The Duke's: August 2010

On the plane to China :)

Well as most of you know Mike and I moved to China this year for a semester to teach English! We have been back for a few weeks now and are pretty adjusted to American life; for the most part. We started off in Hong Kong, going to the Hong Kong Temple everyday doing baptisms as a group, there was about 20 of us; that was a very neat experience! We then headed into 'real', Shenzhen, China and had some crash courses on teaching English (ESL training). After being in Shenzhen for a few days we all headed our separate ways to each of our schools. We taught at college kids at the Hunan Institute of Engineering. Our students were a blast and hung out with them a lot and they loved it and we loved it! We were always busy; being in competitions, or going to watch out students in singing competitions, model competitions, fashion shows, graduation, etc. We didn't get to do a whole of traveling during the semester. We worked five days a week, so it was hard to go anywhere over the weekend. We did have two days off during the semester so for one of those trips we went to the Huanshan Mountains aka the Yellow Mountains we all hear about when people talk about China Mountains. It was an AMAZING view! We camped on top of the mountain, then woke up early to watch the sunrise! GORGEOUS!! We then finished hiking all the way back down the mountain. For the other day we had off during the semester we went to a nearby city to buy the famous China dishes. They were all made in the city and they were pretty cheap. One of my students lives in that and he invited us over for dinner and his family had bought me a gift! His mom and him bought me a hand painted China vase! It's gorgeous!
After we were done at our college we traveled up to Beijing over the fourth of July and saw all the famous sites there; Tian anmen Square and watched the soldiers raise the flag during the sunrise, Forbidden City, saw Chairman Mao's body, Summer Palace, hiked the Great Wall, camped in one of the towers and watched the sunrise! went to an acrobatic show. We had a blast in Beijing! And of course LOTS of shopping and bargaining!! I am a pro! :) Ask Mike!! When we got back from Beijing we had found a new job for the month of July in a near by middle school (about 6 hours away), so we had to hurry and pack up to move the next day. We had a blast with them too! Little kids are so fun, happy, and just too cute. It was really hard to not bring all of them home with me! No, really, it was.
After our last city, Cili, we headed up to Shanghai. We took the train and rode it all night and arrived the next day at about 4pm. We found our hotel and immediately went out to see the city! We only had that day to see Shanghai but we saw more than we were planning. We saw the famous Bund, and all the big buildings. We went to the top of the famous tower, which took about 2 1/2 hours of standing in line! After that is was about 11pm, so headed back to our hotel. We really wanted to see the World Expo in Shanghai, but when we found out our train ride and what time we would be getting in we knew we would have to pass that up :( But that's ok, we enjoyed what we saw WAY better! :) We had a blast!
In the morning we packed up and called a cab and took it the airport to head back to America! The cab cost about 150 yuan which is about maybe $50!! But we were not about to try to lug all off our seven bags on and off the train at 8am on Monday morning in the middle of Shanghai.
So we made it home and we loved our time in China a learned a lot!!
Here are a few pictures of what I have on my computer: