Meijia Express Hotel Hefei

Well, it was another 3 day weekend. We love these. One thing we have found, though, is that many of the places that we can go for a three day weekend from Anqing are started to get limited when it comes to variety. Also, my mother is going to visit in a little over a month, so we decided to go to the capital of Anhui and enjoy our weekend unstea...

As some of you may know, we live in Anqing, Anhui Province, China. It is a small town and it has a few trains to immensely wonderful places, but here is the glitch, not all of them we can take at a time convenient to us. Therefore, we have gotten into the habit of going to Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, by bus and then taking their train....

Uda Buda. Have now been in China for two weeks, and it seems like its been a whirlwind. On the go, the internet is slow, and access is not always available. Even though I don't yet speak Chinese, the peoples up here in Huangshn hsve been awesome. Arrived late night on October 3, and have daily had the thought of keeping it real by blogging regul...

Hefei was a brief and fairly irritating experience all we got was a bunch of idiots who were unable to read a map crowding around us like we were some kind of special attraction. I know we are devilishly attractive but the smell of some of them really made me want to vomit. It was intense and they were all just shouting inane babble at us, or Ch...

Some days traveling are harder than others. During these trying days you might start to wonder why one does it at all. Especially when you wait in a line surrounded by bad breath for over an hour in an room with no windows and no air conditioner only to find out that there aren't any seats left on the train. You leave feeling like maybe all of i...

As of today I'm officially no longer living/working in Hefei! My last week zoomed by as the last of everything always do and I finally settled in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, last night. Well....settled into a youth hostel since my room isn't ready...It was a little sad saying goodbye to everyone and everything I've become familiar with over the la...

Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, the blur of days inbetween, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day....sad to say this month of festive feasting and happiness has raced past with me barely noticing. I am now certain that there's some kind of intrinsic need for humans to celebrate something! The last four months have been strange in every way. M...

Boxing Day 2007, Hefei, China; I have just received my 28th Christmas card. This is a very special card as it's the ninth given to me from ONE student........I guess he likes my teaching! Christmas in Hefei reminds me of the time I bought a CD from the street of a musical I loved only to find it I'd been mislead into buying a kareoke-type perfor...

What an amazing weekend I just had! I could not have asked for a better trip to end all of my excursions in China. I went with 8 other girls to Guilin/Yangshuo (everyone refers to it as Guilin, but all the things to do are in Yangshuo, which is an hour away) to witness what many call "the most beautiful city in the world." I know that I haven't ...

With this last week being Thanksgiving and all, the holiday season is already here! On Thanksgiving day, we made Amy's chocolate chip muffin mix, which we've been saving ever since we got here. You can't get those kinds of things over here. My classes made hand turkeys and wrote what they were thankful for on it. It was so cute! Then for the big...