US China Relations

Over here we're getting a lot of media news about "US trade protectionism." It's strange. The news doesn't seem to entirely condemn the US. But it's hard to ignore the growing tension between the two super-powers who, by all rights, should be friends.
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Check it out. China is the largest production economy in the world. The US is the largest consumer economy in the world.
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Before I jump into some argument I'd like to tell you what I know. US stopped taking tires manufactured in China (in Firestone factories, I believe). China bitched to the WTO. Had to start taking tires again. Suddenly the US stopped accepting chicken from China, who has just filed a complaint again with the almighty WTO.
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What the hell is going on? Everything was fine before this financial crisis thing.
What I'm really curious about is this: What is the spin that everybody's hearing in the US? I mean the regular TV news. It's very important for TV-educated societies like these two. What kind of language is being used (buzz words, talking points, etc). Can anyone quote me the stuff you're hearing most?
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Thanks
Kev

We're Back home behind the Great Firewall of China so we have to use a webproxy to get to the blog. Therefore we can't upload anymore pictures or videos. These last ones were uploaded when we were still in the States. Hope you like 'em.

We found a great site called Snapfish. It's a good upload from here. Check out this link. Tell me if it doesn't work.
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http://www5.snapfish.com/shareephotolib/shared_view=recently_shared/p=571121252820974923/l=545139026/g=364653026/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB/first_visit=true/pns/share/p=571121252820974923/l=545139026/g=364653026/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB
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Sorry. HTML editor through this proxy is a pain. It doesn't always take my edits.
Anyway you can copy and paste the link for now. And I'll try to make it a clickable link.

Love ya,
Leah and Kev.

pictures

We'll start with China.

Some cool monuments on the Hankou riverfront.

Everybody loves the Kite Lady!

A little KTV party with some friends.

Can you spot the pig brain in this picture?

Some cuties and me.

Chinese new year! Xing Nian Kwaile!

Many of my students saw this on Friday and all day Monday were talking about it. It was funny. I walked into my last three classes saying "Who saw me on TV?" In our curriculum, one of the main characters, Uncle John, was just on TV so we chatted it up a bit.

Sorry this is so long and the quality is bad. I got the call that it would be on about four hours before it aired. VCR is outta style and Tevo stuff is still too expensive. So I propped my camera on some books on a chair and presto.

The loud bangs toward the end are some random fireworks going off outside. I think you can hear me complaining in the background while I hurried to close the patio doors.

Hello.
Been gone awhile. I haven't even checked this blog for quite some time. Glad to see some new comments. I'm back. Pictures or no.
First: a personal note.

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Hey Alex. I am teaching your kids man. Will be again next year too. You are famous on floor three. I'm trying to live up to your legacy. For the first few weeks all the kids called me Alex. Vivian and all the co-teachers say hi. Give me your email .
kevdhall@gmail.com
I'll tell the rug rats that you're still alive. Maybe get them to write you a letter. Post card. Somthin'.
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Anyway, Life has been extreme here. We go through periods of elation and angst. Everything seems a lot easier than it was and we've found traveling in China to be really easy and cheap.

Sorry about leaving off in the middle of grandiose, unfinished stories. Everyone will just have to coax them out over beers this summer.
Now that things are a bit more cruise-control here, I can't wait for summer! I found a way to afford a couple of days in Bali for us on the way back to the States. Oh yeah baby! Such urban environs here in the Middle Kingdom. It'll be nice to relax on a beach with some Mai tais. Slow down a smidge.
I'm really looking forward to Jul 13th. A couple of the boys are throwing us a bash at Herbs in downtown Denver. Nothing like good friends in this life. Well, good beer... No, friends are better. But friends with beer... Man, I can't wait!
Okay, I'm gonna try the picture thing again.
It's workin'.


So this is Welham and I. We were waiting for some friends in a drizzle when suddenly a TV show happened by and asked if we would do a comedy skit with them. The craziest things happen to us. Or rather, we happen to them. Leah got some video. I'll see if I can upload it later. Did I mention I miss bandwidth?



Actually the friends we were waiting for are photographers. We were going to our first modeling shoot. Don't get exited. They are students at a pretty nice art university. Seniors doing their thesis. Talented bunch. The head Photographer is our friend's cousin. They were happy to have some foreigners to shoot, and we were happy for a new, cool, experience.


Hit you cats up later.

The further adventures of...

Well this is what it's like to be on a tour without an interpreter.If anyone knows what this guy's saying, please post a comment. His dialect accent is pretty thick. He was really cool though.

We were freezing our butts off and this guy was comfy in a light jacket.

There's some cool pictures of Lu Shan Mountain.

You can tell we were still at the bottom 'cause the visibility is good. In the cable car, that's our travelling companions.

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I love this picture of Leah. This picture of me is blurry, but it really captures our mood. We were freezing! All day. We didn't want to show the misery we felt. Even to ourselves. I would say things like, "Wow, what a pretty view," while thinking, "Man I hope we just go to the damn hot spring soon." I didn't want to be the whiner.

We really didn't dress well enough for the cold. 'Sokay.

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This old dude was about half way up. Probably been there a long time. There was a little landing where you could jump out of your cable car to look at him, then jump back in an empty one when you were done. The real adventure of Mainland China is safety issues. This culture tends to prefer personal safety to public safety. You can't really sue anybody. Take care of yourself. Nobody else gonna do it for ya.

It's the little things like running alongside a cablecar, trying to open the little door and jump in before you get to the edge of the landing. These things make me happy.
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I'm going to pull my hair out trying to upload pictures. I spend hours of trial and error just to get ten pictures uploaded. It's been just over two hours to get the last six pictures up. I put the video up two days ago. Sorry to bitch, but AAAAAGH!

Okay I'm done.

Here's a link to our Picasa web album. It's fast and easy uploading so there's plenty there.

http://www.picasaweb.google.com/leah.j.hall

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Back to our regularly scheduled program:

Next time: Pictures of a ruined temple.

We love you guys.

Well we got 5 weeks off. In a row. Paid. Oh the adventures we've had.

We have been frozen and boiled and baked and eaten by fish. We've found ruined, forgotten temples to ancient gods. We floated up a high mountain enshrouded in mist to a spire in the sky. We saw snow covering palm and bamboo alike. We survived a Russian invasion. We asked a diamond smuggler for advice and he lied through his smile. We've feasted with generations in the largest celebration on earth. Through jungle, forest, beach, and mountain. Over land, sea, air.

And Oh how we reveled!

It was getting a bit too cold for us here in Wuhan so we decided to go to a hot spring in the next province. We've got a friend who is a travel agent so we called her up and set up an appointment. There's no train that goes there but there is a tour. No problem. A Chinese tour ought to be cool. Actually, it was cold. It was also quite interesting. We ended up on a special tour with two other couples. They were all newlyweds, this was their honeymoon. So the six of us and our guide piled into a van and took to the hills.

That last kid was at a local restaurant where we had lunch. We should have dressed as well.

We saw some cool ancient schools and temples. Then we went to Lu Shan Mountain. It was tall and beautiful. There was a cable car that went to the top. It took about twenty-five minutes, maybe half an hour to get to the top. Boy was it cold. There was a little village on top. The people were nice. Hiking around, Leah found an old temple that had collapsed a long time ago but the statues were still untouched in the rubble.When we got to the very highest point on the mountain there was a tall, slender tower. It was a temple. There was a stone basin full of sand. Sticking into the sand were countless incense sticks, some burned, some burning. It was so high that it would probably have been a great view if not for being in the clouds. We really couldn't see more than a few meters past the stone wall. It was like looking into oblivion. No sound or movement. No texture. Just grey. It was like snow blindness. I couldn't look too long without looking back to something tangible.

I'll continue tomorrow. It's late.

Hello. Sorry I've been disappeared. Leah and I have been having a wonderful time here in our new home. We've really been relaxing into Wuhan.

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I think it's time to tell you all about teaching. We love it. The kids are so cute.

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Our school has been really good to us. Our workmates and friends are fantastic. Couldn't ask for better.

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You guys know that I prefer to let my birthday go unnoticed. Always have. I would've gotten away with it too... If it hadn't been for those meddling friends. Somebody found out. And told everyone. Anyway, we got these morning exercises. All the kids and most of the teachers gather on the field to do three different routines. A couple of us foreigners have made a habit of doing it too. It's a good warmer on a cold day. Gets the blood pumping.

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So by the time we got to morning exercises on my birthday, I'd already had two classes. All day, everywhere I went, I heard "Happy birthday Kevin." Even people who don't speak English. Every kid was into it. Entire gaggles of children would walk by in the halls screaming "Happy birthday Kevin!" It was crazy. All of my students had gifts for me, and every class swarmed me and put stickers all over me.

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So Leslie took some video of what they surprised me with at morning exercise. I think I've got Vivian to thank for this one. She's wonderful. Good thing I'm not shy. This one's for you Mom.

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All English speakers in China learn the greeting, "How are you today?" The invariable response is "I'm fine thank you, and you?" It's like playing Marco Polo (that's fitting). So it was one of the most amazing moments in my life to have a thousand children all at once screaming it. I'll never forget it.

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Okay enough about that. The students are the reason I love my job. We're far enough into the year now that I can see them learning. My student's sentences are becoming more refined and I can hear the difference in thier usable vocabulary. At lunch and between classes some students come to the office to read for me. This is an invaluable tool for it's one-on-one aspect. Any student can just mumble along in class, and with 45 of 'em per class it's hard to spread the solo time. While some teachers would consider this to be extra work during rest time, I get lonely if I have no student visits during lunch.

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So the first video is better for everyone. The second one is for Mom. It's a little long and the camera is at a funny angle, but I know Mom will want to see what I do every day.
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Cool huh? Well I think it's cool.

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I never thought I'd like a day job. Leah and I love teaching. I'd like to teach my same kids next year. They teach me Chinese. They're good teachers because their vocabulary is simple.

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One day, I had a very special moment with class D. We were learning the phrase "sports centre" (british curriculum). I thought I was cool 'cause I'd figured out how to write the characters for centre (the characters "middle" and "heart"). Well I'd gotten the heart char. wrong on the board and the whole class was yelling corrections. It was a fiasco. It took me three or four tries, but when I got it the whole class stopped yelling and gave me a standing ovation. They were so proud of me. Teared up a little. Had to be there.

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Well, the little runts are pretty cool sometimes..

Sometimes.

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I'll try to post more pics. We're busy but still havin' fun.

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Hey there. Just gonna spend some time with the blog today.

__I went to East lake for a picnic with a few of our co-teachers. Incidentally, our co-teachers are English teachers who are Chinese. They make our jobs possible. Without them we would be lost. I mean all of us foreign teachers. We're kinda lost as it is.

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We refer to them as Chinese English teachers or Co-teachers. The girl in the yellow shirt is Lucy. these are, of course, their English names. The taller kid is her nephew, Davy. He is a student of mine. Lucy's son is the boy in the white and red shirt.

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__The girl in the blue sleeveless shirt is Vivian. She's my co-teacher in 3A and 3B. That's her beautiful daughter, Xing Xing that she's handling here. That's Vivian's husband behind.
__The guy in the yellow shirt is Eddie. He's my co-teacher in 3C and 3D.
East lake is a neat place. It reminds me of Central Park.
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Okay I'm gonna inundate you with pictures! By the way I recommend clicking on most of the pics on my blog so you can see the full size. Download all you like.

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Let's see...

This is Jiefang Park.

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This is right outside our apartment.

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Above and below are some shots we got while trying to find a way between our neighborhood and the Chan Jiang (Yangtze River). We are constantly in these urban canyons. We live all of our days in Wuhan within this canyonland maze. We are often surprised at the culture and community that can be found here. It's beautiful, really.

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The shot with the two cars shows what I thought our accommodations would be like. We lucked out. A lot of families live in places like this. Sometimes they sell stuff out of these little garages.

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Most local stores in the tight canyon neighborhoods are smaller than a 1-car garage back in the states.

Above are some pretty cool veggies that are growing outside some people's windows a few stories up. They look like big cucumbers or long melons. We'll probably see them in the grocery store sometime.

The picture here with Leah in front of some steps. I think that's a cop shop.

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Alright, I'm done for today. Before I go I would like to complain a bit about this weblog editor software. Man, what a pain it is to have all of my spacing rearranged everytime I upload a new picture. It's a lot of work to delete 87 blank lines that are spread throughout the damn thing. Then it never publishes like I want after all.

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Okay thanks for listening.

We miss home and we love you guys.

Comments make us happy.

Kevin and Leah.

When Faced With Two Chinese Lions, What Does The Right One Always Have?

Hello There? Where have you been? What do you mean Where have I been?

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Yeah, Okay. Your right. I promised you guys some stuff, like, a year ago. Then I kinda dissapeared. Sorry. Things here are really starting to seem normal now, So it's hard to tell what photos you guys would want to see or what you guys will want to hear about.

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You guys never comment anyway.

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So fine. Now I'm just gonna post everything. I don't care. No, no. I don't want to hear it. You'll just take what I post and like it.

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This is the view from our balcony. The place with the blue sign is the laundry lady. The clothes hanging there by the two ladies are ours. It was a little expensive and it took three days so we do our own laundry. They are very nice though. They are often looking to see what we're doing on the patio.

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Now I'll take you on a walk to our school. These are some of the other foriegn teachers. From left to right is Issac, Wellham, Amory, and some girl I'm thinking of marrying. Issac is from California. Wellham is from England. Amory is from northern Ontario, Canada. These guys are never with us on our walk. Just this one time so we took some pics. This is what we call the flower street. It has a bunch of local flower shops along the road.

We don't really take this route to school anymore 'cause we've got bikes now.

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as we get farther down the road, it changes into a different neighborhood. On the left is an expensive apartment complex.

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Why buy razor wire when broken glass is free?

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This is the gate of our school. I have no idea what that poster says but the kids are cute. This is the cat that lives there. I don't think it has a name. I think the security guard feeds it. It keeps the place safe from intruders. I love guard cats.

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As soon as we walk in the gate every day, we are faced with these cool statues of children playing. Actually, only one of these guys look like any of our students. Can you guess?

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On the left is a pic from the first floor. The English office is on the second. That's me and Issac. That's a picture of our office. Our co-teachers are really cool. We teach each other when we have time. If I get 50 stickers, I get a prize. Can't wait.

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This is what it looks like outside the school gate. We go left.

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Thought you'd like this one.

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This is Jiefang Park in Hankou. It's beautiful there. I saw a cool little monkey there. It was brown.

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Okay. One more. This is the Best Chinglish that I have ever seen. It was in Jin De Jhen, a little town with ancient pottery kilns. Some of these kilns have been restored and there is china (ceramics) being made there still. It is quite famous. If you can figure this sign out, your better than me.

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By the way, the title of this blog is a riddle. Give me a comment if you know the answer. I'll post a picture with the answer later.

Zai tien.

Field Trip.

We went to the zoo! The kids were quite exited.
The whole country is on a week vacation so I'll have time to post a good one. I'll also have ample opportunity to get good pictures.

Later.

anyone can comment now.

Just wanted to let you know that there was some setting that said you had to sign in to post a comment. I turned it off. I'm still learning this thing. I hope it hasn't kept anyone from commenting. Now anyone can post a comment.

I'll have more cool stuff soon. I promise.

Yellow Crane Tower Adventures

Hello friends! It is my first time posting a blog, so bear with me. Kevin is always so eloquent with his words so I'm sure I cannot compare, but I'm gonna share my thoughts anyway... We spent last weekend exploring our new city of Wuhan and came across some beautiful places we would like to show you. It was our first time getting panoramic views of the city from above! The Yellow Crane tower and gardens were gorgeous and a nice break from the bustling city below. The tower was an important place for scholars and poets around 250 A.D. and is a magnificent vantage point. We found ourselves imagining what it must have been like for those who lived within the walls of this place as well as how different it must have been for the wealthy elite in comparison to the peasants and merchants who lived in the city outside. I wish I could see what Wuhan looked like at that time. I love the juxtaposition of the ancient buildings with the modern cityscape surrounding them...

This is on the way as we walked to the Yellow Crane Tower. We are on an above street walkway because there is so much traffic in some areas. We thought it was a cool view. At the top of the picture are train tracks crossing the street. Vendors lined the walkway selling all kinds of tourist items.

The statue of two cranes standing above a Snake and a Turtle. There is a legend about the two Cranes having descended from heaven and uniting the Snake and the Turtle which then helped to control the floods along the Yangtze river which had killed so many people. Snake Hill and Turtle hill are the two hills which the structures of the Tower and the Bell of one thousand years good luck (that's the red thing in the pics) are built on. They really wanted us tourists to buy little bronze likeness of this sculpture for good luck. But we resisted. Xiexie, bu shi. Thank you, but no.

There's Kevin on the steps!

Look at how tiny the people in the picture are and you can get some idea of how large the tower really is. Its huge! I am always amazed at the scale people were building things so far in the past.

The tower is filled with gorgeous murals, many poems that we could not read, beautiful furniture pieces and smaller scale models of the tower complex and other famous sights in China like the Forbidden city. The sad part was we could not read most of the tourist info about the history of the place so we just had to try to ask people and piece together what we could. In Wuhan they only rarely put things in English. I guess too few english speakers come here to make it worthwhile.

Here is one of the models. They were pretty amazing.

The views from the top were spectacular! We spent quite awhile up there looking out each side of each floor. Oh and bye the way, you have to pay extra if you want to take the elevator. It was hot, but we took the stairs anyway. You just get used to being dirty and sweaty here.

I like this pic because you can see the Chian Jiang Bridge (Yangtze

Bridge crossing the river in the distant background. There is a nice walking area along the river there with frequent street musicians. They love to sing in public too! We also saw a man and woman doing their Taiji sword forms down by the bridge one evening. The woman was amazing.

The thousand years good luck bell, a really cool door in another part of the complex, and some more Chinglish for the way out. Well, I hope you enjoy the pics and I will try to blog again soon!

Moon Cake, how I love thee.

Ni hao. We just finished the Mid Autumn Festival. This is a family reunion festival. It is also the one time of year when China bakes Moon Cake. I love Moon Cake. There's nothing like it back home. It comes in cool boxes like this.

I've got some new pics for ya, so I think I'll caption them.

This is the view of our nieghborhood from the new Starbucks in the mall. We're not here to judge. It's the only place to get a good cup of coffee. Although the tea here is amazing, they just don't do coffee much. The picture on the right is zoomed to show our appartments looming behind the grocery store. That's them in white.

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One day we were walkin' around this neighborhood nearby and a sea of guys in blue flooded the street, each carrying his own stool. Not that kind of stool. You know, chairs to sit or stand on. Don't be gross.

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Ya lift sixteen tons and whadya get? C'mon everybody, sing it with me. I was trying to get this guy to smile and wave for the camera, but he wouldn't. As soon as I took the picture he smiled and waved. These guys are common here in Wuhan. They're recycling. Hao.

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This is one of the many local eateries where you can have Ru Ga Mien, Baozi, Jiaozi, all kinds of edible mysteries. Leah's presenting it. Nice huh?

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Here's a fun one. Try to find me in the picture. Heres a hint: I'm cleverly camoflaged among the bananas.

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This is the ferry between Wuchang and Han Yang. Also American Ginsing is hot here. Who knew? Then there's a picture of me in a park at night. What am I doing in a park at night? Shopping, of course. Don't you see the bag?

I think I'll tell you guys about the Yellow Crane Tower later. It's getting late and I have some Moon Cake to devour.

Love,

Kevin and Leah Hall

Just a quick one. Earlier I mentioned another teacher, Joe, from another branch. He's fine. Honestly, I feel bad for telling everyone that he was freaking out. He's happy and busy.

Zai tien.

Doctors and Dinners and Parks, Oh My!

Ni hao everybody. Well it didn't take long for us to end up in a hospital. Don't worry, it wasn't bad. Leah got a mysterious rash. Itched like hell. We woke up Friday morning and Leah mentioned being itchy and had a little red spot. Off to school. After school Friday all of the foreign teachers from all three branches of the school were to go to an expensive dinner to meet the headmasters and the director of the whole shebang. Before we went, Leah showed me some rash that had developed during the day. Pretty bad (gruesome picture will follow). She decided not to miss dinner and possibly cause some ruckus. She's pretty strong. Has to be, I guess, to handle me. By the time the wonderful dinner had started, the rash had spread to most of her body. Not her face, thank god but she was in hell. Finally, when dinner was mostly over she told Lucy that she could probably use some medical attention. Our employers didn't freak out, but they were very concerned and gave us Headmaster Hu's car and driver (best driver I've ever seen in action, no kidding). Lucy accompanied us to the hospital and within 5 minutes Leah saw a doctor. The folks that run our school are awesome!







The hospitals here run very differently from what we're used to and Lucy was a real blessing. Well the doctor decided on a shot, a one-a-day pill and some cream. Don't ask what any of it was. It's all in Chinese and no one we know speaks medical English. Getting a shot here is different from back home. Here they put the shot into an IV drip; so as not to shock the system with strait medicine in the blood, I think. Just a guess, I'm not a doctor. That's just how they do it here. Everything turned out fine. The school picked up the tab for the doc, which I suspect was a fraction of the price of dinner. All in all, we were quite impressed with the Wuhan medical system. And without further ado -- the gruesome picture:

Removed 'cause it was gross.

Anyway, the rash was gone this morning and we went to East Lake. It reminded us of Central Park in NY. Beautiful place. It is a national park. It's a big lake and park with a lot of little lakes and some cool stuff. A lot of trees and grass. Nice place to go for a walk.







I can't think of anything else interesting so here are some pictures.



No, I'm not pouting. Just caught me at an awkward time, I guess. More great Chinglish.


Buses here work exactly like they do at home, but cheaper. Trouble is finding the right bus.


This is our street. You can tell it's a nice neighborhood, the Macdonald's gives it away. All the toddlers here wear split-pants.




Please keep the comments commin'. We love to here from home.
Well, Zai tian.

Man, we're busy! I've been spoiled working three days a week for years in a job you don't take home. Well, now we're teachers. I love it but it is really hard. The kids are cool. The other teachers have been really kind to us. Not much time.

Here are a few pics.

New friends. That's our new neighborhood in the picture.

Fish heads, Fish heads,Rolly polly Fish heads.

Looking foreward to the Tuture!

Many things are lost in translation. Like our minds.

Ms. Hu, our headmaster took us out to dinner. It was a very nice restaurant and the food was awsome!

Zoko!

This was outside of a haunted house in the shopping mall.

Well, gotta go work on some lesson plans.

We love Wuhan!

Holy Crap!

To say that this is the most bizarre place we have ever found ourselves walking within doesn't even... I mean... This place... Holy Crap!

Leah and I realized very quickly that there is no way to explain most of what we see around us to westerners. I mean that quite litterally. Even if we could somehow, no one would believe it. Really.

I thought we were so cool getting picked up from the airport by a driver. On the way to our apartment I quickly realized that one really needs a professional driver in Wuhan. All of the traffic is slow and constantly converging. No matter where you are, there is some bike, or scooter, or pedestrian, or car, or truck, or bus, or something perpendicular to traffic. Actually travelling perpendicular to traffic. Everywhere. I can't even think of it as traffic. It's a conglomeration of movement. I'll try to get a pic for everyone. Mr. Zhou, our driver is a good driver. World Class if ya ask me.

By the time we got to our apartment, we were blown away by the scenery of the city. The only way I can describe it quickly would come out without perspectve. I feel like I would be offending the Chinese people. So I will not try. Not before it's time anyway.

When we got to our apartment, we went through a guarded gate. This is not unusual at all in Wuhan. This apartment complex is very tall. Hold on, I'll count floors... 16 stories tall. But, like Leah just told me: That doesn't really describe the canyon effect here.

Anyway, I can't escape the feeling that we're in the movie Blade Runner. On the bottom floor, between the elevators there is a plasma video screen about head-level that is constantly on, advertising. The hallway that it's in is -- we'll just say extremely filthy. Please excuse me, I feel like I'm "settling" for most of my adverbs and adjectives. When the elevator arrived we had an instant of hesitation because it didn't look like it would survive the trip. Honestly it looked like there was a good chance the bottom would fall out. All the while, the advertising TV was babbling on politely as it is still doing now.

Th apartment is wonderful. It is our sanctuary. On the fourth floor with a balcony and windows overlooking a courtyard, it is air conditioned, hardwood floored, hot watered, and there is a nice full jug of springwater with taps for hot (for tea or noodles) and cold. We have brand new laptops, dishes, kitchen, the first dining room table we've ever had, it's great. There is one TV station that is in English.

Well, in case you're wondering, there are no white people in Wuhan. You want whities? Go to Beijing, Shanghai, or Hong Kong. When Leah and I go out walking we are stared at, much like celebrities. The children tug on their mother's shirts and point. Any children that know a bit of english will sometimes approach shyly, dared by their freinds to wave and shout "hello!" before bolting away.

It's wonderful here. Leah and I are in love with all the people we meet. We think we will get culture shock in some form or another but we don't know when. We met a fellow teacher who is at another branch of the school. Joe. Twenty-six years old. From Canada. Nice guy. Freaking out. He said that he wasn't, that he had gotten in late last night and couldn't sleep so he just felt weird 'cause no sleep, but we could tell. I sat down with him away from the others for a moment and gave him some good advice and generally tried to help soothe his perspectives. Next evening we were in a car with the headmaster and after a translated, overheard phonecall to the headmaster, Mrs. Hu, we got worried about Joe. He didn't sleep the next night either. He's freaking out. Poor kid. We offered to go help but no. Hope he makes it.

Really strange place, but we love Wuhan. Let me throw some pictures on here. I gotta go.

These pictures kinda suck huh? Well I'll get some really interesting stuff for ya. Just so ya know, It took me three days working on the first four lines of this weblog before I finally decided that I couldn't describe half of what I wanted to and just started settling. No problem.

Whoa

Well that last one was a little sentimental, wasn't it?
So I run on mood. Eat it!

Well Leah and I are leaving to couch surf in 2 days. Funny how you can get rid of everything you own and still have a cluttered living room. We have a lot of cleaning to do in the next 24 hours. Then it's 3 weeks of living out of a suitcase. Wish I was in China already.

We've lived here for more than a decade so our friends wouldn't let us go easily. Boy, we have been celebrating for a week straight.

I've been working at the same bar for 7 years so you know they wouldn't let me off easily. I been tarred and feathered!

I've sure loved my time there.

There are some people I'll never forget.

I love you. Goodbye.