The Begining of Year 2

We have made it to China safe and sound. Our flight over was painfully long. Way longer than I remember. After sleeping, napping, watching a movie and than repeating that three times we arrived in Hong Kong airport at 4am. A few hours later we had a long staff meeting and surprisingly stayed awake for most of the day. Our new room is 'off the hook' as some may say. We have a much bigger kitchen and bathroom this year. It even has three sinks and hot running water!! We also have a lot of storage space this year. And since we're on 6th floor this year we're hopping there will be less mold, bugs and mice!

As for school life. We've had several meetings and I've had a lot of scheduling conflicts, but other than that we've just been unpaking from last year and getting ready for our students on Monday.

Today we got our first small set of groceries and this evening we're going on a staff shopping trip to IKEA!!!! When everything is up and ready for show I'll post up some pictures.

Thailand Round II

So we had a four day weekend here in Shenzhen and Greg and I decided we would stay put for the weekend, see some of the town and save up our money. However on Friday afternoon at 4:30 we found out that our 4 day weekend was changed by the government to a 5 day weekend. So a group of us jumped on the computer and started hunting for cheap tickets to anywhere in Asia and we found some for Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. This is the first city Greg and I visited in Thailand on our last trip where we feel in love with the city. Last time we did zip lining through a jungle, cooking course and an elephant orphanage.
This time we decided to stay a hostel that cost more than 3$ Canadian and get a place with a pool (it was only 10$ Canadian, SO CHEAP!!). Greg went to the same zip lining place again with our friends and had a blast. Some of the lines were a bit different, so it wasn't the exact same. While he was there, I went some of our other friends to visit the northern tribes of Thailand. We visited about 4 different tribes
Northern Thailand is home to interesting and colourful ethnic minorities, known as the hill tribes. These add an important element to tourism here and you may visit. Since most are rural and poor, any sales they can make to tourist are welcome.
Most of the hill tribes have come in the past 100 years from outside of Asian and have largely preserved their traditional ways, making them a fascinating cultural study. They prefer living above 1,000m, and shy away from the outside world.
There are seven broad hill tribe groupings, however. Each hill tribe has its own customs, language, dress and spiritual beliefs.
Most of the hill tribes living in the remote upland areas practice subsistence farming. They were pretty much left alone until the 1950s, when the increase in their numbers, and became really poor until the government decided to help out.
Growing opium brought the tribes a lot of money and the government worked hard to get rid of the crops and get them to grow vegetables to make money instead.
We went to visit several tribes the first was the Karen tribe. The Karen wear woven v-neck tunics of various natural colors and turbans. They are skilled weavers and the most environmentally conscious of the hill tribes. We then visited the Akha tribe which is originally from Tibet. They are the poorest of the hill tribes, resisting to mainstream Thai culture. They are, however, the most fascinating and colorful of the hill tribes and can easily be visited. We also visited the Lisu tribe. Their women are distinguished by their brightly coloured tunics, worn over long pants; some of the older generation continues to wear tasselled turbans on their heads. Unlike other hill tribes, they don't usually live in stilted houses.
The most fascinating tribe was the Long Necks. As you can see in my pictures the women of this tribe wear rings around their necks in an attempt to make them longer. Starting a very young age they begin to wear them as years go on they add rings, stretching this neck until it is as long as they can get it. It is a tradition in their tribe that has gone on for years and it also seen as being very beautiful. The sad part is that some have stretched their necks so much that if they were to take the rings off their neck could not support itself. Also some women have bugs that crawl instead the rings and they can’t get them out. Many Thai people have tried to convince them to stop wearing them, but they won’t listen. It was also sad to find out that they don’t belong to any country. Their tribe originated from Burma, but was kicked out (I don’t remember why). So they live in the northern hills of Thailand, but they also won’t give them citizenship. So they really don’t belong anywhere, they keep moving every couple of years to where ever they can. I felt very sorry for them.
On our trip to the tribes our group also got to eat a great Thai buffet beside elephants and then check out this 360m long ancient cave. At the end of the tour we visited this beautiful orchid farm.
Our Sunday night was spent at a HUGE night bazaar (market) where I bought waaaay to many things for cheap and then went to a Chinese market where I spent even more. Greg and I also stopped for a hamburger on the way home and saw a baby elephant being used for money on the street. It was very sad to see after we had visited the elephant orphanage last trip. I desperately wanted to save him.
Other than that we went to this Tiger zoo called Tiger Kingdom where we each paid less than 20$ to visit a tiger for about 10 minutes. Most were sleeping, or playing in the water. They are quite lazy animals and live a great life in this zoo. All they do is eat chicken, swim, sleep, and get belly rubs from tourist. Sounds like the life! It’s awesome to say that I’ve cuddled a tiger!
The rest of our vacation was spent in our pool in 40 degree weather, hanging out with our friends. It was a great trip and even though we didn’t save any money, I’m glad we went back to Chiang Mai and would recommend it to anyone!!

These are not wierd to us

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/16-products-they-only-sell-at-chinese-walmarts

Spitting

This bit of our experience of China probably doesn't need much explanation. It is definitely something I will never get used to and that is how much the Chinese spit. And it's not a polite little 'tut' spit off to the side of a street. It's a huge hocking loogie that involves deep throat hacking and a large amount of saliva which is then spat where ever the person feels like it. It is done noisily on trains, in the streets, out of bus and car windows and into bus dustbins. Most men make really loud sounds while doing it and some elderly women can also produce a pretty mean spit, but it will always catch my attention no matter who is doing it. The younger generation does it much less, but there are even a few rare students in our school who feel the need to spit during class in the garbage can. Some are start to campaign against it, but I think the movement is slow. It is definitely part of the everyday soundtrack of China. This picture is a sign on a train window.

Hard Beds

Another interesting fact about living in China is that the beds are as hard as rock!
Hard beds are very popular in China. Chinese people believe that hard beds are good for your health so the beds are made this way. Hotels don't even accommodate to the many foreign tourists coming to Shenzhen, so if you go to a hotel the beds are the exact same. Surprisingly even though our bed sometimes feels like we're sleeping on a kitchen table, my back has absolutely no problems here (which is rare). I know I'm going to miss this bed when I go back to Canada because I've had the best sleeps on it. Maybe China is onto something. Watch out Mom! I might be sleeping on your table this summer. (jk)

Squatters

This is what a toilet looks like when we are out and about in the town of Shenzhen. Occasionally we will be able to find a nice clean western toilet, but most of the time we have to suffer through using a 'squatter'. They are absolutely horrible, but when you gotta go you gotta go. We avoid them like the plague, but unfortunately they are unavoidable. If you are curious as to how we use them, which is a feat in itself check out this website for instructions http://www.banterist.com/archivefiles/000348.html

Birthday coming up

Ah yes and for my birthday that is coming up I've decided to round up the teachers here and have a big potluck on Sunday night. All I want is real food.

The information to go with the pictures: February Break

So I just realized that I haven't actually written about our February trip and it's April already. To fill you in, our school had a two week holiday at the end of February to celebrate Chinese New Year. For most of the Chinese this is they're only holiday all year and they go ALL OUT. It symbolizes the end of a business year for many and thus there are many superstitions and traditions held. One of the weirdest I heard was that you need to get a hair cut before New Year day because you couldn't cut if for the whole month afterward. If you did cut in during that month your uncle will die. Fireworks were set off everyday at any time of day for 3 weeks straight. One new years eve the WHOLE ENTIRE TOWN was setting off fireworks all at the same time. I cannot begin to describe the feeling of standing on a ruff in a city of over 14 million watching fireworks of all shapes and sizes coming out of every street corner, every apartment window and on top of every building. It was 360 degrees of thousands of fireworks...it was breathtaking.
Jayme was able to come visit me for these wonderful two weeks off so she was able to join in the festivities. Jay arrived Friday night and spent two nights in Shenzhen with us before we flew up to Beijing with my Mta friend Alicia. We were in Beijing for 4 full days of tourism. We walked the great wall, went to ti'an men square, saw the forbidden city, went to a jade market, learnt about traditional chinese medicine, did some really really cheap shopping, saw a temple fair, watch an acrobatic show, went to an antique market, ate peking duck and even ate in between. We were completely exhausted by the time we left back to Shenzhen.
In shenzhen I took Jayme to all my great shopping places to get cheap purses and pearls, we got a hair wash, ate my favorite sushi restaurant and fit in a pedicure and then one day later Greg, Jayme and I left for Boracay in the Philippians. There we layed on a beautiful beach everyday, took a glass bottom boat tour, checked out some nearby islands, did some snorkeling, ate really good food, drank a lot of cocktails and went in a zorb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorbing). After 6 days in the sun we had a beautiful tan and we ready to return back to our normal lives. Jay stayed for one more night in Shenzhen before she sadly left me for Canada.
Ever since then Greg and I have been back into our normal schedules or work, gym, mandarin lessons. Greg still tutoring, playing basketball and eating Chinese BBQ and beer. We're starting to get excited about coming home. Under 100 days left!

so many spelling mistakes...:S
I'll fix them later. sorry

Ko Phi Phi- snorkelling

After Boxing Day we move on to a different beach called Ko Phi Phi. This was a very small island loaded with tourists. We saw people from all over the world speaking many different languages. Here the beach was much bigger and there were many places to go tourist shopping. Here spent most of our time enjoying the beach, sun and some fancy drinks. Our one day of adventure was spent on a beach touring near by islands. We took a long tail boat to an island with monkeys on it. We did two different snorkelling stops and saw some coral reef, tropical fish and even some sharks. Like the kind you don’t want to see when you’re in the water. Apparently they’re safe to swim with, but just the same I wanted to be out of the water after seeing one. Greg on the other hand chased one down to get a good look at it. We also visited Mai beach from the movie “The Beach” with Leonardo DiCaprio. On the way home we watch the sun set. It wasn’t as good as the Bay of Chaleur, but I didn’t tell them that.

Christmas on long beach

Christmas eve, Christmas day and boxing day our group really wanted to be away from the touristy areas, so we went to a small quiet beach not far outside of a town called Krabbi. Here Greg and I shared a little beach hut right next to the water. During these days we didn’t do much besides, swim, sunbath, and eat. It was very different than our other places because we had no access to internet and power was only on from 7pm till 6am. On Christmas morning we got up and all had breakfast together. We had exchanged names earlier on in the trip so we each had a gift to open. Christmas day was spent on our quiet beach and in the evening we went into town to skype with our family.

Thai food cooking course

For our last full day in Chiang Mai we decided to go to an organic farm, again, outside of the city. Here surrounded by empty fields and rural Thailand was a small piece of property filled with gardens and tiny cooking shacks. We were lead through the gardens as our guide, Max, explained what each plant was, how it smelt and what we could and could not find in Canada. We were given red aprons and sombreros to wear. Each of us cooked 4 different dishes throughout the day. Everyone had a chance to make curry from scratch, a soup, salad and a dessert. My dessert was mango with sticky rice, which sounds weird, but was amazing! I even compared it to the greatness of ice cream. It’ll be hard to make most of these dishes back in Canada, but we both loved everything we made, so we’re going to try.