OK, so I just posted some pics of my last few days in Macau and China. I'm going to write about those few days a bit later, when I have some more free time.

Sunday and Monday in Hong Kong

Saturday in Macau

whoah hong kong is so HUMID! when i got out of the plane, it just hit me like a wall. it felt like my skin immediately just soaked in all the moisture from the air... dang, and it was at night too. wonder what it'll be like tomorrow afternoon.

Well, while i'm in HK, i'm going to be staying with Auntie Cathy, a close family friend of Kat's. She's already been incredibly nice to me. She made sure i got to the place alright... made sure i knew where everything was in the apartment... she's letting me use one of her cell phones... and she even let me borrow some HK money so that i don't have to rush to the bank tmw morning.. she's so nice. I got her something from Lijiang... the locals sort of burn "paintings" onto wood... and they're actually really nice...so i got her one of those... and i gave her some green tea cake that we got yesterday whiel we were souvenir/gift shopping for tea.

so...When we got to Senzhen, we took a coach bus to a subway line that led us to HK (I came with Lawrence's family). We met Kat and Mike (Lau) at a subway station (Kowloon Tong) - she took a direct flight from kunming to HK... but she arrived at around the same time as us 'cause her plaen got delayed by 2 hours. we said our last goodbyes to lawrence's family there... and then kat and mike took me to auntie cathy's apartment. hmm... we went out for a snack at night.. and now it's really late.

tomorrow we're going to spend the day in Macau... mike says we don't need a visa to get there and back... he's been there before... but i'm kind of nervous about that. hope we odn't get stuck in macau :p

june 16, 2006

leaving for hong kong in 20 minutes. i hear it's incredibly and uncomfortably hot there.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Today was the last day of school. It was pretty sad to leave everyone; they all asked us if we could stay a few extra days or if we could teach one last class for them.

Yesterday, Lawrence told us a bit of background about some of the kids at the school. I was commenting about this one boy in grade 4 who was huge...looked like he should have been in grade 6. I can't remember exactly what he said, but he told me that this boy left school for a while... and when he came back (to this city?) his father didn't want him anymore. so now he's living in a sort of youth hostel with 6 other boys and he's being sponsored by either World Vision or a woman from Hong Kong. He told us about another girl in grade 5 who was sent to this city by her parents (i think her parents live in another province). but her parents don't support her at all... she rents an apartment on her own, and to make money for food, she has to go through "rubbish" (i'm guessing she goes through trash cans to look for plastic bottles... a lot of people to that). but the thing is, when you look at and play with these kids, you would have no idea that this is the kind of life they're living. And there's probably way more stories like that. There's a teacher at the school who has really helped us with a lot of things... and she told us that she left her baby and her husband in her hometown (somewhere in the Hubei province) to come to this school because she needed work... and i think her kid isn't even 2 yet.

I wish we could have found out all of this earlier... then we could have at least visited some of these kids at their homes... and maybe even helped them out with clothes or food. we've been trying to do what we can... like buying food for those who live on the streets..but it's definitely not enough. wish we had more time here... but maybe it's a good thing that we're leaving with these things on ou rhearts..

More Pics of the Stone Forest

- this kid was so cute. he always wanted to be ahead of us so that he could lead us in the "right" way... so he always had his map out and yeah, always at the front of the line. he was really funny...everything he said made me laugh.









- this is for all of you on the nicaragua team :) great memories...

June 13, 2006 (Stone Forest)

*at the convenience store downstairs...*
kat: Hey cool, it's banana and chocolate flavored...oh gross, the wrapper says it's made of frozen milk!
will: ummm... kat, do you know what ice cream IS?????

Pictures at the Stone Forest...


- there's an elephant in the background...














- We went with a family (father, son, and grandparents) that knew Lawrence. They were really nice, and the little 3-year old boy (enoch) was so cute. they had an extra 2 seats...so it worked out perfectly for us to go with them. i don't think we would have gone if we had to bus it like our last attempt...



blog is uploading pics really slow... so i'll try to post up more pics later.

June 12, 2006

Here's a picture of Lily wearing my flip flops and me wearing her sandals (i could only fit my first 3 toes into them).

Didn't really do much today. Went to school.. played games with the kids for a bit... lawrence wanted us to make a giant poster full of pictures of the kids, so we did that for a while...

i'm really going to miss how cheap the food is here. i mean, for every breakfast and lunch, we always get food that's 1 rmb (equivalent to about 15 cents?). so for breakfast, we'll get this fried dough wrap... or 10 dumplings... or a huge piece of bread filled with some paste. and then for lunch, sometimes we get these noodles off the street vendors that are kind of tasty. haven't ventured to try the street meat yet... still working up to that. oh ya, and at night, i played frisbee with lili and wei luk.. and then afterwards, i took lili to the convenience store nearby adn bought 2 ice creams and two popsicles for one dollar canadian.

oh ya, and we got pretty lucky. a family that lawrence knows is going to the stone forest tomorrow... they're taking a private van. they conveniently have two seats left, so kat and i are going to join them.

june 11, 2006 (Added pics)

Saturday
On saturday, we decided to go downtown to go see Green Lake (a famous park in Kunming) and to do a bit of shopping. Lili came along as our tour guide. Green Lake was OK. it's just a really big park with lots of little pond-type areas..there were lots of people walking around, but I guess after going to Lijiang and Dali, Green Lake wasn't too impressive. After that, the three of us walked through downtown Kunming, looked into a few shops, but we didn't really buy anything.


For lunch, we went to a restaurant called Dico's, which was sort of like a chinese KFC. We introduced Lili to eating french fries with ice cream...reminded me of funnel cakes at Wonderland...










At night, we decided to cook dinner for Lawrence's family since they've been so nice to us. So, we bought a bunch of pasta, ground beef, soup, etc at Walmart and brought it home. We made soup, spaghetti, and garlic bread for dinner. and then kat made a cheese cake for dessert... mm.. we made 2 huge packs of fettucine though, so there's a ton of leftovers.

Sunday
This morning, we went to another three-self movement church. the building itself was massive and really modern. There were three floors dedicated for the main service... they had TV's everywhere. on our floor, they had a huge projection screen at the front and 3-4 tv's as well... anyways, the what was cool was that as we were going up to the third floor, we bumped into the storekeeper of the bookstore (the one who invited us to sit with her until the rain passed... i think it was thursday night). So she invited us to sit with her.. and we did. during the service, the choir sang, the children sang, and then a guest speaker (an american who spoke mandarin) gave the sermon. OH, and after the service... it was crazy. after i came out of the washroom, i was walking towards the stairs.. and i saw the pastor that we met from Dali! and then when we went downstairs to the main entrance, we saw his wife and the private driver that took us to lijiang!! CRAZY!! that was so much fun... it was cool to see everyone again.

- after church, kat and i were supposed to go to the Stone Forest, which is 2 to 2.5 hours away from kunming. We had to take 3 different buses to get there... so, we got on the first one.. and then got off at the first stop to transfer to another bus. But, when we asked around if anyone knew where the "east station" was, they had no idea...so we got back on the bus, went to the next stop.. got off... and yeah, we just couldn't find it. anyways, we didn't even really want to go to the stone forest, because everyone kept saying that it was just "ok".. and that by the end, all the stones would look the same. so we just walked around the area a bit, then came home.

friday, june 9, 2006

thursday
- thursday was the first day i taught at the school. but we didn't teach for the whole day. we only helped out when there were english classes. So, we taught the grade 3's and the grade 5's, and we sat in a bunch of classes. it was pretty funny... because when we sat in with the preschoolers during their chinese lessons... i was actually learning it with them.













- there's a couple of distinct diferences between schools in north america and china... for example, this school starts at 7:50 am, and ends at 4:30 pm. super long days.. but to compensate, there's about 6 recesses during the day (varying from 5 mins to 20 mins), and a 2 hour lunch break. the recesses are really fun. during the 20 min one, i started dribbling a basketball around the court while some kids tried to steal it off of me... soon, about 30 of them started chasing me all over the basketball court.. it was fun. oh ya, and the kids here are super tough. this one kid (maybe 6 or 7 years old) fell 3 times in a row on the pavement while he was chasing after me... and he never cried.. he just got back up and kept running. as well, during some of the breaks, they have eye drills. a tape plays on the speakers, and in unison, all the students rub the same areas of the eyes (over the eyes, pinching the part b/w the eyes, under the eyes.... etc). they also have an exercise drill where they all line up outside and follow a tape.. and they do a 5 min "dance routine".. all in unison. it's actually really impressive. what else... oh ya, they all have kung fu lessons.. so all the kids know kung fu.
- in the middle of the afternoon, we got a call from a guy who is an E.M. here. he's the general manager of this organization.. and the reason why he called was because he's the uncle of a friend of kat's. he invited us for dinner, and we talke.d.. and it was pretty cool to hear his story. ummm.... and yeah i can elaborate more later. really tasty dinner though - i had fish and chips!
- after dinner, we went to the Canaan bookstore. the owner of the store was a C-------. she was super nice... kat met her the last time she went. we browsed around the store... and she invited us to stay with her in her store because it was pouring rain outside. so we talked for a long time with her.. yeah, just really nice. all the C---'s we've met hre have been so hospitable to us... kat and i both bought some pretty cool stuff from the shop.. and when we were leaving, she gave us these knitted bookmarks that look pretty neat.

friday
- today was fun. since it rained the whole day, all of the physical education classes were "cancelled"... and the students had to stay in their classes all day. so for those PE classes that were cancelled, we helped out. our first one was the preschoolers... lawrence just asked that we sing songs with them... we thought it would be easy, but the kids were so rowdy! we sang songs like "deep and wide", "london bridges", "row row row your boat", "twinkle twinkle", "head and shoulders", etc. we had to sing so loud... because if our voices didn't overpower theirs, they would all just start playingw ith each other. so.. by the end of it.. our voices were really scratchy. haha. but it was fun anyways. oh ya, and when they sang their chinese songs to us... i think i almost went deaf. they're just tiny little 4 year olds.. but when they all sing.. dang... it's crazy how loud they can get. they were piercing my ears!
- we also played 7-UP (i remembered it from our pca days!) with the grade 3's adn they loved it. we played it for the entire 40 mins..
- with the grade 5's, we did some conversation stuff with them... they showed us some of their kung fu moves, and at the end, we played sherades. during the conversations, they asked kat if she knew how to dance... she said yes, but all they had was the kungfu music they used for their kungfu presentation... soon, all of us were chanting "dance, dance, dance" (led by me, of course).. haha. err, i guess you just had to be there to find it funny :P.
- oh ya, and one other cool thing. whenever, the kids want to come into the teacher's staff room to talk to a teacher.. they have to salute.. and then when we nod or say ok, they say "b-uh-gao"... and then they come in

July 7, 2006 - Lijiang

Once we arrived in Lijiang, we met Ruth, a friend of Lawrence's family. She's actually a native of Lijiang - a Naxi (i think it's pronounced na-shi). She brought along Beibei, a 4 -year old girl that she was taking care of. Beibei was adopted by her parents in Wyoming, and she moved here about a year ago because her parents were offered a job at a nearby university. She was sooooooo cute. she talked and talked and talked... Ruth said that because she doesn't speak mandarin, it's hard for her to make friends.. so when she actually does meet people who can speak english, she talks non-stop! she kept giving me candies, offered to share her fruit-in-a-cup with me, kept giving me her carrots at lunch.. hhaa. it was pretty sad to see her go. ruth had to take her back to her home, but you could tell that she wanted to stay.

for dinner, we went to a local restaurant. i'm pretty used to them right now, but i think this was the first one for kat. it probably wasn't the best way to introduce her to the local foods... because there were tons of flies, lots of dried meat hanging from the ceiling, a gigantic skull of maybe a yak in the corner... i could see on her face that she was a LITTLE nervous. Ruth ordered the food for us, and it ended up being really really good.

at night, kat and i went to hear the Naxi orchestra. it was pretty neat. the songs are really old... about 1000 years old. i read in another book that they lost a big portion of their songs because the older generation of naxi music players passed away. initially, we were put in the wrong seats... i was in a spot where there were 2 people in front of me and a column on the left... and the people in front kept moving their heads, so it was a bit irritating. after the first song or two, we ended up moving to two empty seats in the front row of our section, which was way better. the songs were great. the only down point of the night was that the "MC" was telling all these jokesin mandarin that we didn't understand... at one point, his comments were taking so long that it looked like some of the older members of the orchestra were falling asleep. haha.

the next day, ruth took us to Tiger Leaping Gorge. Ruth was so nice to us during our whole trip . she took us everywhere and always made sure that we were okay... we were really lucky to have her with us in lijiang. Anyways, we took a 2 hour bus to the gorge. pretty uncomfortablle ride... but we met this old scottish couple there. it's always cool to meet and talk to foreigners. they were just taking a little vacation - the husband has been working in beijing for more than a year... and i don't think his wife works. the bus took us close to the entrance of the gorge.. and then stopped. we had to pay another 120 rmb to take a mini van to the middle of the gorge... but that also included our ride back to lijiang and our ticket to get into the gorge. at first, we thought we were getting ripped off..but when we calculated it, it turned out to be a decent price.

the gorge was so amazing. i'll just post some pics. words can't describe it. it was a tough hike down though. it took about an hour to get down. but when we were down there... dang.. it was amazing. when we got down there, i hiked around a bit more while kat and ruth rested at a "cafe". i wanted to get onto this huge boulder that was just downstream on the yangtze river. there was this huge red flag on it...and i wanted a picture with it. but when i got there, the ladder leading to the boulder was caged off with metal wire. i was so mad... 'cause i really wanted to get on.. and it was really tough getting to that spot (it was just really steep). so when i had to climb all the way back up.. without the picture.... i got angry (not really, but just a little) :P. heh. but then when i got back, ruth told me that an italian guy died there last year 'cause he slipped ont he rock. after hearing that, i guess i was kind of relieved that i didn't go. actually, now that i mentioned that... on our way down to the gorge, ruth told us that just that morning (or the day before, i can't remember) someone died. at some parts, it was a bit dangerous (e.g. there were tons of "watch out for falling rocks", "go at your own risk" signs). our hike up from the bottom of the gorge was actually pretty tough. i felt so bad for kat... but she fought through it! i was really amazed/in a way proud that she did it. and she didn't complain or anything on the way up.. she just sucked it up and kept going.

oh ya, and here.. we wrote our names on the wall of the cafe:

ummm so when we got back, took a shower... ate dinner.. then walked around the old city of lijiang. we actually lived in the old city.. which was pretty neat. it's a really cool place.. just check out the pics. really cool place to be at night.

wish we could have stayed a few more days... 'cause there's tons more to see and do there. buttt, that's okay. i'm glad we're back in kunming... and i'm going to start working at the school tmw.

june 4, 2006 (updated pics)

alight, at an internt cafe at dali riht now. it's been a really fun trip so far

- on saturday, we took the 12 o'clock bus to dali. cost about 120 rmb and took about 5 hrs. it was a really awesome bus ride because the scenery was amazing (there were mountains the whole way and everything was so green!. when we got here, lawrence told us to find a hcruhc (spelld backwards; i need to be careful w/ my words) in the ancient city of dali because he knew the rotsaP . we found the place, and we were taken to a seminary school... the people there were so nice. without even asking for our names, they told us to put all our stuff down in a room and they invited us for dinner. it was really good food too. we were supposed to stay in some rooms at this place, but it ended up that they only had one free room. so we checked in at a hotel just one minute down the street. it's actually a bit sketchy... lots of gigantic bugs... but it's only costing us 4-5 bucks to stay at this place. when we came back to the seminary, we attended a pihsroW service where ppl did different dances, songs, played violn, etc. it was really neat. in the middle of this service, one of the teachers asked us if we could sing a song. haha. so i picked up the guitar and kat and i sang "open the eyes". at night, we went to this bar... had smoe dessert... and just walked around the city..

- today was pretty amazing. we attended a sunday service in the morning. it was super long though - 3 hours. they had a choir who sang, danced.. it was cool. i couldn't understand anything though 'cause it was all in mandarin.. but it was a good experience nonetheless. after that, the wife of the rotsaP arranged a driver to brng us to Zhonghe Peak. it's this mountain that's 2100 m above sea level. the view was amazing!! ahhhhh. it was perfect weather... and it felt like we were so close to the clouds... yeah, and.. i don't even hav the words to describe it. it was just as cool as the three gorges. kat and i climbed this mini waterfalls, and it was soo much fun. we could have went higher, but we found this piece of poo on rocks... so we sort of stopped there. kat kept on saying "mike would be so proud of me!". haha. i forgot my wire that connects my camera to the pc, so i'll have to upload pics in a few days. we had dinner at a korean restaurant and then just walked arund again at night.

going to lijinag tmw morning..early.. at 7.

june 3, 2006

well, i just found out that the school has a 2 day holiday (monday and tuesday). since we have 4 days free, Lawrence suggested that Kat and I go to Dali and Lijiang... so we're leaving in an hour! they're two really ancient cities...we're taking the bus everywhere, and it sounds like it should be a great trip! here's a pic of me at the great wall that i forgot to post before:



Lili is very happyhi

June 2, 2006

Two nights ago, i got an e-mail from Liang saying that him, Amy, and Kathy were going to fly into Beijing on the next day. so they got in around 11 pm last night. it was AWESOME to see them again. after shanghai, they went to another city nearby... i believe it was on an island... initially, they were going to go to chongdu and some other places before beijing, but they surprised us and flew there first. it was great to catch up and talk... we stayed up till 3am talking in the bar at the hostel.

I arrived at the airport about 3 hours earlier than my flight. it got delayed by an hour, so i didn't end up leaving until about 5 pm. I arrived in Kunming at 8, and Kat was waiting for me outside of the baggage claim gates. it was great to see her again. i'm staying at the principal's house (Lawrence is his name... Sally is his wife... and they have a son and a daughter). It's a really nice place, and they're really nice too. I"m staying in a really small room on the top bunk of a bunk bed.. but it's fine by me. Sally wanted me to stay over at their friend's place because she thought it would be too small for me... i told her that i wanted to stay because i wanted to stay with Kat... at least until i get comfortable. so, yeah it's great. i played around with Lili, their daughter. she's so funny. she reminds me of Greg's youngest sister a bit..Janelle.. actually, in a lot of ways... she was showing me her yearbooks, her pictures, her awards, her projects.... played tag with her, she gave me a massage.. haha. it was fun. so tomorrow kat and I are going to explore downtown Kunming.

Flat 301, Unit 3, Block 5
Sunshine Garden, Phase II
Kunming, Yunnan
Peoples Republic of China
650228

phone #: 86871 4635482

June 1, 2006

That's a pic of me beside a statue at the Summer Palace. It was built by an Emperor a couple hundred of years ago, so there were a lot of nice buildings to walk around in. It's kind of like Edward's Garden (leslie and lawrence), except 10 times bigger and that much nicer. It was the type of place where you could just lie down on the grass and stay there for hours. It took us a heck of a long time to get there though. we took a bus straight from our hostel all the way to the Summer Palace and it took 2 hours. dang, it was bad... 'cause the bus was really hot and really crowded. towards the end of the bus ride (maybe 1.5 hrs), a guy at the front of the bus barfed... it was gross. then everyone left except us. on the way back, we just took a taxi to the nearest subway stop and then took the subway all the way back... it was way faster (approx 45 minutes) and only cost 13 RMB in total.

at night, we went to another fake clothing market. these shopkeepers were way more aggressive than in shanghai though. every time i tried walking away from a store, they would grab my hand and drag me back in. but, at the same time, it was good because they were really desperate to sell stuff before the mall closed (we got there an hour before closing time). so, i ended up buying a pair of nice shorts for 5 bucks and some polo's for 4 bucks.













heh, this is a pic of a giant banana i found at the grocery store. wasn't as sweet as a normal banana though =/

May 31, 2006 - The Great Wall of China

Man, the Great Wall is amazing. last night, the girls wanted to be adventurous, so we decided to take the 10km hike on the great wall from Jinshanling to Simatai (just two different areas of the great wall). it was actually a really tough hike. you were basically just climbing enormous numbers of stairs, and then descending enormous amounts of stairs. and... that happened maybe 30 or so times ( i believe we hiked through 32 towers). yeah, and believe me, they weren't easy. there were many times when the climb would be at 70 degree angles - that's really steep! i'm somewhat surprised that the girls got through it all, but i'm actually really proud that they did! for myself, i really enjoy canoeing/portaging/hiking, so i had a really fun time doing it. the scenery was amazingly beautiful. i'll post pics when i get the chance. i just forgot the cable that connects my camera to the computer upstairs in my room, and i don't have enough time to get it before my hour ends at this internet cafe. we were lucky too 'cause it wasn't too hot and there were barely any other tourists on the wall with us, so it seemed like we had the whole wall to ourselves.

so, immediately once we entered the gates, we got swarmed with local mongolian people. this one woman just ran straight towards me and began following me... trying to talk to me in english (asking me where i was from, telling me about her...etc), and trying to help me up the stairs to the great wall. i was warned from another guy at the hostel in Shanghai that this would happen, so i knew she just wanted me to buy stuff from her. she literally followed me for 4 km's on the wall. i couldn't believe it. she looked about 40-something years old. at the end of the 4k's, she asked if i wanted to buy something from her. i bought some post cards just because i felt bad that she had to walk all this way. actually, it was more because i knew that she was only doing this to feed her family... it's crazy that these people have to work so hard just to earn 15-20 RMB (approx $2 USD). i'm guessing that they do the walk with the tourists maybe 3-4 times a day... which is honestly CRAZY. i can't even imagine what it would be like in july ... or what they do when it snows in the winter time.

so yeah, just got an e-mail from Liang, Amy, and Kathy.. and they'll be in Beijing tomorrow night. so it'll be cool to see them again before i leave on friday.

getting excited about teaching and going to kunming too.

updated pics

ok, so at this internet cafe, i can upload pics onto this blog... i added a few for my old posts, so you can check them out if you want.

here's a pic of me and Dr. Chang from Zhejiang university. he's the head of the biology department at Zhejiang. he's a really REALLY funny guy... just the way he acts is hilarious. i'll have to explain more later 'cause it's just too hard to explain in words.

oh let me say a word about this university. it's the 3rd best university in china.. which is HUGE. i recently found out how the university system works here. since china really wants their universities to be top in the world, they pour all their money into the top 3 or 4 universities. So, Zhejiang, being #3, gets a ton of money.. that's why their campus is so incredibly new and beautiful. To get into these schools is crazy... before they apply to universities, each high schooler has to take a test which ranks them among all other chinese students in China (ie, ranked 5 out of 300,000). The #1 university gets to pick however many students first, and then the #2 university goes.. and then #3 (Zhejiang university gets to pick from what's left... etc. on top of that, these universities may sometimes only pick one person from each province in china. so, we had a few chinese partners in our group who were the only people from their respective provinces. that's insane to me, these guys are brilliant.

May 30, 2006 (updated)

in beijing now. we almost missed the train at 7pm! lauren, christine and i ate dinner with luke and terrence... and when we finished, it was about 5:45 pm. we got on a taxi and were on our way to the train station, but we ran into some MAJOR traffic. by 6:15, we barely got anywhere. so i told the taxi driver to drop us off at the nearest subway station because i knew that it was only going to be a few stops away. this ordeal turned out to be harder than i thought, 'cause lauren's suitcsae was massively huge and heavy! i forgot that the subway stations here don't have escalators going down, so i had to carry my suitcase and lauren's suitcase everywhere! had to go down the stairs.. buy the subway tickets.. pass the luggage over the "entrance blockers"... go into the subway... go down another flight of stairs... it was definitely a memorable experience though. the girls were pretty stressed that we would miss our train. so we sprinted most of the time. luckily, the signs leading to the train station were pretty good.. and when we finally reached the train, we were actually 15 minutes early :P

the 12 hour train ride turned out to be amazing. we were in a luxury-class train and our room had 2 bunk beds in them (which were really clean and nice). there was one other lady in our room - her name was May. She was from Beijing and just went to Shanghai to get her passport. she was so nice... really fun to talk to and she gave us a bunch of places to visit in Beijing.

our hostel that we booked turned out to be right across the street from the shanghai train station. it's called the Beijing City Central International Youth Hostel. because they dont' allow co-ed dorms, i have to stay in a room with 3 other guys. i just met one, but haven't met the other two yet.

we went to the temple of heaven and it was pretty cool.. except the place is MASSIVELY HUGE. nearly 300 hectares big... so it was really tiring. after that, we just walked around in the city.. came back early 'cause we were really tired and i really needed to do laundry.

may 29, 2006

i'm at the Shanghai Library right now. this place is huge - probably 4-5 times the size of Stauffer. it's so big that it's actually a tourist attraction :P anyways, i thought i could upload pics here at the library, but the security guard caught me with my mp3 plugged into the computer (apparently that's not allowed here), so, yeah..next time. i have tons of pics i gotta post up.

so the last 2 days have been really fun. yesterday, about half of our class left (some to go to beijing, some to go to an island near shanghai). so, the night before that (two nights ago), we all went to a party/club and we all had a really great time. they gave us a VIP room and yeah, just a really great way to end off.

last night was so much fun. we went to see a chinese acrobatics show called "Era: intersection of time". IT WAS AMAZING. AHHHHHHHHH!!! i can't even describe how incredible it was. it's almost like Circque du Soleil. They did some crazy things.. they had 7 motorcycles driving around super fast/in circles in an enclosed, cage-like metal ball... they did some crazy jumps through hoops... flew around on scarves that came down from the ceiling... yeah, i know my description is really bad, but there's no way i could ever describe it!! and it was all for only 80 RMB, translating into about 10 bucks american.

today, me and lauren went to a market that sells a ton of fake stuff.. but it looks so good. and yeah, i had to buy stuff. it was realy fun trying to bargain with them. for example, if you asked them how much a Polo t-shirt would cost, they would say something ridiculous like 200 RMB. this was my strategy: i would just tell them that i was willing to pay 30...right after, they would start yelling and telling me i'm crazy and that i'm "so joking". i would just say "ok, fine, i'll go to another store"... and then, EVERY TIME, as i'm walking out, they'll grab on to me and say "OK OK!" haha. it's pretty fun. sometimes i would just offer a price that was really ridiculous .. like offer 5% of what they're asking..a nd they would curse underneath their breath in chinese. heh.

yeah, so i'm heading on a 12 hour train ride to beijing tonight at 7pm. should be interesting. turns out that i'm not heading to beijing on my own anymore, because lauren and christine wanted to stay in shanghai for another day as well. i'm actually really glad that they're coming. originally, i was going to go with lauren, christine, and 3 other girls. and.. there was one girl in the group of 3 girls that i didn't really want to go with :P so.. yeah, turns out that everything worked out in the end. thanks to all of you who told me to stay in shanghai longer than beijing... 'cause if i hadn't stayed, i woudl have missed out on the chinese acrobats and the xianyan (sp?) market. gonna see tian an men square, the forbidden city, the temple of heaven... all that stuff tomorrow. the day after, probably going to take a whole day to go to the great wall and the ming tombs... and then on friday, i'm heading off to kunming.

ok, well, gotta go find luke. he was supposed to meet us here at the library, but we waited around for half an hour and didn't show up.

may 27, 2006

ok, correction: the name of the hotel is the metropole hotel. it's pretty nice, we got this place for like half price. tomorrow we're going to have to move out and find a hostel though. partly because they're a bit cheaper, but mostly because we want to explore a different part of the city.

today, went to the Shanghai museum, and it was awesome. really great place. admissoin for students was only 5 RMB, translating into less than a dollar canadian. it's actually a really nice museum. they had this one gallery that displayed a collection of gems from this one guy named Michael Scott. he used to be the president of Apple like 30 years ago. anyways, they had some crazy gems there but unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of them.

then we went to the shanghai urban planning museum. nothing too special, but it was cool to see what shanghai will look like in 20 years.

all in all, shanghai is a really cool city. sort of reminds me of toronto because there's chinese people, french people, indian people, and well... no black people yet. but it's cool walking around and hearing some different languages around. but a lot of people can speak english.. so that's really helpful (e.g. in stores, restaurants). and we finally got to see the blue sky today. probably only see that like 3-4 times within the past 4 weeks. usually there's just a huge cloud of pollution above every city. so yeah, it was a good day. probably going to check out a cheap market tomorrow that my friend told me about to pick up some gifts for ppl.

may 26, 2006

ok, so today was the last day of the trip, and right now we're in shanghai. a bunch of us were supposed to stay at this hostel here, but when we tried to book it, it was all full. so yuxiang, with all his connections (he's so popular here :P), hooked us up at an awesome hotel - the metropolis hotel. it's right next to the Bund here.. and very close to Nanjing road (really famous shopping street) and yeah, in the middle of downtown. haha, there was one catch though. we had to say we were interns for a software company in california named Futureway. OK, so, today, luke, lauren and i just walked around everywhere and just got to know the city a bit. tomorrow, we'll have a full day, but we havne't planned it all out yet.

and.. i think when i go to beijing, i'm going to go on my own.. 'cause after these past 3 and a half weeks, i need some alone time. it'll be an interesting 2-3 days :p

oh, btw, for those of you who are asking if i started to pick up chinese... well, my chinese friends here have really been trying to teach me chinese. and back in the first week of the course, one of my chinese friends - eunice - actually bought me a book to help me learn mandarin :P the book was kind of hard to learn from (had really random phrases such as "Hi, i'm part of the friendship tour to china"), so today, i bought a Lonely Planet phrase guide. ok, so that's it for now.

OH YEAH

AND, today i finally got to watch an NBA playoff game! the heat vs the pistons!! i was so happy. these are the best playoffs ever in the history of me liking basketball since grade 5.... and i have to miss them :( they don't really have sports bars or anything here, so they're hard to catch on tv.

yeah, and actually, last night i had a dream that i was coming back to toronto the next day. and i was so happy 'cause i could finally catch up on Lost, 24, THe Office, and Prison Break. dang. then i woke up.

may 24, 2006

today's our last day of the field course... well, our last day of doing work. we did a super long genetics/pcr lab today. i kind of like it, but it's just annoying 'cause there's times when you have 2 hour breaks in between (to wait for the reaction to happen), and our dorm is like 15 mins away. so today, in total, i walked 5 times back and forth. it's ok though. ya, so today's the last day of our field course. tomorrow, we're going to fly from here (Chongqing) back to Hangzhou (where Zhejiang university is). we're going to have a final dinner with all the profs and students from that university, and then the next day, we're off to shanghai!! so for the next week, i'm going to be touring in shanghai and beijing... then next friday, i'm flying to kunming to teach for a few weeks. pretty excited about that. my chinese friends here tell me how beautiful a city it is.. and that there's a rainforest there with lots of cool animals.... like elephants :p

ok, here's a funny story i forgot to mention last week. back when we were in Wuhan, Charles got up one morning and his stomach was really hurting him. at breakfast, he told Dr. Lougheed that he thought he had appendicitis (pfffft lifesci's). so they took him to a doctor, and he told them that he thought he had appendicitis... and so the doctor's thought he had appendicitis. so usually, with acute appendicitis, it hits you REALLY hard out of nowhere, and then you have to go to the hospital right away to get surgery. so Yuxiang had to take Charles all the way to beijing to a hospital there 'cause charles didn't want to get treated in Wuhan. So they went all the way to beijing, and when the doctor at the hospital did a check up, they found that all he had was a sore stomach. ok, not really a funny story for yuxiang, i think he was pretty pissed, but it's just funny that it happened to charles.. 'cause he's always the one driving the profs crazy. so yuxiang came back the day after, but charles didn't... he stayed in beijing ('cause his grandparents live there)... and last i heard, he was heading back to canada soon.

ok, so.. things have been going pretty great. can't believe the course is already over... and i can't believe my stay here isn't even half over yet. getting pretty home sick, but that's ok 'cause i keep reminding myself that i might not come back here for a really long time... so i should just make the time worth it.

may 22, 2006 (updated)

WHOAH, ok, it's been a long time since i've had access to the internet or to a phone! sorry to any of you who have e-mailed me recently... i'll try to reply asap (probably not today though). i'm sitting in my chinese friend's friend's dorm room right now. it's crazy, they have 5 ppl living in this one room :P anyways, lots of stuff has happened in the past week.. so i'll try to sum it up real quick right now.

Wednesday may 17, 2006
ok, so we travel for 5 hours from Wuhan to Yichang. but i think i'm getting used to the long bus rides now.. it didn't feel long at all. We visited a sturgeon "zoo" which was amazing. these stugeons can get up to 3 metres long!!! just imagine fishes that are MASSIVE. wow. they live in the yangtze river. anyways we got to see a live one which was pretty cool. we got back to the hotel and i had to do my seminar. i was a bit nervous, but luckily, i had already learned about what i was going to talk about in my seminar in a lecture last term.. so it went pretty good. after the seminar, i felt so good. so me and a bunch of other ppl went out for a drink and a snack... and man this area was so sketchy. we walked down the street and there were all these "hair salons" still open... and these stores had bright pink fluorescent lights eminating from them... with lots of girls just waiting around... haha. it was pretty sketchy. we ended up going to a restaurant. amy and jerry ordered a turtle to eat. it was actually pretty gross looking, but they said it tasted like chicken. oh, and to add to that... we got back to our rooms, and then our room got a phone call with a woman on the other line... but we couldn't understand anything 'cause neither of us speak chinese. haha..um, ya, i'll leave it at that.

Thursday may 18
- we did some surveys in Yichang.. just around the city... asking ppl what they thought the benefits and negative effects were of the Three Gorges Dam. then we visited the 3 gorges dam, which was amazing! man it's huge. we got to go up to the top of the dam too.. so we got a really good view of everything. after that, we got on our cruise at around 8 pm.. had dinner, then went to the top deck and just chilled there for a while.

Friday, may 19
- we got on a cruise boat the night before. today, we went to the 2nd gorge along the yangtze river. after the 2nd gorge, we got off the boat and got on a smaller one... and we toured the mini gorges.. and those were BEAUTIFUL. i took like 50 pictures... and then we got off to see this temple. we climbed all the way to the top of the mountain to get to this temple, and there wasn't really anything special about it. but the cool thing was that we found a waterfall to the right of the temple. so me and some other ppl trecked thru the woods to get there .. and it was so amazing... we stood at the base of the waterfall, and i could have stayed there for hours..but we had to rush back 'cause we were already late for our boat.. ahh i gotta post pics..
- at night, the cruise boat stopped at another tourist site. i can't remember the name of this place.. but it was something like "the white temple"... nothing too special about it. we just walked up a ton of stairs and got to see a pretty good view of the gorges. the thing i don't like with all these temples is that they're all reconstructed (e.g. re-made) because they were all destroyed during the cultural revolution. so, they don't look or feel as real... and the environment just feels like it's a tourist attraction because everywhere you go, people are trying to sell you things. you can't walk 5 minutes without someone getting into your face and nagging you to buy their stuff. even in the temples, there's tons of souvenir stores.

Saturday
- went to Fengdu (or Fongdu) and we were supposed to do surveys there as well. but when we got there, we found out they were doing tons of construction on the roads to get ready for the rising of the water level of the yangtze river. um... just to explain that a bit, one of the reasons why they built the three gorges dam was to generate hydroelectricity... and to get more power, you need more water passing thru the turbines. so they're raising the water level in the upstream regions of the yangtze to accomodate this. and since the water level is rising, many cities have to relocate to higher regions int he mountains... and Fengdu was one of these cities. they've already reaised the water level by a lot. for example, at the surface of the river, you can see the tops of bridges that used to connect the mountains together... right now, they're destroying bridges and building higher ones because the water level is supposed to go up another 25-30 m by august.

Sunday

- finally done the 3night/4 day cruise and we got to Chongqing. this city is massive... 32 million ppl in this place. dang. bigger than the population of all of canada. anyways, today was fun. this place eats super spicy food. at lunch, we went to this pretty fancy restaurant. i sat with the profs, so we the restaurant gave us a better lunch than everyone else. we drank this white wine that yuxiang calls "jet fuel".
- at dinner, we had hotpot.. authentic hotpot. and ... when i saw the hot pot, i almost peed in my pants. It looked like super hot, red bubbling lava... with some hot peppers and peppercorns floating on it... seriously, it was crazy. we had a bunch of raw stuff on our table (brain, intestines, kidneys, beef, fish, etc), and it was funny.. luke was like, "will, i've eaten everything on this trip.. but i think this is the first time i won't be able to try it". he thought that we just dipped the raw food into the hot stuff and ate it raw.

Monday
- in the morning, we had a long lecture by one of the profs here at southwestern university. then we had lunch with the vice-principal of the university and some other university heads (which was pretty neat). after that, went to a water treatment plant, the national history museum here in CQ, and then we went to speak to some fishermen.
- at night, we had an iron chef competition. it was really fun. we used a real restaurant kitchen. the stoves are crazy! they're not like our stoves in canada.... they're just big holes in the counter with gas coming out of them.. so when they're lit on fire, they sound like a jet engine. and they literally look like the back of the batmobile... they put a massive wok on top of it .. and yeah, it was cool. i cooked on it!! hahah. it was scary though... i was scared i would burn my face off. yeah, so they gave us our special ingredients we needed to cook with.. and my group was against luke and jenna's group. it was actually really fun.. all of us had a really good time.

Tuesday
- went to see the Baoding rock carvings. that was pretty neat. it was basically this canyon where there's tons of rock carvings.. pretty neat. after that, visited a fish farm that used hot springs as their water source to harvest tropical fish.

may 16, 2006

today, we met the president of the institute of hydrobiology... he gave us a talk on his research and what they do at the institute. it was pretty cool because he's a really really famous scientist - Ding Wang. anyways, that was cool.. and we checked out some museums and saw some live porpoises swimming in one of his research sites..
then we went out for dinner on our own.. so jerry, luke, and i went out with 3 chinese guys from our group.. and they took us to this local restaurant. it was pretty good food.. got 5 plates plus this awesome sticky/fried rice bowl.. for like.. $1.50. crazy. it's pretty cool 'cause each different region in china has different types of food.. and they prepare food differently.. so.. it was good to have some variety today.
- another thing i keep noticing but forget to post on this blog is how nearly every single piece of available land is used either for farming or for fish farming. it's pretty crazy... and you won't believe me until you see it yourself. just believe me when i say that it's rare to go on the highway for more than a kilometre without seeing a farm... or land being used for some type of agricultural purpose. even if it's just a little 5 foot wide by 10 m long strip of land beside the highway, they still grow stuff on it...

ok, tmw we have a long bus ride to another city.. then the day after, we're going on a cruise boat for a few days to get to another university... it'll be cool 'cause we're going to stop off and do fun things like dragonboating and having a cooking contest... seeing the three gorges dam.

-will

may 15

yesterday, we took a really early flight to get to Wuhan... but the flight was pretty quick - only about one hour. we're now staying at this really nice 4 star hotel... our room is so nice.. and the lobby looks really fancy. we sort of had the day off yesterday 'cause the last couple days were really intense for us... so me and a few other ppl decided to go sight-seeing. the bus dropped us off in downtown Wuhan. we decided to go to this place called the yellow crane pavillion, so we took a ferry boat over the Yangtze river to get there. it was pretty neat. it's this really old chinese-looking temple/tower .. i can't really describe it, i have to show a pic. it had a really nice view of the city..then the girls wanted to go shopping, so we shopped for a few hours. after that, i was dead tired so we took a bus back to the hotel and that was my day.

May 14, 2006

so, just finished a really really long day. we did a water quality analysis lab from 8:30 - 4:30 .. with a half hour break for lunch.. and then a bunch of us guys played 3 on 3 on the outdoor courts on campus. the courts are soo nice!! they have two main outdoor courts... with about 20 nets at each place. they're always really packed too... we were lucky to find an empty court. anyways, it was good times... and then we had to come back to the lab to hear 2 more seminars tonight..

it was funny.. after the seminars, Yuxiang was briefing us on what was going to happen tomorrow for our flight to Wuhan... and then he started to talk about returning our room keys and bke keys. then he started to get really serious and told us NOT to sell our bikes.. because apparently, Charles (for those of you who go to Queen's, you probably know this guy) sold his bike for 20 RMB, the equivalent of 3 dollars... we couldn't stop laughing, but yuxiang was pretty mad because Zhejiang university paid like 250 RMB for each bike... and he just sold it. anyways, charles is quite the character... there's just tons of stories i could say... like the other day when we did a habitat assessment, for no reason, he just started throwing rocks/small boulders straight into the lake beneath him... and he did this for like 15 minutes.. Dr. Lougheed was going crazy. and then during our labs, he keeps touching things he shouldn't be touching and taking things that he shouldn't be taking... I find it hilarious, but other ppl are getting a bit impatient :P haha, here's my last story about charles... so we've had two 2-hour shopping times so far.. and we always walk as a big group.. but charles ALWAYS runs ahead of the group (like until we can't see him anymore)... and he runs from store to store.. and always comes back with tons of stuff. anyways, the other day he bought this pink t-shirt .. witha huge "v-neck".. that went down to like the middle of his chest... lol.. it's great!! and he wears it all the time.. it's so funny. all the chinese students keep asking if it's a girl's shirt... anyways, it's funnier than it actually sounds..

ok, so for the next 10 days.. we're going to be in Wuhan.. and at SouthWestern University.... doing different things.. going on a cruise boat (where i have to give my seminar!).. i'll try to keep this blog updated...

oh i just thought of something i should add (to remind myself of my experiences here..).. the washrooms here are generally pretty nice.. in most places, you'll be able to find a toilet seat.. but sometimes when we have to make a washroom break during our trips on the bus, we have to stop off at gas stations to go to the washroom... and the toilets are literally just troughs that you pee and poo in... the other day, i walked in.. and there was a guy right there pooing in front of me... i idn't know what to do.. but.. i just went to pee beside him anywyas..
ok that's it for now.

May 13. 2006

argh... internet still isn't letting me upload pictures onto this blog... i tried uploading them to yahoo photo, but that didn't work either.. i'll try imagestation...

gmail still isn't working.. and only today, i've been able to access my hotmail... so sorry to those who have e-mailed me and i haven't e-mailed them back. but qlink works.. so if you want to e-mail me, send it to 3wc3@qlink.queensu.ca

so, for the past 2 days, we've been on the other side of Hangzhou... Across the Thousand Island lakes. These islands were formed 50 years ago... originally, the land was just a bunch of mountains... and ppl lived in the areas below the mountains. but the government wanted to build a dam, so they evacuated all the villages in taht area... and built a dam.. because the dam was built, water just "accumulated" on one side of the dam... and the peaks of the mountains formed the "islands". to give you guys an idea of what a dam can do... one side of the dam is 70 metres higher than the other side... which is a huge difference.

ok, so 2 days ago we went inside this dam and got a tour. after that, we got on a boat to cruise over the thousand island lakes. we also had lunch on the boat. then, we got to hangzhou.. some of us dissected fish ... and then we had seminars at night. the funny thing was that we had to do the seminars in a karaoke bar... and so we could hear really bad chinese ppl singing in the room beside us the whole night.

After the semniars, we were just chilling in the karaoke bar... and then terrence and luke just picked up the mic and began singing "endless love"... haha.. then the song frm the titanic. soon, a bunch of us just stayed and sang backstreet boys ('get down', 'as long as you love me') and old school pop songs from M2M, etc... it was really funny and we ended up staying there for 2 and a half hours..

yesterday, we did a lot of habitat assessments and water sampling... so.. it was pretty boring. but at night, we went to a real tea house. it was cool because all you do is pay for your tea... and they give you a huge buffet of food/snacks (e.g. dumplings, french fries, dim sum stuff, candies, ice cream, fruits, vegetables).. and the place was really nice too..

ok that's it for now. for these next 2 days i'll be here on campus ... so hopefully i'll figure out a way to post pics!!

-will

Tuesday May 10, 2006

Monday...May 9

so now i'm in my friend's hotel room. he's got a computer with internet accesss... and it's so much better than the internet cafe i was in 15 minutes ago. ok, so here's some pics...

crap, the pics won't upload.. i'll have to try again later. ok here's just another update that i remembered after looking thru my pics..

- we had a sports night on saturday. me, jerry, and luke played 3 on 3 ... we lost our first game in like, 1 minute. it was up to 5. so ... that sucked, and i was mad. cause one of the chinese guys looked like he was laughing at me. so ... eventually, we got back on the court, and we won like 10 games in a row against different teams... it's not really something i can brag about though, 'cause everyone there is really skinny.. and we were taller than everyone there. and.. on top of that, luke's probably weighs twice as much as any of them. haha.
- we went to an aquaculture (a "farm" for alligators, turtles, fish.. crabs, shrimp) and it was CRAZY. they farm them in these rooms at like 45-50 degrees celsius... we went into these farms.. and i swear.. after 10 seconds, the sweat just starts pouring out... i could barely stand it in there for 5 minutes... and argh, wish i could show pics... anyways, it was cool! 'cause these animals are ectotherms.. so, by increasing the heat by that much.. it will increase their growth rate.. for example, alligators take 3 years to grow to adults..or reproduce.... but by doing it this way, they cut it down to 8 months..

anyways, that's it for now.

Monday May 8, 2006

ok, well, i'm at an internet cafe right now, and it sucks because i can't check my e-mail! they have some kind of censorship over here. anyways... here's an upate on what i did. unfortunately, i can't put up any pics 'cause i can't get the USB thing to work on this computer.

Sunday
- Visited the Grand Canal and Tai Lake..
- At Tai Lake, we did a habitat assessment... meaning, we described the environment of where we sampled. it was pretty cool, but the only thing was that we spent soo long getting there. took about 4 hours to fnially get there, and then it took 3 hours to get back..
-
Monday
- on our way to Zhoushan Island...
- we stopped off at Shaoxing and took a boat ride in a canal, it was cool. i'll upload some pics soon. We ate lunch at a really expensive-looking restaurant... good food. tried their local wine .. they call it "cooking wine". I was sitting with the profs (Yuxiang and Steve) and some other chinese profs... so we had quite a few bottles of it. i ended up sitting beside steve, and he kept filling my glass.. the stuff tasted like soya sauce! he kept caling me "urbane"... still don't know what that means, even though he explained it to me. and now i call him "dapper/sartarian"... gotta look up those words too.
- so we had to stop in Ningbo for the night because we were having some bad weather... so the profs didn't want us taking the ferry to Zhoushan Island... the hotel is SO NICE and they have a real toilet! again, i'll post some pics later. we have all this food and free socks/underwear in there too..haha. what else... oh ya, tomorrow we might nto be able to go to the island again because there's supposed to be a thunderstorm... and the profs don't awnt us to go 'cause if ther is a storm... we might get stuck on the island for a few days... which is not what they want. but there's still a ton of stuff to see here in the city... we're going to check out some fish farms and take samplse by the ocean shore... sounsd cool.
- oh ya, and today we also went to this ancient chinese library... err, i'll post pics later.

so, that's my update. e-mail me and let me know what's up with you guys!

Saturday May 7, 2006

so today, we were supposed to go on a boat and cruise along the Grand Canal to take some water samples, but unfortunately, a member of our group (Jenna), got into a little accident… She was sitting on the back of a bike… and she accidentally fell off, broke her tooth and got a few huge gashes in her upper and lower lips… so, Yuxiang and Steve (our profs) had to stay with her and get things sorted out at the hospital. She’s okay though, her lips are just really swollen. Instead of going to the Grand Canal, we had a lecture on conservation genetics… I think we’re going to go there tomorrow though…

So I included some more pics from yesterday. I hope this turns out ok.. I actually can’t go to the “will-chen.blogspot.com” website.. I can only access it thru my “blogspot manager” when I sign in… it’s weird. I think they have 2 types of internet here.. a domestic one and an international one.. and the domestic one blocks certain websites… anwyays, I hope everything works out.

Just to describe these pics…
- my roomie Luke with a coin.. if you put a coin on this globe and it sticks, it means you’ll be rich.
- Us taking samples from the Xi Xi Wetlands…it rained a lot that day…
- Ate this very famous dish in the Lo Wei Lo Restaurant… You take the fat off of this huge piece of meat, put it into a piece of dough, and eat it like a sandwhich… MmMMMmmm…
- My group that I toured with in Hangzhou… Yuxiang and Steve didn’t go with us though.