Hebei Hotel Shijiazhuang

... with a chinese host family. I hit the jack pot. I stayed with "becky" and her parents. Her father is a meteorologist and her mother works at a bank. They showed me all over town and gave me a nice wooden good luck bracelet. (They are not normally worn by tourists and other Chinese people have found mine pretty funny when i where it out)<br><br>Becky's family was loaded. They had a large 2 story apartment, flat ...

... to a few crowded tables. These guys are our hope to get to Taiyuan tonight.<br><br>We go over to the tables where the drivers are sitting and ask each table one by one if they would take us. The drivers of the inflammable materials can't take us, the drivers of the truck carrying new cars won't take the risk - they are too many bandits out there they said, others say they are going in a different direction. With all the drivers at the restaurant ...

... was pretty upset, I tried being understanding and trusted<br>him since we were friends&#8230; wrong move- he kept making up excuses and not<br>returning my calls, going on trips supposedly paid for by his friends, and now<br>he&#8217;s nowhere to be found. He owes his business partner/best friend a lot of<br>money too and HE doesn&#8217;t even know where he is. He still owes me 3500 RMB (more<br>than $500)- but after 5 months of frustration, I&#8217;ve come to ...

... biggie, we were almost out anyway. Birthday and Marriage *Went to a nice restaurant and had sushi for Sam's bday. It was soo good- I've missed sushi. Our Chinese friend Eileen surprised me with a text message that said she got married and she wanted us to meet her husband. So we went to "the boat restaurant" to celebrate Grandma &amp; Grandpa *Our new friend John (lives in our apt building and is helping the new Korean students get adjusted) invited us to have dinner at his ...

... is often referred to as being lucky in recent Chinese history. Once a small village, it developed under modern railway construction. A century ago, when the Lu-Han Railway stretched to the former Shijiazhuang Village, it brought with it new opportunities, opening an industrial ...

... boss, Jack is really cool. He runs the school as well as teaches, he's in the process of opening a new school and he also has an international trade company. He's a busy guy but always makes time to call us to give us a heads up for the week. He has a lot of connections in our city and he asked me to work with one of his friend's hair school students for a weekend. They're all going to take a test in May which will ...

... try fixing these things. As we were waiting for my washing machine to start jumping I said "maybe theres a ghost inside making it jump like that" and he responded with "well, i saw a lot of beers outside of your room- maybe you fed your washing machine too many of those." ha! they were really from when we had everyone here after dinner sat night. he was here for about 2 hours trying to figure things out- we had a great time laughing- he was telling ...

... celebrate the harvest moon. In October or November, we will sing and dance under the harvest moon!!! WHAT...what is so wrong. It makes us sound like a cultish tribe! Whatever, I'm sure someone somewhere in America does that so it might not be that completely untrue! We celebrated the Mid Autumn Festival by going to a part about an hour away from our city. A tv station put on this party and invited our school basically because they knew the foreigners would come. When we were ...

... used my phrasebook and got around quite well. my apartment is slowly feeling more homey. want to get some plants and decorations to make it my own. strange things we've seen/things that have happened: *little kids pants have slits in the ******/butt for them to potty easily- like kimmy, theyre not shy- they do their business anywhere and everywhere seen a couple just plop down right in the steet. *people stare and take pictures of us like crazy ...

... the buildings thinned out and we were in the midst of open fields and orchards -- particularly, apple orchards whose owners dot the roadside, roosting on 20 kilo bags of yellow-green apples visible through the netting, waiting for passing vehicles to stop and buy. David said the apples were more expensive here than in the market because consumers were willing to pay a premium for freshness. We turned off the main road on to a narrow ...