Yinhe Hotel Shijiazhuang

... hui ren (black person) and took a picture because it was so rare. We thought this was pretty funny, and greed to pose in a few pics with people from the city.

One night i ran into some Spanish teachers from Spain, but they were unfriendly so are chat was very brief.

The city has better weather than beijing. The polution was thinner and some days you could see blue sky!

For two nights we ...

... no I goes out the the parking lot and intercepts each driver as they go to the covenient store and the bathrooms. Two hours goes by and we had asked about 30 set of drivers with no success.

It's 10:30pm. Finally just as I am about to give up I see two guys standing close to Liu Chang. They must be truck drivers. I go up to them, offers them some cigarettes from Germany I brought with me, sweet talks them into giving us a ride. Fortuantely they are ...

... obsessed with the Beijing Olympics, it was fun to
pretend like we were having our own Olympic games.

*Who Wants to be a Millionaire-made up questions about things
we’ve gone over throughout the year, things I’ve said about myself and my
family, and then had a bunch of random questions too like “How many spiders
does the average person eat in their life?” and “Donald Duck can’t be on tv in
which ...

Peanut Butter and Jelly Day :) *We decided to bring a little taste of the West to our Middle School by making over a thousand peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and distributing them during the students lunch time. It was crazy! We had Willie and our friend John controlling the crowd and Kara and I handed out sandwiches. It was a lot of fun until we got in trouble by the school because theres a rule against it.. even though we told them all about what we were going to do.. ehh ...

... 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 ...

... are coming to visit next week. Can't wait!! A couple weeks later, Willie, Kara and I are going to Chengdu, then Kara's brother is visiting, then we're going to South Korea, then Willie's family will be here, then we have about a month before we head home. Time is gonna fly. Although I'm really looking forward to being home and seeing everyone, I know I'm really gonna miss it here so I want to make sure to live up every moment.

... friends in Kunming that would show us around- yippie! Our friend Caleb (from Ethiopia-been working here a few years) introduced me to his Chinese friend, Johnny in hopes that he'd make an attempt to learn English. Johnny is a car salesmen and works with a lot of foreigners because Chinese people can't buy foreign cars so he uses Americans and other foreigners as the middle man (i'm almost positive this is illegal but he's banking off of it so i ...

... any of you guys come to visit maybe I can take you out to dinner... on me! Our second week of teaching was much more fun and comfortable; we knew the faculty better, the students had already met us, and we had already established our room rules...so now we could have fun. Basically our teaching is supplementary to the students' other English class. We are mearly here to interact with the students, play games with them, teach them American culture, and converse...and make them ...

... places to eat (a hole in the wall type place that a lot of people know about because it apparently has some of the best food). everyones eyes were glued to us the entire meal. the waitress gave the pad of paper to hellen because i think she realized she wouldnt understand anything we said or tried to describe. hellen ofcourse picked what we ate because we had no clue what the options were (the menu was ofourse in all symbols). she ordered two hot ...

... nearly complete. The "soft seat" ticket lounge at the train station was unexpectedly comfortable with plush arm chairs, potted plants, a bar (a stark contrast with our local Amtrak station). Of course, you could only sit down if you bought a drink. The student with us recoiled in shock when he learned that a cup of tea of coffee cost 8 yuan (a little over a buck) and suggested we stand for the 50 minutes before the train left (as many others were doing). Being ...