They call me Ms. Chu

i'm teaching a 3-week long oral-intensive english class at Huagong university, where my parents went to school. i applied to it during the school year, and my mom got my family friend, jean, to teach it with me (we're splitting the paycheck).

we were both kinda nervous and not sure how/what to teach them -- the rest of the program's teachers (there are over 30 of them) are like retired elementary school teachers and most of done this program before. they gave us no guidelines and just told us to teach whatever we wanted. neither of us have ever taught before. but it turns out we think our students like us! we hope haha =). we teach them a lot of slang and play games that use english, make them do presentations which they're not used to, and tell them about american culture which they're most curious about. and they're SO CUTE!! we talk about which of our students we would set up with each other and rank them by cuteness outside of class. lol.

we teach a morning class and an afternoon class, 3 hours each, and we just repeat the material. it's so tiring but a really good experience at the same time.


here below was "relationship day". we taught them slang such as "third wheel", "blind date", "to dump", etc etc. Then we played the dating game and gave the winning 'couples' roses. =)














the first friday, one of TAs arranged for the afternoon students to meet at a coffee house. we just ended up all talking for a few hours.

on the bottom right is stephanie, one of the few other younger teachers. she's from texas and applied to the program because she had a chinese professor who recommended it to her. the rest of the teachers are part of TFF, "teaching for friendship foundation", like i said most are 40 or 50. eric is about 26, probably the youngest member of TFF, and is just a young teacher. stephanie and her friend kealy are in grad school. and there's jean and i (jean is in the bottom middle, black tank top). yup... five young'uns.



we treated our students to KTV! that is KARAOKE. chinese ppl LOVE karaoke, and i've been pretty much turning into a fob. i've learned the lyrics to a jay chou song already and a wang fei song... ahhhh i miss my indie music!

we have about 45 students. and OVER 35 of them came!! we rented the largest KTV room and over half of us still had to sit one the floor. you should see the videos i have.. crazy dancing, normally quiet students singing crazy loud. it was a fun night.

the next day we found out 3 of our students were locked out of their dorm (they close at 11pm) and had to sleep in the park.. oops..



the next day we met with our morning students at the same coffee house. we played mafia, or as they call it, "the killer game".


lol... they all take lunchtime naps. and since our classroom is one of the few places on campus with a/c they all come early and sleep. so cute!!

2 day tour of Lushan

My relatives found a tour group going to Lushan, a famous mountain about 3 hours east of Wuhan, and they sent ray and i there since there is pretty much nothing to do in my hometown.

it was so pretty there! well, i've seen better but for the short notice of the trip and the proximity to wuhan, it was a really nice trip. here's ray on the left doing some fancy kungfu move that doesn't actually exist. there was a lot of climbing & waterfalls.


this on below was one of the nicest sites we saw. it's called the Three-Tiered Waterfall -- see it? three tiers. aren't we chinese creative?

we basically had to climb from the very top of the waterfall to the bottom in order to see it. on the way up we climbed the steps: 1323! thats a shitload of stories, and i've pretty much got quads of steel now =D.

you can actually rent these little inflatable boats and row around in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. i didn't want to because 1. you'd get drenched, and 2. your dinky little boat would probably flip over under the waterfall. good thinking on my part, huh?


here's a nicer view of lushan. these mountainous areas are best when you have a "yunhai", or "sea of clouds" kinda like this one.


there were monkeys there!! so cute. you aren't supposed to feed them on your own b/c apparently they can get kind of crazy and bite, but we did anyway.



























ummm random photos. nice rocks, bamboo forests, etc. haha i'm not sure what to say

Wuhan, the "fireplace" of China

not only is Wuhan, my hometown, one of the 3 infamous "fireplaces" (bad translation? meaning it has been a constant 98 degrees here all week with 71% humidity and it will get WORSE) of China, but also there is nothing to do there. seriously. but ray came to visit from beijing anyway =).




here, at Donghu or East lake (one of the only 2 scenic spots in Wuhan), i ruined a picture he was taking of some tower. HA!


there was parasailing in East Lake! woot.

ray didn't know how to follow instructions ("you need to take a few steps after you land") and planted his feet. kids, this is why you follow the rules.

my take-off and landing were beautiful =). see below

Mini-trip out west: Chengdu

chengdu has the only panda sanctuary in the world. no one living in chengdu i talked to has been there; it's full of "waiguoren" - foreigners, like me.

you have to go early in the morning, before it gets too hot and the pandas are just sleeping or go into their air-conditioned cages. all they do is eat. they sit there and eat bamboo, and they just let the scraps fall on their stomachs. the only reason they move is if there's no more bamboo within reach. after this my mom started calling me "panda".

even though all they do is eat... it's SO cute. there were like 40 people just standing there watching these guys. i took a bunch of videos too, but i don't know how to post them here. maybe facebook?

i think the pandas know how to put on a show for the tourists too. one of these guys just laid on top of the other panda in the cage and all the tourists went crazy, myself included.


on a sidenote, my mom's old college buddy had a cat in his house and i think i took 100Mb worth of pictures of him (the cat). so cute!

Mini trip out west: Huanglong & Jiuzhaigou

huanglong and jiuzhaigou are very difficult to get to. first, you have to fly to chengdu to get transportation to the area. then it's either an 11 hour bus ride or a 40 minute plane ride (the difference can be blamed on the mountain range the entire way). you land on the 3rd highest airport in the world at ~3500 meters, you take a 1-hour bus ride to huanglong, and then you gotta hike up 3.5 km.

all along the way your head is dizzy from the high altitude, the bus is winding in and out of the mountains, and your heart starts beating like crazy everytime you take a few steps. at least, that's what happened to my mom and i. but the result was this view, almost worth it. this was some peak made famous by mao zedong climbing over/around it during the Long March.

and THIS. this is the view we came to huanglong to see. the famous pools formed by calcite deposits (thank you, wiki).

i felt like jumping in and taking a dip, but then i'd have to pay a several thousand yuan fine.

the area was also very well preserved. there was a 500 yuan fine for smoking, and along the trail (since chinese men are so addicted to tobacco that they can't give it up for 3 hours) there are specially designated "smoking rooms". i was very impressed with the government =)

here's another pretty little waterfall thingy below. not all the pools were bright blue like the one above, most were this ugly yellow mud color. i think that's where the name huanglong - "yellow dragon" - comes from.

after huanglong it's another long-ass bus ride to jiuzhaigou, this time 3 hours. we arrived at night and i was in a daze from sleeping on the bus, so in the morning i was surprised to see our hotel surrounded by mountains.

the people in the area are tibetan, this is some sort of tibetan religous thing (sorry i can't be more descriptive).

my mom & my grandfather had a lot of fun renting these "traditional" tibetan costumes.

this is "five-colored lake". pretty!!

and some waterfall. my grandfather really liked it.

"peacock lake". the blue portion of the lake looks like a peacock shape from above.

"pearl waterfall", so-called because the little ridges make the water look like a million little pearls.

in the evening we were taken to a traditional tibetan home, which is their excuse for serving really bad unflavored food and making us eat on small wooden benches. i guess we got to do cool stuff like jumping over this entrance flame and singing and dancing with them.

Birthtown, baby!

i saw my grandmother for the first time in two years -- since then she's had a couple strokes, lost the ability to walk, then speak, and is completely different from when i last saw her. i was quite moved when her nurse told me this was the first time she had smiled in days.

that's my grandfather on the left, my mom, my grandmother, and of course myself.


my uncle's (my mom's older brother) a big spender. he bought this soup consisting of leg bones, i dont even know which meat. you get a plastic glove and a straw and you're supposed to drink the "juice" from the bones. he enjoyed it. i did not.
this is the 150 yuan plate of snails he bought, mainly for the shells. no one ate the snails.

the last day up north

i met up with ray as he arrived in beijing. we hit up all the touristy spots as any american tourist would: tiananmen, beihai, wangfujing. instead of showing you these beautiful spots, i will show you all the dead fish we spotted in beihai, a famous man-made lake north of tiananmen square.

isn't china amazing?