In the stupor of having a ridiculously large swathe of land to cover it is easy to overlook your 'backyard' sometimes. Up until May, our backyard had gone largely unexplored despite the constant reminders provided to us by the inviting mountains. In the push to maximize our year to travel, we had yet to do much by the way of exploring the feathe...

Without much direction, Kait and I boarded a bus headed for the village of Dipu, rumored to be surrounded by the largest bamboo forest still in existence in Eastern China.  It holds the title The Birthplace of Bamboo as named by the government.  Not to mention, it is where a lot of the scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were filmed. Roughl...

Nearing the completion of our longest 'big week' of the term here at school (a big week consists of a string of 5 day, uniterrupted 'small weeks'....this one has been 17 straight days of learning bliss for the kids), we have not ventured too far since our trip to Shanghai...Anji has not left us begging for excitement however. The Osmanthus trees...

Alot has changed since we last talk. Namely, we have been entrusted with the spoken English skills of roughly 500 students. Laurie meets with six first-year high school classes three times in each four day week while Kevin has eight classes split evenly between first-year and second-year students. Kevin enjoys the luxury of the smallest class (1...