Shenzhen and Hong Kong

So 3 weeks ago I took a trip to Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Instead of getting my fresh opinion on it I decided to let it brew a bit, aka 3 full weeks! Regardless of my reasoning for the delay, I will do my best to give you the full scoop. This trip introduced me into two different interesting and awesome parts of traveling on the cheap in china. Hard Sleepers and Couchsurfing. Both were integral to my trip so I will explain them as I go along.

The trip started on Friday afternoon with me heading to the train station to catch my 5pm train to Guangzhou. Of course I met a Chinese university student who wanted to tell me his life story in english but it helped kill the hour wait I had at the train station. So I get on the train, and find my bed for my trip to Guangzhou. Trains in China have 4 different classes, Hard Seat, Soft Seat then Hard and Soft sleepers. While hard isn't actually hard it just is a thinner less luxurious option than soft. Given that the Hard Sleeper is half the price of Soft I'd say it's a good balance of value and comfort. For the hard sleeper there open ended compartments that contain 6 beds per compartment. On the way out I had a bed in a middle berth. I spent most of my time on the train playing games on my iPod and listening to music. Around 11 pm without announcement the conductors turn off the lights for the night. But even with the lights off the train still makes stops and so of course chinese being chinese when getting on and off the train have to yell at their friends to communicate opposed to whispering like you'd expect for etiquette on a train full of sleeping people. Another interesting thing, that is actually quite effective is when you get on the train a conductor walks through the train and collects everyones tickets and exchanges a plastic card containing your bed number. This is so if your stop is in the middle of the night and you are sleeping the conductor can walk by and wake you up to make sure you get off at the right place.

So after a less than satisfying night of sleep on the train I arrive in Guangzhou at about 7am. I drag my groggy self out of the train and go search for food. I could eat noodles from a street vendor, but I eat that all the time, luckily I found a McDonalds and feasted on an Egg McMuffin, hash brown and orange juice. Granted, like most things at McDonalds its never satisfies completely, leaving you about 7/10ths full. Regardless it was a good change of pace. After eating I go to buy my return ticket to liuzhou, and very typical of me when I go to the train station I know enough chinese to get to where I want to go but not enough to get the exact train I want. Granted, it was a major holiday weekend so the train I wanted could have been sold out, so I had to settle for one that departed two hours earlier. Next I go to a different office to buy my tickets for the bullet train to shenzhen. So 80 rmb later I have my ticket for that. In a span of about 30 minutes, buying 2 train tickets and buying mcd's i spent about 350 kuai. In the grand scheme of things not that much money, but still a good dent. So I go to the special waiting room for the bullet train and then board the train. The bullet train was really nice. The seats were arranged more like and airplane, granted with more leg room. What I was surprised about was how smooth the train was. I literally felt like you were floating compared to the standard trains that clunk along. With the combination of the smoothness of the train and my grogginess I slept for most of the ride to Shenzhen. Upon arrival in shenzhen I make my way to the exit of the train station. For the bullet train which I was not aware of you have to scan your ticket to get out of the station. While I was sleeping I must have dropped my ticket, not wanting to pay another 80 kuai I see if I can find it on the train. I go back to the platform and the train is already full of people going back to Guangzhou, so not wanting to get stuck back there I thought I had ran out of luck. But then I talk to a conductor, tell him my deal in my broken chinese and he talks to someone on his walkie-talkie and gives me a thumbs up. So I walk back down, go to the desk tell the lady I dont have my ticket and she points me to this side gate, which they let me through, to much relief.

After exiting the train station I needed to make my way to the Hong Kong border so I could get my passport stamped, keeping my visa legal. Luckily the Shenzhen train station is on the border so all I had to do was walk to customs. It was a little strange just walking over the border to what is essentially a different country. The customs check wasn't too exciting because, just quite crowded due to the holiday. So once I cleared customs wanted to just turn around and go back into China because I had plans to stay in Shenzhen the first night. But the border crossing was set so that you couldnt do that without getting on the subway (MTR) first. So I had to buy a fare to the closest station get on the MTR get off at the first stop, get the next train to the border. So that went without too much difficulty and I was back into Shenzhen.

In the day's leading up to my trip I had exchanged a few messages with my Couch Surfing (CS) host and I knew he had to work until around 5 so I had a day to kill. So I just started walking around the city just scoping the scene. Comparing Shenzhen to Liuzhou is night and day. Shenzhen was one of the first Special Economic Zones of China and has gone from being a small border town to a full on metropolis, of 10 million people. Everything in Shenzhen is relatively new and few things of historical significance. That being said shenzhen is incredibly clean and orderly, compared to the chaos that exists in Liuzhou. One of the things I first noticed was that people actually follow the rules of the road while driving, pedestrians cross the street at crosswalks and wait for the lights to change. If the chinese characters were removed from the sides of the buildings I would have thought I was in downtown Miami. So I start walking around, just trying to find anything of significance. I make my way into some very chinese styled shopping malls (aka stores the size of my closet full of knockoff goods). I keep walking around, take about a half an hour break sitting on a bench along the road where a chinese guy sat down next to me to try and have a conversation with me. After that I decide I wanted to go check out the main business district where all the tall skyscrapers are. So after a good 20 minute walk I make it there. I then notice this large shopping mall, and being in need of some AC I decide I could hang out in there for a bit. Going into this shopping mall was ridiculous it literally had every brand name designer anyone could think of. So walking through, checking out the stores and whatnot I make my way up to the third floor and happend upon this massive open space that contained something I'd never expect.....hockey rink. I couldn't really believe it so I had to just check it out. It was more of a skating rink with hockey lines painted on it and no glass above the boards. It was packed with chinese kids practicing their skating, they actually weren't that bad, I mean nobody was really an expert but there were several very competent skaters there. I pondered giving it a shot, but at 60 kuai and hour and the only skates available were figure skates I decided just watching was good enough. So I make my way around some more, going through more places. One thing of note that my Minnetonka friends might be interested in is outside of the Hyatt in Shenzhen is where I saw the Rolls Royce Phantom, a car that starts at 380,000 dollars, Communism in China anyone?? So after walking around for quite some time I needed to find a place to relax a bit, so I figured finding an internet cafe would be a good idea. I also needed to get in touch with my CS host because his phone must have been out of credit or battery. So I find a cafe near by and head in. I had never been in an internet cafe in china before and so it was interesting to see. First thing of note was that the place was massive filled with a good 200 computers of people mostly playing multiplayer games on the internet (counter strike and WoW for those who care). So I sit down hoping to stay for only an hour or so. But for the life of me I could not get a hold of my host, Santi. So I just start killing time on the internet reading news, facebook whatnot. Then this girl sits down next to me, and of course she tells me she wants to be my friend, typical chinese. But good thing I met this girl because she really helped me out. I still couldn't get a hold of santi, so I post a message on the CS page for shenzhen seeing if anyone could help me out, shortly later i got an address and the girl helped me get some food and tell the taxi driver where to go. I also got santi's brothers cell phone, i called that and everything was set.

So after a 30 kuai cab fare to the other side of town I meet Santi at a carrefour supermarket, where he was eating dinner at this italian restaurant with 7 of his friends from Guangzhou. I soon find out that they are also staying at Santi's place for the night. Needless to say the apartment was a little crowded but his friends were cool and a lot of fun so it was worth it. So after eating some terrible italian food, we headed to santi's place. He had a pretty cool spot on the 16th floor of a 30 story building. So we're there hanging out for a bit, more of Santi's friends come over and soon I start talking to this girl. Turns out she went to the University of Wisconsin and is from Mankato, small world. So we talk for a bit, she works in Shenzhen for InterSport, one of the largest sporting goods retailers in Europe. She told me to send her my resume, so hopefully this could turn into something!

Later the whole crew heads out to the Coco Park district of Shenzhen where there a several night clubs/bars. It was interesting because these places were mostly outside, granted the weather was perfect but it was just a cool vibe. So after hanging out there until the wee hours with Santi and his friends we head back to his place where I was lucky enough to get a spot on a bed. It was kind of a mess because people just crashed all over the place. Granted it was a good time and having so many people that I hit it off with made it a really fun first CS experience.

So the next morning I'm the first person to wake up... pretty typical so I just wait around for an hour or so playing games on my iPod. As people slowly start to rise one of Santi's friends from Guangzhou says that she's going to the supermarket to buy breakfast. She returns with an assortment of eggs, potatoes and fruit. So for the next half an hour she's cooking in the kitchen and one everyone wakes up we have a large and delicious breakfast.

After breakfast I knew I needed to start heading toward Hong Kong because I knew with the border crossing and a long MTR ride to Hong Kong Island it was gonna take a good three hours to meet my host there. So Santi shows me to the bus and I went off to the border crossing. It was a different border crossing than the one the day before, this one was brand new and quite empty so it was a pretty smooth process. So I clear customs and hop on the MTR towards HK island. After about a 45 minute ride with two transfers I arrived in Central. Waiting for me there was Jack, my CS host in Hong Kong. Jack was a real nice guy, and was really excited to show me around Hong Kong.

The first thing I needed to do was to get some food because I was quite hungry. So we just walking down the road and ended up at a Middle Eastern restaurant. I'm not really sure but it had good cheap food and cheap beers. So after dinner and two beers Jack tells me the our route through the city to see as much as I can in only one night.

After my relatively cheap dinner (still quite expensive by mainland standards) Jack and I depart on a walking tour of Central HK. Jack clearly knew the town quite well because he was able to tell me all the major land marks and the history of some of the buildings in Central. One really interesting thing that I had heard about from Laura about Hong Kong on sundays is that it is the only day of the week that thousands of Philippino women have off. They work typically as house maids and child care providers for the wealthy Hong Kongers. So for their day off they spend all day together in parks and on the street, just playing various games and socializing. They were everywhere, HK closes some streets on Sundays to accommodate all of the women that come out. So we finally reach Victoria Harbor, from there we board the Star Ferry and head over to Kowloon to watch the nightly light and laser show on all the sky scrapers back on HK island. I really wish I had a tripod because I could have taken some really good long exposure pictures of this but I had to settle with a McGyverd set up on the top of a trash can. It worked but with a tripod I could have gone right up to the edge of this balcony we were on, instead there people in front of some of my best shots.

After the light show we continued our walking tour, now in Kowloon. We started off by going through Hong Kong's Avenue of the Stars. Jack kept telling me about all the people that had been given a star but I really had no idea who they were, we also stopped for a few minutes at the statue of Bruce Lee. From there we walk through the main business district of Kowloon and up to Temple Street. Temple street is a MASSIVE street market that stretches for miles, we walked a good portion of it and Jack informed me of the not so good side of temple street. While there are stands in the middle of the road, on the sidewalks is a sort of red-light district. Just a little odd. So after quite a significant walk starting in Central Hong Kong and ending up at the northern end of Kowloon, our walking trip was finished. We next boarded a mini-bus to take to Jack's apartment in the New Territories. Upon arrival Jack cooked some noodles and we pretty much crashed shortly after.

The next morning Jack's mother bought us some lunch/brunch (multi-generational homes, like china are common in HK). Which was pretty typical HK food. After eating this I can now say that most Chinese food in America is Hong Kong style cooking, aka more meat, thicker sauce. So from there Jack walked me to the bus station, to the MTR to Shenzhen, Bullet train to Guangzhou, over night train back to Liuzhou.

Interesting aside, when I was walking through the train station in Guangzhou I saw this western family that had three late elementary to middle school aged boys walking through. So I just say hi to them ask them where they're from and where they're going. Turns out they're from Seattle ongoing on the same train as me, getting off one stop before to go to Guilin. So I told them I have a bunch of pictures that I took in Yangshuo and that I would show them to them once we got on the train. After boarding the train I head over to their car (they got the lux soft sleeper) to show them some pictures. This family seemed really cool. They had pulled their kids out of school for an entire year to travel the world. They started in South America, then went to Australia and New Zealand, South East Asia, India and China. They're next plan was to go to Africa for a few months as well. I was totally jealous of this and wanted to hear their stories of all their experiences. They have a blog at www.5discovertheworld.wordpress.com. I really enjoyed talking to them, we ended up chatting for around 3 hours.

After that I head to my bed to try and sleep. Tonight sleeping was particularly difficult because they didn't turn the lights off until about one and then this big group of people board the train and all have seats near me. I eventually wake up in the middle of the night to the most horrible snoring I have ever heard in my entire life. It was the deepest loudest snore, beyond what I thought was humanly possible. It was all coming from the guy across from me in the middle berth (i was in the top berth). So this was totally preventing me from sleeping so I had to take some sort of action. So I found my water bottle and started flicking water at him just to wake him up for maybe 5 minutes because I knew that would be enough for me to get to sleep. It took a couple of tries but eventually I got him up and I fell asleep, he probably fell asleep and continued to snore but i didn't notice it anymore. So for those who think I'm super mean for doing this I have no words for you other than he probably didn't even remember waking up in the middle of the night, so there.

So for a general recap of my trip to Shenzhen and Hong Kong, I felt that this was one of the most interesting weekends that I have been in china. In Shenzhen I really saw what the future of China is going to be like, Clean well managed cities. I also saw the carrot dangling in front of the horse, in Hong Kong. China wants so badly to be what Hong Kong is. But I think with China's ideological issues, it will never completely reach the level of Hong Kong. I keep thinking of scenarios in my head of what would make the Chinese government fall apart in favor of a modern democracy and I think Hong Kong will play a major role in the transition, most of this is for another discussion so I'll leave it at that.

To close everything off, I probably forgot some things that I'll want to add later so stay tuned. And note that I actually left for HK 4 weeks ago today but this post has been under construction for nearly an entire week, I started on monday…..

Additions and BBQ

Okay, got a lot to catch up on so I'm gonna do it in bits. First off, I have a few things to add about long tan park that I forgot about in the previous post. First thing is that when I'm running through the park and the weather is just the least bit nice, basically not raining, there are always people getting their wedding pictures taken. I can't believe that people would be getting married on a monday at around 11am so I figure that these picture sessions are separate from the actual ceremony. Its also interesting to see the range in styles of photos taken, there are the standard husband and wife together with nice scenery in the background, to the painfully corny. I once saw a couple in a pose where the girl was staring off into space while the guy was standing behind her with a sign saying "I'm available", I dunno you may think it's cute, I do not. Another thing with these photos is that typical attire for guys is a white tux. I've seen a few black ones out there but white seems to be the standard. For women in China the dresses don't always have to be white, actually in a traditional wedding I believe the dress would be red because that is the color of luck and good fortune (I will have a whole post dedicated to these types of things in the near future), But I've seen Yellow, and a light pink before, these were pretty isolated instances but yeah, it deviates from our standard of only white. Another comment about getting photos taken in china. It's a pretty big deal to chinese people to get a set of professional photos taken. I guess I'm saying this in a way as it's one of the things you have to do when you become established in a serious relationship. Stephen and his girlfriend recently got their photo's back when Xiao Liao dragged him to the photo studio. I'm sure Stephen would agree with me that the pics are on the corny side and he did it as one of those "bite your lip things and get it over with" things that girls always make guys do. Yeah, any female readers (and male as well i suppose) you know what I'm talking about.

Okay, so that's my bit on getting photos taken in China, and for those who are wondering, no, no girl has dragged me to the photo studio. Just putting things in the clear. So on the 23rd stephen had informed me that one of his students that he tutors on the side wanted to invite all the foreign teachers over to his house for an afternoon of barbecue. The day for this event couldn't have been any more perfect, 80 and sunny. So me laura and stephen hop in a cab and head over to the east side of town. Stephen's student Xiao Long, was studying english to pass a proficiency exam so he could go study business management at a university in the UK (he already had a degree in engineering from a chinese university but he didn't like the subject too much). So I knew that if he was trying to go to university in the UK he had to have come from a wealthy family, Stephen had mentioned this to us as well. Pulling up to his house, to me in my american view of wealth, It didnt look like the family had wealth bursting from the seems, but there were several indicators that I was able to pick up. His family had an actual house that you could walk all the way around, second the house was three stories tall, and large by chinese standards (a footprint about the same size as my house sr year of college). This diverted quite drastically from the typical chinese home which consists of an apartment in a massive housing complex. While having a house to themselves the houses in this neighborhood were essentially row houses with about 10 feet of space in between, the idea of having a yard is still pretty foreign to chinese people, granted if everyone owned property like americans there probably would be no space left in the country! Another thing I noticed is that many of the houses were unoccupied. Xiao Long said that pretty much the entire place was bought out but so many people had bought the houses as investment properties. I was able to distinguish this because the un occupied houses were just cement shells, no floors, windows, appliances or anything. So on to BBQ, and just a footnote about this bit, I'm not trying to judge or obsess about wealth, I just want to give a glimpse into what I experienced with wealth in china and this was the first time i was invited to a truly "upper class" chinese home.

So after a quick tour of the house the BBQ began. Chinese barbecue is quite different from what we would call barbecue, no burgers, no steaks or anything. Instead the meat is cut into small pieces and placed on a kabob stick then placed over a small open fire in a metal box about 1 foot square. While the meat is cooking various spices are added. This is pretty much what happens with the barbecue that you buy from street vendors at night markets, though our hosts said that the way we were cooking it was much healthier, don't know why, probably less oil. So after about 2 hours of just sitting around having round after round of kabob sticks coming through with various meats (no dog trust me) things start to slow down and the family tells us that we were going for a walk, a very typical chinese thing to do after a large meal. So we're walking through the neighborhood and then end up at this pond in the center with a pier and a pagoda type thing in the middle. So we spend about an hour there, Xiao Long's mom took tons of pictures of our group (she was taking pictures all day and i think she ended up with over a thousand, seriously she was taking shots alllllll day). So after hanging out at the pond for a while we wander back to the house and waiting for us is a massive dinner. Having only finished a huge meal just over an hour ago I really couldn't eat much more. Dinner was very good, pretty typical guangxi fare, chicken, duck, uhh some spicy dishes some not, cant really remember everything but I know it wasn't too out of the ordinary. So dinner ended up lasting longer than the BBQ as Xiao Long's dad pulled out a bottle of fancy baijiu from his expansive collection. So when things were about to wrap up (or so i thought) we were asked to go over to the living room where we drank tea for about another hour and a half. Finally at around 11:30 our 9 hour affair wound down and me stephen and william headed home.

yeah, next time I will tell you about my adventures in Shenzhen and Hong Kong!

Also, anyone know how to edit stuff in blogger? I want to make one of my photos my background but I cannot get it to work, the photo now is just one of their stock photos....

Longtan park 龙滩公园

Okay, here is my first attempt at writing about the every day experience of China, opposed to telling the stories of me running around with my friends until the wee hours of the morning.  So I my first edition is about Longtan park.  Longtan park is a very large park very close to my school.  I go running through here almost every day.  I try to run every day but since I have no plans to run in any races in the near future motivation can be a little hard to come by some days.  So now I'm just trying to run because it's something that I love to do, opposed to something that I feel like I have to do and if I don't get out I feel guilty about myself (which has been the case at various times in my life).

So, on to the park.  The gate is about a 10-15 minute walk from my apartment or a 4 minute run (I've only walked into longtan 2 or 3 times).  So upon entering the gate of the park, you seriously enter a different world.  Gone are the hundreds of cars and thousands of electric scooters that drive like pedestrians do not exist.  Also, the air is notably better in the park, and there is green space, something that is mostly nonexistent in chinese cities.  So naturally this place is a big attraction in the city and can become very very crowded at times.  So when I go running in longtan I try to avoid times when the crowds are the biggest, basically the middle of the day.  The park is quite wooded with a small lake in the middle.  There are also several karst peaks that have steps to the top.  I have yet to climb any of these.  So the roads in the park are roughly laid out like the greek letter Phi.  One main road in the middle and two roads that make a circle around the lake in one half and through the woods in the other.  There are a few trails around the park but they're not really suitable for running.  I feel pretty fortunate to have the park this close because I easily have access to a decent running grounds.  I have figured out how to cut up the roads into various loops and have made a series of routes that I go on depending the amount of time that I want to run.

Longtan park likes to pride itself on being a "natural" park where development is limited.  While yes, Longtan is better than most chinese parks at having open fields and forests (most parks are based around large public squares) it still has almost all the features of every park.  It has various carnival type rides; looping pirate ship, go-karts, bumper cars, bumper boats, log flume, carnival games, etc.  I mean, it still is quite nice but there is still the obvious objective of making money here.

As I run through the park I often become one of the attractions for the Chinese people.  I probably am in 100s of photos that people try to discretely take of me.  I can typically figure out when people want to take a picture of me, its actually quite easy.  usually, someone will be pretending to take a picture of something that is quite unremarkable, like a tree, then quickly turn their cameras towards me and snap the shot.  When I catch them doing this I try to make a face of some sort, give a thumbs up or look away.  I gotta to show them that I'm smarter than they think I am. Another thing they love doing is just yelling "hello" at me and then turn and start laughing with their friends.  Most of the time it is kids that do this but other times older people will join in on the act.  They think they're so clever!

One of the most interesting things about the park is when you go there in the morning.  Hundreds of elderly people will be there walking around, playing music, dancing, singing, writing calligraphy on the ground with water, playing cards, and so on.  I feel like this is something America could really learn from the Chinese.  There is so much benefit to regular social interaction that I feel is missed out on by some of the elderly in the US.  Also the elderly are still very active despite their age and I feel that this stems from a culture that values active lifestyles and social interaction in public places.

Okay, I dont really know where to go from here.  I feel that there is a lot more I can talk about but don't know how to put it together.  The weather is great here now, upper 70's and sunny so I'm enjoying it!

Tomb Sweeping Day

Hello everyone!  Its been a pretty slow monday night so I've decided to give the blog a good ole updating.  So, from where I left off last, I had just finished a long weekend where I had thursday and friday off of lessons.  So the next week I was informed that I would have to work on a saturday and then have sunday, monday and tuesday off for the Chinese holiday "tomb sweeping day", but more on that later.  So being informed that I had to work a 6 day week, I was a little baffled why would they just have monday off.  Regardless, they said work and I did....

So yeah, events during my 6 day week were not too exciting.  The first half was pretty typical, teaching and what not.  Then on Thursday i believe, laura had a friend from home visit us here in Liuzhou!  Jackie (laura's friend) worked for the British Council in Hong Kong.  She explained to me what she did exactly, but I don't really remember.  So on thursday night we went to Soho for a little while, but we couldn't be out late because we had to teach early on Friday.  Friday night a big group (me, laura, elaina, jackie, xiao liao, william edison and CC) of us headed out to a restaurant in the city center.  I don't know the name but everyone just called it the bamboo restaurant.  So yeah, from there we went to time bar for a bit, and then to Soho.  We were probably out a little too late for our own good, given we had to teach the next day, but not until 11:15 so I was able to sleep in.  So saturday I begrudgingly (Side note, i just spelt that word correctly on the first try, gotta be worth something!?) dragged myself to school and taught my relatively easy lesson. After lessons, I said goodbye to jackie as laura took her to the train station to catch the train to shenzhen.  Saturday night I met up with william, and we went to, you guessed it soho.  I dont know why we always go here, its a fun spot but there are plenty of other places to hang out as well.  I dunno.

So after another random night of running around I decided on sunday morning to go to Yangshuo.  I kinda went to yangshuo out of necessity but I definitely was excited to head back to my old stomping grounds!  Because of the holiday the trains were packed so i had to wait an hour to catch one of the slowest trains to guilin.  It was mildly frustrating but I still managed to get there.  So then in guilin I wanted to catch the express bus which left from the bus station a few minutes down the road.  For whatever reason I couldn't find the station, to only find out that the last express bus left at 6. the exact time when my train pulled in.  So after wasting away an hour I ended up taking the normal bus that left from the train station.  I finally arrived in yangshuo at around 830 and made my way to the school as fast as I could.  It was really exciting to see all my old friends back at the school.  So from there we went to the grand reopening of the Stone Rose.  It was pretty fun seeing how different the place looks from before.  The weekend in Yangshuo wasn't the most exciting but it was just good to spend time with the people there.  I also talked to Isabella for some time about my options for staying in China longer.  So that was a very useful conversation.  On that note this is something I really have been thinking a lot about recently.  I am really enjoying my time here and could see myself here for a year.  The school really wants me to stay and I would get paid more.  But if I did stay that means I would miss coaching cross country this fall, something I really really enjoyed last year.  Right now I am siding on staying longer because I feel once I leave China, It will be quite a long time until I come back.  Also, I think I'll need more time to work on the language.

So my return trip was kinda funny, looking back at it.  On the bus back to the train station I sat next to this chinese girl, and I talked to her for a few minutes but then i dosed off to sleep, waking up about 5 minutes from the station.  So just before we arrive, she does a totally chinese thing.  She gives me her phone and says "can we make friends" okay, she wants my cellphone number.  But when I was talking to her she said that she lives in Nanning.  So will I ever talk to her again?  no.  Regardless I gave her my number anyways and I have hers, never to be used.  So I go to buy my ticket at the train station for the train that leaves in 15 minutes, a woman comes up to me trying to sell me her ticket.  I look at it and it seemed legit, but I didnt want to buy it from her because you never know.  I don't know why I didn't pull the "i cant speak chinese, I dont understand you" card.  Anyways my ticket ended up being a standing room only ticket (the lady's was too).  So when I got on the train I wandered around for a bit and ended up sitting on a step.  This wasn't all that bad since this was only a 2 hour train back to liuzhou.  So I arrive home and call it an early night, exhausted from the long weekend of running around until the wee hours of the morning.

So this week was a 3 day week which was awesome.  But one of the most terrifying things happened to me in class on friday (actually its the week before but i'm telling it to you now).  So I'm teaching my lesson and then all of a sudden my phone starts ringing.  Not too loud, or anything and typically this is NBD but then a group of girls start laughing in the corner.  this meant only one thing THE STUPID GIRLS HAD MY CELLPHONE NUMBER.  This had potential to be one of the worst things ever.  I had no idea how they got it and they wouldn't tell me.  But I do have a pretty good theory (they went through their written english teacher's phone).

This past weekend was pretty typical.  Me and laura went to the city center friday night and met up with edison, william, cc stephen and xiao liao.  We hung out at time bar for a while and then laura and I went to money box.  We hung out there for a while and then these chinese guys invited us to their table.  we played some dice with them and whatnot.  Once things started winding down they invited us to hang out at their place in the city center.  "their place" turned out to be the Liuzhou Grand Hotel.  The hotel would be really nice by western standards so I had to guess these guys were quite minted.  So we just kinda sat around there doing nothing for a while, until they got us some KFC and after an hour or so we rolled home (side note, KFC and McDonalds deliver in china).  On saturday I agreed to meet up with this girl who I met the week before. She had been texting me non stop for a while, so I finally gave in.  I made every effort in the book to reinforce that this was not a date.  I told her that I might bring my friends and she said she didnt care.  good deal.  So I met her, and then we go meet some of her friends, who were with this german guy that I had seen around the city.  We wen't to get some food n such, then her friends left.  So then we were going to go play pool, but none of the tables were open so we walked over to williams place because he said he was getting people together to hang out in his apt.  We hang out over there for a while and then hit up our typical spot, soho.  We ended up not being there for too long before heading home.

Okay, so I now that i'm up to speed I will explain what tomb sweeping day is.  Tomb Sweeping Day is a holiday where Chinese family go visit the tombs of their ancestors. Of course, they light off firecrackers (to scare the bad spirits away).  At first I thought this was just a pretty basic holiday, but then on the train ride back to Liuzhou I was thinking about what if we had this.  To make a point of going to visit the ones who have passed before us.  Then I realized that I have never visited my Grandfathers grave.  He died almost 5 years ago and the last time I was there was at his funeral.  Yeah, it's about a 6 hour drive away but Chinese people will take train rides that are exponentially longer just to clean the tomb of their ancestors.  Just some food for thought.

Okay, to cap off this blog I think I'm going to try to change the tone of it a bit.  I think I will write more about chinese culture and traditions and so on.  I felt this blog post was mostly about nightlife and whatnot. I am doing a lot more than that, but it just feels like more day-to-day things like going running, teaching lessons and stuff that just doesn't seem to noteworthy.  but its in these day-to-day things is where I really experience the regular culture.  I will try to think of things but If you have any specific questions about things you want to hear, let me know!

Did I really break the faucet?

Hello everyone, decided to get an update in over my lunch break, I have class in an hour so I don't know if I'll finish in time.  Regardless I'll get 'yall up to speed.  But let me first make note of the weather in Liuzhou today, the weather today is awesome.  It's 63 degrees and SUNNY.  Sunny is a big deal because ever since I have arrived here it has been rainy, and when its not raining its cloudy.   Yesterday was sunny for a few hours, but then around noon the clouds rolled in... Today on the otherhand, there is not a cloud in the sky and it's awesome.  It's one of those days where you walk outside and you finally know that winter is over and spring and warmer weather has arrived.  Hopefully it can stay this way for a while and not race to being too hot where I can't go running.

Back to the day-to-day updates, there hasn't been too much to report.  I'm working, how exciting can work really get?  I do have a few stories.  So leaving off from last tuesday... Wednesday really is the only night of too much significance.  Wednesday night Stephen calls me and tells me that Edison and William (teachers at another school) were coming over to hang out.  So we're hanging out drinking some beer in his room and it gets to about 1am and I decide that I probably should head to bed since, unlike stephen and laura, I have lessons on thursdays.  So I'm brushing my teeth and I was getting annoyed with our faucet because it was leaking and it didn't hang over the sink all the way so half of the water ended up on the counter, making a mess.  I know this probably doesn't make sense but when I say faucet I mean more like a spigot.  So I try seeing if I could twist the spigot over the sink (it screwed into the pipes).  So I give it a little twist and then all of a sudden THE FAUCET BREAKS OFF.  Water starts spraying everywhere and I rush back to stephens room and say "uhhhh Stephen, we have a problem"  we rush out and start trying to figure out where the shut off valve is as well as trying to direct the water down the drain.  Of course there is no shut off valve so we call our coordinator who lives two floors above us.  She comes down in her pajamas and calls Mr Li, the maintenance guy he says there is an emergency shut off valve in the bathroom, but there wasn't.  So he told us to go outside to the master water valve and to turn off the water to our entire complex and that he would come fix it in the morning. So after about 45 minutes of running around like a chicken with its head cut off the water finally stopped, to much relief.  Mr Li, comes the next morning and installs a new faucet to my sink, everything is fine.  I was going to take a picture of the spigot to show how thin the metal was where it was broken, about 1mm thick.

So after all the craziness, that weekend Laura and I went to go explore a different part of the city.  Laura really wanted to go to this park where supposedly there is an indoor climbing wall.  So we take the bus to the complete opposite side of the town and walked around the park for a couple of hours, and never found said wall.  BUT we did find out that liuzhou has a "country club" whose golf facilities are a driving range (but it did sport a pretty posh clubhouse).  Then in the park we climbed up one of the mountain, karst things and got a really interesting view of the city.  We found out that this park will soon have a massive water park, filled with water slides and wave pool. But we could also see the surrounding city quite well.  We were close to the industrial part of town and it was crazy seeing how massive some of these factories are.  Lastly, we happened across and outdoor roller rink, that had several obstacles in it.  Later that night Jimmy (music teacher at my school) calls me saying that he's meeting some friends.  I had nothing going on so I decided to join him.  We started off at this lounge type of place but then his friends wanted to go get food.  So we walk down the street to a very typical chinese restaurant.  Of course outside they had Gou Rou (dog) and Tu Rou (rabbit).  And obviously they got the dog meat.  So we sit down and his friends start telling me that they got the rabbit, when I clearly saw them take the dog meat and start cutting it up.  So it was finally served and I just had to do a "when in Rome" kind of thing.  Dog meat, isn't too bad.  It's just a very tender red meat.  I won't go out of my way to eat it again but if it's served I'll eat some.  Now as I finish reporting on this weekend I remember why it was not very exciting, I had a pretty nasty cold, probably from all the rain we had.

So this past week was a pretty good week.  On monday I found out that grades 1 and 2 have exams on thursday and friday so we wouldn't have to teach lessons then.  LONG WEEKEND!  I was thinking of going to Yangshuo and surprising everyone there but after talking to them, they wanted me to come the next weekend, so theres no sense in going to the same place two weekends in a row.  So wednesday Edison said he could get some cheap tickets to the cinema in town and that he wanted us to come see a movie with him.  Sounded good to me so wednesday night I saw Battle of LA.  Movie was okay, if you're in the mood for a big loud action movie, with not too much plot you'd enjoy it.  So after the movie Stephen and Xiao Liao went home, so Edison, William and I went to Time Bar for some beers, after hanging out there for a bit Edison wen't home and William and I went to Soho for a while, and then later to Music Box.  I have to say William is on a whole different level than me.

So after a very late night, I crashed at Williams apartment because he lives about 10 minutes away walking from the city center, and I didn't feel like taking a cab back to my place.  I woke up and walked along the river for a while, eventually catching the bus back to my apartment.  For the most part I took this weekend pretty easy.  Friday night, Laura and I went into town, meeting up with Edison, William and Edison's co-worker CC.  We all hung out at Time Bar for a while and then made our way to Soho.  For whatever reason, at around 1am I got this terrible headache and got really tired so that kinda put a damper on things, but regardless I still had a good time.

Sunday Laura and I went to town to check out this gondola thing that we see every day when we take the bus to town.  It goes up one of the largest Mountain/Karst thing in Liuzhou.  So we went to the ticket booth to check it out and it was 40 Kuai to go up and 50 down, way more than I was willing to pay.  So we just explored the park some more.  It was really interesting seeing how parks in China really are the social centers for many people.  There were dozens of people playing traditional instruments and dancing.  I found another sign of the death of communism in China, there was this walkway in the park that had the logos of pretty much every major car manufacturer in the world made out of stones.  So after walking around the park we crossed the river and happened upon one of the old city gates from the city wall.  We paid our 2 kuai to go walk around on the wall.  The wall was really old, built in the 1300's.  I think Liuzhou is even older, its unfortunate that there aren't more artifacts like this around town... well, that I've seen thus far.  Finally after making our way home I sat down at my computer for about 30 minutes and I get a call from Jimmy asking if I wanted to go to his friends house for dinner.  I agree, because I hopefully could learn some more chinese, and have a pretty good meal.  Dinner was pretty fun, It was in one of the nicest apartments that I've been in while in Liuzhou and the food was good, Pork.  After dinner I came home to go for a night run in Longtian park because when I tried earlier in the day the place was packed.

So backing up to friday, I was searching around the internet and found a half marathon that I could do in Singapore on May 28th.  It looked really cool because you got to run at night.  I looked up flights to Singapore from Hong Kong (one night train away) and they're only 120 dollars.  I couldn't believe it so I got really excited.  The next day I went to go register and found out that the race was full.  I sent the race director an e-mail trying to pull the "i'm kinda fast card" but this morning I got a reply, no dice.  But I did find several other races in the general area.  One race is in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia on May 1st. Looking up flights this one is do-able but on the expensive side (320 dollars).  There also is a race in Kuala Lumpur, on June 26th.  Flights are pretty cheap for that one. So I'll likely do that one.  But I need your imput, should I try for the race in Kota Kinabalu?  I would really like to run in it but 320 dollars is just over half of my monthly salary.  Anyone want to contribute to the fund?????

First Days Teaching and Nanning

So picking up where I left off,  Monday morning was a pretty big day because it was the first day that I'd be teaching all on my own.  Before class I met with Stephen to go over some of the topics chosen from the textbook that we teach from.  So I felt I was pretty prepared to start teaching.  But when actual class rolled around, things didn't go so smoothly.  I started going through the material with the kids but most were disinterested except for a select few and then I got to the end of the material with about 20 minutes of class left.  So I felt kinda stuck, so I started going over some of the material again, trying to explain words that they didn't know (this has to be the single hardest thing to do when you don't know how to translate a word and having to explain a word in very simple language).  I then saw the kids starting to drift off and I knew I was boring them to death so I was a little disheartened.  So I decided to play hangman with the kids for the last five minutes of class, this woke them up a bit.  They love guessing the worst letters for the game (W and X come to mind), another thing that makes it difficult is sometimes they say what the letter sounds like opposed to the name of the letter.  Regardless things were pretty difficult my first day, but once I got through a couple of classes I started coming up with better things to do with the class time.

So the rest of the week was not too exciting, just filled with more teaching, going out to eat and playing pool at the pool hall.  But the weekend was pretty exciting.  The group from Yangshuo had been talking about going to Beihai for a beach weekend.  Looking at the weather it wasnt going to be too nice for a beach weekend (speaking of weather the weather has been terrible here as well, 50's and raining most of the time).  So they decided to go to Nanning, the largest city in Guang Xi province.  I wasn't really sure if I was going to go until saturday morning, the day I left.  So I wake up on saturday morning at around 9:30.  I check the train schedule for trains to Nanning and there is one that leaves at about 11:30.  So, I figured that would be the one to get because the Liuzhou people got there the night prior.  So I tried calling them to see if they could meet them at the train station or where to go.  Nobody answered.  I tried calling several times and then it came too late to catch that train.  So there was a train that left at 1:30, I could catch that one, but I didnt want to go without getting a hold of any of the people I would be meeting.  Then I start chatting with Hannah (Chinese university student that worked at Greenway over chinese new year and summer) and she said that she was going to Nanning and knew the plan of meeting everyone.  She was going to take a train from Beihai to Nanning that would arrive about half an hour before my train from Liuzhou, so this sounded like a good plan.  With a plan in motion I needed to get moving as quickly as I could because I had about 90 minutes to pack, go to the train station, buy a ticket and board the train.  So I threw some clothes in my backpack, ran to the grocery store to grab a roll of Oreos (my designated comfort food in china) and got on the bus to the train station.

So once I got to the train station I bought a train ticket without too much of a problem and got on the train. Everything going smoothly.  Until I sat down.  I realized that I had left my passport in my apartment.  In china to check into any sort of hotel you need to provide your passport and visa information to the hotel or hostel that your staying at.  So I started getting nervous, thinking I might not be able to spend the night in Nanning.  So I finally got a hold of the Yangshuo crew, told them my situation.  They told me all I really had to do was write my info on a sheet of paper.  So I figured if worse came to worse and I couldn't stay at the hostel I could catch a 2am train back to liuzhou.  But then I had Stephen get a key from Joanna for my apartment and then he called me and told me my numbers.  I was in the clear.

The rest of the train ride was uneventful, tried talking to several Chinese guys to little success.  Upon arrival hannah was there waiting for me outside the exit.  So that was good seeing her.  Our next mission was to find the others.  They told us that they were in some big department store in the city center, so we headed that way.  We spent a good hour and a half trying to find them.  They had told us that they were right outside of a Pizza Hut, so we went there and waited.  We called them again and they described the scene some more, KFC around the corner, hundreds of parked motor bikes, large video screen, all were there but they weren't.  So we asked a pizza hut worker if there were any more pizza huts in Nanning, of course there were three of them and both were a few km away in opposite directions.  So we called the group again and then they had figured out that we were near the Pizza Hut near the Walmart.... wait, am I describing America or China...? Anyways we start walking towards Walmart because we knew there would only be one in Nanning, and alas we were reunited.

After finding the group we decided to walk the streets a bit and explore the city.  We went off to a street market to check out the strange food and trinkets that were sold.  We happened upon a stand that was selling alligator which was quite a shock to the europeans.  It wasn't to me because I've eaten gator when I was in the Florida Keys (It is also sold at the minnesota state fair).  Of course we got some, we had both the meat and the skin. Both were good but not too remarkable.  So the next thing I wanted to do was go to Walmart because it could quite possibly be the most american place in china.  Side Note: I'm surprised Walmart is in china because as a company Walmart is quite possibly the antithesis of the principles that the chinese government was founded on.  Wal Mart being very capitalist, not allowing workers to join unions etc.  Side Note over, we went into the walmart and it looked, well... exactly like a walmart, full of samples and brightly colored signs and everything.  The only difference was chinese things were sold there opposed to american.  So after spending way too much time in the hot and very crowded walmart, we headed to the hostel.

The hostel was about a 5km walk away so it was a good hike.  The hostel we stayed at was possibly the coolest hostel I've ever seen.  It was on the 11th floor of a pretty ritzy high rise apartment complex.  It also quite expensive, 75 RMB or $11.50.  Yeah, thats expensive by chinese standards (i was expecting to pay around 40).  So at the hostel we just gelled out for a bit after a day of running around.  So around 10:30 everyone in the hostel, our group,the two other groups there and the hostel owner head out to the bar, first stopping at an ex-pat bar because the beers are cheaper there, and then to a really big chinese bar.  Long story short, I went to bed at around 4:30, and I was early.

The next morning I get up at 10:30 after a pretty good sleep, then I start the process of getting everyone else going finally making it out of the hostel at 12:30.  We get some lunch at a local place, try to get rid of the crazy girl that had been following us for about 12 hours (ask me about this story). catch cabs to the train station and take off.  I get home around 6pm Xiao Liao cooked me and stephen dinner, and I prepped for my lessons. went to bed.

Monday, typical monday, Today, typical. Went out to eat with stephen and xiao liao, were going to eat gou rou (look it up) but then settled on yang rou.

Bedtime.

Liuzhou

So when I left off last time I wrote about my final few days in Yangshuo.  I really enjoyed my time there.  But now after my weekend in Nanning (which I will get to later)  I really think the people is what made Yangshuo so great.  I feel that they route I took was an ideal transition to life in china because Yangshuo is a very western city by chinese standards so it allowed me some time to transition from western culture to a full on chinese culture that I have here in Liuzhou.  So yes, here a more of a rundown of the past two weeks to finally get up to speed on my blog.

On Monday morning, the 28th Mr Meng drove me to the Yangshuo bus station to take a bus directly from Yangshuo to Liuzhou, where someone from the school would pick me up.  So everything went smoothly until I actually got to Liuzhou.  When I got off the bus I was expecting either the headmasters of the school, who I met a few days prior, or someone with a sign with my name on it, like when Tina picked me up at the airport in Guilin.  But of course neither were there and I was given almost no direction on where to go or do.  So I just stood... and stood... and stood.  For about an hour.  While I was standing countless taxi and tuk tuk drivers were asking me where I wanted to go, and that they could take me.  One even had the gall to ask for 100 kuai for a ride.  I declined.  So I figured I probably should call Isabella.  I of course only had Isabella's phone number on my computer which I didn't want to pull out in the middle of a busy street in china.  So I made a plan.  I was going to go to a noodle shop, open my computer there (where fewer people would see) and then go back across the street to where there were several phones that you could pay several kuai to use.  So I started proceeding with my plan.  While I was in the middle of eating my noodles this guy comes up to me, starts talking really fast in chinese and so I didn't understand him.  I figured he was trying to sell me something so I started repeating "wo bu yao" (i dont want it).  Then he pulls out his cell phone and calls someone and puts the phone to my ear.  On the other end is Joanna, the foreign teacher coordinator at my school.  So this was my guy.  Apparently he was walking around for half an hour trying to find me, which I don't know how that happened because I was standing outside the bus station for an hour, and the bus came right on time.   Regardless I made it and everything is good.

So when I arrived at school I was quickly introduced to all of the other foreign teachers,  Stephen from Ireland,  Freda from Ghana, Elana from Latvia, and Laura from England.  All are pretty nice people as usual.  So after meeting them I was shown my apartment.  I was pretty surprised because the place is pretty nice in comparison to the dorms in Yangshuo.  Granted, I don't have the same view but the amenities are a bit nicer (I have a two bedroom to myself so if anyone wants to stop by YOU'RE MORE THAN WELCOME!!!).  So, my first night the teachers take me out to eat, a nice gesture that I was very appreciative of.  So the next few days were all pretty similar because I spent time observing classes, which to me seems pretty uneventful and very similar to my training classes because I just spent about 10 minutes each class introducing myself and answering the kids questions about America.   Now this reminds me of something.  The school I'm at here in Liuzhou, is like the Taj Mahal compared to the school in Yangshuo.  In every way this school is nicer.  I guess the school in Liuzhou has more basketball  courts.  So if thats how you want to measure a school then, I guess yangshuo is better.  I haven't taken any pictures here of Liuzhou yet, but I'll make sure to take some of the school.  It's really nice.

So events that have happened in Liuzhou... On the 3rd day I was here a chinese teacher comes up to me and tells me that stephen is going to his friends house tonight to eat dinner.  I was slightly confused by this because I had never met this teacher before but if Stephen was going it probably was legit.  So, that night stephen and I hop in a cab to his friends house.  It was really fun just hanging out eating dinner in they way they do social dinners, Hotpot (i think i explained this already).  So after eating dinner for like 2 hours, I'm told we're going to the city center for a few beers and that we're not going to be out that late.  Well "not that late" turned into 3am.   Luckily I didn't have class until 11.  The next night stephen and I start doing the same routine but we make sure get back early because we both had early class.  So on friday me and stephen decide to go to the city center with his girlfriend where there is this massive pool hall where they charge for tables by the hour.  So we play for an hour or so and then we decide to go to a bar, but something more low key.  So Stephen knew of a spot so we went there.  But after about 15 minutes one of stephens chinese friends came and told us to come with him.  So we follow him and he leads us to a KTV bar where he has a room rented.  So KTV for those who don't know is karaoke, but where you rent private rooms so you only embarrass yourself to your friends rather than an entire bar.  So we spent our evening there which was a pretty good time.  After friday night, my weekend went very slow.  I slept in really late on Saturday and didn't really get out until 3 in the afternoon.  I basically went running and went to dinner with stephen and xiao liao.

So I'll talk about running some, because my blog is titled running through china.  So.  Running in Liuzhou actually has been suprisingly good.  I live really close to a very large park called Longtian park. Its pretty big and has several miles of roads which makes it a decent running spot.  The main problem is that the park can get really really busy, particularly around lunch time, when its most convenient for me to run.  So I have to do a lot of weaving.  One nice thing about the park is that I've notice the air is significantly better in the park than on the regular streets so thats better than breathing the polluted air of typical chinese cities.  An intersting thing about the park is that the chinese love putting little carnival things everywhere, gokarts, bumpercars, boats etc.  It was like this in yangshuo too.  But longtian park touts itself about being undeveloped but it has all this stuff.... I don't really get it.  Also, this is nothing new but chinese love trying and failing at being discrete at taking pictures of westerners, particularly when I'm running.  They'll pretend to be taking a picture of something (most of the time is like a tree which gives it away) and then turning their camera to me at the last second.  When I catch them doing this I usually try to make some sort of face to show that I know what they're doing.  They also love yelling hello to me.

Okay, I'm tired.  I didnt sleep much last night in Nanning, and I promise I'll get up to date tomorrow.