Jinqiaohotel Deyang

... like. We weren't in her office for anymore then maybe 5 minutes before we had been invited to a Chinese wedding that coming weekend and also the annual teachers run up the "East Mountain". It was good to see her again, even if I wasn't really prepared for the occasion having just got out of bed and chucked on the nearest (dirty) pair of jeans I could find. The wedding was very interesting. We were taken by one of the English teachers who works in my office. Her daughter and ...

... for food and living expenses. This was 1000rmb as of February, when the last volunteers left and Jon and I took over. Jon and I were really looking forward to getting this money as we'd spent a fair bit of our own money just making our apartment clean, homely and more like an apartment then a concrete and brick shack with furniture and windows. When it came to getting it, Cathy, our new link teacher, took us to the finance office and they counted it out loud "100, 200 ...

... So I'll pick up where I left off. Today is my 5th week in China and my 4th week of teaching. At first things were incredibly difficult. Walking into a class of 70 or more students is extremely scary stuff. Especially when you're the only white face in the room, and they are only a few years younger then you. I teach 15 classes a week, 70 students in each class (give or take 1 or 2 students) apart from class 15 with ...

... time. Our teachers, Paul and Robert were great guys and went out of their way to make sure that we were eating properly and settling in alright. Paul often took a group of us to various restaurants during our 2 hour lunch break to sample different Chinese food until we found something we liked. Until he had started doing this, I was was living off DICO'S, a Chinese home-brand version of KFC. It is silly expensive compared to ...

... that was a bit much. After a good solid 30 minutes two free taxis showed up. Me, Jared, and Robbie hopped in one and we were off to Pudong airport. We were trying to think of alternate ways to go to the airport, if it would be faster to drive to Maglev and take the train or drive straight to the airport. We opted to drive to Maglev the other taxi went straight to Pudong. The traffic in Shanghai at rush is so ridiculous I thought about getting out and running when all ...

... pouring into Tibet that many young Tibetans cannot find jobs. This adds a further element of instability in the Tibetan society. Therefore, new riots are quite possible." It is because the Dalai Lama sticks to his position of "Tibetan independence" and continues his efforts to split the motherland in and outside China that contacts between the central government and the representatives of the Dalai Lama have yielded no results. In an interview with Xinhua News ...

... about 2 hours of FAST driving and met with the local Communist Party officials and the town's administrators. Were were given a tour of several villages who had recieved some of the tents and the villagers were very apreciative. We then went to the warehouse and found the remaining 150 tents and ehped them pair the tents with pole packages and then ...

... sign "Tiger Leaping Scenil Resort" to Margo's restaurant. The Aussi lady entertained us with scary stories about the trek, e.g. how locals try to give wrong directions so that the exhausted tourists will rent their mules. She was a bit weird, talking absent-mindedly while preparing a good breakfast. Thanks to her, we easily found the trail and loved the landscape and little villages more the further we got. It was wonderful to be back in nature after many cities and to meet the ...

Day Four - to the 'home of Panda' Sim's kind of thin, has longish hair, is kind of lived-in, you might say, isn't Chinese, and knows how to run hostels. He's the owner, by the way. A Japanese guy, whose now on his way to Tibet, recommended I visit the Panda research breeding centre for something to do today. "You'll need to get there early or they'll be asleep." (wasn't it a question of getting ...

It was a quick day as I had to organize the following of my trip. Anyway, I still went to a monastery near by my hotel to drink a cup of tea and to meet some monks. My other unexpected meeting of the day was also to find in my hotel the nephew of a really good friend of my parents: a friend from Creuse in the center of France The discussion ...