China

These pictures are the fruit of another walking adventure I went on with Tim. We went to Yuexiao park and walked around for a while, and saw the famous five goat statue. I had never heard of this before coming here, but there are billboards around town showing famous things from all over the world including the statue of liberty, the Sydney opera house, and the five goat statue, so I guess it's a big deal. We also saw the site of an ancient Chinese tomb and the stuff that was extracted from it. Some of that was cool, and some of it was a little oversold. But the tomb itself was cool.

A few weeks ago a new foreign teacher came. I met him at Tianhe park and we looked around and explored a little bit.

My friend Tim was invited to go with his school's principal and her family to see a temple in the far south part of town on Tomb Sweeping Day. He invited me to come along, and we got up early on our vacation day to meet the family. Jasmine, spoke great English and served as our tour guide. Her parents did not speak English, but with body language and a little translation, we could communicate just fine.

Saturday (3 April) Tim and I took a walking trip around an area of town that is pretty close to my house. We found a pedestrian mall, tons of jade jewelry stores, a White-person-infested Island and lots of other cool stuff. I'm not sure about the history of Shamian Island, but there are lots of English signs and white people, and the food prices are set to match those in western cultures. Obviously we didn't eat there :) There are lots of pictures so I've selected a representative subset to show here.

On Friday (2 April) I went to GrandView mall for dinner and to look around a little. The place is huge and there is an adventure floor that looks really cool, but we didn't do much other than look because we still haven't gotten paid. I took pictures of the highlights.

By pure chance, I met the mother of one of my students at lunch a few days ago. We ate together and exchanged email addresses, and she told me that her brother had a son in another one of my classes. Saturday was her brother's birthday party, and since the family was getting together they decided to invite me as well. I figured it would be a little awkward because of the communication barrier, but didn't let that stop me. I met the whole extended family and went out to a fancy dinner. They even paid for me! It was fun and, somewhat surprisingly, not awkward at all.

This album contains all the pictures of hilarious english misspellings and mistranslations that I've seen in China. Unfortunately the camera will probably never capture the priceless interaction that goes (on a regular basis) as follows. I'm walking down the street and see an english T-shirt and read it. It inevitably says something like "Everyone, yes what? thereby you?" Or "I got more kick that you!" and I can't help but smile. The Chinese person wearing it sees me smiling and realizes how cool he must be because the white guy liked his english shirt. I love it when that happens.

Beijing Road is a pedestrian mall where they shut down several blocks of the road to traffic, and allow people to walk up and down the street browsing the different shops.  I went there with two other foreign teachers and Zac bought a Rolex (or Faulex) from the upstairs room of some subtle little backstreet shop.

These are pictures that I took on the street and from the fire escape of the hotel that I stayed in the first few nights that I was in China.  The streets have many cool neon and LED signs that make the city look exciting.  Which it is :)

These are all the pictures that I've taken in and around my school.  I teach at 北大附中 which is the affiliated high school of Peking University.  The buildings have a really cool design.