Well, it’s been BUSY.
I guess that kind of goes without saying…the ends of things often seem to be busy.

These past couple of weeks have been absolutely packed full of lasts….
Last trip within Guangxi (Beihai beaches….lovely!), last dinners at the usual restaurants, last lessons, final exams….

I’m really quite sad about leaving! It’s heartbreaking that I’ll probably never see most of these people again.
Except for Kate, that is- I’m planning on seeing her again at some point, fortunately.

This morning, the school is giving me a ride to Nanning where I’ll spend the day before catching an early flight tomorrow. Many of my students and friends from Yizhou have promised to “see me off” at the car. It seems to be a tradition here- just saying goodbye isn’t enough, you need to actually wish the person good luck as they’re driving away. I think it’s going to be absolutely heartbreaking and wonderful.
Unfortunately, my camera has broken (apparently a common thing for the particular camera that I have…there seems to be a design flaw) so I’ll just have to remember it.

I should be getting ready, so I should go.

zai jian!

My blog is getting spammed like crazy every day.
I get loads and loads of comments about stuff that I really don’t care to get messages about. Ugh.
Good thing I moderate all the comments before they go up otherwise you’d see 29 comments a day about getting cheap prescription drugs.

In other news, my Nanning photos are now up. Huzzah for that! I’m actually keeping up to date on one small part of my life.

Next week Kyle and I are going to Vietnam for a few days. I’ve managed to rearrange three of my classes so this week I don’t have my usual Friday off and next week I don’t have my usual Monday off. I’ve got classes all morning tomorrow and then afternoon on Monday. However, it’ll be worth it to have an extra day in Hanoi.
I’m really excited. I thought Hanoi was quite lovely last year, but there were a few things we missed…well, many things that we missed. It’ll be great to get to see what we didn’t see before.

As far as things go here, we’ve got what apparently seems to be Yizhou’s spring right now. It’s a strange mix of heavy rain, cloudy skies, and warm sunshine. Sometimes one of those will stick around, but often we get all three in a day which is, to say the least, confusing.
However, it can stick around for as long as it wants! I definitely prefer this to the summer weather that’s just around the corner.

Well, time sure flies.
I haven’t written in a while and you may have noticed that some of my posts of ‘disappeared’.
I’ve got to be a bit more careful about what I write, so that had to be taken care of.

Anyway, I’m back once again.

For those of you who happen to check out my Flickr photos, you may see that I’ve been uploading (more to come) photos of all of my students. I just had midterm exams, so I’ve gotten a picture of each of them. Labeling them to post them up has been quite helpful as far as getting me to remember names and faces. Too bad I don’t have much time left.

Thought I’d share a quick humorous exam story. The freshmen, as one part of their exams, had to give a short (2-3 min) speech about themselves.
I was listening to one girl’s speech and suddenly she surprised me with this sentence:
“I’m not very good at intercourse.”
I’m sure that she didn’t mean it as I heard it, but wow, it was terribly hard not to laugh out loud at that one. I wrote in her comments that she might want to rethink that phrase, so I’m sure she’ll be asking me about it later this week.

This weekend, Kyle and I met up in Nanning. We’re planning a (very!) short trip to Vietnam at the end of the month, so I had to pick up my passport and visa.
It was incredibly hot there (I am absolutely dreading this heat…I despise humidity) and it seems, now that I am back, that the heat has picked up in Yizhou as well.
I had a fantastic time. We met up with other teachers that we know for dinner, we walked around the city, found real ice cream, (No joke! New Zealand ice cream for only 6 yuan per scoop. Anyone who’s in Nanning should look for it. It’s amazing.) working on wedding/marriage planning, and we visited the medicinal plant garden.
I’ll be posting photos on Flickr sometime this week. Perhaps tomorrow, if I get around to it.
One of the great things about the weekend was attending church this morning. We went to this church with other teachers last year and it was quite similar to other Chinese Christian churches. However, this time it was different. They had an English translation of the service! We got a headset and the translation was broadcast over the radio and into our headsets. It’s such a fantastic thing to know what’s going on rather than constant guessing. This is the first time I’ve sat through a service in Guangxi and had the whole sermon translated for me. I loved it.

Speaking of churches and China- I don’t think I ever remembered to post this article from last fall. I was contacted about the use of some of my photos for an article about Bible printing in China. It’s definitely worth your time to check it out:
http://shanghaiist.com/2008/01/03/godless_china_t.php

Ah, yes- and the BIG news-

I finally have plane tickets to go home! Huzzah!
On the morning on June 26th, I will be flying from Nanning to Beijing, then Beijing to San Francisco. I will stay there for a while and then on July 8th, I’ll fly from San Francisco to Texas (strange layover, if you ask me!) then from Texas to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
It feels good to know when I’m getting home now.
To be honest, simply knowing that I have a flight makes me itch to get out of here.
It’s probably for the best that I didn’t have tickets earlier.

It’s going to be really hard to leave China, but for the moment, the idea of seeing people that I haven’t seen in nearly 2 years over-rides all of that.

Two posts in two days!
Now I’m making progress.

It’s yet another dreary type of day here. Last week it was all sunshine and cerulean skies peppered with white, fluffy clouds. As soon as Thursday afternoon crept up on us, so did the rainclouds. Most days since then (it’s Monday afternoon here) have been plagued with gray skies, sprinkles, and showers. Naturally, this is the kind of weather that is conducive to staying indoors and getting things done…right?

Alas, it is not always so for me. Somehow, I find the endless thick clouds distracting and melancholy. Therefore, instead of staying in and actually making progress, I’m staring at book covers and pondering the existence of the word “towards”. (That dilemma is solved, thanks to my trusty friend www.dictionary.com- Usage Note: Some critics have tried to discern a semantic distinction between toward and towards, but the difference is entirely dialectal. Toward is more common in American English; towards is the predominant form in British English.)

There are things to be planned and finished. There are things to be sent, taken care of, and applied for. I am certainly well aware of these things. They eat at my inner stomach lining like soft, black leeches with sharp teeth. I know I need to take care of them, but I just can’t seem to get myself to move. Perhaps this is what it feels like to be a sloth in a tree. (I was always terrified those creatures as a child…photos in science books made them look mean and dirty)

The cracks in my bedroom floor tiles are getting worse. You know, I’m not sure I’ve mentioned them before. Sometime last term, a tile developed a crack. Then it began to spread. When I came back from the holiday, the tiles had begun to move up as though some force was putting pressure on them from below. It’s really quite strange. Mary (co-teacher/friend/waiban-foreign affairs assistant) was over here today to take a look at it, so I’m expecting that it’ll get fixed sometime in the near future. It’s certainly not life-threatening, so I’m not terribly bothered about it, to be honest. Mostly I just think it’ll get worse and it’ll be more work for the school if I just let it go. For now, I just avoid those two tiles (which are unfortunately directly behind the chair I’m sitting in at the moment.

Here’s a sign of how behind I’ve gotten with my emails. My dear friend Cynthia sent me a link to download some music ages ago (I honestly don’t know the exact date) and I didn’t bother to download them until last week and I didn’t even get a chance to listen to the album until today.
I’ve certainly been missing out. It’s an album by Alela Diane called “The Pirate’s Gospel” and it’s absolutely fantastic. Highly recommended. Perhaps a bit behind the times, but recommended nonetheless.
Now playing: Alela Diane - The Pirate’s Gospel
via FoxyTunes

I just got word that a fellow Amity teacher was “was injured in an unfortunate encounter with a dog” recently. He’s now in the hospital being treated and he got the lovely rabies injections. Ugh! Scary thought. I suppose I ought to be more careful than I am currently when it comes to animals.

I think I’ll end this post with a photo from my trip in Sumatra as a tribute to sunnier days.

Hello!

I’m in some random city in Malaysia now…we’re waiting for a bus and I needed to find the internet to send a happy birthday text message to my dad.

Anyway, this has been great so far.
Malaysia is fantastic and tropical and full of various people and an incredible variety of food. I love it! I haven’t had this many food options since I was back home. Absolutely amazing.

We were in Kuala Lumpur for a while where we visited mosques, the sky bridge at the big towers, and did some general wandering around.

Last night we went to a little town where there were, to our surprise, wild monkeys! Just running around! I’ve never seen wild monkeys before.
Although Kyle did just find this terrifying article- check it out.
Then we went on a boat ride at night and saw thousands and thousands of fireflies. Absolutely gorgeous.

Now we’re hopefully on our way to some little island where we can relax by a beach…as long as we can find a hotel with rooms. We’ll see how this works out.

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.

I’m cccccccold.

The mornings and nights here are extra chilly.
Truly told me last week that this winter is going to be colder than last winter.
Oh no!

I’m on a search for more layers and thermal underwear.
However, I don’t think I’m going to have much luck at all in those departments.

I’m in for a long, cold, winter.
Especially when I travel to Tibet in January/February.
I hope I survive.

In a couple of days, I’ve got to cook something that’s kind of like Thanksgiving dinner. Thankfully, Kate is helping out. Who knows how this will turn out? I really don’t know. Well, there will be food and that’s what really matters.
Thanksgiving is all about hanging out with people and eating anyway. Mmmmm… my mouth waters at the thought of a Thanksgiving meal.
Last year, we were at Pizza Hut in Nanning for Thanksgiving. Certainly not traditional in any way. Ugh.

This weekend, Kyle and I had some engagement photos taken by an older woman who lives on the 4th floor of my building. She’s a photographer and she’s pretty good at it. She just got a digital camera the day before taking our photos, so she used digital and regular film. My friend/coteacher, Mary also came along and took some shots with her digital camera. I’ve posted all of the photos here on Flickr.
Also, I have some pretty sweet photos of Kate and I and I am doing something for Kyle’s Christmas gift. (ha ha) But those photos have to be kept hidden for the moment. If you’re interested in seeing them, email me (hunt.megan@gmail.com) and I can email you an invitation to see them on Flickr.

In other news…. wedding planning is going… well, I guess.
I bought my dress. Well, I picked it out and paid the money for it, but my mom had to do the actual ordering at the shop. Once again, if you’re interested in photos, send an email because I can’t post them where Kyle will see them.
We’re also coming up with a list of potential songs for the ceremony (we’re thinking about not going completely traditional there) and also for reception. If you’ve got any suggestions, I’d love to hear them!
I also just spent what I consider to be an obscene amount (although it really isn’t) on makeup that I ordered online. I figure that I need some nice stuff since the stuff here is really cheap and horrific and I’ll be needing to have decent makeup for my wedding anyway…might as well get it now. The sad bit is that I realized that even though I just spent a lot, I don’t really have all the makeup I’ll need. It’s like a vicious trick. You can never quite have everything you need without spending loads of money. I do love makeup though. I can’t wait to be back in the States where I’ll be able to try some on and just buy nice makeup without having to wait my entire lifetime for it to arrive! It’s supposed to get here on December 26th. A Christmas present to myself, I guess. I haven’t worn makeup in ages (as is sadly evident in the engagement photos where I happened to be wearing…none! What was I thinking??) So I’ve decided that it’s really necessary to have at least a little bit of nice stuff so that I can put it on and feel good about the way I look.

In other news, the regional conference is this weekend. Since we’re hosting it, all 14 Amity teachers/friends of Amity will be arriving and spending a short time here. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again. Hopefully they’ve all got good stories to tell and interesting teaching suggestions.

That’s all for now!

P.S. I had completely forgotten that ‘My Fair Lady’ is nearly 3 hours long…and I showed it to my British Literature class yesterday. (They’re studying Pygmalion this week) Ugh. Torture. Pure torture.
And then, after it finished at 5.35, I then had to go home, get some things done, then go back to show ‘Back to the Future’ at 7.30 for film club.
I love films, but 5 hours is complete overkill. I was not particularly happy last night.

This past Sunday, Kate and I went and visited Lizzy, a student from the Chemistry Department, at her teaching practice.
Lizzy is particularly interested in English, so she spends a lot of time asking us questions and hanging out in the English library or cooking in Kate’s apartment.
During the last year of their education here, all of the students are required to go out for teaching practice for 5 weeks. It’s a bit like student teaching back in the States, although, to be honest, these students get a whole lot less practice in!
Lizzy had found a lot of students who are extremely interested in English and we went to a classroom to introduce ourselves to them. What followed afterwards was a flurry of photographs and “Hello”s.

After that, we walked around the city a bit, it’s Luo Cheng, a city that seems to be similar is size and development to Yizhou, but Lizzy told me that it’s actually considered to be a part of Yizhou. We saw a new building at the best middle school in town (not the one Lizzy’s teaching at). The classrooms looked really impressive (at least for schools in this area). We also saw some statues and the outside of what is apparently a museum. We didn’t go inside, but I thought it might have been interesting.

Monday morning, I met up with one of my former students, Melinda.
She took me over to XiaJian, an area of Yizhou that’s about 15 minutes from here if you take a bus. I got to see the school she’s at and meet some of the friendly teachers in the English Department. This school is significantly smaller than the one in Luo Cheng, but the surrounding area certainly is much more beautiful here.

After seeing the school, I got to see where the students who are doing their practice are living. They have rooms in an empty building where 4-6 of them sleep and live together in each room. I think Melinda said that there are 20 of them in the building. It doesn’t seem too bad, except that they only seem to have one working shower and Melinda said it doesn’t have any hot water! I don’t know how well I’d deal with that.

On the plus side, they are very close to the Liu San Jie Resort, a place that I think is quite beautiful. If I didn’t live in Yizhou, I’d love to spend a night there. The rooms look really comfortable and the grounds are gorgeous. It’s really quiet and peaceful. Over here, in the bustling bit of the city, we don’t get that kind of peace. Well, the best I get is climbing up the little mountain/hill at White Dragon Park near my apartment. However, I can still here the cars, loud music, and pig squeals from up there.

As I was biking out the gate today, the guards at the front gate tried to stop me and the pointed out a sign that said (forgive me if I’m missing a bit, but I believe this was it):
出人下车
I’m pretty sure that means that I have to get off my bike to exit. However, I was already going at pretty good speed and I just said “Wo bu dong!” (I don’t understand) and then they laughed at me and let me through anyway. The guards at the back gate weren’t so forgiving though. They seemed to know that I knew, so I got off and walked my bike in.

However, it is terribly frustrating to live in a country where I’m practically illiterate. I’d really like to be able to learn more. The unfortunate part is that my lack of literacy is largely due to an excessive amount of slacking on my part. More of then than not, I just don’t feel up to it! It’s a ridiculous excuse, but it’s the one I give myself when I put my Chinese textbook back after 5 minutes of looking it over. I’ve really got to make myself work on Chinese this year.
I was looking at a blog of one of my friends from high school. She’s in Morocco now and she spent a year in Paris before. Some of the things she said were very true. Knowing other languages really opens doors in life. It gives you many opportunities that you wouldn’t have otherwise. I’d like to become at least conversational in Chinese and I’d like to study French again because I’ve forgotten nearly all of it. (My French prof at Hope was right when I quit- “Ce n’est pas une bonne idée”. I should have listened.)
Hopefully, when I’m back in the States, I can find somewhere to study, or at least practice one (or both) of those languages.

In other news, I’ve finally found a place with fun drinks that I like. Back home we have Bubble Tea (called Pearl Tea some places) and usually you can get black bubbles or colored ones. I, personally, think that the black ones taste horrid. Unfortunately, that was all they had here. Until a new shop came in over the summer. And at this shop, I can get this delicious grape juice (a great alternative to the usual tea mixed with milk). I’m really happy about it and Kate and I both really enjoy it.

Also, a bit of sadness over my former “roommate”.
I’m sure I had told several of you about a little gecko who had taken up residence here at the start of term. He’d always come out at night, but during the day he would find little hiding places. His favorite seemed to be in the crack of the door. This caused me to be incredibly cautious whenever closing or opening any door.
Unfortunately, Friday morning, I left the bathroom door open a tiny crack while I took my shower; I guess it just hadn’t latched right or something. Anyway, I got out of the shower and then the door swung in, then back out. My little gecko friend must have snuck in the crack when I wasn’t looking because then he fell- plop!- right onto the floor in a puddle of water. I quickly picked him up out of the water only to discover that his back legs had been irreparably smashed. Poor fellow.