Final days...

Well, we finally made it out of Siyang. However, getting to Shanghai was quite the adventure, shocking, I know. We got ourselves up at 6am to be ready to leave for the bus at 6:30. Mr. Xu was late picking us up, and when he took us to where the bus was supposed to leave from, it turned out the first departure was 8am. Sweet. Also, we wanted to be dropped off closer to our destination, so we had to have like 15 men crowd around a map and first of all try and tell us that where we wanted to go was on the complete other side of the city than it actually was, and then when they finally had it right, there ware like 5 different places they could drop us. After much debate and location was decided on, and we climbed aboard. The bus left around 8:10am, and we figured we'd arrive around 2pm, six hours later. HA. Finally, about 8 hours after we left and a million and a half stops to let other passengers off, we got to our stop, put all of our luggage into a taxi and spent 30RMB on the cab ride that would "cost no more than 20RMB" we got to our friends apartment and headed off to Starbucks for some sanity and catching up. That night involved and lot of wine and Papa John's pizza, and was an overall success with completely avoiding being in China, and celebrating our last few days in the PRC. On Friday we went to Starbucks again, and heading out to do some shopping, both at the Super Brand Mall, and the Pearl City bargaining market. I was able to pick up some last minute things to bring home so that was good. Friday night we went to dinner at an awesome Mexican place and then headed out on the town for some drinks...we were planning to be home around 12 so we could get up and head to the museum early, but when 3am rolled around, we finally wandered back to the apartment. We still made it to the museum on Saturday, but just decided to go to a 50's style diner for dinner and to watch a movie, considering we had to travel the next day. (We watched the new Sherlock Holmes movie, I thought it was pretty good)

This morning we got up around 7 to get our things packed and head to the airport. We said our final goodbyes to Christine, who is heading back up to Funing, at least for a little while, and then took a super quick cab to Hongqiao airport. Laura and I had different carriers so we made some quick plans on how we would try to meet up, and headed off to check-in for our flights, as well as pay our overweight luggage fees. We knew it would happen, domestic flights only allow up to 20kg total checked luggage. Oh well. After that was all taken care of we both had our flights, with not so fantastic lunches, and we met at the baggage claim in Shenzhen. It was super easy to find a bus over to Hong Kong and all was going well, clearing customs and whatnot, until we got to "our stop" only to realize that they guy who told us to get off was wrong, and we were not where we wanted to be, with a ridiculous amount of luggage. We finally asked around and a worker there told us a cab would be the cheapest and he hailed one for us. When we got in we tried to tell the driver where to go, but he just busted out his mobile, someone picked up and he handed the phone to me. The voice on the other end asked me in English where I wanted to go, I told him, handed the phone back and poof! we arrived at our hostel. We checked in and got to our cell...literally like 6ftx10ft. Saying rooms in HK are small is the biggest understatement of the year. But we made it, and we were both able to take hot showers and clean up a bit before we planned to meet up with a girl who lives here and is friends with someone I know back home.

We met up with Elizabeth at a metro stop near our place and we walked over to an Irish Pub for some beers before heading down to Victoria Harbor for the light show.
****I should mention that the whole time we've been here, I feel like I've been in New York. There's so many Westerners and everyone speaks English, and everything is just big, and busy, and I absolutely love it. The people are really helpful, both at our hostel, and even just on the street if you need a little direction. It is a little funny thought, because everyone seems to default to English on the street. I saw a man that looked maybe Indian, speaking on his cell phone in not English, and he ran into a Chinese guy and said "Sorry!" Welcome back to diversity! YAY!***** After the light show we took the ferry across to Hong Kong Island, and ElizaB took us to an AMAZING Indian restaurant where we had soup, salad, curry, nan, and some other things for about 13USD. It was awesome. She also gave us a quick tutorial on the MTR (metro) here and how to get over to see the Big Buddha tomorrow. She was so nice and helpful, and curious to hear about our time in the PRC, it was a really nice night.

I'm so excited to do some touring tomorrow, but mostly I know I'll be excited to get my things completely together, and get to bed because Tuesday morning we'll be leaving for the airport at about 5:30am. My computer is about dead and I don't have a HK adapter, so I think this is my final sign-off from the Far East...It's been a trip everyone, but all things do come to an end...I'm so excited...I'm almost home!

My Actual Last Post from Siyang.

After last night, I realized that Siyang deserves a legit final blog post, at least. It's my final night here...I will be leaving for Shanghai in 8 hours time. But it's strange to think about my time here actually coming to a close. I know I've been looking forward to it for a while now, but to leave, and say goodbye, and realize there is a good chance I won't see most of these people ever again is weird. My bags are totally packed, I just need to put in those few things I'll use in the morning, like my toothbrush. If it wasn't totally apparent from my last blog post, I'm not excited to have to take public transit to Shanghai, but we'll figure it out. We're taking the first bus out of here, and we may just spend the money to take a cab directly to our destination, to avoid lugging all of our bags around the city. Either way, we're down to 5 days in China, and then we'll be heading back to America :)

Today I had my final classes, and said goodbye to my students once and for all. I received a few more gifts, which I am going to try and take back to America, and got my "memory book" from my top classes that I might read a few pages from tonight, just to bring everything to a close. Tonight we had our final Chinese dinner with the teachers from my office. Everyone was so nice and complimentary, and they actually didn't pressure us to eat or drink more than we wanted, which in turn made us super happy and willing to partake, but all in all we just had a lovely night. I was able to talk with my colleagues, and thank them for being so kind, and they all sent me on my way with good wishes for safe travel and my future. They also told me that all of the students love me very much and will miss me, which made me very happy and sad. It is hard to leave so many great students. They have obviously enjoyed having me at their school, and it's been my pleasure to teach there. We did a bunch of photo opts, and gave hugs around and finally decided to say good night. As we were leaving, Chen said that she would go the other way and it was time to say goodbye. I can honestly say that Chen is my best Chinese friend. She has done so much for both Laura and I while we have been in China. I was so sad to say goodbye, and we shared some tears before parting ways. I hope that someday she will be able to come to America and I can invite her to my home and into my family the same way she did for me. Chen is reason enough for me to come back to China and to Siyang....I hope we can stay in touch long after I've left. A few students came over to say their final farewells, officially ending my time here. I have so many things I wish I could share and express, but it's hard to find the right words. I know that I've been challenged here, and things are completely different than home, but I made Siyang a part of my life, and I will never forget the time I spent here, or the people I became friends with. These experiences are something I will never forget, and I hope to have made as much of an impression on the people here as they have made on me.

DRUNKEN BLOG INTERLUDE 2

Hello all from Siyang. Welcome to the last blog from Siyang...most likely. Laura and I made a joint decision to get rather drunk on our second to last day here because we have the intention on leaving quite early for Shanghai after our last day, and figured being drunk/hungover for a 7 hour bus ride would be horrendous. Even if we are lucky enough to get a car ride there, we don't want to be asking them to pull over so we can get sick on the side of the Chinese highway. Either way it looks as though we will be taking the public bus to Shanghai because the headmaster of the school was too drunk to remember that he promised us a ride...and booked the school car for the same day we planned to leave. Which sucks.....and isn't fair. And the worst part is that when he was nicely reminded about his promise he had no recollection of what he said. Stupid Chinese people not being about to handle their booze, and getting themselves into a difficult situation. In a country that bases itself on saving face, I can promise that they have done nothing close to the sort in helping us get to Shanghai after our term is over. WE have one more full day here and are praying that something works itself out for our benefit. We've been more than accommodating for the last 5 months and thing we have deserved something relatively easy to go our way. Seriously.

Whatever we were promised a ride and now we aren't getting it....but we did get some money exchanged today. And, let me tell you, American money looks like play money. I used to feel the same about the money in China, but now that i'm used to it....everything else is a joke, except in actual value. Either way, we got some money and laid some guilt on the people in our school that have cars, or access to cars and hopefully we'll be able to get a ride to Shanghai without having to deal with multiple forms of mass transit with multiple pieces of luggage..... wish us luck.... hopefully i'll be back tomorrow after my final day at the middle school to close out my time in Siyang sans alcohol!!!! Get pumped :)

Last Lazy Siyang Sunday...

Even though you can't tell the difference, I'm currently writing this blog in an empty email because my Chinese internet and VPN are being so awesome right now and I can't get on my blog website. I have also discovered that google and gmail are the only google programs that work. No documents, reader, etc., hence my writing this in an email, and not a doc. But anyways! It's my last Sunday in Siyang, and technically my last Sunday in China...at least on the mainland. We'll be heading off to Hong Kong next weekend. We've had a slight change of plans with that though. Our friend in Shanghai basically told us it would be impossible to easily get train tickets and we should look into flying. We had Chen help us on some websites and we were able to find flights to Shenzhen, which is just across the harbor from HK. The tickets are like 650RMB as opposed to the 450RMB train tickets, but we don't have to sit on a gross train and share a compartment with 4 other people for 19 hours. It's about a 2.5 hour flight, and then a 1.5 hour bus ride to our hostel area. WAY better than a train, and totally worth the price if you ask me. We'll also have to pay a little extra for our luggage, but I think we would've ran into that on the train too, because we both have 2 suitcases and a carry on. There won't be any issue on our flights home though, because international flights have a way bigger luggage allowance.

We went to Chen's in-law's for dinner on Thursday, and it was amazing. Her mother-in-law is such a good cook and she made a ton of delicious dishes. That family is so wonderful and even though Chen is the only person that speaks both Chinese and English, they have been so kind and have offered to give us anything they can. At the dinner, her father-in-law made a few different toasts to us, wishing us the best in our futures and if we have the chance to bring our families back to China to meet them. He also said that he hopes that when we're back in America and people mention China, we will think of his family and our time with them. I can promise that we will. Chen and her entire family have been such a blessing here, not having families of our own, they've opened their doors (and kitchens!) for us and don't pressure us to eat anything we don't want, or to drink more than we want, it is just a warm, relaxing time with good people. I will miss them so much. Chen has also offered to buy our bikes from us. Her and her husband will use them in Nanjing once she moves there to go back to school for her Masters. Seeing as though we have no idea how to sell things in China, and Chen has been so great to us, we have no problem selling them to her. And any extra money is a bonus at this point. We also found out that there is a bank in Siyang that has USD, and that Chen can just go in and exchange RMB for USD with no problem or hoops to jump through, something we can no do as Americans. So hopefully this week we'll get our money exchanged, and then be all set to head off. We are still a little unsure about how we are getting to Shanghai. We have two different people working on getting us a ride, so hopefully it will go off without a hitch. It will just be such a hassle to take the bus with out luggage and then to have to transfer over to the metro, and then get a cab...ugh. No thank you. We'll see. China owes it to us to make this easy, I think. We've been more that flexible with so much. Haha.

I'm working on my last lessons for the Primary school. Because it's our last day, and they really don't have any expectations of us, I think I'm just going to play games and have fun the last day. It's not like they can fire us...and we saved their butts by agreeing to teach there in the first place. I just want tomorrow to be an easy day, and say goodbye to the adorable little ones, oh, and get paid :) I have my lessons planned for my last 2 days at the high school too. So I'm really just waiting for things to wrap up and go. I've packed a lot of my stuff up, and I'm throwing away all my random garbage. I can't believe I'm down to 3 days of teaching. English Corner finished up, I'm just waiting to get my "memory book" back. I had them all write in a notebook for me, so I can keep it to remember them better! I can't wait to read it. I think I'll wait until my flight from Tokyo to LA....That should be a good time :)

2 weeks...woah.

I'm down to only two more weeks before I'm back in America. I can't believe the end is this close. I have a countdown for pretty much everything I do, but I think that is just because I'm so excited to be home again. 2 more English Corners, 1 more day teaching at the primary school, 10 classroom lessons, etc. Our invitations to lunches/dinners have been increasing, but that's not always a good thing. There are a lot of traditions and customs in China centered around meals, and we don't always want to follow them. A big one is the drinking of the Chinese spirit. We went to a lunch today, some of the teachers from Laura's office kept trying to make us drink. I have a bit of a cold, and we both had lessons in the afternoon, and just didn't want any because we don't like it. It was so annoying, and they tried to make us feel so bad about it. Besides the alcohol, they also kept pushing us to eat more and more. The food was good, but we ate until we were full and stopped. All they could say was, "It is so good, eat more," "You did not eat enough," "I think you are not accustomed to Chinese dishes." They just didn't understand that we ate what we wanted and we were done. Then they wanted to get rice after the meal and when we said we didn't want any, the man looked at us like we had just shot his dog or something. I'm sure we broke a ton of "rules" for eating in China, but I'm just so beyond it now. I've been pushed around at dinners all term, and I'm done. I appreciate the invites and everything, but just let me eat and drink in peace and at my leisure! Anyways, after that, we both just hope there aren't too many more occurrences that put us off the way today did.

We did however have a lovely dinner last night with Mr. Xu. We went back to the restaurant where he took us for our first dinner in Siyang. The woman who runs the restaurant totally remembered us, and came in to show us a photo she had taken at the dinner 5 months ago on her cell phone. It was really sweet. The food was amazing, we had legs of lamb for the first time here, and they there were seasoned super well, and just really delicious. We were able to choose our other dishes, which ensured that they liked them, and we had a ton of wine, and then beer to close out the evening. Mr. Xu talked with us about the impact of having foreign teachers at the school, and how he thinks it is such a great thing for us to be there. Also, he told us that in Jiangsu (our province) it is actually against the law to hold lessons at weekends, but that our school is so competitive with the results of the students that they break the law and keep students there even when they shouldn't. He thinks this is horrible, as do we, because the students are always tired when they have time off of school and they don't foster any sort of social relationships or creativity. It's interesting to hear someone who holds such a high position in our school have an opinion like that, but it makes me happy to know there are people here who want to change things for the betterment of the students. Mr. Xu is a strong supporter of Western education, and he told us that he thinks our English is the best for teaching foreign people. He spent some time in England and said that all the different accents from there are too confusing, and hard to understand, but the mid-West accent from America is great! :)

We also discussed arranging transportation to Shanghai next Thursday, and we expressed our concern with who accompanies us (the inappropriate man!) on the journey. He said that possibly Chen would be able to come with us, and that it shouldn't be a problem to get a car to drive us there. It also sounds like our Hong Kong tickets are getting worked out with our friends in Shanghai. You can only buy tickets a maximum of 10 days in advance, and only from the station you leave from. SUPER INCONVENIENT! But, as I said, hopefully taken care of. I also am in touch with two girls in Hong Kong that are friends with someone I know in the States. They are both eager to meet us and take us out one of our nights there before we go home. We just need to figure out where to stay and the best way to get everything in order so we catch our flight on time and whatnot. Also, so that we don't spend a fortune, which I think is quite easy to do in Hong Kong. Oh well, by the end of it, I probably won't even care about the money, I'll just want to get my butt to the airport and on a plane back to the good ol' U.S. of A.

Time keeps passing...

Well, the week is over, and even though it felt like it dragged, I can't believe it's Friday night. I finished my English Corners with classes 21-24 and only have 4 left. I got a little emotional with the last English Corner for class 24, because they are pretty much my favorite class, bt I think they understood that while I'm happy to go home, it will still be hard to leave them all...but after today, I'm down to a week and a half left of teaching. Crazy.

This week had a few interesting happenings. On Thursday night I got home from English Corner and unloaded my things. After a while Laura and I decided to go get dinner. It was just about 7pm and we got to Liu Jie's just as they were turning off the lights. Liu Hao was going to let us in but we decided to head back home and fend for ourselves. Just as we got to our apartment, we realized that neither of us had grabbed our keys. Sweet. Locked out in China. We attempted to break in using any methods we could muster, but no dice. We called Mr. Xu and told him we were locked out. His first response was "Why?". We had to tell him we didn't do it on purpose, and he came to see how he could help. Apparently, there is a number on our door for the locksmith and he called and had the man come break us into our place. While we were waiting we talked to Mr. Xu about how we had no hot water. He simply told us that our pipes were frozen and they probably wouldn't work before we left, but we could just go to a hotel and pay to shower there. He also mentioned the public shower at the school, but understood that were didn't want to use that. The locksmith finally arrived and it cost us 50RMB to get into our apartment, but by then we didn't even care, so we just paid the man and sent him on his way.

Today I didn't have classes until the afternoon so I was able to sleep in for the first time all week. I was still up around 9 though, I don't really sleep in all that well unless I'm up super late the night before. Anyways, I was able to catch some of the National Championship football game, but about halfway through th 4th, our power went out. This had happened before so we checked all of our fuses and whatnot but nothing seemed to work. I had to head off to teach, but Laura hung around and called Mr. Xu (again) and he told her to go to the guard station and try to communicate the problem. Luckily, when I got back from class the power was back on and Mr. Xu was on his way with our salary. When he brought it by he told us that he would try to arrange a hotel for us to go to and shower. We decided to take matters into our own hands, and after dinner, we went to the hotel that is owned by the parens of Laura's student. She said they had hot water and that it would cost us 20RMB each to shower there. We both felt so disgusting and in need, 20RMB was well worth it. We ran home to get our stuff and headed back. We were both able to take nice hot showers and as we headed out to pay, the woman told us that it was on the house. She said that because we were the teachers of her son, and so far from home, we didn't have to worry about paying for it. And we were supposed to come back next time we needed the hot water. I guess it all tends to even itself out...and we came out ahead being warm, and clean and all, and back in our apartment.

Christine will be arriving tomorrow morning and I'm sure we'll have a fantastic weekend, then just a few more days to get through before we head down to Shanghai and Hong Kong. I still can't believe things are coming to a close, but I'm ready to take the next step.

Happy New Year!!!

It is now officially 2010 (and you can say that however you please, I still haven't decided which I prefer)!!!! Laura and I took our final trip to Nanjing to bring in the new year the best way we know how. Christine also came down to celebrate with us. Our friends that live there were spending the night in Shanghai, but were to come back on Saturday so we would have one last night to party with them before heading back to Siyang to finish out the term.

Anyways, we were able to get out of Siyang before noon on the 31st, and got to Nanjing faster than any other time we had traveled there. We arrived with plenty of time to shower and get dressed before heading out to party. I took what was probably the best shower I've had in China. Completely longer than necessary, with hot water and good pressure the whole time!!! It was glorious. We got ourselves dressed up and headed to Behind the Wall, a Mexican restaurant near the hostel we stayed at. The dinner was fantastic, and we went back to the hostel for some pre-gaming. They were having a small party with sangria and mulled wine, and were happy to have us there, as most of the people attending worked at the hostel, or were friends of the employees. A guy from Wisconsin that Christine knows met up with us and brought some of his Slovenian friends and we all left for Don Quixote around 10:30.
Don Q is a bar in Nanjing that feels like home. It's got a lot of hard wood, and serves western beer, and even has live music. I've sang there a time or two with one of the regular performers. New Year's Eve was no different. After some drinks and music, part of the group headed off to Mazzo, a club nearby that we always seem to end up at. Laura and I decided to head over right before midnight and found ourselves running through a square, with fireworks going on overhead, and shouting "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" It was a great way to bring in the new year.

The following day took it rather easy. We went shopping for DVDs, which was quite successful, and went to Wu's Fried Meat Buns, a tradition for us when we visit Nanjing. They are pork meat balls with a broth, cooked inside a thin dumpling style dough. It's hard to explain, but all I can say is that they are amazing, and the chefs were pumped to let us take photos to remember! I came down with a really bad headache later in the afternoon (probably dehydrated) and decided to take a nap to see if that would help. I woke up feeling better and we thought that maybe getting dinner and sticking around the hostel to watch a film would be a good idea. We went to a French restaurant and got some pizzas and wine, and returned to the hostel to watch "Under the Tuscan Sun". The whole evening actually made me miss Italy and Europe quite a bit. It was good to relax though and we had most of the next day to do as we pleased. We wandered around the area of the hostel a bit, and then went off shopping again, as we tend to do whenever we're in a big city. After shopping, we went to get massages. It was amazing. Super weird, but amazing. The three of us were actually in the same room and had three Chinese guys working on us. These were talking with each other in Chinese the whole time, except for a few random words or phrases they said to us, and we just talked to each other in English, and tried to respond to anything they said or asked. Overall it was entertaining, but felt awesome, and really relieved a lot of the tension I've had in my back, most likely from the cold. Saturday night we went out to eat with some of the people that had made it back from Shanghai, and then met up with the rest of the crew for another night at DonQ and Mazzo. It was so great to see everyone again, and I'll miss the crazy times we seemed to have every time we visited Nanjing.

Sunday brought another ridiculously short bus ride back to Siyang. There was a delay of over an hour while waiting to depart, but once the bus left it only took about 2.5 hours. I was blown away when we got home so early in the afternoon. But luckily that made for enough time to plan lessons for the primary school the next day.

We're down to about 2 weeks of teaching before our short travels, then heading home. It's so strange to already be at the 5th of January, but I need to keep my wits about me and my interests in my lessons. My students deserve that, at least, no matter how restless I am to finish the term. Things will close out before I know it, and I'm quite excited to see Shanghai again and to get to Hong Kong. It will be a whirlwind, I'm sure, but a great way to round out my Chinese adventure.