On a foggy, cold morning, we set off after a big breakfast for what we prepared to be a four-hour hike through villages and terraced rice fields. Within the first ten minutes, we realized the […]
Hainan Island 海南岛
When planning a vacation, you always imagine everything as going just as planned, and then when on vacation, this is rarely how it pans out. Never in my life have I had to sprint through […]
Students 学生
I’ve spent the last year teaching. It’s been the most amazing, rewarding, challenging, frustrating experience of my life. The challenge hasn’t been how to teach students how to say “I like bananas and apples, but […]
Learning the Hard Way
It was a rainy November morning. The kind of rain that doesn’t appear worth an umbrella from the window, but later has your clothes saturated after a few minutes. The cold wind is what I […]
First Tourism Experience
For the last three days of our vacation, we thanked Jim’s family in as many ways as possible for everything they’d done for us, well, really just for all the food they fed us, and […]
Chinese New Year 春节
Although Christmas in China was more of just a normal day, Chinese New Year has made a valiant effort to replace it. As the Chinese used a lunar calendar in ancient times, New Year’s Day […]
A Salon Experience
When you travel for longer than a few months at a time, your hair begins to become an issue. In France, it took me almost 6 months to muster up the courage to go to […]
Discovering Tea
Before traveling, drinking tea was never an interest of mine, and coffee really didn’t make its way onto my list of ‘daily necessities’ until I was well into adulthood and in need of a slap […]
The Lotus Bar
If anyone even remotely knows my father, you know he’s, just about, the cheapest man alive. That is, until he travels. I could have killed my Dad growing up when he explicitly instructed me that […]
A Day In The Life
There are 56 minorities in China, and 1 of them makes up 90% of the composition. I’ve caught only a glimpse of the other 10% in the last two days. Along with the Han fisherman […]