Remembering China.......

Because I'm going back! It seems a little crazy, especially when I dig up and read THIS.

I then have to go and find something a bit more positive like THIS, to remember why I loved this insane place so much, and all the things I learned from it.

I'm really excited for this summer.























I'll explain more later as to why I'm going back. It's definitely not on holiday. I've actually been offered a job to work with American high schoolers working with orphans up in Beijing. A bit heavy for this lighthearted post, so more on that later.

Right now I'm focusing on how I'm going to be turning vegetarian again!

Weekend in Fuyang

Ahhhhh…The weekend is over and already this Monday has started off pouring down rain. I’m trying to find things to do with myself now that I’m done with class, but the rain is seriously putting a cramp on my outside plans. I did manage to get a small bike ride in today before the downpour started.

At least I had a great weekend to be thankful for. We stayed in and around town this weekend, which was nice and low key. Friday night we had some friends, who haven’t been in Fuyang very long, over for dinner and then we all headed to our local pub Music House, where we remembered Michael Jackson and danced the night away. It was fun to go out. Eliot and I haven’t been going out as much recently. I think we’re both just a little burned out on the small town scene. There’s one bar that we’ve been going to for the last 10 months and needless to say, we’re ready for a change. Saturday night we headed to Hangzhou (the big city that’s an hour away from where we live) to watch the rugby match (my first time ever) on TV, between South Africa and Great Britain. It was definitely an exciting and physical game with the British leading most of the time and South Africa pulling it all off at the last minute.

On Sunday we really wanted to go see something around our town. There’s a Fuyang tourism website that has information about different places nearby and we read about a place called Tian Zhong Shan, or Heavenly Clock Mountain. It’s supposed to be an easy hike up a small mountain, with a lot of streams and small waterfalls. But, as with everything in China, there were no directions on how to get there; it only said to take a bus from Fuyang station. Knowing it was near Fuyang we really wanted to take the motorbike so we did a quick Google Earth search of the place, which gave us a rough location and decided to try and find it ourselves based off that.

Here are the photos of what we found:


~I may have too many pictures of bamboo.~


~The Mountain~


~Swings~


~Creek~


~Swinging Bridge~


~Lots of green!~


~Resting Dragonfly~


~Small Fall~


~Eliot~


~Boulders~


~Another Fall~


~Orange wildflowers~

I'm Melting!

Wow! It's gotten hot here. This week it's been up in the 90's but with humidity it's been feeling like it's around 105. I don't mind the heat so much, I definitely prefer it to the cold, but Eliot doesn't handle it quite as well. He has a condition we refer to as "showering." It started at ActionQuest down in the Caribbean and every time I'd see him he'd be pouring with sweat and I would make some comment like, "Was it raining down in the engine room locker?" So needless to say he tends to prefer cooler weather. But right now in little Fuyang it's hot, humid, there's no wind and there's no water to cool ourselves off in (unless we want to go jump in the dirty river).

So nothing really new going on with us. We've been trying to get some stuff packed up to ship back so SA. I've been finishing up my last few weeks at my Chinese school and trying to cram as much vocab and grammar into my head as possible. Right now my head is spinning, but I'm really happy with what I've managed to learn in such a short amount of time. Eliot's job has 2 prototype boats going right now. A 37' power cat and a 38' sail cat. He's hoping they launch the 37' before we leave, it would be a nice way to end our time out here in China.

So since Eliot only has every other weekend off we are planning on going and seeing something new for the last few weekend that we do have. No sure where we're going to go this weekend, but I'll definitely be documenting it. We're thinking either a place called Thousand Island Lake (a huge lake with tons of islands) or going out to the coast and going to see another little island we heard about.

Since the photos are the best part, here some that I took of our little town. Some are from last weekend and some are from during the winter time when it was a bit colder.


Riverside dinner with friends.


From the top of Dong Wu park.

The sampan boats coming in to sell their goods.


Playing cards to pass the time.

Brrrrr....

River Town