OK….
It’s embarassing to have written a post promising more posts and then I completely disappeared for ages afterwards.
I’m quite sorry.
Here’s a quick update…
The term ended…a flurry of spoken exams, written exams, marking, turning grades in (after rewriting them countless frustrating times- I’m terrible at copying numbers by hand), and traveling.
First, Kyle, Kate, and I met up with Andrew and Lucretia (two other Amity teachers from the U.S.- they’re fantastic) in Yangshuo (the famous tourist town outside of Guilin). It was COLD. We spent the vast majority of our time indoors eating and watching DVDs on big screens in restaurants. All in all, it wasn’t a terrible way to spend several days. I had a good time.
Then, we traveling to Guiyang in Guizhou province for my last Amity Winter Conference. It was great to see folks, but somewhat bittersweet knowing that this is the last time I’ll see most of them.
The weather in Guiyang was hideous! Seriously cold and icy.
There was supposed to be a visit to an Amity project- a biogas thing. I was really looking forward to seeing how this works. However- the weather was too bad and most of the roads were closed, so that bit was cancelled and the conference ended early. Most folks were flying out, but they got stuck at the airport for days! Well, they ended up in hotels at night. Kyle and I thought we made a good choice by getting train tickets. Boy…were we wrong.
It’s a long story- but the train station was mass chaos! Trains hadn’t gone for days. People were sleeping in the station. It was definitely below freezing inside and out. Our train was meant to leave for Guangzhou at 10.35 am…. we were lucky we got to leave at all! We were told that our train would leave the next morning (after hours of ‘it’s cancelled….maybe….we don’t know’) but then Kyle randomly showed a train security person our tickets at 1 am. She then rushed us onto a train that left two minutes later! We nearly missed it! Insane!
The train was definitely at least freezing-literally-the whole time we were on it…all 31 hours! Oh my goodness. It was not fun.
When we arrived at the station we came upon the largest crowd I’ve seen in my life! Over 100,000 people waiting and LOTS of police surrounding the building. Wow. If you look at any news article about the crazy weather in China, it’ll probably show a photo of that station.
Most of the metro stations near the train station were closed off, but we walked to one further out and made it to our hostel. We were looking forward to nice warm showers….I got in and - no hot water! I decided to tough it out and shower anyway. It turned out that for some reason the city shut off hot water or something. Really confusing. Basically, there was no hot water for our entire time there. And it was cold.
The night before our flight out, my sister and my parents called to tell me that my grandmother died. Apparently she had gotten sick and she didn’t pull through. It’s still quite a shock to me. It’s hard since I’m here and I can’t get home. Kyle and I looked into flights and it would cost me quite a bit over 1,000 just to fly into Chicago. Please keep my family in your prayers.
This afternoon Kyle and I arrived in Singapore. It’s really nice here. Raining and hot, but so far I like it. We had originally intended to go see ‘La Triviata’- I’ve been wanting to see it for years- I’m a big Verdi fan. However, I was a bit of a mess this afternoon and we got a later start than intended, so we missed it. Oh well. There are other things to do. It’s a big city!
They speak English! And it’s clean! No spitting!
We had toast with peanut butter for dinner/lunch.
Oh. My internet time is almost up.
I will do my best to write more soon.
I’ll be here, Malaysia, and Sumatra.
Adventures.