End of winter vacation

Well sadly my long winter vacation is about to come to an end. I've had over a month and a half off and it was wonderful. After traveling with my sister and brother-in-law, I still had a month of idleness. I made use of my time by going to the gym and studying Bengali like there's no tomorrow. Here are just a few photos from my break.

To the right is a photo on the ice at the Tianjin TV tower, Tianjin's one and only landmark. Left to right: my friends Robin, Sudev, and Sumanta. You could rent skates or these little sleds on runners that you sit on and push yourself around with long picks. We just walked around since the ice seemed too bumpy and skate rental seemed a little pricy (20 yuan per person! - $2.50)






Left is Rajdeep checking out the skates.








The two photos below are from Valentine's Day. I had never actually celebrated it before, and doing so in China was something special in itself.

























Last but not least, Chef Lyndsey. Like the apron? It's the year of the rat folks.

Spring Festival

Happy Chinese New Year everybody!

The New Year was on February 7. On the eve of the new year everybody, including small children who should be nowhere near explosives, goes out to a fireworks stand to load up for the big night. You can get anything from sparklers to industrial sized stadium show fireworks. At midnight on the eve of the new year everyone goes out in front of their apartment gate to set them off. I guess the idea is that on the eve of the new year the evil spirits come to earth and the firecrackers help to scare them away.

So this New Years Eve I loaded my bicycle basket up with a long chain of firecrackers, rockets, and the like and road to Rajdeep's apartment. We set them off outside his apartment gate (not that I really believe evil spirits were going to get us but, better to be safe right?) then we road to our friends' place on the 21st floor of an apartment building - a great place to look down over Tianjin and watch the fireworks madness. We got to their apartment just around midnight and I swear every Chinese person was out in the streets with firecrackers in hand.

There wasn't a second of silence - fireworks filled the sky and the deafening sound of thousands of simultaneous firecrackers being set off was almost unbearable. They were setting these things off in the middle of the street even as cars drove by. ... the view of all this from my friends' flat was really wonderful. It was like a very colorful doomsday.

Well, 5 days later and the fireworks are still going off every second. My crazy neighbors seem to find if necessary to set off long chains of firecrackers outside my apartment building all night long, every hour on the hour. They begin at 4am and continue until about 9am. EVERY NIGHT!! I'm going insane. I can't hear myself think. I can't even hear my TV with the volume on high! I thought of calling the police last night but then, what's the point? This is a national holiday. Everyone is setting off firecrackers. Heck, it's probably the police who are setting those things off outside my window!

The lesson here folks is that, Chinese New Year may sound like an exciting holiday but do yourself a favor and never, NEVER come to China at this time of year! I'll try to get some photos of the fireworks salesmen but I haven't had a chance yet.

Winter Vacation

Sorry folks. I know it has been awhile since my last entry, so here's a long overdue post...

I'm now halfway through my contract working at the Korean International School here in Tianjin. The first semester went pretty well. This was my first teaching job where I didn't rotate schools. That made it nice because I got to teach and get to know the same students, unlike my old teaching jobs where it was hard for me to remember my students' names because I taught over 600 at 4 different schools. Plus it's nice to have my own office space. It's nice to be permanent.

I'm also halfway through my winter vacation which started in the beginning of January. One of the perks of teaching at an international school is that you get 2 months vacation in Jan. and Feb. Sounds nice right? Well the first few weeks were great. I got to relax, my sister and brother-in-law came to visit, and then I got to relax some more, and more, and more. Well I'm quite frankly tired of relaxing. I don't want to do the whole 'tour around southeast asia tour' that a lot of other westerners do here. I don't want to spend so much money. So, I'm stuck here in Tianjin doing nothing all day.

I've been trying my best to keep myself busy by studying Bengali (my boyfriend, Rajdeep, is from Assam in northeast India) and going to the gym. I admit though that all this time off has forced me to develop an addiction to dvds.

Here's a photo of Rajdeep and I. He's executive chef at an Indian restaurant here in Tianjin.

Erin, my sister, and her husband Curt came to visit from January 15 - 24. It was a pretty short trip so we packed a lot in. Here are a few photos of the places we visited. First off, I met them at the Beijing airport and we took the bus (2.5 hours) back to Tianjin.

First we took a trip to Ancient Culture Street in Tianjin. You can find any kind of traditional Chinese arts, crafts, snacks, etc here. The red lanterns and red paper cuts you see are being sold in fullforce for the Chinese New Year which is coming up on Feb. 7.

The next day we (Erin, Curt, Rajdeep, and I) hired a car that drove us to the Tianjin section of the Great wall at Huangyaguan (yellow cliff pass). It was a long drive and the outskirts of Tianjin which we drove past were pretty much a barren wasteland. But the wall was awesome and a nice break from the city.

This section of the wall is in good condition and supposedly hasn't been reconstructed like the sections around Beijing that most tourists go to. We were literally the only people there. It was all up and down, with lots of steps and steep hills.

The next morning the three of us, as well as two friends from my work, went to Tianjin airport for our flight to Harbin, a city in the far northeast of China that's famous for its snow and ice festival. The airline we flew on was called Okay Airline (just OK?). Why couldn't they have called it something like Excellent Air, or Great Air, or something more reassuring...? Well we got onto the plane and just before takeoff smoke started coming out of the vents and all the passengers started freaking out and jumping out of their seats. Turns out they just forgot to close the vents while de-icing the plane. Nothing for us to worry about, but they sure didn't do a good job calming Erin down. She was freaked out and thank God she didn't jump ship.

Harbin was FREEZING COLD! It was around -30c everyday. Here are a few photos of the snow and ice festival in Harbin. It was really amazing. Although I got frostbite every time I stepped outside, I really enjoyed it!




More stories and photos from the rest of the trip to follow!