My adorable students on the zoo field trip!

Since my last post I have

• Traveled in China for 2 weeks with my family & Dave’s family—which was awesome!
• Spent an amazing month back home in the states and got to spend time with my family and friends…and of course ate lots of great food, BBQ and drank good beer (I was getting sick of Tsingtao)
• Returned to China and got back to working with many students from last year and some new ones
• Traveled to Palawan, Philippines for a week during the Chinese National Holiday

My school has a funny way of giving the students and teachers a vacation…they only really give us 3 days off, because the 7 day period includes the weekend where we wouldn’t work anyway—-and then we return from the break to work 7 days in a row: Saturday to Friday. I can’t complain though, because Dave and I had a great trip to the Philippines

The Philippines is a massive cluster of islands, so getting to our destination (Sabang Beach) was quite the trip itself. On Saturday (October 1st) we took the 2-hour train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. When we arrived, we grabbed some dinner and then caught the bus to the HK airport. Our flight was supposed to leave at 9:30pm…but because of the recent typhoon in the Philippines, it was delayed until 12:30am. So we arrived in Clark airport at 3am. We ended up sharing a car ride to Manila with a really nice Filipino family and arrived in Manila at 5am. Dave and I hopped out and slept at a hotel for about 4 hours before heading to Manila airport to catch our next flight to Palawan (this is Sunday October 2nd) We got to the airport around noon, but there was yet another 5 hours to go til Sabang Beach! It wouldn’t normally take so long, but we took a “Jeepney” (see below)

 

Even though it took so long to get there and we had some rain, it was worth it because the beach was beautiful and so quiet. After all the traveling we didn’t want to go anywhere else so we stayed in Sabang for the rest of the week. It was nice to get some sun :)

Right before our break I began taking yoga. I did it for a while back in Ithaca but it’s been over a year since I’ve done it so I was a bit rusty. Hopefully I’ll commit to going twice a week and I can start to improve on my ability to move from position to position without falling over (which happens a lot)

I finally called my Chinese teacher, Lynn, to start up lessons again. Just one so far but I’m hoping that I can become more independent with my speaking skills. I tend to rely on Dave’s Chinese to get around, but I really need to practice on my own a lot more if I want to improve.

Hopefully I’ll soon have some more interesting stories to write about! 

Feeling great today, looked up the recipes I need, went running, now just have to:

• Bake a chocolate cake 
• Marinate some steak and buy veggies
• Set up the grill and tables on the roof
• Pick up the beer

Then it’s time to celebrate Dave’s birthday with some BBQ and beer pong!

Happy Birthday Babe! 

photos from Dave’s birthday dinner (on his actual birthday) 



And the look on his face when he opened his birthday present (acer liquid smart phone):

 

It’s 10am on Saturday morning and I’ve actually been up since 8:30am. This really never happens to me because I absolutely love to sleep in until noon on the weekend and be lazy and not worry about anything. But for some reason I woke up, looked at the clock and got out of bed. My reasoning was mostly the fact that it was early enough (with the 12-hour time difference) to call my parents on their Friday night. 

I am getting much more psyched for my parents and little brother to come to China now that our “itinerary” is in place and we are getting flights within China booked and figuring out hotel stuff. I can’t wait to see the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Terracotta warriors, etc etc and all of this with my family and Dave’s family. Also, this year has been the longest time that I have not seen my family…I’ve done 5 months away in London, but one year away in China really is a LONG time… So I am anxious to travel China with them and then get HOME to the states!

I was on facebook doing my usual “daily” (okay probably more like 4 times a day) check with my friends and family’s updates, and my friends Sara, Meg, Dana and Tam were popping up on there with their recent NYC rendezvous..It made me miss everyone even more. I don’t care how cheesy it sounds, I really want to give all my friends back home a hug!

so yeah, needless to say, if you are reading this I probably am missing you like crazy and sending you a virtual hug. 

hmm I’ve been lacking in the “pictures” area, I’ll try to get on that soon so my ramblings include something interesting to look at :P I blame the Chinese internet for giving me “upload” issues

Woo! Officially going to be in the states from July 25th-August 25th! I’m so psyched to come home, Dave and I arrive in Boston at 4pm which is cool because we actually leave China on the 25th at 9am and gain back a day—basically my birthday is twice as long because of changing timezones :)

yay! can’t wait for summerrrr 

also, it’s probably obvious because I said “round trip” but, to say it officially, Dave and I are returning to China at the end of the summer for another year of teaching. I’m feeling really good about that decision :)

I’ll be back to write a more solid update another time when I’m not half asleep haha 

Congratulations to my brother Brian and his wife Rachel! Marina Janice Leigh was born on April 15th at 5:30pm! 7 lbs. l0 oz. and l9.5 inches long, a healthy baby girl! This is their 3rd daughter and I’m so excited to be an aunt to another beautiful little girl :)

Ahh life is so amazing! I’m looking forward to August even more now, I can’t wait to meet Marina…

On the field trip to Zhujiang Park—-two of my students :)

Over the last few weeks I have been telling my friends here in Guangzhou that Dave and I will not be returning to China next year…and then for some reason that statement became more and more difficult to say. I think that’s probably because I don’t actually want to leave. It’s strange because around February I was very readily saying I’ll be finished living in China after the school year ends. But I’ve recently been thinking I could be happy here for a second year…maybe that’s what I’ll do! Stay tuned for updates on another kind of big decision.

Last weekend we had a 3 day weekend (which at my school means we work Monday-Saturday and then we get Sunday-Tuesday off) for Qingming Festival —-aka Tombsweeping festival. So I made my first trip to a province outside of Guangdong! Dave and I went to Guilin & Yangshuo in Guanxi province.

We started out in Guilin and took a bamboo raft down the Li River to Yangshuo. Yangshuo has become pretty touristy in the actual city, but all it takes is a short bike ride and you’re in the quiet middle of no where surrounded by gorgeous scenery. It’s also a pretty popular place for rock-climbing—which Dave and I got a chance to do. I have to say that I have a whole new respect for rock-climbers… Not only is it extremely scary (when you get up high) but it also takes a TON of strength to pull yourself up. Let’s just say if I didn’t have my new buddy A Shui (the guy holding onto my rope at the bottom of the cliff) hoisting me up with a rope, I would have fallen about 6 times before reaching the top. In any case, it was a fun and exhausting way to spend the day. 

[one of many pictures from our weekend away]

 

Well, I guess that’s all I have to talk about today! Oh, and it’s April 9th so—Happy Birthday to my brother Kevin :) 

I guess it just takes me a month or two at a time to find the inspiration to write an update…but I’m still here, I haven’t completely disappeared off the face of the earth :)

So I don’t exactly know where to begin…the last update was about monkeys so where can I really go from there? I guess I can talk about the fact that my students all grew up SO much over the course of 1 month away. I couldn’t believe how much older they look, especially the 2 and 3 year olds…This phenomenon of them growing fast reminds me how much more I need to stay updated with my brothers’ kids—my nieces Ariel, Geneva, and Brenna are getting bigger everyday and I miss being able to see it! Thank God for skype, it helps me to not feel so disconnected from the people I love and miss…

The month off for Spring Festival/Chinese New Year was incredible…Dave and I traveled from Halong Bay all the way down to Saigon and Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam. It was a relaxing and adventurous break from China and Huamei school and I think we both needed it :) Check out Dave’s entry about the War Remnants Museum in Saigon here!

I just started taking Mandarin lessons 2 weeks ago (yeah, it’s about time!). I feel like I’m learning very slowly, but at the same time I always end up using a word or phrase I learned in class. For example, I was in a store asking for a big bottle of water. They handed me one from the fridge, but I didn’t want a cold one…so I racked my brain and remembered—- “bu leng!” not cold—-and successfully got myself a bottle of room-temperature water. I know that sounds insignificant, but it was cool for me :) 

Dave and my 3-year anniversary was approximately a week ago. February 29th is a complicated anniversary, considering it only comes every 4 years…but February 28th/March 1st marks 3 years for us :)

Looks like this coming Fall I’m going to need a job in the states! If anyone knows what kind of job a B.S. in Speech Pathology can get you—I’d love suggestions.

That’s it for now…

plus a picture to make you smile:

I am currently on Cat Ba Island, Vietnam for my month off from work in GZ! I felt that it was necessary to write a short blog about the events that happened today. I’m traveling with Dave, and 4 other friends from GZ and today we went took a boat tour to see Monkey Island. That was the plan, but there was a miscommunication so we ended up circling around the islands for about 2 hours before ending up near Monkey Island. I say “near” because we had to wait for a second smaller boat to bring us to shore…we actually had to jump from the boat to shore (and then when we left we jumped from shore to the boat again—-where I unfortunately bruised my leg a little doing so).

The funniest thing that happened today was definitely when we got onto Monkey Island and actually interacted with a few mischievous monkeys. I was taking pictures of a few and then one red-faced monkey start walking towards me. I continued to take pictures and then all of the sudden he RAN at me, jumped up on my purse and stole my orange juice bottle out of my bag! I freaked out because I though he was going to bite me, but all he wanted was my juice. He then ran away and sunk his teeth into the bottle and proceeded to drink the juice. Definitely the most interesting thing that has happened to me so far. I’m looking forward to more adventures through the next 3 weeks traveling north to south through Vietnam!