wow... im alive! [warning, epic post]

HI ladies and gentlemen! I'm sorry i haven't been updating htis thing, I'm horribly lazy!! considering the amount of time I've spent in wang ba's (internet bars) over the last month, you think i could have at least said hello! but i didn't. and then today, i found out i could access my blog all by my lonesome! chinese internet has been blocking it the entire time i've been in china, and suddenly, in a little wangba next to the japanese restaurant in sanya, i can use this thing!!! probably because they government is opening up the internet for the olympics. thats probably the only good thing to have come out of this whole fiasco.
now, from lets rewind a bit (or a lot rather) to where i last left you. then i was in my poky little town in southern china, teaching my students many glorious things about the english language and the elusive yet highly popular Western world...

lets start from holidays:

whilst the senior 3's were doing their huge examinations, all the senior 1and 2 students went home so that the senior 3's had the whole school to themselves. carina and i used this opportunity to see some of our province. we went to guilin and yangshou for two days each, as everyone keeps telling us how beautiful they are.
we arrived in guilin about midday on thursday, and during our 5 minute walk from the bus station to our hostel, witnessed a street fight between two chinese women =D they were screaming at each other and there was this huge crowd of people around them, and they were blocking the road, it was crazy!!
both guilin and yangshou are famous for they karst landscape, which is basically huge limestone peaks, and cool underground caves. that afternoon we visited solitary beauty peak, apparently the most beautiful one in guilin. we paid Y50 to get in, which is hell expensive, only to fond out we could have climbed the peak for just Y15... the extra Y35 got us access to a few buildings which had no english information, so we didn't even know what they were. they were some pretty cool old buildings though. climber to the top, which nearly killed us because it was so hot! but defiantly worth it. slightly smoggy day, but the view was still awesome! the whole city is flayed out before you with all these peaks rising up in between office building and homes and what not, its crazy.
next day we got up early and waited 2 and a half hours to see the.... olympic torch =D not exactly worth the wait, but still a bit of fun. very patriotic - carina and i bought olympic t-shirts to fit in =P not that i could ever fit in, i look a tad different to your average chinese person... that day we also climbed elephant trunk hill - so named because it looks like an elephant dipping its trunk into the Li river. gorgeous views from the top, as expected, and it truly did looking like a elephant.
next day we took a bus out to yangshou, which is described by lonely planet as "less of a town and more of an international backpackers colony". this was soooooo true. it seemed everything there was simply for the convenience of lao wai (foreigners). there was a whole street of pretty much all western food and clubs, and every second shop was either a hostel/hotel or a souvenir shop. twas madness! yangshou is a beautiful area though. the day we arrived we went for a boat cruise along the li river. the lady who poach us offered us a "bamboo boat ride" - turns out bamboo in china is code for PVC piping... still lovely all the same. we got gorgeous views of the peaks in the area. spent the rest of the day cruising around the town and walking through the lovely parks. next day we hired bikes and rode out to the fields around yangshou - it was the most amazingly beautiful thing i have ever seen. beautiful limestones peaks rise up between emerald green rice fields, and this stretches on as far as you can see. it was a nice warm day and we road out to moon hill, which is a peak with a moon shape hole in the top, that goes all the way though. as we were riding though, it started to rain - it currently being wet season in china. we were soaked through in a matter of minutes, it was lovely after the hot sunny morning we had had. so we climbed the hill in the pouring rain, it was wonderful! its a quite an easy climb, as its all stones steps, but its a fair was up. still, this really old chinese lady followed us up the entire way, trying to sell us drinks, it was crazy! by the end of it i was more puffed out then she was! the views from the top were beautiful. the rain had cleared a lot the smog, so we could see for quite a distance, and all it was was beautiful country side, all lovely and green.
By the time we reached the top our old lady was getting angry that we kept refusing to buy her grossly over priced drinks, so to avoid her carina and i ducked up a dirt path that we found out led to the top of the hill. it was narrow and over grown, and as it had been raining, horribly muddy and slippery. fortunately it was quite rocky, so we made it up fairly easily. the views from the top were the most breath taking thing i have seen so far in my life.
the next day we returned to our sleepy little village and our teaching jobs, but i must say, it was defiantly one of the best holidays i have ever had!*


[* gap year not classified as holiday, classified as monumental life changing experience.]

footy:
not somehting you would expect to hear about in a blog written by claire and set in china, but its true, aussie rules football is a valid topic! carinas parents sent her a football, and after about 2 months we finally got it pumped up and taught the kiddes how to play! they were so mystified by the oddly shaped yellow ball and immediatly tried to use it like a soccer ball, or a volleyball... however once we explained to them how to use it they were quite good at it, and very enthusiastic. i taught all my classes how to play. or at least how to handball and kick. they all loved, and suprisingly so did i!!
rain:
as you may have heard there was flooding in parts of southern china, including my province =D but, as with the earthquake, this didnt really effect us and we didnt even really know about it =P however we did get 2 weeks of soild rain. everyday. all day. it would flood the oval and basketball courts. and by flood i mean there was lots of water. not a real flood. but yeah. i loved it! walking in the rain is one of my favourite things about china.
jasmine:
as i may or may not have mentioned, my little town in the jasmine capital of china =D but people still dont know where it is =P
so in our last week lily took us to some jasmine fields, as it was harvest time! it was rezally hot, and the sun was blazing, yet the workers in the fields were completely covered, even their faces, which as you may guess was to protect them selves from the sun. but not out of fear of skin cancer, but because they want to be white. its kind of sad, but everyone here has the same attitude. they all buy whitening cream, and carry umbrellas in summer, all to keep their skin as light as possible. i told many of students that in australia and other westerns countries, people want to have darker skin, and they were shocked.
but back to the jasmine. you pick the flowers a just as they open. its quite hard work because the jasmine bushes are quite low, so your constanly bending over, and the weather is terribly hot. but it smells nice! once the jasmine is picked its taken to the markets and sold. lily took us there and everywhere were huge piles of white jasmine flowers. the smell was intoxicating, and even managed to overpower the stench from the meat market next door. there were people everywhere, hauling sacks of jasmine, weighing it, raking it into piles, bagging it, and then hauling it away to be made into tea. lily said we should buy some jasmine to put in our house, so it would smell pretty. for some reason though no one would sell it too us, until some old lady argreed. we got one jin (500grm), and while she was measuring it out and whatnot, this huge group of people crowded round to watch us. it was really weird... even security came to observe the lao wei buying jasmine. that night we put it on top of our mosquito nets and all through the house. jasmine will forever remind me of hengxian and the my little home there.


last classes:
so! my placement, and thus my life as a teacher, is almost over =[ my last classes with all my students was fun and laid back. i just told them all about where i was going next, which made them all horribly jealous. then we took photos, or played games, or made paper stars and cranes =D all in all lots of fun. i also got LOTS of presents from students... i got four chinese knots, which are for goodluck, two olympic t-shirts, one signed by all the students of that class, a wooden dragon, a chinese scroll, a 3d puzzle of the great wall, some bracelets, paper for and instructions on how to make paper stars and cranes, hair pins, and much more! it made me fell so loved and appreciated! my last classes always made me sad, but it was nice to reflect on how far my students had come and how much fun we had had together.

a gift of tea:
lily told us that the school wanted to buy us a present, but wasnt sure what we would like. so she asked us if we would like a tea set. carina and i both insisted we didnt want anything, so poor lily was left to think of something herself. however a few days later when i asked if she would help me buy a tea pot to go with my two tea cups i had bought ealier, she insisted on buying us both tea sets from the school.
so off we went to the tea shop part of town. its huge. especially considering the population of our town (something between 10,000 and 16,000). there was hundreds of them! i dont undertand how they made any money, there never seemed to be anyone in them. however it was lots of fun. lily decided we needed tea to go with our tea sets, so we spent ages drinking loads of chinese teas. we had green teas, red teas, jasmines teas, and tea from the yunnan province! it wsa lots of fun, and the teas are so tasty ^_^ in the end we got one green tea and one jasmine tea, and then the store gave us some health tea for free =D then we spent a while looking at tea sets and eventually got pretty white ones with blue fish. we got all the things one needs to properly serve chiense tea. now i just have to remember how...

party!:
our school decided to throw us a party with all our students. all 300 of them... lily asked us to organise some english games fir everyone to play, but told us nothing beyond that. we were a little nervouse about organsing games for that many students, and so we left planning it till the last minute =D first lily gave a lovely speech and thanked carina and ion behlaf of the school. then she gave a gift from the principal... Y1000!!!!!!! we were shocked but certianly happy! then we said a thank you to the students, and the school and lily, and then gave lily a present! and one for the school - an australian flag. apparently they loved it. then we played games! first we played simon says, renamed carina says =D problem was it took ages because they were so damned good at it!! but they loved it. then we put them in groups and gave them riddles. they turned out to be harder then we expected, but they still had fun. then we spent ages taking photos and talking and then said goodbye to everyone =[

packing/goodbye/leaving:
so yes. this is the end =[ it all terribly sad. carina and i spent our last weekend with the apartment in completely disarray as we sorted and packed everything and got out parcels ready to send home. i sent home 15kg of stuff... i never thought it was possible! most of it was presents from people and for people, and souvenirs. and photos. so many photos... and so much tea! the school gave us 7 packets each! SEVEN! its crazy!!!
of course while all this crazy sorting and packing was going on we had SO MANY VISITORS! students kept coming to say goodbye and give us presents and just hang out. carina and i have never been so popular though! it was really nice.
on sunday, our last night, our link teachers took us out for a banquet, which the principal, who we have never actually met, was going to attend, but ended being hideously late because he went to a poetry reading to celebrate the Party's' day. our link teachers were very proud, as apparently not everyone gets to go. but he eventually arrived, and i didn't even realise it was him until he left and carina told me... he was very nice though!
the next day was our last day =[ we were leaving on a train to kunming at 4:20pm, and were leaving the school at 2pm. we spent the morning hurriedly tiding our house, which was still a mess, but apparently cleaner then when the other foreign teachers left, and sending our parcels. then we had one last meal with lily and betty, and we were off. the school had offered to drive us to the train station in nanning, and lily came with us, which was lovely. when we said goodbye to her at the station i nearly started crying. she has been wonderful to carina and i and i will always thing of her as my chinese mother!
so its over. i have left! gone! my glorious days as a teacher of english at hengxian middle school are over! its so sad, and i miss it like crazy. i have been keeping in touch with many students, and lily and betty though, so its not too bad. its just sad to think i will never see most of those people again.

the second part of my grand adventure:
so! now i am no longer a teacher! i am simply a traveler. first stop: kunming, yunnan province, china! here is my itinerary for the next 6 months:
- yunnan, sichuan, hunan, guangxi and hainan provinces of china!
- hong kong
- shandong province of china
- 16th of august: i meet laurenin beijing! then we go to tianjin, then back to beijing for the start of the transmongolian! this epic train journey will take us to mongolia (ulaan baatar and a ger camp) and russia (irkuts and lake baikal, moscow then st petersburg, where the trian ends).
- tallin; estonia.
- helsinki; finland.
- stockholm and maybe ystad; sweden.
- south of france; france. here i meet my parents, grand mother, aunty, uncle and cousins.
- poland.
- malta.
- various places; england.
- UNSURE.
- new york; america. for the first week of december with my folks ^_^
- grand prarie, vancouver; canada. here for christmas, again with my folks.
- HOME! sometime maybe early january. depending on various factors.


so. THERE YOU HAVE IT! my life up until the 30th of june. next i shall tell you about my china travels!
so, until next time (which will be soon)!
claire xo.