Xuchang Building Openhouse

My one minute of fame. I basically got paid to hold a ribbon for one minute for being white. Hooray for being white in China.

When I first got to China, I met a girl while buying a phone card. Her name is Susan (though I think she has changed it, and she uses another name now... I will continue to call her Susan though). Susan has more or less created her own business over having a network of.... I will say "models" (aka white people), on her phone. She has asked me to do a few various gigs since I have been here. I would have to say this last one was by far the easiest!

The Park on a clear spring day in China

A clear day in China is hard to come by. A clear day where I already have plans to go to a park is even harder to come by. That is why I was so happy to experience going to this park here in Zhengzhou.

Traveling in China - Day 12 and 13 - Going Home

Picture from the train ride home

By this point we were all pretty anxious to go home and do laundry. The trip was fun but there is something nice to being in a familiar bed (and being somewhere with a space heater).

Traveling in China - Day 1 - Off to Guangxi 广西

Here in China school doesn't get out around Christmas time. Fortunately for me, this past Christmas was on a Sunday, so I had the day off, but I still had to teach English classes for a week afterward.

What IS nice however is that the Chinese new year is a <understatement>pretty big deal</understatement>. This means that from the beginning of January until the middle of February has no school! Woot!

I was able to endure a week of nothing in my apartment before I realized that doing nothing is only slightly more fun than actually going to work. That called for a plan. A plan to do SOMETHING! When most people go to China, the go with the intent to travel. Sounded like a good plan to me, so that is what I decided to do. I talked to a couple other teachers here who wanted to travel as well and we decided to go to southern China near the border of Vietnam. From Zhengzhou (Henan province) to Nanning (Guangxi province) is just over 1000 miles (see map below). It is about the same distance as driving a car from Provo, UT to Kansas city MO. (Incidentally, I just found out from Wikipedia that Nanning is sisters cities to Provo. How cool is that?!)




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