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.