Outta Here

Hey folks,
No time for a long post, I'm leaving this afternoon for the Philippines: Coron and El Nido in the Palawans.  I'm going to get my diving certification, and do a lot of sitting on the beach.

Biggest recent event to report was a company holiday party on a boat in Hong Kong harbor, which was actually a surprise wedding anniversary party/ second marriage for one of the couples on our staff.  Hong Kong is nuts, not really my kind of place: too crowded, streets are too small, etc.  But the boat ride was fun, and we all got Chinese clothes made.  Here's me:

And just for fun, here's a super-creepy doll on the street near my apartment.

Ok, I gotta finish packing.  Happy holidays everyone. Should have lots to report in a couple of weeks.

Oh Mai, Part 2

Tuesday
So, after a great birthday, we woke up for a relaxing day in the city with no real plans.  We did some Wat touring, where we came across these monks in deep meditation on display.  The first wat we visited had one off in a corner, and we couldn't really tell if it was a statue or a real person.  They look very realistic for a statue, but they were completely motionless and their skin almost didn't look real: probably a result of whatever intense state they need to get their metabolism into.

These are real dudes, I think...

 The next wat had eight of them sitting in the main temple, and then one out back in a smaller structure who was locked in a glass box!  I didn't feel comfortable taking his picture.  I also learned that the fat Buddha image is not actually the Buddha, but a monk.  He used to be so handsome that he was a distraction to other monks, so with Buddha's help he turned himself fat and ugly (or something like that: you can maybe read the description in the picture).

Fat monk

Cool ruins behind the wat

 After another massage, we stayed up way too late talking.

Wednesday
Had to wake up way to early to take a tour of the Chiang Rai region.  We started with a stop at the White Temple, an amazing work of art that some famous artist has been working on for years.  Some of the coolest sculptures I've ever seen, and definitely a different kind of Wat from the traditional ones.

Totally metal temple!

"The Hell Gate"

Hands reaching up to get ya!

This thing is completely made up of these little metal charms (see next pic from the bottom)

After that, we went to a "longneck village", which was mostly just a craft market run by the displaced Karen tribe from Myanmar.  These are the women who stretch their necks with brass hoops.  I was pretty underwhelmed, but I was also too tired to enjoy much of this day.  We continued to the Golden triangle, where you can see Myanmar and Laos across the river.  We took a boat tour, where we were able to get close to a casino in Myanmar and actually got off in Laos for about 20 minutes.

The Buddha is in Thailand, and the golden dome is in Laos

I went to Laos!  Who knew?   

Border crossing to Myanmar

Your intrepid traveler, at the end of the road in Thailand

Then we traveled to the northernmost point in Thailand, and the legitimate border crossing for Myanmar (where a member of our group had to cross the border to renew her visa), then back in the van for a long, bumpy ride home.  Packed it in because we were too tired to do anything that night.

Thursday
Last full day in Chiang Mai, more wats and a massage by a blind guy.  Also, the stupidest insect "museum" ever.  My favorite exhibit: a display box of old torn cloth:

I really hope you take the time to read the description of the old torn cloth (I paid money to go in this place!)

The description of log fighting beetles is pretty hot (and very scientific, I'm sure)

Went to a street market at night to do some souvenir shopping, but I wasn't really in the mood, and didn't see anything that struck my fancy.

Friday
We have to leave today, and the "vacation is over" blues are settling in.  Did some walking and got the best massage of the trip. A few hours before we had to head to the airport, we rushed over to the airline office and tried to see if we could push our flight back a day, but it was a no-go.  Tuk-tuk to the airport, back to Macau and ridiculous immigration, and a long car ride back to Dongguan.

Over the next two days before we went back to school I got disgustingly sick, so it's probably good that we left when we did.  School is back in session, and I'm trying my best to keep on top of things and have a good attitude.  Next stop: Philippines for Christmas!

Miss you all, write and send pictures.

Oh Mai, Chiang Mai

Got through the end of first quarter at school, with report cards, parent teacher conferences, and a school Halloween party.  It's been so busy with all of that at school that I've hardly had time for thinking about anything else, but I did plan a trip to Chiang Mai, Thailand with one of the other teachers.  We went for the first week of November, which was our school's fall break.  Here's what I can remember of the trip.

Day 1: Friday, Nov. 2
We rushed out of school after a professional development day in a private car, went home to get our bags, and headed out to Macau to catch the plane.  One lasting lesson I've learned from this trip is NEVER, EVER try to fly out of Macau unless you have a half day to get to the airport.  The car ride took almost three hours, and that's just to the border crossing, called Gongbei.  We get there, and it's this crazy busy scrum of people going into a huge building, just nonstop rivers of people.  Inside the building, you get in line for exiting China.  I think that took about 30-40 minutes, and then I thought we were through.  We walked through a long corridor, turned a corner, and there we are at ANOTHER IMMIGRATION LINE!  This one was to get INTO Macau.  Waiting, etc, then we rushed out and got a taxi to the airport and made it with 15 minutes to spare.  We got into CM late that night, took a tuk-tuk to our hotel, and crashed for the night.

Day 2: Saturday
Woke up and had breakfast, then went walking around the city to get our bearings.  Stopped for a fish pedicure, which felt awesome:

Then we spent the rest of the day walking around, looking at temples and monuments, getting a massage, stopping for snacks and drinks, and planning for the rest of the week.

Day 3: Sunday

Got all ready to go for a tour we had booked earlier, and ended up waiting for over an hour because the tour company forgot us.  We finally got out to the countryside, down a bumpy road, to the beginning of our white water rafting adventure.  We were grouped with a bunch of Belgians, who seemed to take having to wait for us pretty well.  After a brief set of instructions we headed out.  This was a first for me, and I'm pretty sure it was a relatively tame stretch of water.  Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun.  I almost fell out once.  We were in there somewhere around 2 or 3 hours, then headed to our village "homestay".  This was a stay at a guesthouse in a small village in the mountains outside Chiang Mai.  It was nice and peaceful, we got a home cooked Thai meal, in-room massages, and had to go to bed early because the whole town was shut down by 9pm.  The village had multiple streams running through it, so the sound of rushing water was a pleasant background to everything going on.  

View from the balcony of our guest house

Day 4: Monday, International Jon-Luke Lind Day

Woke up relaxed and ready for more action, had breakfast, and we were rushed off to the tour company's office to begin our zipline journey through the jungle canopy.  This was a really fun and exciting activity, lots of different ziplines high in the trees, just the right mix of adrenaline and beautiful scenery.  We had a really funny guide, and my travel partner surprised me by getting the group to sing me happy birthday on one of the platforms.

Went back to the office for a Thai lunch, then to a waterfall, 

then back to town. After settling back in we went for a massage, then some exploring, then a night on the town starting with a Thai boxing match.

I'll post the rest of the trip later.

Moon Festival

Ok, I just posted, so I'll keep this short. I wanted to share a few pics of the moon festival festivities in the square outside the cultural center.  

Here is one of the flower arrangements during the daytime

Here's a Chinese car in front of another arrangement.  Those big red things are all covered with silk flowers.

Here's a huge earthworm!

This is at night.  There were these pieces of paper hanging on lines, and people would stand around reading them, and occasionally tear one down and go somewhere.  We found out later that they were sort of riddles, and people could get prizes for solving them.

One of the dance exhibitions in the amphitheater.

The reason for the festival: the moon was beautiful that night.

Another cool flower arrangement.

Nothing much else to report.  We had some drinks outside a bar on a pedestrian street close to my apartment last night.  At the place next door, some guy performed a long ritual blessing the place by burning incense and intricately folded packets of paper.  Just another interesting thing that happened that I've never seen before.

I had an awesome conversation with mom and the Kingsley tribe this morning.  It was really great to talk to those cousins again. It's been a long time.  My air conditioning and microwave got fixed this afternoon, so even though I had nothing to do with that, I'm getting a sense of accomplishment from it, and using it as an excuse to procrastinate and watch some TV!  Yeah!

Peace All,
Jon

First Break

Well, I made it to the first break.  It's the Moon Festival in China this week,  which is also called the lantern festival or mid-autumn festival.  From what I can gather, it's sort of a celebration of the full moon, and there's a folk tale behind it.  Chinese people usually get together with family, drink tea, and eat moon cakes.

Moon cakes are weird.  They're these dense little cakes that may contain a great number and variety of fillings, from nuts to egg yolks (baked whole into the middle of the cake) to chicken.  Not my favorite, but people here can't get enough.  Our family had a Thai women live with us for awhile, and on one of her visits, she brought moon cakes.  It's still a running joke around our house, and I think Dad still uses the tin for cookies at Christmas time.

At school, we had pajama day to celebrate, and many of the students and staff wore pajamas to school. At the end of the day, the teachers and the staff organized a tea room and lantern making, and then the secondary students put on a play illustrating the folk tale behind the festival.  We wrapped up the activities with a pomello eating contest.

 So we had a shortened week this week and next week at school, and I'm finally able to relax for a bit.  I'm sticking around Dongguan and not committing to doing too much.  It's only a six day break, so I didn't feel like going through the planning of taking an actual trip, although many of my co-workers are out of town.  Yesterday, I had a nice day cooking a big lasagna meal with one of the other teachers who stayed, and then we invited all the rest over to eat.  It can be challenging to cook over here.  We spent much of the day going around to 3 different grocery stores trying to find ingredients, and some (ricotta) we just had to make do without.  I also made my favorite oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies.

The cultural center near our apartments is being prepared for the celebrations on Sunday.  there are big sculptures covered with silk flowers, and banners up all over the city.

I'm going to try to get a little bit ahead of the game over the next few days, and plan things out ahead of time.  The workload has been a little brutal recently, trying to keep up with five different classes, helping other teachers with tech issues, preparing for my after school computer clubs...  I keep telling myself that it has to get easier soon; I just hope that soon doesn't mean next year!

I hope everyone stateside is doing well.  I'm getting good reports from some former students: keep it up, guys!  Ellie and Kurt's new twins seem to be doing well, and they have their aunt Rose and grandma Suzanne to help out.  Miss you all, keep in touch, send pictures.

Peace,
Jon

Oh my goodness...

Things are very busy here.  I'm in training for some management software at school all weekend, and I've been spinning my wheels on getting some lessons together.  It's been too long since I had to do lesson planning, and I don't really know where to start.  Everyone is really helpful, though, and supportive.

I really lucked out with the group of co-workers here.  There are two other single guys, four or five single women, and three couples.  All of them have an incredible amount of experience and hearing their stories is sometimes overwhelming.  Very interesting people, and I can at least get along with all of them.  Also, the director of the school is an amazing person.  He's been all over the world, and had some crazy experiences that he loves telling all of us about.  He's also the most upbeat and interested person I've ever met.  If I had to deal with half the headaches he does, I don't know if I could keep it together.

Then there's the local staff: a whole army of young Chinese women that work ridiculous hours trying to keep things running, ordering supplies, cleaning the school, etc.  They all have funny english names: my favorite is Sherman, a tiny young woman who runs the front desk.  I call her "the tank"

I started writing this entry a week ago, and got bogged down with trying to do some of my real work.  I've made it through the first full week of school!  With five different classes to prepare for, I'm barely keeping my head above water.  But, the kids are mostly great.  I just have to learn how to keep up with them.

We invited teachers from another startup school in nearby Nansha for a school tour and dinner.  This was actually the first school that I interviewed for back in February.  Now, I'm kind of glad I didn't get that job.  They're out in the middle of the wilderness, a 30 minute bike ride from the nearest shops, and it's a boarding school, so they have babysitting responsibilities as well as teaching.  The one nice thing is that they only have 9th grade to start.  That would definitely make my life much easier.  Anyway, they were very nice, and I'm sure we'll get together again.

The apartment's coming together, sort of.  I am writing this from my couch on a wireless keyboard, with the computer displayed on my ridiculous tv.  I checked my email in 3D this morning, just because I can.  The bed's still a big issue, so hard I might as well sleep on the floor.  I developed some pretty serious back pain earlier this week, which turned into a good excuse to get a massage.  That helped, but I don't think the Chinese are used to working on people with body hair. I'll have to ask her to use more oil next time; my legs and stomach got plucked, and feel like they've been rug-burned.

I should really be doing schoolwork right now, but I can't get into the right mode.  No video this time, but here are some pictures:

First some funny signs from my apartment complex (they're a little hard to read):

Don't Paly with Water

Grass are sleeping.  Leave them alone!

Bullish on pets

Mr. Jon's classroom

I had to try the spicy duck neck, but it's gross: all bones!

Coolest cups ever.  They read "Diversified blue genius offers you boundless drems and wishes".  It's my new motto.

One of the girls trying out her new oven by baking a carrot cake.

The bathroom at school: Man

Haven't got the courage to sample the wild Jew's ear fungus yet