David's Big Adventure in China

We’re more than halfway through the semester now and I’ve got a pretty easy workload. I started off with a pretty light load this semester and some classes end early. After next week I’ll be down to 7 periods which is about 2 days work per week (each period is 40 minutes of class time). Bonnie has 12 periods. Most students have about 24 periods per week but get very little homework from most of their classes. I teach a class of oral English for students who have English as their second major and in addition to their normal load they have 13 to 17 periods of English on the weekends. All second major classes are scheduled on the weekends so that they don’t interfere with their normal classes. I was very frustrated with my second major students last semester because it seemed few of them did the homework I assigned. Then this semester after I learned that they have 35 to 40 periods a week in total I had a new appreciation for why they didn’t do the homework. I also teach a class of oral English to teachers who are preparing for a test that will determine if their English is good enough to work abroad. For many of them to advance to the title of Professor they need to go abroad for a year for advanced work in their field. I have been surprised by the lack of critical thinking skills demonstrated by this group. These should be the university’s brightest as they are the up and comers with masters and PhD degrees. The education system here doesn’t develop thinkers, it develops memorizers who can regurgitate the material on exams. The elite schools are better but the masses of students here don’t get a very good education. That’s why so many parents of Chinese students want their child to study abroad. The students here don’t really have pride in their schools. You don’t see students wearing clothes with the name of their school.

I’m also working one on one with a PhD in computer science who will be going to Arizona State University for a year to work with a Professor there. He wants to improve his oral English before he goes there this fall. One of the staff in the English department got a scholarship to go to New College which is located right on the bay in Sarasota, Florida. Not a bad place to be sent for a year! It’s a small but elite Liberal Arts college.

We started shopping for decorating our new apartment but we still don’t know when we’ll get the keys. The building looks like it’s pretty much finished but they won’t tell us when it will be completed. The best guess is that we will get the keys in September or October then we will start the decorating process which will take 2 to 3 months since it includes flooring, plumbing fixtures, cabinets, etc. Then we want to let it sit for a couple months to let all the fumes from the new materials to dissipate. So it will be sometime after the first of the year before we can move in. Hopefully June, 2014, at the latest. Thus I plan to teach for one more year in order to keep the apartment we’re in now until we can move into the new apartment. I’m tentatively planning to retire or at least cut back my work schedule even more in July, 2014. Until next time……

We’ve now completed all our Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) travels and started back to work on March 4. We went to the states for about 16 days in late January and early February. We arrived in Jacksonville, FL where we had a great seafood dinner with cousin Craig. The next day, the Bowdish’s picked us up and took us to Savannah, Georgia for my annual Coca-Cola group reunion which was hosted by the Grady’s this year. We had 3 days of great friends and great food while seeing the sites of Savannah. We then went back to Tampa with the Bowdish’s and stayed 1 night with them before heading off to Orlando and Disney World. We went to the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT and the Space Center and Bonnie enjoyed EPCOT the most. We went back to Tampa for a few more days at the Bowdish bed and breakfast and enjoyed visiting old friends and former co-workers, going to the beach at Fort De Soto in St. Pete, and a Superbowl party hosted by the Bowdish’s. We were fortunate to have very nice weather in Georgia and Florida during our time there.

We then left the sunny south and headed to Indiana and snow on the ground. A couple hours after arriving at my parents home in Richmond I helped Bonnie make her first ever snowman. It was pretty ugly but at least you could tell what it was supposed to be. We enjoyed about 5 days with friends and family before heading back to Nanning. On both ends of our trip we had to spend a night in Hong Kong as we couldn’t get connections that would allow us to arrive at the final destination without an overnight stopover. I’ve gotten into the habit of bringing back an extra suitcase filled with stuff that either I can’t buy in Nanning or is very expensive to buy there; mostly canned foods and dessert mixes (no-bake cheesecake, brownies, cookies, etc.). In fact, we took an empty suitcase with us to the states that we used last time to bring stuff back to Nanning.

We arrived back in Nanning just after Chinese New Year day so we were lucky to miss most of the fireworks. We were in Nanning about a week before we packed again and left for Thailand. We flew to Guangzhou then on to Bangkok. We spent a day and a half in Bangkok seeing the sites before going to Chiang Mai in the north. Two days in Bangkok is enough to see the sites such as the Grand Palace and some temples. Bangkok is a bustling city with pollution and high temperatures that can leave you longing for cool nights in a quiet place. Chiang Mai comes close to providing that. It’s a city that’s big enough but not too big with plenty to do and all at an affordable price. We spent about $27 for a pretty decent room in a hostel located within the old city walls. Dinners for two cost between $7 and $15 in most restaurants.

The first day in Chiang Mai we did a tour that included an elephant ride (see pics), a hike to a small hill tribe village, and a rafting trip on bamboo rafts complete with water fights that included our 9 and 10 year old raft guides. I don’t know about labor laws in Thailand but the kids seemed to enjoy their work. The second day we went to a zip line park and enjoying zipping from tree stand to tree stand. The park did a nice job including some other interesting ways to get from one place to another (see pics). The third day we did a tour to Doi Inthanon National Park which was the least exciting of our activities. Then we went to the beach resort area of Phuket where we enjoyed Simon’s Cabaret lady boy show, a snorkeling trip to Phi Phi Island and various kinds of foods. Then we returned to Bangkok for a day before heading back home to Nanning.

There were so many tourists in Thailand. It seemed that most of the tourists we saw in Bangkok were Chinese, Chiang Mai had a mixture of tourists and Phuket seemed to have lots of Russians although our snorkeling trip was with mostly Chinese. Well that’s all for now……….until next time.

We arrived back in Nanning on August 30th and I had my first class a few days after that. The first couple weeks we didn’t have a full schedule of classes so it was good to get back to ... [Continue reading this entry]

We had a great time on our road trip throughout the Midwest. After spending about 5 days with friends and family in Richmond, Indiana we went to Indianapolis and enjoyed the Parkers’ hospitality before heading on to St. Louis. ... [Continue reading this entry]

I’m currently enjoying a pretty relaxing life as I’m not working much. It appears my life as a Chinese pig farmer is about over and I’ll be transitioning back to teaching. In September I’ll be back teaching at ... [Continue reading this entry]

Here is a link to an article you might find interesting about Chinese mistresses referred to here as ernais which directly translated means second breast. Because there is such a gap here between rich and ... [Continue reading this entry]

There’s not much new to write about this time so this will be a short post. I’ve been working a lot as we’re still trying to finish our yearend close and get caught up on the January and February ... [Continue reading this entry]

It’s now the last night of my Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) holiday and I have to go back to work tomorrow (Sunday) after 7 days off. This is the most important holiday here and is the equivalent of ... [Continue reading this entry]

Well it’s another Christmas in China. It’s nice that it fell on Sunday so at least it wasn’t a normal work day but we’ve been so busy at work that Bonnie and I ended up ... [Continue reading this entry]

Below is part of an article from China Daily. You can find the entire article on the China Daily website if you're interested. As far as I know, I've never consumed any placenta. Try not to think about ... [Continue reading this entry]