Special thanks to Zak for allowing me to guest post on his travel blog. I am in day 7, China. What an experience! Last weekend, Zak and I took a bullet train (a first for me) to the coastal city of Qingdao. This city was inhabited by a large German community in the early 1900’s… Read More Cindy in China
You can thank the Chinese, and I will use them as a convenient excuse as to why I have not been present on the blog for months. The government here, exalted and wise, hath decreed that wordpress and all associated blogs are forthwith to be stricken from the cyber-domain of the People’s Republic. The positive… Read More Emerging From Winter
Daybreak brought the soggy, humid wet season weather with it. While the week itself, when we are in theory hard at work but really just when we teachers confined to a narrow orbit of our respective campuses, the weather is warm but gorgeous and clear. In most countries this would make a lovely excuse to… Read More Anatomy of a Day
With apologies for a lengthy layoff, I have refrained from writing for the simple purpose that I have very little news of note to share with the world at large. There are the small victories of acclimitization and adaption that I have written about before, the joys (and pratfalls) of teaching, and the ongoing challenge… Read More The #18 Twilight Blues
The flight out from Shenzhen was a piece of cake. The return flight, some five long days later, was not quite so simple. But more on that later. In what seems to be the fall fashion for inland cities, we landed in Chongqing in the morning, greeted by a blanket of fog and smog. Tori… Read More The Sichuan Episode
Once again, I have been granted a bit of vacation as a result of a school event wiping out several days of classes. My kids now have red banners in their classrooms from their Sports Day successes. I on the hand have a few pictures, a slight cold, a pullover, and a trilingual copy of… Read More A Hazy Shade of Winter
I’ve been somewhat inactive the past few weeks on the blog. This is in part owing to the current firewall block of Facebook in China, which I’ve been using to host my photos. The other component of this is that there has been little big news of note. The days and then weeks have gone… Read More Etched in Lore
I’ve been settled back in Shenzhen now for nearly almost two weeks. Spent time first in the hotel with all the other teachers, mostly the group of new folks who were up in Beijing for training with Tori. It was a bit overwhelming to be around so many foreigners in this town and some of… Read More Back in the Saddle
As seems to happen when the year runs out, time moves faster and faster. Myself and the other foreign teachers all realize how little time is left here, in Shenzhen, and the pressure builds to get out, to see the city, hang out together. Unfortunately it has been incredibly humid and hot the past month,… Read More Marathon Karaoke
It’s hit the doldrums point, when each week of lesson planning looms angrily. The weather is heating up, and my aircon has been running far, far more the past week than at any time prior. The mosquito net is up in my room, lending an enchanted castle vibe that was sorely lacking. All in all,… Read More Springtime Shenanigans
Zak Abroad 