Waterfall

Raining In Changsha

This is the “Changsha Pedestrian Overpass Waterfall”. It will never make the World Heritage list – but it was humorous. It was one of those rains where the manhole covers were bouncing with the overflow. I had an umbrella – but everything was wet – even my underwear by the time we got home.

Side Note: I substituted for Amy - Monday and Tuesday – but with the bad weather and the fact that it was the last days of class – I only had one student show up yesterday and 3 today. I had been excited to be teaching so it was sort of a let down. Next Semester……

Gou Qiou

This is a shopping area that is the size of a small town where each store has one type of item that it sells to other sellers – sort of like warehouse shopping. One store will be full of just umbrellas, another one just watches, another just tea containers. You can find clothes, coffee, fireworks, pocketbooks, toys, fancy hairpins, bedding and on and on. The prices are a lot better than you can get anywhere else (except maybe the internet) it just takes a lot of time to find what you want. Amy, who is leaving after this term to attend graduate school in Florida, needed a few more unique Chinese items to take home as gifts. We decided that both of us needed to be walking to loosen up our sore legs so we did about 4 hours of shuffling and shopping.

Side Note – I Just read this article on the NYTimes online – oh so true

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/opinion/global/24iht-june24-ihtmag-hua-28.html?pagewanted=1&ref=china

Pizza with Chinese Translation….

Friday night Cynthia and I went to Juicy’s a local place that has American music videos playing on the walls and windows and Western Food. They usually have a nice menu with big pictures and English under the Chinese. We have eaten there a couple of times before. Food had always been good before. Known entity – right?... Well – they have put the menu on this really cute small iPad type of device- only problem pictures are too small to discern the ingredients and there was no English Translation, but that didn’t worry me cause I had Cynthia. With Cynthia translating for me – We had choices of a “fruit pizza” (Never) a “Spicy Pizza” (not really Italian –I thought) and an “Italian Pizza”. I picked the “Italian Pizza” cause it sounded like a good, safe, normal choice. It was a pizza with spaghetti as it’s topping.

AND NO I didn't have my camera or iPhone to take a picture -
I will be home in 2 weeks - Sals or Arte's Pizza ----have a pie ready for me.....

Pandora Day 2

ZhangJiaJie Day 2

Pouring Rain. We got up early, ate our breakfast and hobbled off to catch a taxi to spend the next 5 hours walking along the stream (not many stairs). This area taxi drivers don’t use their meters – you have to ask for the price before you get in. Sort of a pain because you know you will be ripped off cause you are a foreigner. We got a sort of fair “laowei” price and rode for 30 minutes to another part of the park. We bought a 3 Yuan raincoat (46 cents) and had umbrellas but within 1 hour our pant bottoms were soaked up to our thighs and Amy had to buy some plastic shoes because her sneakers/socks were soaked. Pictures were hard to take because our hands were so wet with nowhere to dry them. Amy’s camera finally stopped working and mine got too wet for me to chance using. After about 3 hours we “called uncle” and made our way back to the hotel to check out and start the process to get back to Changsha. One good thing was we were able to eat lunch in the same great restaurant across the street before we left. Bus ride home was EXACTLY 4 hours – left the station at 2:00 ‘on the dot’ and arrived the Changsha station at 6 ‘on the dot’. Amazing. After a couple of local bus changes we walked (again -in the pouring rain) to McDonalds where we ran into Cynthia and her BFF. We had a nice visit and then one more bus ride back home. Day ended with us arriving at NUDT at 8:15pm. It took me about 5 minutes to get up the 3 flights of stairs to my apartment because my legs were so sore. Amy’s apartment was on the first floor- not fair. I have to do more Wii Fit! –

Photos show - Amy in the worst of the downpour and then a little later- notice she is now carrying her sneakers in a bag - they were so wet

ZhangJiaJie Trip

Amy and I took a 2 day quick trip to ZhangJiaJie World Heritage Park – Photo link is below. The park is located in our Hunan Province so it was only a 4 hour bus ride away (plus an hour taxi ride). There are 5 entrances to the park so we chose a hotel within walking distance to one of them. After starting our walk to the entrance in the wrong direction (my fault) we finally got our tickets and were able to start our park adventure by 2 pm. First on our list was the cable car ride. While waiting in line we saw lots of posters for Avatar along with directions of where you could see the mountains used in the film. We got to the top – pictures from the cable car were not really good due to the fog/clouds. I doubt if they have many really clear days here – but it is still worth the trip because the scenery is so unusual and spectacular. But if you come - try the fall when it isn’t so hot. It was embarrassing how much I sweated during the “Big Mistake Hike” down. We had decided to walk down figuring gravity would help us. Big Mistake! It was a 5-6 km hike down with a surprising number of ups too. It started to rain for our last 30 minutes, which made the rail-less steps even more exciting. After 2 hours, with rubbery legs and much pain, Amy and I finally made it to the bottom. We were lucky because we had been joined and cared for by a HS girl and her mom. She had just finished her senior exams and was being rewarded with a Zhangjiajie trip. She was enjoying practicing her English and we enjoyed the company. We took tons of pictures, drank lots of water, and took very careful steps.

At 6pm we caught a short train ride down the rest of way – I wish we had had the energy to walk it – because we missed some spectacular photos but there was no way we could have made it out of the park before dark if we had tried in our hobbled condition. We even caught a taxi for our very short ride home to the hotel. We walked across the street for some really good Chinese food and then I got a massage at a local parlor with Amy going back to the room for a hot shower. Beds were exceptionally hard so when we got up early the next morning neither one of us felt very refreshed.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/katiea48/sets/72157626868270733/with/5847033926/

Facebook Frustrations

Took me an hour and a half to finally get Facebook up and running on the windows machine – too technical to explain –and maybe if I constantly used the windows machine it would probably be less time –but it is such a pain to try and figure out the CHINESE operating system. Thank goodness I sort of know where things are located on window applications because otherwise I would be lost. I was on Facebook for 3 minutes – got to see the new pictures of Lee’s baby CJ and then was promptly kicked off. SO FRUSTRATING. Got back on for another 20 minutes. China teaches you perseverance and patience.

Side note – I was reading a NY Times online article about Google’s laptop called Chromebook where everything is online including application programs but it assumes that most people (minus 1.3 Billion) can get online anytime (not any time HERE soon). I still get excited when I go to Subway, Daylight Donuts or McDonalds and I can get online with my iPad. The author wrapped up the article by also saying that it was too soon– but it sure will be nice in 5 or less years. (Maybe 7 in China)

Side Note: Amy (one of the younger foreign teachers) and I are going to ZhangJiaJie (think Pandora in Avitar) tomorrow by ourselves- I won't have my BFF Cynthia "security blanket" with me - but Amy can speak and even read a little Chinese so hopefully we won't run into too many glitches - except sometimes the glitches can be pretty amusing. Oh - and Cynthia did spend 2 hours with me to help set up the hotel reservations and tell us which buses to catch - how much everything was - etc etc. I should be home with FANTASTIC pictures sometime Saturday night China time.

Senior Test Days

This photo was taken during the lunch break of the first day of the all-important Senior Tests. Parents were picking up their kids to take them to lunch. The tests last 2 days. Parents accompanied them to the school and some of them actually stayed the whole day waiting (standing) outside in the heat. People were handing out flyers to the kids finishing up. There were signs in the road reminding people that there was a school nearby giving the tests. Multiple Police were at the corners attempting to keep the traffic quiet and organized. You could almost feel the stress in the air. How many of us stayed and waited till our kid finished their SATs…… (I didn’t- guess I wasn’t a tiger mom.)

QuiYang Day 3

Our Wild Taxi Driver

The last day we decided not to join a tour because we just wanted to see one of the old stone towns and we needed to be back in time to catch our flight. On our first night we caught a cab with a driver that seemed pretty good – so we got his phone number and called and reserved him for our Monday sightseeing. He must have been on his best driving behavior Saturday night – because he was a different driver Monday. He managed to find the most excuses to use the horn and find the bumpiest roads to get to TianLong Town. It was about an hour of bouncing around (only banged my head once and no, there wasn’t a seat belt in the backseat). I wear a pedometer to count my steps – so I have gotten pretty good at predicting how much we walk – I would guess about 5000 steps that day – but the pedometer read 17000 – so that means 12000 of those “steps” were really the bigger bumps in the road. Shocks, tires and horns are probably the first things that wear out on a Chinese driven car.

On his good side he didn’t smoke in the car and he did recommend a really good restaurant for the “Spicey Chicken” that Guiyang is famous for.

Side note: - No McDonalds in the whole City – with all our driving we should have seen McDonalds- but none. There were lots of KFC’s. Also the whole 3 days we only saw 3 other foreigners and that was at the big waterfalls. It is rare to be in a town as big as GuiYang and not see any foreigners or McDonalds.

Another side note: Cynthia was actually able to sleep during the bouncing, honking, swerving taxi ride. I have seen many people do this on the buses too. This supernatural power must be built into the Chinese genes.

Stone Town

TianLong Town

This is a stone town – even the roofs are made of flagstone. In 1381 A.D., the first emperor of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhan stationed his soldiers here and built the first stone barracks. It appears that time has sort of ‘stood still’ here – most of the older men and women still use the old fashion dress style and not just for the tourists. The doors are very short and people still live in these stone structures (you can hear the TVs behind the wooden doors). Women with no headbands are single, white head bands means they are married, black ones –not sure (widowed I would guess).

Whiney Boy

I made the mistake of speaking to a boy selling rocks at one of the tour stops. He followed me around for 10 minutes whining at a loud and high pitch. I almost wanted to buy the rock to get rid of him but I knew that the next laowei would have to pay for my gullibility – so I remained strong and did not reinforce his whiney behavior. I pity his mother. It almost got to be funny with him stalking me as we walked over some really unusual terrain. Even the Chinese people tried to get him to stop. Persistent little…….kid.

Side Note: The strategically placed stepping stones had all the dates of the year stamped into them. You were supposed to find and stand on your own so that you would have good luck all year. I think it was just a ruse to make you watch your step. I stood on mine and took a picture of Zac's

GuiYang Day 2

Sunday – Huangguoshu Waterfalls

We opted to go with a tour (14 hours) for this part of our trip because the place is about a 2 hour drive away. We had a nice bus, good driver, comfortable seats and great scenery. In the photos you will see two sets of falls and a park but the tour also did a couple of caves. We had lots of walking, climbing and stairs. The southern part of China is having a drought so the falls were not as spectacular as expected but they were still pretty impressive.

GuiYang Trip

GuiYang http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guiyang

is the Capital city of Guizhou Province that is west of Hunan Province (mine). The landscape looks a lot like the Guilin area, Kurst hills, waterfalls, caves, lots of rice fields and lots of interesting rock houses. Even though the distance was short, Cynthia and I flew because the fastest train was 12 hours. We found a good beef noodle place for lunch then went to the nearby QianLing Park to walk around. It was a very peaceful LOOKING place but there were so many musical (?) performers, equipped with loud sound systems, competing with each other that it didn’t sound very peaceful. Another thing adding to the noise was a strange sport (or maybe a form of tai chi) that used a “top” and a whip. When the “top” was going at full speed it made a low toned humming noise. Next time the Internet is up I will post a video that I took – cause it is impossible to explain. Oh and there were monkeys all over the park. http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/guizhou/guiyang/qianling.htm

After the park we went took a cab into the center of town to look around. Mostly just shopping but we did locate a Poppa Johns for dinner. I asked for a beer and they brought me a warm one with a glass of ice… I drank it warm. Everything else was as expected. After we finished we caught a cab to the Jiaxiu Tower to take a couple of night shots. The driver was so nice and helpful we got his phone number in case we wanted to use him on Monday for our “Ancient City Tour”. (Big Mistake).

Photos of Everyday China

If you have an extra 15 minutes in the day -- this is a must - Jason the teacher from Canada that lives across the hall - took pictures of just normal stuff we see every day - stuff that I never think about writing about because it is so common. This will give you a good idea of what it is really like in China -
Make sure you make it all the way to the "Hello Kitty Car Seats" they are a scream.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28398373@N07/sets/72157626615881247/with/5753946499/