Well, I'm sorry to say that I didn't do much posting on vacation. I'm back in China now, of course, but I do have an excuse this time. I had planned to post on the go while on vacation, but discovered that the Blogger app for android was no longer supported and, in fact, had not been supported for many years. Why they still allow downloads of this app, which essentially doesn't work, is beyond me. Anyway, I didn't have the right adapters to use my computer, even though I carried it with me everywhere I went, and eventually just abandoned the idea altogether.

What I did do was post some videos to youtube while I was travelling around the Phillipines. while these were not of sufficient quality to post publicly, it did spark an interest in doing some better video work, editing a bit, and posting those publicly on youtube. I think that will work out nicely, though there is definitely a limit to how professional those will look, but I do think they could be good enough to show some interesting things around China. Seeing those as a goal may also inspire me to do more of the travelling I wanted to do when first coming here anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I've done my fair share of travelling in the past four years. But most of the traveling I've done has fallen into one of two categories: trips to Guangdong Province; and trips to Southeast Asia. I've done countless trips to Guangdong. After all, for the first three years I had a visa that required me to make trips out of the country every two months. Hong Kong counts as being out of the country for these purposes, so I made many trips to Hong Kong, but we were only a couple of hours away from the border in Chenzhou, and only about an hour away from Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong. So it was a convenient place to spend a weekend and a really cool city. I would have no problems going back there. But there are several other places I've spent time in the area, including Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Macau. 

I've spent every Spring Festival but one in SE Asia, often seeing more than one country in a trip (we usually get around three weeks for spring festival). I've been to Vietnam, Cambodia and the Phillipines once each, and Thailand twice. I was devestated that I wasn't getting to go back to Thailand this year. I really love Bangkok.

Though that may seem like a lot there's a glaring hole in my travel experiences: China. Well, most of it. I mean, the area that I've seen in Guangdong is limited. The list of cities may seem impressive until you realize that they're all part of the same urban area called the Pearl River Delta. It's like someone in Atlanta driving down to South Florida several times and pretending they did a lot of travelling because they stayed in Miami Beach on one trip and then Fort Lauderdale on another. They're all right next to each other!

So I want to expand my experiences in travelling around China. Yes, I'm sure I'll return to the PRD sometime. I love that part of China (I'd like to move there if it wasn't so expensive). But I still haven't make a trip north to see Beijing. I did go about ten years ago, before I moved to China, on vacation from the US. But I haven't been back since I moved here. More importantly, I haven't seen any of the famous cities or national parks of China that an international tourist would likely miss. That's one of things that I came here for! I wanted to be able to take the time to travel around to places that most foreigners would miss because, well, if you come to China, you'll only have two weeks or so and the number of places you can reasonably get to is limited. You'd want to See Beijing and the Great Wall; make sure to pay a visit to the ancient capital of Xi'an and see the terra cotta soldiers; Guilin is a must, of course; and finish off your vacation in Shanghai. But those places are all on the postcards. That's why you want to see them, but then you're missing all the great stuff that doesn't normally attract tourists. 

This is the same dilimma that is faced by every traveller. No one wants to go to Paris and miss the Eiffel Tower. But every minute you spend at the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre is a minute you don't get to relax in a cafe or explore some city street. By moving to China, I was  hoping to simply increase the amount of time I was able to spend in a place, thereby giving myself the ability to see both the Giant Buddha statue (there always is one) and find the alleyway hotpot that will be so delicious and give the runs for a week.

But I haven't done any of that! Instead, I've been caught up in the drudgeries of day-to-day life. I haven't done that much adventure travel. The biggest trips I've taken have been outside of China (I'm addicted to everything in SE Asia), and most of my travels inside of China have been rather mundane. Until last fall, that is. The time I spent last year back in the states has re-invigorated my desire to travel in China. I hope you 've seen some of the pictures from my explorations of Hunan Province, where I live.

Last fall, after returning from the states, I finally took a trip I could be proud of. The places I saw were still tourist sights, to be sure, but there were a bit out of the way. One was a beautiful mountain town along a river called Fenghuang (A legendary bird that was the mate of the Chinese Dragon, sometimes translated as 'Phoenix', though with none of the connotations of western legend). The other was  a national park called Jiang Jia Jie. That's a beautiful mountain area where erosion has carved spectacular natural scenery. Both of those are super famous Hunan sites. 

So that's my new goal: travel more and film it.

Back again, and getting ready to depart.

Alright, well... I recall that the last thing I wrote on this blog was that I would try to get back up and writing the blog again after returning to China in the Fall. I knew it would take awhile to get settled in, but I probably should have predicted that it would take a lot longer than I predicted (if that's possible). In any case, It's now the end of January and this is the first post I have made since returning.

To quickly update: the new job is going well and I'm pretty well settled in now. The new town is not as comfortable as the old one, of course, but that could change. Only time will tell. I like the increase in income that I've gotten from the move, but I'm missing my friends in Chenzhou terribly. Yueyang simply doesn't have anything here that interests me. But more on that later. Much later.

For now, I want to update everyone on what's happening. The end of January means that Spring Festival is at hand. That means vacation time for foreign teachers. Now I had planned before I left the United States to travel throughout Vietnam with  friends during the Spring Festival but, as plans often do, these fell through. So in the last month or so I was left to decide where to spend the three weeks I would have for Spring Festival. 

One of my favorite times in China has been the year I didn't leave, but instead spent the holiday with Chinese friends in Chenzhou, who I assume would have been happy to have me join them again this year. Chinese New Year begins the Spring Festival and it lasts about two weeks, ending the the Lantern Festival. Those two weeks are usually spent with family. In this sense, the Spring Festival is like Christmas. But it's also New Year's, complete with fireworks. But people travel home from long distances during this time, so it's also a bit like Thanksgiving. If there's any holiday or event that you look forward to all year (I'm thinking of you, burners), it's also like that, as this is definitely the holiday that gets the most attention in China. Probably more so than Christmas in the West. It's sort of like all our most important holidays rolled into one. 

During the two weeks of Spring Festival, Chinese extended families have daily feasts where everyone comes around and spends the better part of the day hanging out, drinking and eating. If you go to grandma's house for Thanksgiving with all you're aunts and uncles, you can imagine everyone doing that every day for about two weeks and you'll have some idea of what goes on during the spring festival. Except one day everyone will meet at grandma's house, then the next day everyone will meet at your aunt's house, then you're cousin's house, then your house, and so on and so forth until pretty much everyone has hosted. And don't forget the fireworks. A wide assortment of fireworks are on offer at every shop in town and they're being shot off constantly all over town. Throughout the day and on into the night people are shooting off fireworks. And, of course, there's the travelling. Pretty much everyone who lives away from home returns home for the Spring Festival celebrations. You do not want to be travelling in China during the festival. All train stations, bus stations, and airports will be packed with unimaginable numbers of people. Getting a ticket on anything will be nearly impossible for the majority of the holiday. If you haven' t already booked something, you're probably out of luck. And then there's the fact that everyone is home for the holiday, so everything that can be closed is. Don't expect to get anything done during the holiday. Government offices are shut, as are stores and restaurants. If you're going to remain in China for the holiday, have a plan for survival as well as Chinese friends to spend the time with.

Which, of course, I want to do again some day in the future. However, since I no longer live in Chenzhou, and I don't really know anyone in Yueyang, I would have to get a room for the full two weeks in Chenzhou in order to remain there for the holiday. I would be away from the comforts of home, paying to stay in a place where there was nothing open, and none of the normal vacation distractions. I decided that staying in China for the holiday wasn't in the cards this year. Maybe not until I return to Chenzhou, in fact. 

I was considering booking a short vacation in Japan or South Korea which would have cost considerably more that past vacations I've taken to Southeast Asia when the temperatures around here plunged to freezing highs during the day. Now, many of you reading this may not understand what the problem is with freezing  temperatures. After all I lived for several years in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is a ski destination. Freezing is no big deal there. But in this part of China, decent insulation is a rarity. And the wall-mounted heating units that are the norm in apartments are insufficient to keep the temperature comfortable. That, combined with the fact that most businesses and other public buildings don't usually use the heaters anyway, mean that it's very difficult to every really get warm when temperatures drop. 

With that as my backdrop, I took the advice of a close friend and booked a trip to the Philippines. I've never been before, so I'm excited to see a new place. The past year has been a little hectic, so I'm planning to do more relaxing and less touring on this trip, but I also plan to travel around a bit. I'll be stopping in Chenzhou for the night to see friends on my way to the airport, but only one night. The rest of the three weeks we have off will be spent in the Philippines and mostly on beaches. I'm really looking forward to the chance to relax and hope to return with a renewed attitude and ready to finish out the school year. 

I won't be posting on this blog while I'm gone, as I've decided to reserve this speace for experiences in China, but if you're interested in what I do in the Philippines, you can always follow my travel blog, which I'm just getting started. Unlike this blog, in which I would like to post frequently and fail, my travel blog is one in which I only ever planned to make several posts while on vacation a couple of time a year. And fail.

In any case, as usual, I am going into this  with the best of intentions to make posts and show something interesting on the trip so keep fingers crossed that I manage to put aside some time and do that. I'll actually be travelling alone, so hopefully I'll be looking for something to kill the time with while lying on the beach. Maybe this can be it.

Or just a nap.

Back to China

I haven't posted in a while now, which isn't that unusual for me, but I have a really good reason this time. This blog is supposed to be about my time living in China and I've been living back in the US for almost five months now. No, I haven't abandoned China. In fact, the reason that I returned was to get a proper work visa for China. Did I mention that my original visa was a tourist Visa? I probably left that off to keep friends and family from worrying. While it's very common to work in China without a proper visa, I always wanted to get the correct visa. Unfortunately, it's somewhat uncommon for a school to have the credentials necessary to legally hire foreign workers. The kindergarten that I'd been working at for the previous semester had all those credentials and wanted me to get the necessary paperwork. I was eager to get the visa right away, but it's really something that you have to be in the United States to get. So after my first semester working for him he agreed to send me back to the US to get the visa. That was April. I won't bother to bore you with the details of all the different elements, but it should suffice to say that it's complicated. Really complicated. And the ultimate goal is a temporary residence permit, which is basically a green card. With that you can work in China legally, stay indefinitely (as long as you maintain employment), and enter and leave the country at will.

Back to traveling

I've made the plans necessary to add a couple of entries to my travel blog. I've booked tickets back to the US for October and a trip to Shanghai next weekend. This will be my vacation for the year. Aside from weekend trips to Hong Kong and Macau, I haven't been able to travel much in China since I've been here. I've traveled a bit outside of China, but aside from Chenzhou, where I live, and the Pearl River Delta, where I lived for a short time last summer, I haven't traveled much inside the country. I hope to change that in the future, starting with a trip to Shanghai.

I've been to Shanghai once before, about seven years ago. Shanghai was actually the first place I saw in China. I only spent a couple of days, so didn't see much of the city. I know Shanghai has a lot to offer and am eager to go back an explore the city at a more relaxed pace. I'll be taking time out from sightseeing to enjoy the food and drink, and will hopefully be posting some nice pics and observations. I've got more time that I usually have in Hong Kong and there won't be any cross-border shenanigans (like bank cards not working) so It will hopefully give me a good opportunity to make some nice travel posts.

In other news, I'll be coming back to the United States in October. A trip I've been dreading since it's all work and no play. I have to move all of my belongings from their current temporary storage (thanks, Sharon!) into something more permanent. I don't really ever expect o return to the United States long term, so I don't want to rent a big storage space. I'll be spending the whole week selling furniture on Craig's List and making trips to drop things off at various charities. I'll be taking two enormous pieces of luggage to bring back as much of my remaining clothes as possible. Trans-pacific flights are the last flights that allow passengers to take a large amount of luggage without an additional fee. Most trans-pacific flights allow 2-23 kg pieces of luggage per passenger, which is more that a person can easily drag behind them anyway. I hope to fill my two pieces of luggage with all the clothes I can carry and donate the rest to charity. Optimally, I would like to have nothing to store long term, but I also know that probably isn't realistic.

I shouldn't say that it will be all work, since I have several good friends in Salt Lake. Seeing them will be nice, and we'll hopefully get a night out or two, but the main purpose of the trip is to get these things dealt with. I've said I should make a list of the things I want to do/eat while I'm there, but I also think they should come naturally. If I don't think: "Boy, I'd like to eat..." then it obviously wasn't that important to me. I can't think of a lot I want to go back to Salt Lake for, other than visiting with friends and eating. Despite what you may have heard about Salt Lake, there are several good restaurants around town. Though most are Asian places. There are a couple of good Nepalese restaurants and a great Indian buffet, a food type that has yet to move to Chenzhou, and which is not readily available anywhere I've found in China. There are also a few western things that I think I'll be ready for, like a pastrami sandwich. And then, of course, drinking isn't the same here as in the States. I'll definitely go for a high quality draft beer. (Draft isn't a think here.) And mixed drinks. The Chinese aren't big on mixed drinks, so I can only get them when I go to Hong Kong, and the prices there are a bit high. So I'll be having a martini, a gin tonic, and perhaps a long island. 

Finally, a Mexican restaurant that serves margaritas by the pitcher. Wait! NO! I'll be in Utah! Margaritas by the pitcher aren't allowed! Real drinks aren't allowed! Only a thimble full of alcohol is allowed in each drink. Oh Jesus, now I remember why I'm not all that thrilled about this trip.

Yes, much of what I miss about the states can be found in Utah, but much more cannot. In some ways, this trip will be little more than a tease. I will be getting close enough to see the US but it will also feel like looking through a chain link fence into the country and not being able to partake fully.

And I haven't even touched on Trump's America. But I'll leave it at that for this post. I've been working hard for most of the summer and this is the first post I've made in a while. Stay tuned, I hope to show a bit more of Chenzhou before school starts back and also to have a few posts on the other blog for Shanghai, the first real vacation I've taken since I started it.

Dragon Boat, Children's Day, and a trip to Hong Kong

I just returned from a trip to Hong Kong and boy are my arms tired! Wait. That doesn't make any sense.

In any case, I've been working seven days a week for the past few months and the Dragon Boat Festival presented a nice opportunity to get away to Hong Kong for a couple of days. It was a nice trip even though everything seemed to go wrong. First, I couldn't book the hotel in advance because the only app that I can use with my debit card wasn't working. This is always a bad sign since the price in the app is almost never what the hotel actually offers when you arrive, even if they have rooms available. So my first stop was a hostel in Causeway Bay, a popular and central neighborhood on Hong Kong Island. The hostel was full by the time I arrived ( which was already after dark), so I had to find a 7 Eleven to buy a sim card for my phone. (Chinese SIM cards don't work in Hong Kong.)

Once I was connected to the internet, I was able to find a nearby hotel. I made my way there and discovered it to be in a building with about a thousand other hotels and apartments. Most rented by the hour and promised special rates after midnight. I wasn't bothered. I was getting a real room for the night and there wasn't anything that was going to ruin my Hong Kong weekend.

The price was exorbitant and the room was mediocre at best, though it was clean. I've heard of hotels in Chungking Mansions in Kowloon that don't have a lock on the door, but this place didn't have a key. The room was right next to the check in desk and the front desk guy told me he would be there to open the door when I came back. I did find the whole operation suspect, but I only left once to go eat and didn't have a problem getting in when I returned. However, I did discover upon my return that the room didn't have the correct outlet to charge my phone.

Hong Kong, you see, has the traditional British wall sockets in older buildings, but almost anything built after the handover has an amazing super outlet that will accept virtually an cord you can imagine: British, American, German, Chinese... I'd never stayed in an older building before, so I wasn't expecting the older outlets. Needless to say, I spent the majority of the next day out looking for a new hotel and trying to get my phone charged. I did finally settle on a nice hostel only a few minutes walk from the previous night's hotel, one which I have stayed at before.

Despite the fiasco with the hotel, I did manage to get an eye appointment and a new pair of glasses. Things like that are much easier in Hong Kong because there's virtually no language barrier for an English speaker, so I do save many of my seemingly ordinary tasks for my trips to  Hong Kong.

The following day I wanted to go see the dragon boat races, a central part of the holiday in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, I wasn't an early riser that morning and when I arrived at the bus stop there was already a line of 1.5 hours for the bus in addition to the forty minute ride to get there. Since I had a train to catch that evening, I decided to forgo the races and just spend some time window shopping around Causeway Bay.

Finally, this week was children's day. That's an international holiday that's​ exactly the bullshit it sounds like. To be fair, it isn't really a day for the children, it's a day for overbearing parents to force their children to do shit they don't want to do like sing and dance in a school show. Which kinda ruins their day off.

I helped one boy memorize a long speech in English for the show. Well, kinda English. Actually, like most Chinese attempts at English, it was a completely incomprehensible word salad that would have been funny if they hadn't forced the boy to spend so much time memorizing it. Which he did perfectly. The whole episode just proves again to me that memorization is not the same as learning a language.

A new blog...

Well, an additional blog. I'm just posting this short entry to let everyone know that I'll be posting for the weekend to a different blog. No, I'm not stopping this blog. This is still the place to go to keep up with my experiences living in China, but I wanted to start a separate blog to cover my travels.

I first thought of maintaining a separate blog last year when I got the opportunity to travel in southeast Asia. I wasn't really keeping up with posting to this blog at the time, but it did occur to me how different my experience was traveling than learning the in​s and outs of living in China. Further, the audience might be quite different, so I thought a separate blog might be the right answer.

The idea has been rattling around in my head since then. Some friends of mine will be playing in a rugby tournament in Guangzhou this weekend and I'm going down to watch. It will be my fortieth birthday weekend as well, and I hope to get some sightseeing in, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to start the new blog.

The new blog will be less about daily life and personal issues and more about traveling and the places I'm going. I hope to be taking more pictures and videos as well, in keeping with the theme. I will consider making it a vlog in the future. As soon as I find out what that is.

Needless to say, I expect to have a flurry of entries for this new thing, then nothing at all for at least a couple of months. That's usually how travel goes. I'll insert a link here and post a notice on G+ when I get the new one set up.

Working 9 to 5... What a way to make a living!

I've finally gotten started on classes, though out of all of the classes I've got, only one class is really going well. I have a group of students from around age six to twelve. That class has been going for about a month and a half now and the students seem to be learning a lot, though it is a beginner's class. I plan the lessons for that class ahead of time and execute the classes fairly well, though my school doesn't really have anything that's necessary for the class to run properly. The school has no toys to help teach, lacks the basics for elementary age students (like scissors, construction paper, crayons, etc...) so the classes are basically just me saying the words and the students repeating, along with the occasional game of Simon Says and red light, green light. I also don't have a computer, so my lessons are planned on scrap paper. And there's no screen or projector to use in the classroom. Despite this, it's probably the best planned and executed class I've encountered so far in China, so that's something, I guess.