon and he keeps talking to me as he waits for the other guy to get it. He asks me why am I getting that particular model. The reason I wanted it was because it had the best ISO for the Cannon cameras at 8 megapixels. He then proceeds to hand me another camera telling me that this one is way better. I understand this is his job, so I entertain him by looking at it. It's a Pentax which I know of. He takes pics with the Pentax and the Cannon showing me the difference. The Pentax kinda blows the Cannon out the water. And the ISO is 6400 versus 1600 on the Cannon. So I ask how much and it's almost $1000 more. I tell him thanx, but it's way too much!! He tells me that he'll give me a special price and lowers it to $1800. I still tell him it's too much. I tell him I live in China, i'm not a tourist with American dollars to spend, I have chinese money. He asks why are we here in China and we tell him, we are teachers. His face lights up, he tells me he will give me a really special price because we are teaching his Chinese people English and now drops down to $1600. This is now $300 more than the Cannon. I sit and think for a sec and he has me sold. I buy the pentax. He hands me his card and tells me to send friends to him for their camera needs. I thank him again and I go skipping into the sunset with my spiffy new camera at half the original asking price. So I did take a couple of pics of Hong Kong. I can't figure out at the moment how to move pics in this blog to differnt parts instead of it going to the top. So when I figure that out, I will edit this and stick the pics in. But all in all, it was a good day and I got something better than what I wanted and at a great price too.