Huatian Resort Liyang

... often sculpted using the legendary purple clay. The porosity enables the purple clay to retain the flavor of the tea. Rumor has it that after several years of continued use the pot will be able to brew tea without adding any leaves because of the retained flavor in the clay. However, in order for this to work you must only brew one certain type of tea in the pot and not mix because you can ruin the flavor of the brew. Tea culture in China is at least as ...

... to me though... Today is my first day away from Reed since I've been here. He has a school orientation today, and he starts going back to school on Monday!! woo hoo! So then I don't really see a point in me being here...but like i said..I've got a week left..I can do a week. As always, I apologize for the length of my entry... The next update should be from Shanghai..where i'll hopefully have so REAL stories to tell! In the meantime..enjoy some pics of me and my posse.. CLICK HERE TO SEE ZHENJIANG PICS

... most international of all major cities in China. I found three must-see places for students of Chinese language and culture, especially for those on a short-term study abroad trip: 1) the Bund, 2) the Shanghai Museum, and 3) the French Concession. No one comes to Shanghai without taking a walk down the Bund. It was, and still is, the most prosperous section of the city, and possibly the entire nation. Western buildings were ...

... photos, harder than it sounds! It never ceases to amaze me how oblivious some tourists are to people around them. I was standing by the twin bridge clearly trying to take a photo of it, yet they walked onto the bridge, clearly saw me standing there, then continued for 20 minutes to take photos of each other on the bridge at every possible location on the bridge over and over. I hate tourists!

All about life in Changzhou.... We share a pretty decent 5 bedroom house with other teachers like us (from Australia and UK). It comes with central heating/air-con (thank goodness!), gas elements but no stove, 4 toilets, a washing machine with no centre piece (so all the clothes strangle each other) and bars on all the downstairs windows! School is ...

... bikes/cars/trucks was quite an adventure. It's too bad we didn't get there earlier because we could have spent a couple more hours there. We tried taking the train back at 8:45pm but the station was again busy. We caught a cab to the bus station but it was closed! We were going to spend the night in town but since it was raining, we decided to hire our taxi driver for the ride back to Shanghai.

... up outside and do exercises that appears to be a combination of tai chi and a britainy spears dance - all the kids say "hello teacher" as you walk around school Oh, and we haven't learnt much Chinese seeing as we teach in English and share a house with 3 girls from the UK and Australia. We've only picked up a couple of phrases to help with our shopping and taxi directions. The school's meant to be providing Chinese lessons but no holding breathes.

... to sleep on, but we snuck in to the laundry room and nicked a load of sheets. Beth got a haircut for two pounds and Aaron got a sore **** as they took over an hour to do it. On the second day we headed to the Sun Yatsen Mausoleum on a mountain outside of town. It was really impressive, with stone steps leading up to a big building with a stone coffin but we were more confused as to who the hell Sun Yatsen was, as all the information said ...

Vydala jsem se na jednodenni vylet vlackem do hodky vzdaleneho mesta, o kterem se rika, ze vypada jak Benatky vychodu. No ja o tom nejsem nejak presvedcena, ale budiz. Samozrejme bylo nechutne vedro a to rozhozdlo o tom, ze jsem navstvila jen jednu zahradu a bylo to. Cinske zahrady vypadaji vicemene stejne. Par altanku, zahradni baracky,jezirko s rybickama, a vsude zasazene skalky a sutry.

... old towns of China. In the canals are gondola-type boats in which you can take a cruise through the canals, which we didn't do because of time constraints, but they did make for some nice photos. The stone bridges were particularly beautiful and created the whole "reflecting circle" appearance on the shimmering waters of the canals. We were doing well on time so we stopped in one of the old ...