safari ni hatua

Today is my last day in Beijing - this afternoon I leave for Yantai, and I will most likely begin teaching on Monday.  I know it's been a while again, but sightseeing has kept me awfully busy, and I just don't always have the energy to sit here typing.  This update will be quick, because I have to eat before I leave...and once I get to Yantai I should have a lot more computer time, so I'll start filling in what I've done in the past week. 

Overall China has been great fun so far, especially Xi'an and Beijing, because I've met quite a few really nice people to hang out/sightsee with.  At the same time, I'm looking forward to settling down in one place for an extended period of time.  China is such a crazy country that it can get tiring after a while, and I haven't had a whole lot of time to just relax.  That's of my own choosing, since on short trips I prefer seeing as much as possible...were I here for a few months travelling, I could go at a much slower pace.  But I'm not, so I can't.  Looking back at the past couple weeks, I think things have gone amazingly smoothly for the most part, and traveling by myself in particular has been much easier than I thought it would be.  There's so much more I want to see here, but the truth of the matter is that, unless you come for 6+ months, there's no way to see it all.  So obviously I'll have to come back, though it might not be for a while.

That's about it for now - I hope this message finds all of you in good health and spirits, and I will be updating this much more frequently in the coming days.  Oh, and here's hoping UNC wins the NCAA title :)

Well, I'm here!  So far everything's great - I have my own little apartment, which is very nice.  It's three rooms (bathroom, bedroom, and living room), and has a water cooler, washing machine, refrigerator, heating+A/C, a TV - not sure how useful that is, though, since watching Chinese television doesn't exactly sound like a fun time - and yes, a COMPUTER!!!  Which means that I will have internet access all the time, and I won't have to pay for it...that's quite a luxury, considering what I've had to use for the past 3 weeks.  Their internet access here is a little dicey (there are some sites I just can't get to, and I know it's not filtering), but I've managed to set up the computer to use a free proxy server, so I can actually get to all the places I want to now.  [For those who don't know, a proxy server means that my internet access runs through that computer - when I want to go to Google, for instance, the proxy downloads the information from Google and then sends it to me.  This means that, as long as I can contact the proxy, I can get to any websites it can.  Pretty neat, and easy to set up]

The school is about 100 feet from the ocean, which is great.  There are also two beaches, about 5 and 10 minutes from here by bus, and it's a 15 minute ride to the downtown area.  The school is basically a boarding school (it's only 5 years old), and covers kindergarten through high school - I'm not sure what years I'll be teaching yet, but I think I should find out on Monday.  The other great thing is that there's another teacher here, from the UK (he's only 19!), and he lives next door to me.  So I'll have someone to talk to, which is nice.  I haven't contacted the other volunteers yet, but I think there are about 25-30 others throughout the city, so there should be plenty of options for socializing.  Overall, there really isn't much more than I could ask for.  It looks like it'll be a pretty cushy job (at least compared to Thailand and the Peace Corps), but that's what I wanted - something that could ease me into teaching without having to worry about all the other stuff that goes along with living in a poorer area.

As such, I'm very happy with how things are going.  I did buy a new SIM card today, so my number has changed - I edited the sticky post to reflect that.  This card has a 15 yuan/month fee (on top of the 100 I paid for the card itself), but that gets me unlimited text messaging, and I now don't pay for incoming calls.  Which is great, because I just used an entire 100 yuan IP card (what I need to use to call the US) on one conversation with my mom - oops!

Pictures are forthcoming, though I need to find a faster proxy server first.  If anyone knows of a good one, let me know!

So I've finally got a whole lot of pictures uploaded, and you'll notice I've broken them down by location.  I'll start adding more descriptions soon, but that will take a while - I've at least put a title on every picture, so you know what you're looking at :)

I've also posted my teaching schedule (so certain people don't call me while I'm in class...*ahem*), and will have my address as soon as I stop forgetting to ask about it.  A longer post is coming tomorrow, but right now I'm going to bed - I've been sitting here for hours uploading pictures, and I don't think I can stare at this computer screen any longer...

Finally going to get some serious posting done on this thing, but I'm going to break it up into quite a few posts since I'll be covering different topics. First of all, I'm going to summarize (before I forget it all) my sightseeing through China. I'll give a rundown of what I did in each place, and my impressions of the things I saw. First up, Shanghai.

One word: insane. Shanghai is the front line of China's push for modernization, so everything is pretty much taken to the extreme in this city. It's gigantic, loud, ugly, and changing incredibly fast. Everywhere you look a new building is going up, which is truly a sight to behold. However, beginning your travels in Shanghai is a lot like having a bucket of ice water dumped on your head at 5am. Or getting smacked in the face (for those of you who've seen The Fifth Element, think of when Corbin smacks Vito Cornelius after he passes out from seeing Leeloo).

That being said, I did enjoy my time in Shanghai. In a sense it was a good place to start, because there isn't a whole lot to see in the city (other than gawking at the outrageously ugly skyscrapers). That meant I didn't feel pressured to be constantly sightseeing. Shanghai was also nice because of the people I met there. Firstly, and most importantly, is Jocelyn Huang (who I've mentioned several times before). I know with absolute certainty that my trip would have not gone nearly as smoothly as it did without her help. She is a wonderful person to get to know, and I only wish I could have spent more time hanging out with her. Then there are the people I met at the Shanghai Backpackers Meetup Group: Richard, Maria, and Rosa. Richard and Maria are an American couple living in Shanghai, and they had recently taken over running the group. Rosa was a friend of Jocelyn. If you go to their website, there's actually a picture of the five of us (from left to right: Richard, Maria, Rosa, Jocelyn, and some goofy-looking guy from NJ). There were supposed to be more people there, but such is the nature of informal meetup groups. Plus, that meant more Papa John's pizza for me, and it actually tasted like it does in the States! Score.

Then I met Howard Zhang, whose wife works at the same school as Alene Plevinsky (my friend Marc's mother). He has a business in Shanghai, as he was born there, though he lives in the US now. When his wife told him I was coming to Shanghai she told Alene that he would like to take me out for dinner, so of course I accepted. He is a very nice man, and was kind enough to also assist me with purchasing a cell phone before we ate. All in all I had a really great time with him, and will make a point of returning the favor when he's back in the US. I did attempt to give him a present of a bottle of Johnny Walker whiskey, but he said he doesn't drink (oops!). And in retrospect, it was totally unnecessary to buy him a gift. When someone is your host here, you are not expected to offer anything in return, except maybe making an offer to pay the bill (which will be summarily rejected, but it's polite to ask at least once). Live and learn - that's a big part of why I'm here, anyway.

So I did enjoy my time in Shanghai, mostly because of the people, but also because of the Shanghai Museum. It is bar none the best museum I have seen yet in China, and I spent a good 4 hours wandering its halls over the course of an afternoon. Aside from maybe the Terracotta Army, I have yet to see as impressive a collection of artifacts in one location. The water town Jocelyn and I visited, Zhujiajiao, was also quite an enjoyable experience. The Bund is way overrated, in my opinion (it's a collection of European-style buildings along a section of the Huangpu River), though Sun Yatsen's former residence was an interesting window into the tumultuous events of the early 20th century. A nice treat, maybe because I wasn't expecting much, was the Shanghai History Museum. It's housed in the bottom of the Oriental Pearl Tower, that ugly building you can see in the shot of Pudong. It doesn't have a collection of fancy artifacts, but it does have incredibly lifelike recreations of scenes from Shanghai's history. A neat find, to be sure (and very un-crowded, which is always a plus in China).

I think that pretty much sums up Shanghai. Next up is Hangzhou, which I'll try and get to before bed - have to go fill out some postcards first...

I've been surprisingly busy this weekend (meeting other volunteers and sightseeing) so I haven't gotten around to writing the next travel summary yet.  But I just found out tonight that I won't be teaching most of my classes this week, because the students have midterm exams - so I'll have lots of free time, assuming I don't waste it all sleeping...  I did, however, add full captions to all the pictures.  So if there was something you wanted clarification on, hopefully you got it :)  If not, let me know, as I can always add more.

Dear Kris, this is a message from your subconscious - UPDATE YOUR DAMN TRAVEL JOURNAL!

(sorry for the delay, folks - I just need to kick myself in the rear a few more times, and I'll finally get some more stuff up here)

Taught my last class for a while today, because it's vacation time - yay!  I'm flying down to Shanghai this morning, after which Jocelyn (my friend there who I've mentioned before) and I are taking a bus to a village called Wuyuan, in Jiangxi Province.  We'll be there until May 5th most likely, after which we'll go back to Shanghai - I'll probably hang out there until I fly back to Yantai on Sunday.

So I'll be out of touch (other than cell phone) for a little while, though I'll try and get online in Shanghai and write some more...I've just been busy trying to get my plans squared away.  And that can be very annoying this time of year, because a billion Chinese are also trying to go places!  Yantai has been wonderful so far though - the people at the school have been great to Rob and me (aside from getting us sauced every time they take us out to eat), and the kids are wonderful.  I'm starting to get more into the swing of teaching, though creating lesson plans can be a bit tough at times.  Still, I think they've been pretty successful.  I've also met quite a few of the other foreign teachers, and they've all been really cool.

So that's it for now, I think - gotta get to bed.  I did put some pictures up of my school, my room, an island (actually a peninsula, but they call it an island) here in Yantai, and Tai Shan, so take a look.  Hopefully I'll have lots more after this week!