Milburn In China

The Blind Advantage

2011-09-02T10:33:00.007+08:00

Sidewalks all over China have about a 1-2 foot section where the brick or concrete has been replaced with this, for lack of a better term, bumpy strip. I have wondered off and on for years what it's for. It doesn't seem to matter how wide or narrow the sidewalk is, which city I'm in, this strip is almost always there. When the sidewalk is really narrow it is the sidewalk. I was especially confused when in Suzhou, the sidwalk didn't have it and they then proceeded to tear up the bricks and install it. After a trip to Shenzhen I noticed they had painted a pedestrian on one side and a bike on the other, so I assumed it must be a dividing line, but that never seemed quite right, espcially since sometimes the strip runs down the middle of the sidewalk and others is all the way to the side. How are you supposed to walk or ride on the three inches left on the other side?

After 2 years of living in China I have finally discovered it's for blind people. It is to let blind people know where to go. The amount of thought and money that has been put into the care and help for blind people to navigate the city, know where curbs are, lead them to a counter to buy metro tickets and know when to stop is astounding!!! I am impressed. I am also incredibly confused.

1. Why are blind people so special??

2. As with most things in China, this idea has only been half-way thought through.

3. Why just this form of help? You see brail ocassionally, but traffic lights don't make that beeping noise so the person can know when to cross.

4. What about all the other handicap people in China?

If you're in a wheelchair you don't get special help navigating the system like say, an elevator or a handicap stall. Shanghai is in the process of building this beautiful and very extensive metro system. There are many stations where you cannot get up or down to the platform if you are in a wheel chair, because there is no elevator or it is broken. My favorite was Jinshajia Metro station. If you are in a wheelchair it is impossible to get from the above ground line 3/4 to the below ground line 11 unless you get out and walk down the stairs or your friends carry you like a king (which I saw happen twice in one year.) Occassionally you'll find a bathroom with a handicap stall. My favourite sign in China might be this one, technically correct:

At this point you must be thinking with 1.5billion people we must see a lot of blind people. We've seen a few blind beggars (a person maimed so they can beg, ala that scene in Slumdog Millionaire where the little boy gets acid thrown in his eyes to make him blind. If you come to China don't give money to these people, it just propagates the system.) But a non-beggar blind person...Once, maybe!!

So where are all these blind people that the government has so generously catered for?

Vietnam

2011-02-05T21:50:00.003+08:00

So, it has been FAR too long since a post has been made to this our blog from China. As it stands, I am writing this from an internet cafe in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Vietnam. We are here for the lunar New Year. 2011 is the year of the Rabbit (兔子) and we have been lucky to see the New Years festivities here in Vietnam. Here, they call it "Tet", but for all intents and purposes, it's the same. It's a time for lion dances, praying to the god of luck, spending time with family, and setting off fireworks. Vietnam is a beautiful country, which we have seen on both a long-range bus trip (from Saigon to Nah Trang) and on the train (from Nah Trang back to Saigon). We spent most of our leisure time on the beach, enjoying the....infrequent sun, and reading. All in all, your basic beach vacation, except all in Vietnamese. Our Chinese language skills are ZERO help here, as Vietnamese resembles Chinese in no way shape or form.

Saigon is an interesting city; lots of mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles. We saw a museum that commemorates the Vietnamese struggle first against the French and later against the Americans. This museum has replicas of the tunnel system used by the VietCong, as well as photos of the buddhist monk who burned himself to death to protest the war (Thích Quảng Đức). The photo is disturbing, so only go to the wikipedia page at your peril.

We ate Pho many many times, and I tried the all-in-one Pho, tonight which has all the good stuff in it (tripe, tendon, well-braised brisket, top round, and meat balls)

DELICIOUS!!! Something about fish sauce and lime juice that makes my mouth water.....

Aside from the mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles, the other vehicle we see a lot is the cyclo, which is a kind of rickshaw. It looks like this.

We saw foreigners and Vietnamese alike riding in these, but never took one ourselves. They're really only built for one person to sit in.

We did a basic walking tour around Saigon which included the museum I mentioned, a Catholic church (it's nice to see religion being practiced. The Vietnamese are also Buddhist and Muslim), an old colonial French Post Office, and a flower market. Kristy and I have been debating if the flower market is a weekly thing, or something set up just for Tet. We ended up at the rooftop bar of a hotel to watch the sun set over the city. Saigon is polluted, but nowhere near as polluted as Shanghai, so we were able to watch the sun set in the nearly blue sky. SO nice!

As I write this it is roughly 26 degrees Celsius here in Saigon, while back at our apartment in Shanghai, the temperature is 3 degrees. We are not excited to be returning. Kristy still has two weeks left of her break from school before her spring term begins again. We are already thinking about where to go for Easter.... Japan, Cambodia, Thailand...?

Train Tickets

2010-08-23T14:32:00.002+08:00

We arrived in Shanghai on August 6th, a week earlier than necessary in order to go to Beijing for a week before school started. We anticipated we would be unable to get tickets because China’s rail system is such that you can only buy tickets a week before the date of departure. As a result they sell out very quickly. Despite this we decided to try anyway. Sunday morning we arrived at one of the many ticket offices in Shanghai to buy tickets for Monday night. After standing in line for 30 minutes we finally arrived at the front of the line and gave the woman at the counter our hand scribbled note with the potential train numbers and times we wanted to leave. She typed a few things into her computer then without even looking at us said “may yo” (don’t have) and waved us off. We stepped to the side, looked up to the electronic seat availability board and confirmed that it did say “15 seats left.” ???? So we conferred for a few minutes and re-joined another line to try again. Clearly that woman didn’t check properly.

Another 30 minutes later.

We handed the guy our note. This time I could see his computer screen and double checked to make sure he entered all 8 of the possible train numbers, which leave 5 minutes after each other. He did. Then he said “yo.” Aaron and I look at each other and thought “Yes! That woman clearly wasn’t doing her job properly.” We started counting out 1300RMB ($191) for the second class soft sleeper, except the amount on the screen popped up with 2770RMB ($408). Immediately the Chinese surrounding us went nuts. “What!!! Where are they going? Why is it so expensive?? This is absurd.” Then I heard someone say “soft sleeper” and they calmed down and I heard a collective “aaahh” with a few head nods. I thought, well I guess this price is accurate and the one we found online was not. Ugh. We forked over the money and left.

We saw one of our Chinese friends later that day and showed him our tickets and he just laughed then showed our tickets to the random Chinese guy next to him who also started laughing. Great! We’ve been duped, clearly.

After a very long sleepless night during which we spent most of it online trying to figure out what on earth happened and how we could be reunited with our money we learned a few things. To start with we could have flown cheaper even if we bought the tickets for the next day. More importantly we discovered that there is ONE English language train ticket counter in Shanghai. We also learned that you can return your tickets for a small penalty.

Are you curious to know what happened? Well the nice gentleman at the counter decided to sell us the super deluxe first class soft sleeper tickets rather than the second class soft sleeper tickets just because he could. Wasn’t that so nice of him!!!! Next time when the woman says “may yo” we’re walking away!

As a little coda to the end of the story, we have subsequently discovered that after arriving in Beijing we would have been unable to buy return train tickets!!! Apparently train tickets into Shanghai are selling out in a matter of minutes, since everyone wants to go to the 2010 World Expo. Instead we’re saving our money and traveling to Tibet in October.

The Turtle

2010-05-04T19:40:00.004+08:00

Eating in China is an experience. It’s not how the food is cooked that takes getting use to, it is how it’s served and what part of the animal arrives on the table. If it is a small animal (typically bird or fish) it will be the whole thing: head, tail, legs, skin. This is to create trust between you and the restaurant or store. It proves to the customer that they are serving you what you ordered. In other cases it also allows you to identify the animal. For larger animals, the meat dishes are served with small pieces of meat with the bone still in it, sometimes the "cuts of meat" are just big chunks of fat, other times there is almost no meat and lots of bone. Fish have the skin, head and bones. If it is a fillet of fish, which is very rare, it will have bones in it. Shrimp comes with its head and feet.

Chinese are masterful eaters. They can take an entire shrimp, put it in their mouth, take the meat outside of the shell and then spit the shell back out, which gets spat onto the table. This is the equivalent to trying to tie a cherry stem with your tongue. They can also hold a piece of meat in their chopsticks and manage to clean the entire bone. I am rather savage-like and must hold mine in my fingers.

One of the things I like about the Chinese is that they do not waste any part of an animal. They like the brains, internal organs, skin, fat, feet, muscle and everything in-between. For me it makes the death of the animal more humane, because most of it is not being wasted. What I don’t like about China is that they eat the whole animal! While I know it’s all edible, I have grown up where you eat the meat of an animal and nothing else.

There are stories of people eating dogs and cats. We have not seen that. The “weird” things that we see are frogs, turtles, fish lips, eel, jellyfish, fungus, brains, pigs feet, chicken feet, intestines, heart and many others.

The worst experience we’ve had so far with food was the Friday during Chinese New year at San Mei’s house. If you remember from the last post San Mei is one of the cleaning ladies from the school (and her name means third sister.) San Mei invited the whole staff and those of us in town attended - along with her entire extended family. We were served so many different dishes, but the one that stands out the most was the poor soft-shell turtle. It arrived on the table and we all looked at it. Seated around the table were 2 Canadians, Kelly, Lulu, Vanessa (from Taiwan), her daughters and us. We all looked at this turtle and every single one of us thought “I don’t want to eat that!” Somehow we discovered that none of us wanted to eat it and Aaron and I were so grateful. When San Mei walked back into the room, Kelly said to her in Chinese, “take this back to your family we don’t want to eat it.” San Mei was clearly baffled and maybe offended. In rapid fire Chinese she started saying perhaps the following: “What do you mean you don’t want to eat the turtle? It’s very yummy! What’s wrong with you people? Here I’ll cut it for you with chopsticks and then each of you can have a bite and see how delicious it is. “

San Mei took two chopsticks picked up the turtle that’s probably 8 inches long and flipped it over onto its back. She then used the chopsticks to slice down the middle and cut it into pieces about three inches square. She picked up the first piece and tried to give it to Kelly, who squealed like a little girl and threw herself backwards as far as she could get from it. Vanessa, who has been brought up well, gracefully accepted her piece of turtle. Aaron, myself and one of the Canadians did the same. No one else had any. Aaron was amazing, he ate all of his. I ate the smallest bite possible and I all I can tell you is that turtle is slightly rubbery and I don't need to eat one again. As soon as San Mei left the room we all took our pieces of turtle and managed to disguise them among the other food scraps on the table.

Chinese New Year

2010-04-12T10:23:00.005+08:00

On Monday of Chinese New Year we were invited by one of the student’s families to join them for lunch. At this point we had done the playing mahjong and visiting friends. Now we got to go with friends to visit more friends. The parents are Chinese, but Matthew is an American. The husband was transferred to the US a few years ago and they lived in Atlanta for about 3 years, during which time Matthew was born. Their daughter is now at Princeton and hates coming to visit her parents in China. Matthew, a 6 year-old is the most American student at the school. I felt confused growing up regarding my nationality, I can’t begin to imagine what these kids think.

So the Monday was Aaron’s birthday. The Ma’s had originally invited us out for lunch or dinner because they like us, but specifically on Monday because of Aaron’s birthday. After they had invited us, the Ma’s were invited to Chinese New Year lunch by their closest and oldest friends. When the Ma’s said they were unable to come, the friends invited us out to lunch too! We were very honoured to be included.

I think there were 20 of us at lunch. Including us there were 4 families. 3 Mas, 2 Milburns, 3 friends #1, 7 friends #2, and 4 grandparents. I don’t remember and didn’t really get anyone's name except for the children of family #2, which are: first child, second child, third child, fourth child and fifth child!!! Who names their children one, two, three, four, five???? The Chinese do!!! This is apparently fairly common. According to our Chinese friends the parents do this so they can remember their children's names. What??? One of the cleaning lady's at the school is named "San Mei." That means third daughter. Her sisters names are: Yi Mei, Er Mei and Si Mei, which mean first daughter, second daughter and third daughter! Don't you have to remember that too?

Aaron and I are also a little confused about how many children the Chinese can have, because friends #2 had 5 children, 3 girls and 2 boys. Friends #1 only had one child, a girl. For both families all the children ranged from late teens to late 20s, so they clearly fall under the “1 child policy.” One of the Chinese teachers at school, Lulu, is the oldest of 3 children. I do know her parents had to pay a fine because they had too many kids. Kelly on the other hand is an only child. But we have not met nearly as many only children as we expected.

We had a pleasant lunch. Most of the tables at restaurants are round. They seat anywhere from 8 people to 20. They all have a lazy susan on them, made out of glass, so it makes it easy to get to all the dishes, but can take awhile, because as you’re turning the lazy susan everyone starts helping themselves. Most of the food tasted very good. We did have to eat some weird, clear, slimy, slightly hard, but also soft thing that I think comes from the water. The other food I didn't enjoy too much was a small little fish that gets baked and you eat everything - head, tail, bones, eyes, skin - mmm, crunchy! Aside from those few dishes, the soups, vegetables and fish dishes were good.

Our lunch not only consisted of eating, but also included toasts and singing and kung fu performances. Now these performances were by those of us sitting around the table. Since we don’t know Chinese, we’re not quite sure why this started, because Mrs. Ma assured us many times that you do not normally have to sing for your supper. It was interesting to see what people chose. Children 2 and 4 chose to sing the pop song “Nobody but You” and danced some of the moves from the music video.

After we finished the lunch feast, we went to a Buddhist temple with family #1. It’s very common for Chinese to go to the temple at the New Year to ask for blessings for the coming year. People travel from far away. They bring gifts of money and food. Groups of women will prepare dances which they perform in front of the Buddhas and other idols. It was neat to be there on this day in particular, because normally when we go to a temple we’re there with a lot of other tourists, but this time it was people here practicing their faith.

Chinese New Year's Eve

2010-03-31T10:42:00.008+08:00

I’ve heard about the Chinese New Year before, but have never really understood the importance of it until this year. The most important day for the start of the New Year celebration is New Year’s Eve. This year it happened to be Februrary 13th. So February 13th is the equivalent to our December 31st. New Year’s Day was the 14th. They do not celebrate Valentine’s Day here so that was not an issue. Chinese New Year is celebrated by eating, playing mahjong and visiting family and friends. It is not just a one night event either. It is one week to two weeks long event. Think Thanksgiving and Christmas combined. From what we understand the Chinese do not get public holidays plus two weeks of vacation they can take anytime, they just get the public holidays and there are 2 of them, Chinese New Year and one in October. The vacation at Chinese New Year can be anywhere from 1-2 weeks long, so EVERYTHING shuts down. Also, EVERYONE travels. Tickets for airlines and trains are booked solid. Hotel prices skyrocket because you either go home to your family or your family goes sightseeing - the Great Wall, the Terra Cotta warriors, etc. So with this information in mind and 1.3 billion people traveling, we stayed put.

On “New Year’s Eve” we went to one of the Chinese teacher’s apartment to celebrate with her. She’s from the Dong Bei province which is in the very north eastern part of China and it takes her 2-3 days by train to get home (think Maine), so she was unable to go home for Chinese New Year. We asked her what time we should arrive and she said anytime after 12pm. Hmm, does that mean 12:15pm or 6pm??? I tried asking for clarification, but she sort of looked at me like I had 2 heads, because this is clearly a very strange question! In the end we asked one of the other Chinese teachers who was also going to Kelly’s house what time she would arrive and she said 2pm. So that’s what we did.

It was the first time we’ve been invited into a Chinese person’s home. As we walked up the unpainted gray concrete stairs to her 6th floor apartment I was wondering what we would find when we opened the door because there was trash, broken furniture, stains and marks all over the stairs and on the walls. Fortunately we were pleasantly surprised when she opened the door. There was a "wood" floor, more furniture than I expected and it was cozy. Chinese apartments are nice, because they are built so that the apartments have windows opening on both sides. If you live in the middle of an apartment building your apartment will face north and south or east and west. Being on the top floor, Kelly’s apartment also had the equivalent of a roof garden without the garden. She uses it to hang clothing to dry.

We played mahjong for several hours, like 3 or 4. One of the most valuable things that I have done since moving to China has been to learn how to play mahjong. Each area of China has its own rules. I have learned to play both Shanghai and Suzhou rules. It was quite amusing, because Aaron and I were teaching Kelly and Lulu, the Chinese teachers, how to play mahjong with the Suzhou rules and we’re the foreigners! We bought a mahjong set and are going to have Kelly teach us the Dong Bei rules and have Lulu teach us the Beijing rules.

After mahjong Kelly cooked us dinner. The food was very good. Simply cooked, oil, water, salt or sugar but with a nice flavor. There were a couple of dishes with meat, pork and chicken, and then there were quite a few dishes that were just vegetables. Eating in China is a bit like eating tapas. You order many plates, but of a good size, and then eat a bit of everything. You order a chicken and it will come with a few vegetables. The broccoli will just be broccoli, etc. No, we didn’t eat anything “scary,” that would come on Friday, which I will write about soon!

We had a really fun day with Kelly and Lulu. We ended up leaving around 9pm and then went home in anticipation of watching and hearing a lot of fireworks. We've spent quite a bit more time with Kelly and Lulu since then and it's been really nice to make some good Chinese friends. Once we move to Shanghai we will continue to visit them in Suzhou to spend time with them.

A real, warm house!

2010-03-21T17:04:00.000+08:00

A few weeks ago we were invited by a Slovenian family, whose children go to the school, for after dinner drinks and desert. They live in a house!!!! A house is a rarity in China. Everyone lives in an apartment or duplex. She made mulled wine. It was amazing. Then she wouldn’t stop feeding us. She brought out chips, nuts, a chocolate cake, fresh made whipped cream (yum) and a variety of other deserts. I think the thing we enjoyed the most was that their house is warm. A very close second was the mulled wine and whipped cream. Their house has insulation, carpeting and siding. Aaron and I are so tired of always being cold. We turn on the heat and it takes the chill out of the room, but it is still cold.

There is some imaginary line in China between the North and the South. The northern part has central heating and the southern part does not. So while the Beijing temperatures reach -20 degrees Centigrade, they have central heating and it doesn’t feel as cold (this is what I’ve been told.) The southern part of China does not have central heating. We have space heaters, blankets and you wear your down jacket, hat and scarf in doors. Aaron and I are not the kind of people who think you should wear shorts and a t-shirt inside during the winter, we like our sweaters, but we do not like to be constantly cold. Just to give you an idea, I am currently wearing thick fleece pants, short and long sleeved shirts, a fleece, down slippers and am wrapped in a fleece blanket. I am about to put on socks and long underwear pants because although I have the heat on, it is still cold inside because it is a very cold day outside, -4C.

The winter temperatures in Suzhou are around freezing. November here was windy and cold. December and January were just plain cold. February has been wet and cold. A week or two ago it was rainy and overcast for 10 days straight. When it doesn’t rain you can’t see the sun or blue skies. It’s not overcast, but there’s cloud cover or pollution cover.

Now some of you might be thinking any or all of the following: “we’ve been dealing with snow all winter long, rain no big deal” or “I live/d in London, I live/d in Seattle” or “I live in South Africa and we don’t have central heating.” We don’t get to just walk the 30 seconds to our cars, but rather have to walk home carrying the bags of groceries along with the umbrella. Let me tell you, I had never appreciated before how heavy groceries are! In South Africa, you walk outside and it’s warmer because of the sun (We haven’t seen it since October.) It’s taken us some getting used to and we’ve survived. Would I rather have a car on those rainy days? Absolutely, but we clearly don’t hate it enough to leave, because we’ve signed on for another 2 years of this weather. Not in Suzhou, but Shanghai.

CRASH!

2010-03-03T18:50:00.002+08:00

So, the bicycle used to be the thing that tied China together. If you ever saw a National Geographic special in the 80's and 90's about China, you probably saw the streets choked with bicycles. The bicycle is still used a lot, but even more so recently is the electric scooter. You take the battery with you to your house/apartment and plug it in overnight. TONS of people drive these things here and in Shanghai.

You do not need a license to drive these things, and there are apparently no laws governing their driving. If you feel like wearing a helmet, wear one. If you don't, don't. No one is going to stop you. It's very laissez-faire here. I have OFTEN remarked to Kristy how I hate that people stare at me as I am walking to work. I don't hate it because I am a waiguoren (foreigner) but because they are DRIVING A MOVING VEHICLE!!!

This brings me to tonight. Kristy and I are standing at the bus stop, chatting with a co-worker who also happens to be our Chinese teacher when we hear a tremendous CRASH! We turn around to see that one of these scooter drivers has smashed his scooter into a parked car, effectively demolishing his little scooter. He is talking on his cell phone. The entire time. He was very clearly ALREADY talking on it when he crashed. He picks up his wrecked scooter, and a few of his belongings that are strewn about on the ground, and upturns his scooter. Apparently, the thing still goes, and he drives off. We are all speechless. Honestly, I am surprised that this is the first scooter wreck that I've witnessed. Only took seven months.

Hairy, hairy man!

2010-02-19T00:56:00.003+08:00

So, as you probably know, I have a full beard. This is probably more of an oddity to my Chinese neighbors than the fact that I'm pasty-white and speak English. I know Kristy used to get a little nervous when she would go shopping without me, because she'd get stared at, but I really do think it happens far less for her when I am there too. The beard is curious to adults and TERRIFYING to little children, which of course makes me laugh.

This brings me to my next observation. Since we have been in China I have noticed on several occasions men and women with moles. Ok, so that's not so weird or different. I have a big mole on my forehead. So what? Well, fortunately for me, I do NOT have weird hairs growing out of said mole. If I DID, I would shave, pluck, wax, or whatever it took to get them out of there. Apparently, the Chinese do not share my sentiment. I noticed these men and women with moles, not because they had moles per se. No, it was because of the TREMENDOUS amount of HAIR sprouting from these moles. The woman I saw had what looked like octopus tentacles growing from the mole. I was waiting for them to come alive, Medusa-style, and attack me.
The second was today as Kristy and I were waiting on the platform for our train to Shanghai. The man next to me had hairs SHOOTING out of his chin-mole that were no less than 1.5 inches long. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?So, I'm interested in this now. The information I've found after my brief research has been that hairs growing from a mole are lucky. A sign of good fortune. Personally, I find it repulsive, but I'm a stupid waiguoren, so what do I know?

Philippines (part 2)

2010-01-06T21:35:00.004+08:00

We planned our trip so that the first half was action packed and the second half relaxing and calm. So after we finished swimming with the whale sharks, we traveled to Naga to go hiking at the base of Mt. Isarog in order to see some hot springs and water falls. Unfortunately we were horribly misguided by lonely planet and ended up in the wrong place. So our water falls ended up being a creek about 2 meters wide and then someone built these concrete swimming pools on the side of the creek. They then filled the pools with water from the creek. The hot springs were better, but we didn't know there was a dress code that required you to wear shorts and shirts, so we couldn't go swimming.

After our day of wandering pointlessly around the mountain (although there were some pretty views and it was nice to get out and walk) we caught the night bus from hell to go to our final destination, Puerto Galera. We wanted to take a night bus so we didn't waste a day traveling. Traveling by bus in the Philippines was an interesting experience. They try to cram as many people into the bus as possible before you leave. You think a van is supposed to seat 12 (because that's how many seats there are), that's a joke, you can easily fit 16 in that van. Squash them in! We anticipated that we would have our own seats like a coach bus and be able to get some sleep. Nope, it was a vinyl covered bench seat. Not too uncomfortable, you could definitely sleep on it sitting up, the problem was the driver and the fact that there aren't any highways in the Philippines, so everything is a winding two lane country road. I think we were late for something, because the guy was driving down this road at what felt like 500km an hour. Aaron and I were literally sliding back and forth on our bench seat. I would grab onto the bench to try to stay in one spot and he would hold onto the headrest. That's how we slept, if you can call it sleep! I couldn't decide if I was more scared that we would crash into an oncomming car or flipping as we barreled around one of the turns. It was insane. But we survived!

We finally arrived in the town of Puerto Galera after that awful bus ride (and I'm not exaggerating at all) and a boat ride. The town of Puerto Galera isn't anything to write home about. There are beaches, but the restaurants and hotels have been built right up to the water and there are so many hawkers. Our favourites were the guys selling pool ques. Hmm, that's exactly what I want to buy when on a dive/beach vacation - my own personalized pool que. The people selling necklaces, sun glasses, fruit, shells - that made sense, but a pool que?? That is what we call a bad investment.

We chose Puerto Galera for the scuba diving. The diving was nice. We saw a white tip reef shark, turtles, flounder, angel fish, nudibrachs, a wide variety of soft coral. The water was chilly for diving 27C/80F, but we enjoyed it. When we weren't diving we read either on the balcony of our room or on the beach.

So that was our trip. Not incredibly exciting, but we enjoyed it. It was nice to get away from cold Suzhou and be able to see the sun for two weeks. I don't know if we'll go back to the Philippines, but we enjoyed ourselves.

(I wanted to add more pictures, but couldn't get them to upload.)

Milburn in the Philippines (part 1)

2009-12-22T16:43:00.007+08:00

So, Kristy and I are spending our Christmas holiday in the Philippines. Originally, we had planned to go to Beijing for the vacation, but I forgot that Beijing is around -10 Celsius right now.... So that plan got scrapped. Instead, an article in one of the expat magazines inspired us to come to the Philippines. After a bit of research, a travel guide supplied by Kristy's mother when she came to visit, and some debate we settled on going to two different areas. The first one: Lagaspi. Lagaspi is not home to much, except the Philippines most active volcano.
MOUNT DOOM!!!

Woo hoo!! Ooops... that's the wrong picture...

So, the real volcano is Mount Mayon. As I am typing this, however, it IS getting ready to erupt for real. It was currently erupting a little bit when we landed. Here's what it looked like from the airport where we landed.

We didn't stay in Legaspi for long, though. We were there long enough to grab some food and some pictures before heading to Donsol for some Whale Shark watching. I wish we had some pictures of the actual whale sharks, but this will have to do.

The visibility was not good when we went, so we were very close to the sharks. These guys get up to 2 busses in length (we saw three, ranging from 5 to 9 meters in length). They eat krill, just like humpback whales, so they are very safe to be near. However, you are not supposed to scuba dive with them, because it can spook them. So, we went snorkeling. That really is good enough. We were very close, and the things were ENORMOUS. They were very cool.

Public Toilets

2009-11-18T22:10:00.003+08:00

So it's about time that we discuss relieving oneself in China. There are two styles of toilets. The one the Chinese are most familiar with is the squat toilet. This can exist in many forms. There is the literal hole in the ground, the trough (women have trough toilets too) and the porcelain one. (Here is a link to Wikipedia in case you want to see the different styles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet) The second style of toilet is the regular sitting toilet that most Western countries are familiar with. Now you cannot throw your toilet paper in the toilet, you must throw it into the little trash can next to the toilet - that is if you're lucky enough to have toilet paper in your stall. Most of the time you need to bring it with you. Also, very rarely will there be soap or towels at the sink for after you have finished. The miracles of hand sanitizer.

Now it is perfectly acceptable to relieve oneself wherever you happen to be. For instance, we have seen cars and tuk tuks driving down the street and then pull over. The driver or passenger gets out of the car, walks into the bushes and about a minute or so later comes back out and gets back into the car. We have also seen a little girl come running out of her house, pull down her pants and just pee all over the sidewalk. While sitting in a cafe along one of the canals, a 5 year old little boy came, pulled down his pants and then urinated into the canal. Unfortunately about 10 minutes later a woman came and washed her clothes in the canal! This past weekend our friends went to Taihu lake to eat the Hairy Crab. After they had finished lunch and were taking a tour of the island, they saw the wait staff cleaning the dishes and fresh produce for the next meal in the lake. The very same lake that the hole in the ground toilet empties directly into! Mmmm, yummy!

I now need to pause and take a moment to describe the split-bottom pant to you. These are for babies through potty-training age. Babies don't wear diapers here. I don't know why. I like this only in that there aren't a bunch of diapers going to sit in a landfill forever, plus the kids get potty-trained much faster. I don't like this because babies are constantly exposed and quite frankly I don't need to see that (Aaron agrees). Split bottom pants are just that, split. Instead of a seam it is just wide open so if the kid needs to relieve itself you just pull its legs into a squat position and voila. So with this bit of knowledge, I must tell you about our favourite public excrement experience. We're at the brand new mall. It's rather upscale with a variety of Western stores like H&M, Zara, Quicksilver, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and a variety of others I don't remember. We see this woman holding her 18 month old over the trash can on the second floor at the bottom of the escalator. We start discussing - What is she doing? She's been standing there for like 5 minutes. And then it dawns on us - her child is taking a dump in the trash can in the middle of the mall!!!!!!

Ah China.

So at this point, when we step into our elevator and there's a puddle on the floor we avoid it. If it isn't raining and the concrete is wet, we walk around it. If it smells like someone's just taken a dump, they probably have. At least it's rather liberating - need to go to the bathroom and can't find one? No problem, just stand behind this tree, everyone else does!

P.S. When you come to our house you are required to take your shoes off and leave them by the front door!

The Insect Market

2009-10-29T21:08:00.008+08:00

So, Kristy and I went to Shanghai twice over my last break. The first time was interesting, spent largely at the Shanghai Museum learning about Chinese artifacts. The second time, we went a little farther afield. We followed the Lonely Planet guide loosely, and found ourselves looking for the insect, bird, and flower market.

This market sells animals, birds, fish, plants, and insects. We have on here in Suzhou as well, but it is much more of an animal/bird market, with only one vendor selling crickets. The place in Shanghai was FULL of crickets. Crickets of every kind. Crickets in earthenware containers, and crickets in large, plastic jars. The Chinese even have little food and water dishes for their crickets, and little scoops for dishing out the "cricket food".

The market is alive with the sounds of the insects, and the Chinese sticking tiny little shovels into the cages to feed the bugs or prod them into some kind of battle-fury. I couldn't really tell which it was.The insect market sold LOTS of mealworms. I assume these are for bird food, but who really knows? I hear they have a pretty good, nutty taste.

The market also had a ton of fish, which weren't really very interesting, birds, turtles, dogs, cats, hampsters, gerbils, squirrels (YES, squirrels). Let me take a moment here: I have seen ZERO wild squirrels since we've been here. I haven't really seen much in the way of birds, either. The ONLY squirrels I've seen have been at these markets in cages. Why would someone want a squirrel as a pet?

Lots of birds, like this guy here. They had nicer cages then most of the other animals (such as those poor squirrels). The Chinese really like their ornate cages, though. The birds ranged from parakeets, parrots and cockatoos, to mynah birds and doves.

There were also bunches of turtles. They didn't look like the ones we see at the grocery store, though. Those are mostly soft-shell turtles. These were mostly water turtles and snapping turtles. I didn't see anyone actually buy any of them, but I have heard that the snapping turtles are pretty tasty.

Life update

2009-10-18T11:59:00.012+08:00

I've been amazed at the weather. We were told that July and August were going to be hot and humid. September and October would be really nice and pleasant and then the weather would turn cold. Based on my experience living in Virginia, I expected the hot and humid to last much longer than just August, but on September 1 the humidity disappeared. On October 1 the temperature dropped probably 10 degrees (think Fahrenheit) to the 70s. On October 3 the clouds cleared and we saw a clear blue sunny sky for the first time in 6 weeks. Prior to that we'd see the sun once in a while throughout the day and only for a few minutes, but it was basically just cloudy, overcast and lots of air pollution. We're not 100% sure what to expect for winter. I've heard it feels very cold because the air is very damp and humid. The temperatures I gather are around freezing, it doesn't actually snow (and if it does, EVERYTHING grinds to a halt - in fact when it did snow, they thought that if they sprayed the streets with water that would help get rid of the snow - hehehe), but the humidity makes you feel cold all the time. There's a Chinese woman who spent some time in Canada and a Swedish woman I met on the trip to Lily Island and both told me independently of each other, that the winters here are colder than in those countries respectively. The winter sounds similar to that of Virginia, but the difference is that back home we have the shelter of our cars and we don't actually spend a lot of time outside! Needless to say, I'm worried and Aaron can't wait!

We're doing well. Aaron had a one week vacation at the beginning of October for the Chinese National Day on October 1 (celebrating 60 years) and then the Mid Autumn festival celebration on October 3. Everything mostly shut down until October 8. We thought about traveling, but when the Chinese have holiday everyone travels, so trains, planes, hotels, etc are just booked solid. So we decided to stay in Suzhou, do some touristy things here and go to Shanghai for a couple of days. We learned how to buy train tickets and out of town bus tickets, both of which involve charades. We also found some cool walking areas in Suzhou. We liked Shanghai. It's a city and it feels like it. We live in a city (6 million people), but it doesn't feel like a city. We haven't done a whole lot in Shanghai because we expect to go back frequently. We went to the Yuyuan gardens and the Shanghai museum (thanks for the recommendation Natalia and Roman). We also wandered around the fish, insect, animal and plant market, the "antiques" market, which maybe had one or two antiques years ago, but now just has a lot of items made recently in the local factory (ie: junk). Our favorite is the way the sales person insists it's from the Ming dynasty - sure it is, that's why you have 50 of them! We also came across a market for everyday goods, it had clocks, shoes, purses, clothes, electronics and so much else. This is where we bought Aaron a new beard trimmer. We got it for 130RMB, which is about $20. We could have bargained harder, but Aaron felt bad and all the other ones that we had found in stores were 300RMB. So now he doesn't look like a mountain man anymore!

Other than that things are going well. I've been substitute teaching a bit at Aaron's school and have 4 more days lined up next week because the principal has to go to a conference. I also started Chinese class this week, which I'm really excited about. In mid-November Aaron has a conference in Shenzen, which is located in mainland China right across from Hong Kong. So we're going to go a couple of days early so we can check out Hong Kong.

A note to those of you who were wondering: I don't know if I made it on TV because we haven't paid for television. We have a tv set, but it just acts as a monitor for dvds.

VIP for a day

2009-10-14T20:44:00.012+08:00

Today I went on my first outing with other gainfully unemployed women in Suzhou and the odd spouse or two. We went to Lily Island which is in the middle of Yangcheng Lake. Yangcheng Lake is a big lake that is just to the east of us. We can actually see it from our apartment and the street we live on is called Yangcheng Lake Road. It's famous because every year in September and October the "hairy crab" makes it's migration through the lake and it's a very popular local food. Unfortunately I'm allergic to crab so we won't be having any.

Getting back to the trip: Apparently this island has never had so many Western tourists as they did yesterday and the woman who helped organize things at the Suzhou tourist office alerted the media. We became celebrities, the VIP guests, and had our own paparazzi following us, as we "fished" for what are called water chestnuts and made zhongzi (pronounced jongse). So these water chestnuts grow on the underside of this plant in the lake. We were forced to wear these awful fluorescent orange life jackets, because it would be awful if the VIP westerners fell overboard! We were divided into these small fishing boats and then taken out onto the lake. You pick the plant out of the water and then pluck the pod holding the nut off. You then cook the pod, shell it and then eat the nut inside. The nut is similar to a water chestnut hence its English name, but isn't exactly the same.

Then we were taken back to the island where we made zhongzi. This involves taking bamboo leaves and folding them in a way to fill it with uncooked sticky rice. The trick is to fold it tightly enough so the rice doesn't start falling out at the corners. Once you have filled the cavity you have made, you then fold the leaves down and tie it with rope. These then get cooked for something like 7 hours. When they're finished you unwrap the very sticky rice from the bamboo leaves and just eat the rice. It's actually quite good. While we didn't eat our own, they had made some for us. At this point the media decided they had had enough and stopped following us around. They had tried to interview a bunch of us, but they were a bit disappointed when out of a group of 45, maybe 2 of us spoke enough Chinese to converse with. They'll be airing it on the local Chinese news station for the next few days, so we're going to try and go to a friends house to watch it because we don't have TV. It was quite bizarre to have all those video cameras and reporters following us around.

Fireworks

2009-09-24T20:51:00.006+08:00

So I expected to hear a lot of noise pollution from the car horn. There's some, don't get me wrong and I will definitely describe this soon, but nothing compared to the firework. The Chinese LOVE their fireworks - as they should - they developed this technology back during the Tang dynasty (between 589-907AD). The Chinese used this technology to blow things up and make pretty designs in the sky, the Mongolians took this same technology (aka: gunpowder) and used it to conquer the Chinese! Hmmm. So 1500 years later, the Chinese still love their fireworks. They go off every day, literally every day. They go off in the morning, mid-day and especially at night. When we first arrived, we though they were doing demolition at 7 in the morning, turns out, people are just really excited to set off their fireworks. They set them off in the courtyard of our apartment complex, at the hotel across the street and then off in the distance. We're not sure why they set them off - maybe because it's 10am on a Thursday or lunch time "yay fireworks" - because you can see them so well when it's light outside?!?! Um are you confused yet, because we are. We've been able to determine why fireworks went off on 2 occasions out of the hundreds we've heard. One was because a nightclub was opening just down the street another was because of a conference at a hotel. The thing we find the most puzzling is that fireworks are expensive, so why are they being shot off morning, noon and night? Aaron is so frustrated with them at this point. It drives him nuts. I don't particularly mind them. So just another one of the weird quirks of China!

Free Falling!!!

2009-09-23T17:00:00.011+08:00

So I was going to write about fireworks, but that's going to have to wait, because in my opinion this is so much better.

I received a call from our landlady this morning telling me that I need to be home this afternoon because there are men coming by to fix the windows. 1.Thanks for asking if this works with my schedule (which it didn't really) and 2. Aaron and I still hadn't been able to figure out what is wrong with the windows in the first place. A man came by for a reconnaissance visit a few weeks ago, but I had no idea what he was looking for and he just babbled away in Chinese to me, wandering around the apartment and looking at the windows while I just stared at him thinking I wish I knew what you were saying, but I just don't.

So I get a knock on the door this afternoon to find 2 men getting together a pail with what looks like cement. This should be interesting because our windows are metal framed and sliding glass so I have no idea how cement is going to help. So I let them in and when you have workers in your apartment I've learned, you leave the front door open (which I kind of like from a safety standpoint.) So I watch one of them unraveling his harness which is good, except he only has the top half and not the bottom of a full body harness. Given an option, I'll take the bottom any day of the week, because when you only have the top and you fall, you are going to fall right out of it! Then I see this rope with a carabiner. Again good, but what exactly is he going to hook on to? I look out these windows every day (it's how I check the weather) and I've never seen any hooks jutting out of the side of the building for him to clip on to and these windows certainly aren't going to stay in if he falls (see how much I trust the Chinese construction!) So the one guy puts on his harness, hands the rope with the carabiner to his friend then climbs out the window. What??? Are you insane? We're on the 22nd floor and you're dangling/standing on the window ledge out the window with nothing to support you, but the hope that your friend is bracing himself the entire time you're hanging out the window plus that if you do fall, he's not going to come flying out the window with you! All I can say is "China!"

Fortunately for all of you who missed this fascinating sight I took some pictures :) Please note that in the first one, the guy holding the rope, is using one of his hands to gesture with so he's only holding onto the rope with ONE hand!!

As it turns out, the pail didn't have cement, but rather some kind of sealant. They kindly showed me what was wrong and I discovered that water is damaging the wall underneath the window. So either water is leaking in at the base of the window or just the whole wall is leaking. So he used his sealant to paint the outside window ledge. We'll see if it works. Personally I'm a little skeptical!

School Life

2009-09-19T15:40:00.002+08:00

So, everyone keeps asking how school is going. I have a class of 5 students. It's the 6/7 year old class, which means that I have four first graders and one second grader. This is actually more difficult to do that you might think. A lot of the curriculum overlaps, but sometimes it doesn't AT ALL. In this case, I am not sure what I'm going to do. I'll figure it out, of course, but in the mean-time it is a source of stress.

The day itself goes like this:
Assembly first (whole school, which is 20 kids or so)
Reading
Language Arts (writing skills)
Math
Science or History

After that, the schedule changes based on the day. The kids also have Chinese every day. But they will also have PE, Library, Music, Technology (with me), or ELD (which stands for English Language Development).

A note about ELD. It's basically when we do silent reading and work on phonics, handwriting, and spelling.

I am also teaching the chess/go club on Wednesdays which is nice because the kids mostly know how to play. I have kids of every age in this club. The Kindergardeners play Chinese checkers, which is easy to play and seems to keep them occupied. I originally wanted it to be a chess/checkers club, but I can't find a checkers set here to save my life.

I also am teaching technology to the entire school. We are using a program called "Techknowledge" for most of the kids. It goes through learning the microsoft office suite, as well as keyboarding. I don't agree with some of the curriculum, especially the part where 5 year olds need to be practicing typing for 10 minutes every class. There has been research that typing at such a young age can actually be detrimental.

The kids across the grades are pretty good. I have the most trouble with the 13 year old class because they seem apathetic and uninterested in participating in discussions, which is essentially what a class of 3 kids is. A discussion class.

The school itself is really nice in that I get to work so much with each child. I have gotten to know my kids well already and can gauge their strengths and weaknesses. I also have the time to go back an re-teach as needed. I don't know if I will be able to go back to a standard public school classroom after this experience. I am sad that in order to get through the material, so many kids have to either fall through the cracks and be left behind (the underachievers) or be constantly bored (the overachievers). We will just have to see what happens. I'll let you know how it all goes.

Gainfully unemployed :)

2009-09-11T12:59:00.004+08:00

Everyone keeps asking me if I'm working. No, I'm not. I've spent A LOT of time looking, but am not optimistic anything will pan out at this point. I'd say 90% of the job postings I find require you to be fluent in Chinese, which I'm not. My Chinese right now is useless vocab I'm learning through Rosetta Stone and "hello," "how much," "thank you" and "goodbye." Plus, the vacations I would have through these jobs would not line up at all with Aaron's and he gets about 5 weeks off during the school year. Since one of the things we'd like to do is travel, it does put a damper on things. I also don't have a work visa and most of the jobs I'm looking at want you to already have that. I had an interview for a teaching position at a University that went well. The downside is it would be a 2 hour commute each way on top of an 8 hour work day, for the equivalent of $1000 a month. I said no.

So I'd like to tutor and in the meantime I'm doing a lot of adventurous cooking - coconut chicken curry, stocks, fried chicken - so if you have any suggestions let me know, but we don't have an oven - only a small toaster oven. I'm going to start taking Chinese classes on a regular basis. I'm looking into various schools right now, a lot of them offer a first lesson/demo free option, so I'm going to shop around before I commit to anything. I go grocery shopping (which is at least a 1 1/2 hour trip) a few times a week, I look for jobs online, try to post things to the blog and am wanting to improve my photography skills. I'm taking violin - the principal at Aaron's school teaches violin. All I have to do is buy a violin ($40) and show up to the middle school class along with 2 of the other teachers who have decided to crash it as well. So that's pretty much it. So that's my life right now.

Birthday dinner for 10???

2009-09-08T20:06:00.007+08:00

Um, no just 2 thanks!

Aaron asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday and I said that I wanted to go to a good/nice Chinese restaurant. (It didn't have to be fancy, but mainly just good.) So we decided to go to this Cantonese restaurant that we had read good reviews about online. We studied the map, found where we needed to go and boarded the bus with all the peasants. We guessed at the Chinese characters correctly and managed to get off at the right stop and then walked about 15-20 minutes until we got to the restaurant. As we walked past the restaurant to go inside I saw some people eating through the window, but didn't notice their surroundings much. We walked up to the hostess stand and told her a table for 2 and we followed her to our table. Now this isn't your typical layout for a restaurant. At the main entrance there's a hostess stand, but it opens up into a courtyard. The people we saw eating were in the building to the right. She took us halfway down the courtyard to the building on the left, up one flight of stairs and then we curved a bit around on the upstairs outside walkway. She stopped outside of a door, opened the door then turned on the lights and the A/C and we looked inside to see that we have our own private dining room with a table set for 10.

Hmmmmmm. Not quite what we expected.

Aaron and I looked at each other puzzled. We reflected back on our "conversation" with our hostess and then it came back to us. After we stood there and held up our hands indicating 2 she then spoke to us in Chinese and we responded by nodding our heads and saying "two." Well, I guess somehow that translated into "private room for 10!"

So what's wrong with being treated like royalty by having our own private room??? So we embraced our rise to power and admired our surroundings. It turned out the room was quite nicely equipped with a flat screen tv, a "sitting area" with some very uncomfortable looking chairs, our own private toilet and our very own waitress! She did her job well standing off to the side in the corner of the room waiting, just to make sure that at any given moment we didn't need anything. We think that these rooms are mainly used by people having a party and are there for several hours. They sit around the table, smoke, drink, watch tv. When someone's had too much to drink, he can start to sleep it off on the "sofa" (it's really a hard wooden bench with a very thin cushion.)

We were definitely the main attraction as far as the staff was concerned because various cooks, cleaning ladies and other waitresses kept walking by to peek in the window at us. At one point we had about 6 different staff members in our room, ranging from a woman in a business suit to a cleaning lady - none of them were talking to us, they were just trying to look busy and like they "needed" to be there. It was really amusing.

We enjoyed ourselves, despite being slightly overwhelmed. The food was excellent and we discovered that chilled aloe is quite tasty. We also had a saute with white fish, colored peppers, mango and pear; fried rice and then this not so good filo pastry thing (which we won't get again.)

So as we're walking through the courtyard to leave I look at that building on the right (where I had seen the gentlemen eating on our way in) to see if they are also private dining rooms - oh no - it's a big public dining room, with many tables just for 2!!!!

Life In China

2009-09-03T22:42:00.003+08:00

So Aaron is probably going to give you the male cut and dry version of how things are going and I'm going to do my best to tell you how we're doing. So hello and enjoy our adventure with us!

The best question is where to start. Well, we're living in the city of Suzhou. It's about a 40 min train ride west of Shanghai (which we plan to verify and check out on Saturday.) 6 million people live here, of which 20,000 are expats. Now I've had to re-adjust my thinking to the word "expat" - this includes everyone in the world, all nationalities, who is not a Chinese person - including all the Chinese who have changed their citizenship to Canada or Australia. One of the funniest things for me is to ask a Chinese person if they're from Suzhou and they say "No, I'm from Canada." What??? You're not Canadian, you can barely speak English let alone French! I think it's even stranger that they've immigrated to Canada (Australia tends to be the other popular one), changed their citizenship, clearly worked there for a while and then moved back to China. Why go through all that effort and then move back to China - I doubt I will ever understand. There are a lot of expats from South Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia. Bosch has a factory here and has brought a lot of Germans with them. The church we've been going to has representation from 24 different countries. It's quite amazing really. So those are the demographics.

Where we live is out in the middle of nowhere. This is a map I found on another bloggers website who's been living in Suzhou for several years. http://www.thehumanaught.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/suzhou-district-map.jpg We're in the orange blob at the top - Xiangcheng district. The old and interesting part of Suzhou is that dark blue small square in the middle. This is your typical Chinese architecture, narrow tree lined streets, street vendors, small pockets of markets every few blocks and then the gardens that Suzhou is known for. To the right (the green) is called SIP (Suzhou Industrial Park). It's about 15 years old and I think this is where most of the white expats live. If we want Western food, there's a grocery store in this area that we go to as well as a lot of international restaurants - I think there are 3 Mexican, there's a German type pub, a Sushi place, Indian and some others. It's about a 20 min taxi ride from our place. To the west of old Suzhou is SND (Suzhou New District) - it's in yellow. We haven't been there yet. This is where most of the expats use to live, but since SIP has been developed it's now mainly where Japanese and Korean expats live. A lot of the more established international schools are in this area. So SIP and where we live are areas with wide roads, high rise apartment buildings and then townhouses. There's really nothing interesting to look at. It's very sterile, boring and uninteresting. Fortunately, I found a bus that stops right outside our front door and takes us right into the center of the old city. It takes about 30 min and costs the equivalent of 30 cents. So we're pretty excited about that. I'm adding a picture here of the view from our apartment. We're not quite sure how far we can see, but easily 5 miles, if not longer. I'm also adding a picture of the old part of Suzhou.

So housing. Suzhou is a very wealthy city by Chinese standards. I think it's because of all the industries here, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. There are factories for Samsung, Bosch, Kraft, L'oreal and a whole bunch of others I didn't recognize. We don't tend to see a lot of really poor housing, although it definitely exists here. From what we can tell, most of it is newer apartment buildings. We do see some very sad homes, people doing laundry in the algae covered ponds or the sulfur smelling canal. This area is very humid, a bit worse than say the Virginia/DC area, and we've been really impressed with how many homes have A/C. From what we can tell these A/C units also double as heaters. So we are pleased that a fair amount of the people here have decent living conditions.

Rent or Buy?

2009-09-03T17:41:00.001+08:00

One thing we will never do is buy an apartment or house in China. So when you buy an apartment or townhouse it comes with concrete walls and floors. It is up to you to provide the hard wood flooring, carpet, drywall, paint, toilet, shower, kitchen, etc. This is nice and all if you want to live there, you have free reign. If you want to rent your apartment, this is also nice because you don't have to worry about fixing it up and modeling. The renter does that. And should you decide to try and make your apartment more marketable by providing these elements to your house, no one will rent it, because while the layout is nice, they don't like the floors you picked! What??? Why as a renter am I going to shell out all this cash to renovate someone else's apartment. What financial benefit do I get? We have no idea. Apparently a woman at one of the other schools decided to buy an apartment and live in it while she was teaching in China. She has been trying to sell it for 2 years, because no one likes the way she renovated it!! Crazy.

Trip to the Master of the Nets Garden

2009-08-30T12:02:00.005+08:00

Suzhou is known for its Chinese Gardens. According to Lonely Planet, the Master of the Nets Garden is one of the best in the city, even though it is small. We took a walk down a narrow street to get to the entrance, which had stalls on either side selling touristy stuff. Here are a few of our pictures.

The apartment

2009-08-22T20:23:00.005+08:00

So...here are the pictures of our apartments. It's pretty nice, if we do say so.

Location, location, location...

2009-08-22T15:38:00.002+08:00

I just created a google map with the locations of our apartment and the school. As you can see, I am close to school, but we are not actually very close to Suzhou city. We have to take a taxi whenever we want to go downtown.

Where we live

Finally on-line!

2009-08-18T09:44:00.003+08:00

We have arrived! Our apartment is so big we can't believe it. Now we need to get all of our stuff put away. We are going to take pictures today, so that will be the next bit to get added to this. We are here safe and sound, and will be updating this blog now that we have our VPN set up. China likes to block internet traffic to lots of sites, including blogging sites. With some creative use of the blackberry Storm I brought, I was able to get this all set up. More soon!

Blog created!

2009-06-27T23:14:00.000+08:00

Hello blog-followers. This will be my blog for our travels in China. I plan to put up pictures, interesting stories, and thoughts up here. I don't expect to have much going on right away, since we don't actually move until mid-August. Have a great summer and I'll hope to see you back here soon.