Oujing Holiday Hotel Shijiazhuang

After meeting up with the other english teachers arriving at the beijing International Airport. We took a 6 hour busride to Shijiazhuang. This city is the sister city to Des Moines, IA and although it is nearly unheard of in the US it has a population greater than US cities like Chicago. <br>We arrived around 11:00 at night and checked into the university. Luke and I went outside looking around as opposed to ...

... to work at least 20 more years to save enough money for them.<br><br>Mr. Qiao likes to hear about my travel stories. He says he dreams of going to Inner Mongolia to ride horses on the grassland and go to Xishuangbana in the tropics, but it won't happen in this life time. He's got too much obligations already. But he's not a cynic. He tells me he's driven over 10,000 km on this truck alone, I tell him that's more than 2.5 times around the world, he chuckles.

... needed- Jack translated everything of course. <br>These guys could DRINK! By noon they had finished off 10 bottles of<br>baijiu. They kept insisting that I drink with them but since I had to teach in<br>the afternoon, I got away with only having to do a few- thank god, I hate<br>baijiu. <br><br> Some of you know about Mickey- used to work for him downtown<br>on a regular basis. His company went bankrupt and he said he needed more time<br>to pay me. Although ...

... m either traveling or working a lot on the weekends, I usually never can but this Sunday I made a point not to schedule any lessons so could go. We took two cars out to Dragon Lake- about an hour outside the city. It was beautiful. We went on a speed boat, then went on a paddle boat, then caught some worm-fish things, had a nice picnic and relaxed by the water. It was great. Hoping to be able to go out with them again sometime before I leave. I really like both of their families.

... which lies to the west, provide charming natural scenery. Mt. Cangyan Scenic Area and Zhangshiyan Scenic Area also attract visitors from all over China and the world. As the economic, political, cultural and scientific center of Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang is becoming more and more ...

... board because the following week we would play a game where they would need to know the country names in English and which continent they were in. Although very few students actually did this, I was surprised by the number of them that brought geography books the next week to use during the game. The classes vs.'d each other in a Scattegories type game. I'd give them a topic such as "Countries that begin with 'C'" or ...

... Gave her dove chocolates and the bday card I bought that said "ROR YOU" instead of "FOR YOU." We see so many funny chinese translations of english. Kara and I were waiting for a while to meet Willie to go to lunch so we told him to just meet us there. A few minutes later I saw him outside the restaurant so while kara was ordering i stepped outside to see him standing there with a brand new bike. After lunch we walked outside and he surprised ...

... combine the students from all of our classes and give you a brief list of the ones that I remember! Kobe Tracy McGrady Superman Batman Spiderman Chopin Bach Darkness Lucifer River Object Girls names Jeremy Willie gave a girl a boy name because he thought she was a boy! David Beckham Harry Potter Lucy June Lily In China, all of the schools celebrate a "Teachers' Day." On this day the students will give presents, flowers, and cards to the teachers. Also on teacher's day the ...

... and we met helen (with one l) and she took us to a department store where i bought a pillow, pillow cases, blow dryer, and towels- in china, you have to purchase each item in its department so each item is bought separately then you have to take the receipt back to a person in that department and then tear a piece of the receipt off and then they'll give you your item- too complicated and time consuming if ya ask me but oh well. afterward we took ...

... An attendant passed out bottled water, swept the floor repeatedly, cleaned up liquid spills and worse (ominously, the first thing she passed out to everyone was air-sickness bags). Although I had been on bullet trains in Europe, I had never been on a bullet train that hit 238 Km/hr and had a tendency to speed up and slow down quickly -- hence, the barf bags. Luckily, we had with us some fresh ginger to make tea (with readily available hot water) to ...