888 !Getting Lucky! 888

We moved out of Zhuhai on Thursday and into a beautiful wonderland resort that was about 1,000 times better than the Sea View. It had all of these wonderful koi ponds and walkways in it:
It rained a lot but it was still gorgeous:

The hotel was a whole set of lakes and goofy resort things you could pay for. It came complete with a driving range AND a shooting range. The Chinese seem to think that every American owns a gun, but they're the ones with shooting ranges at their hotels.

Here's an inexplicably huge statue at the hotel. It was totally obscured by other buildings, so you would barely even know it's there, even though it must've been 60 feet tall. There was a cool shrine in front of it, and it was flanked by carvings of other wide-hipped goddesses.


Judging by the following picture, you'd think all of the food at the hotel was jellied octopus, but actually it was very tasty.
There was a really cool park that we played around in. Here's a characteristic photo of Andy in the park:
And me in the park, dressed as a loyal Communist:
Cool hippo (?) statue in the park:
And we documented some of the lovely flower arrangements for our green-thumbed mothers:
Andy adopted a friendly little butterfly he found waiting outside of our hotel room. He named him "Renaldo," and they were inseparable.
Here's a bit of administrative business... We all had to get a physical examination to show that we're healthy enough to teach English in China (basically that you don't have AIDS and you're not blind). The group coordinators seemed confident in the system they'd worked out for 110 people to visit 7 medical stations each in two hours, but the proposed system quickly broke down. Here's a photo of the resulting chaos, 100 Americans bringing a Chinese hospital to its knees:
And here we are at the police department, registering to live in Yantian, the eastern district of Shenzhen. I'm pretty sure Andy wasn't supposed to take a picture inside the police dept., but no one noticed. The guy at the end of the table with the red-collared shirt is Louis, our contact teacher (guy who helps us out) at our school.
We already moved in to our school, which seems fantastic. It's only a block from the sea (you can see Hong Kong right across the water!), maybe a 15-minute bus ride from the beach, and right by a bunch of gigantic, lovely mountains. It's not really in the "big city" part of Shenzhen, but it's only a half hour bus ride away from downtown. We have to start teaching on Wednesday. Soon we'll take pictures of our place and post them.

Flashback! San Francisco

Before we went to china, we got to spend a very silly week hanging out in San Francisco. Kitty's parents came down to hang out with us for a few days, and we also got to join Kitty's sister, Lisa,'s lab picnic on Angel Island. Then a lot of the rest of the week Kitty spent on assembling Dank's $500 lego set of the Millenium Falcon.

A note on the photos: Blogger tends to hate the panoramic photos that i include so to see versions of them that don't look like crap just click on a picture and it will open the full resolution file in a new tab!



Thanks for everything San Francisco Crew!

Last Zhuhai Post (Hopefully)

Andy:

After many days of incredible heat, our little peninsula finally got blasted with rain. My friend Zach and I courageously sprinted through the deluge to pick up lunch for our group. Huge lightning bolts were blasting all around the city and the alarms of all the cars we passed would erupt with each strike. Every time lightning struck the goofy, fake, plastic palm tree-lights in front of the hotel would light up. When we got back with the food, the mean concierge lady made us go to our rooms. Later gigantic snails popped up all over the sidewalks and ancient stairs leading down to the coast. This was a small one, the big ones were maybe twice this size!



A day earlier we hiked up to the top of this mountain comprising the awesome park we had mentioned earlier. It's a pretty long hike, hot and buggy, but the view from the top is amazing:

Kitty:

Also for some reason we're not totally sure of, all the people who come to the top of the mountain seem to put locks on this huge boulder. It probably has something to do with coming back at some point or love or something. We're not sure.


There's a slow kind of roller coaster running down from the top of the mountain. It cost about $5, so we didn't go on it, but as we were standing there looking at it, this guy got in to one of the cars with his dog! He rode down, standing up and holding on to the dog's leash. Sorry this picture's blurry:

We also saw a friendly little lizard running around the park.

Later we went to this dumpling place with a bunch of our friends. It's really cheap (~ 40 cents for 9 or so dumplings, usually enough to fill me up) and really tasty, so we've been going there a lot, but since there were so many of us, some of us had to sit on little, cheap, plastic stools. While I was chatting at the other table, Andy's stool decided he was way heavier than the average Chinese person and suicided. He was left sitting embarrassed on the floor while everyone in the restaurant laughed at him.... pretty funny stuff. You can see the stools and some of our buddies in this pic:



Some other random pictures:

Dragon topiary


A weird religious (or anti-religious?) desk set of some sort, featuring various tortures and weird figures


Lack of toilet choice
"Classy kiss" dairy product - no sloppy makeout sessions for them!

Andy:

We had to practice teach in front of our peers to somehow simulate the feel of a "real" classroom. Kitty and I prepared an awesome lesson plan for the kids about monsters and zombies to teach them pretty much the basics of what they will need to know if they go to the US. More on that later.

Kitty types a lot faster and better than i do!

Early China Experiences

Once again the people of my new host country are amazed by my incredible ability to grow hair. So far the Chinese are not nearly as brave as the Ecuadorians in that no one has mustered up the courage to physically touch my hair, but they are by no means shy.

The people here treat me like you would a friendly gigantic fuzzy robot that went strolling down the street. When i go to the beach and take off my shirt about 100 16-year old chinese girls run up and take their picture with the magic gigantic man with body hair. I am surprised more accidents have not been caused by people staring at me when i walk down the street (They apparently have with other white people).

Some girls captivated by my body hair at the beach:


We don't actually get set up with our classes for another week or two when the training ends, and so technically we don't know what level we will be working with. Most likely though, they will put us in Primary school with the little goofy kids, since i have had experience and they are in highest demand.

The craziest thing is how ridiculously cheap everything is here! For example a gigantic 20 oz beer costs 4 yuan or about 60 cents. We can get huge multi-course meals for about 25 yuan ~ 3 bucks.

You get a gratifying amount of bizarre free samples in Chinese grocery stores. Here's what they look like:


The only place we have been able to get internet access thus far has been "Star Pizza" which was a Starbucks, that failed and they ripped off the "bucks" and added pizza.

There's a really cool, gigantic park right by our hotel. There's a billion fun mazes to run around in. It's kind of like if the City Museum were just a park instead. Here's Kitty on a rock:


Kitty and I ran into some fun chinese fauna; we met a big city toad running about the sidewalks and a crab in the cool park.

The Krispy Kremes also have way better flavors than in the states. I got a watermelon and a green tea flavored one!


Here's Kitty in the Hong Kong airport with her bottle of Pocari Sweat. It tastes better than you might think.



Signing off,
Andy and Kitty

Notes from the Future!

Here is our first quick post! We made it to Zhuhai for our TEFL training and Chinese lessons! Getting here was pretty rough, and we don't have the best way to communicate, but soon we will be posted at the places we will finally be living and communication should pick up from there.

We are staying at the semi-luxurious Sea-View Hotel. (Which does suprisingly offer a view of the sea, just not any of the views pictured in its totally fake website http://www.zhsvh.com/)

Our city is amazingly beautiful and completely defies any stereotypes against chinese cities.
It is big, open, fresh, green, and friendly!

Got tons of really great pictures already of the beautiful sites, and even more pictures of the bizarre products (See "Pokari Sweat!" or "Asparagus Juice" or "Blueberry Potato Chip!"). I might have to make an entirely different blog just for the products they offer here.

Don't know when the next time i will be available, gotta get back to class and being pointed at when i walk down the street (Once again i am the only one in the country with body hair and am applauded anytime i take my shirt off at the beach!).

Kitty and I are having an awesome time!

Ecuador is Hard to Leave (physically)

The day came and i finally had to bid farewell to my favorite new crazy country. Alvaro gave me a ride to the airport at 6 AM while the sun began peeking over the tips of the Andes. Alvaro helped me with my bags and took off for work. I turned around with my sacks of luggage and camera equipment to face the transport system that would be my mortal enemy for the next few hours of my life and was immediately greeted by a friendly officer with some sort of future stick, and the word narcotics enscribed across his vest. In spanish he informed me that he would like to know if he could search through all my meticulous packed baggage. I asked what would happen if i declined his request, and he pleasantly let me know that i was at full liberty to deny him, but then of course i wouldn't be able to fly anywhere that day. So after 20 minutes of him rummaging through my luggage with his space probe, he cheerfully released me to the ticket counter. Here i got all checked in, bags ready to go, and the ticket lady was about to toss them on the goodbye-belt behind her, when another, grumpier man, with a NARC vest and a future stick, grabbed my bags and brought me back to the discretion table to run through everything again.

Once you make it past the gauntlet of drug officers at the Quito airport, the only thing left to do is maneuver oneself through 10 different security checkpoints: Some for organic material, some for paying the 40 dollar leave-the-country fee (which, as i found out has to be cash! I yelled at the guy behind the counter that they were an entire airport and that they should invest in the amazing technology of credit card readers, but my broken Spanish pleas landed on deaf ears), some for visa requirements, some for making sure that you have this sheet that other stations gave you previously, and finally one station for not getting to bring any water onto the plane.

I finally reached the gate with a few minutes to kill since the plane got delayed 45 minutos, and i made friends with a kindly old man next to me. We were sharing his newspaper, which was plastered with articles concerning the final round of the Liga tournement that was happening that night, when my buddies in the NARC vests made a B-line for me with their cute little puppy. As i sat still, practicing my non-chalance and mentally preparing for whatever further tortures i was going to face as the apparently, perfect description of a drug smuggler, the little doggy came and sat down right next to me and my backpack. NARC 1 and NARC 2 walked up behind their dog, stared me down, and then grabbed the old guy next to me and whisked him away to who knows what.

I guess my luck was beginning to change.


We made it over the airport 1/2 an hour early, but were informed that God was currently smiting miami airport with golf-ball sized hail and that we would have to land at nearby Ft. Lauderdale to weather the storm. The plane began lowering over Lauderdale until we were about 50-100 feet from the ground when it decided to make quick, jerky manuevers and blast the engines, sending us back up into the sky. Then we just started flying out to sea for 40 minutes.

The pilot finally got in touch with his confused audience in the fuselage and let us know that we were going to another airport at West Palm Beach. We actually managed to land the plane here, but then they told us that, since we were an international flight, and Palm Beach was not an international airport, we were confined within the entire plane. Handy guards even appeared from the airport to stand watch over the exit hatches for us. This was around 1:30, and the voices over the PA calmly let us know to sit back, and that in 30-40 minutes, our plane would be heading over to Miami airport where we belonged, and that for now they would just toss on a quick movie for us while we waited. So everyone begrudgingly sat back and watched martin lawrence and some chess-playing super pig. Every 30-40 minutes we would get identical announcements delaying our departure just another 30-40 minutes. By the time Martin and Raven were parachuting into Georgetown university and accidentally interrupting Grumpy McRichman's 20,000 dollar golf shot, the plane was ready to go and pulling out to fill up on some gas. Unfortunately the plane was pulled into a light pole (as i found out later from a cool steward) and now we had to wait for them to fix the tail to make the plane fly-able.

So for the next 5 hours i dedicated myself to turning the boring (let's watch the bucket list while we are in airplane jail) plane, into an awesome party plane. I made friends with a cool steward who snuck me first class omelettes and snacks and gave me free reign over the liquor cabinet. So i spent my time smuggling heinekens and bailey back to my friends in coach, and I started a huge betting pool with about 50 people, concerning when the plane's wheels would actually leave the ground. I placed an early bet in the pilot's name to get him an incentive to get the plane going earlier, but he was one of the first losers.

The day went on, more and more delays, and instead of getting in at 6 Pm like i thought, i managed to make it into chicago at a little after 1 AM. Kitty and Tom came to pick me up since i had long missed my shuttle back, and we made it into Urbana at 5:30 AM.

Now i am just working on getting things together (See firework below) and finishing up some projects before china in August!

This was the best firework for the Fourth! It makes Baby Boomers depressed!

Blog will start up again sometime when i am in china and have internet!

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Here are some links and pictures from Galapagos past! Memories!



Here is an article about the rincon del relato!
http://www.usfq.edu.ec/el_periodico/periodico/30-06-2008.pdf

Here is a link to a bunch of group photos from the galapagos
https://www.honors.uiuc.edu/files/galapagos/photos.html

And here are a bunch of those fantastic pics of me from Anna:

Here is a sequence where i got abducted by KFC's ecuadorian mascot, Chicky