random pix: fun bbq food

You can't see it very clearly, but that's a chicken head.

Pig skin is apparently supposed to be good for your skin.

This is a dove. I saw it walk by me alive about three minutes before I ate it.

mission trip & gala

We've had some new foreigners in town lately, which has caused a bit of a buzz. There are 14 Americans here from a high school in California. They're here on some sort of mission trip type thing, not so much for the whole "spreading the word of God" bit, but more for the "volunteering in schools and planting trees" bit. They're mostly girls and mostly cheerleaders, with two guidance counselors, two college aged kids and a random boyfriend that got conned into tagging along.

There is a Chinese foreign exchange student in their school in California who is from Songyuan and whose father has stake in another of the English schools here, which an American friend of mine also happens to have stake in as well. So they set the whole trip up for the kids. It seems like a random but awesome experience for them. One of the guidance counselors was telling me she has trouble getting students to consider just going to a university as far as the midwest after high school, so this is really important.

Because of the kids, the school that brought them out put on a "gala" the other day. Really it was like a talent or variety show, but whatever, they called it a gala. Because of the name I convinced some of the other teachers to dress up and it was literally the first time I've had a proper dress up since leaving the states. Exciting stuff.

Normally when us foreigners are out and about, sure we get stared at, we get people asking to take pictures of us (or more likely taking pictures of us without asking) and other kinds of attention, but NOTHING like what we got at the gala. The staring and crowding and picture taking was insane; I felt like a celebrity (or zoo animal... maybe a bit of both). I was literally signing autographs. It started with signing money, then inflatable balls, then clothing and finally people. Serious 15 minutes of fame.

The whole thing was pretty cool, in that it was something different for Songyuan, but it could have been so much better. There was some rain, a brief power outage (rumored to have been caused by my school's government connections because the whole thing was generating attention towards another school) and the mics weren't loud enough, which all amounted to a bit of chaos. The Americans still got to put on their show though (singing, dancing, cheering, etc.) and the Chinese got to do theirs (traditional singing, dancing, comedy, etc.), so that's what counts.

excuses, excuses & southern China recap

I've been seriously slacking on blogging for a variety of reasons. I don't really want to be around technology (aka my laptop) much when I travel, so there was that. So then when I return, necessary posts build up and get overwhelming. I have to wade through zillions of photos to find the right ones I want to include and then I usually will have to find time when I want to blog and my coffee shop is open. The internet in my apartment is not the fastest and minor posts can take foreeeevvvvvveeeeeerrrrrrr there, which drives me nuts, and I have a policy of not being at school if I'm not teaching.

On top of all that I've been quite busy. There's been quite a bit going on here. Lots of action and drama in Songyuan ladies and gents, LOTS of action and drama (stay tuned for more on that).

Anywho, final thoughts on the south...

I love it. Bottom line. The scenery is gorgeous. The weather is great. It's a good balance of eastern and western everything. The people are friendlier. When you're walking down the street there and you make eye contact with someone, they actually smile at you. Northern Chinese, not so much. The men are sexier. On the whole people there are shorter, but there tend to be more of the random freaks of nature that are like six feet tall and jacked (sigh).

Hong Kong was great, but too big and busy to live. Shenzen I didn't get to spend enough time in to get a good feel for it. Xiamen I am absolutely jazzed about. Guilin I'd say is actually prettier than Xiamen, but too touristy to live.

And that's about all I got!

random pix: Guilin misc

What do "Fashion," "Healthy" and "Grow up" have to do with zip lining?

LOTR tribute?

Keepin' it gangsta for this May's Thanksgiving.

random pix: misc Guilin food/animals

Yep, she's carrying dinner.

This I did NOT eat.

 

 

It's like a Chinese tamale.

Instead of a corn type mixture it's a rice type thing and it's usually sweet, with red beans or dates inside.

Guilin cont'd

My friends from Sognyuan arrived in Guilin later on my second day, so the one from the States went to teach at night again and the Songyuan crew went out to get rowdy. We met a group of foreigners that are on a brief study abroad program in Guilin and hung out with them for a bit. They made us feel really old; they're all like 19, but they took us to a club and we had a great time (though I think they did ditch us there... lol).

One pretty funny thing happened that night, I was talking to a Chinese guy in the club and he poked my arm. I wasn't sure why, but I was said, "Yeah, it's kind of fat." (I've had Chinese tell me this before.) Then he pinched my stomach and said, "No, all fat." What?! It just made me laugh. I'm not sure what his purpose in saying that was, and I'm by no means fat, but that's China! They look down on being fat and such, but they talk about stuff like that very matter of factly (also, things like, "You have a pimple").

The last day I woke up and had breakfast with the Songyuan crew and then it was time to be on my way back home, which turned out to be quite an adventure in itself. I had tried to book a taxi to the airport the day before with my hostel; I knew I wasn't going to want to screw around with taxis to buses to shuttles or whatever the longer but cheaper option would be. The airport is less than an hour from the city by taxi. When we got back late the last night, the hostel told me I didn't need to book in advance, I'd be fine just coming to the desk whenever I want to leave. Soooo, that's what I did. Or tried to do.

The front desk called the taxi company in the morning and couldn't get through, the girl said it was really hard to get a taxi that day. Apparently the legit taxi drivers complained about the "black taxis" (people that are not legal taxis but still drive people for money and often scam them), so the government was checking all taxi drivers' papers that morning. She gave me some ridiculously complicated directions of a bus to take to another hotel to an airport shuttle. It wasn't clear at all, but I had given myself a little over an hour to get to the airport, but it seemed that she hadn't tried very hard to get me a taxi, so I decided to try myself.

I walked down to a major street and waited on the corner in front of a major hotel. For ten minutes. And saw not one taxi. In the days prior there was a constant flow of them there. Time was starting to get short, so I called the front desk and asked for directions to the bus again. Completely incomprehensible, again.

I was trying to figure out what to do, when a man that I had seen around the hostel who seemed to be Italian and possibly opening a restaurant next door walked by. After a long conversation with him and the concierge from yet another hotel, I discovered that all of the taxi drivers were on strike. We determined that the Italian's Chinese friend would drive me to the airport shuttle whenever he could come to meet us. I had pretty much given up on making my flights at that point.

The guy eventually showed up and we got to the shuttle stop just as the shuttle was pulling away, so we followed it with all the windows down and the Chinese man, the Italian man, his Italian mother and myself hanging out the windows yelling for them to pull over. Naturally, all they did was wave.

I ended up taking the next shuttle, which left for the airport less than an hour before my flight was supposed to leave. I got there exactly when my flight should have taken off, but luckily it was delayed long enough for me to check my bag and walk right on. My second flight was on time, but I still had enough time to collect my baggage in Beijing, bring it to another terminal and check it, and myself, in for the second flight. What an ordeal.