laughing traveler

It was crazy to be the one taking care of my parents for the first time. They were staying in my apartment in China. I had done all the vacation planning and I did all the speaking at the restaurants or cabs in my limited Chinese. It was the first time I felt like a real adult and I feel they saw me as an adult for the first time as well. They came with full trust in me, when I asked what do you want to do while you are in China the answer was always, “whatever you want!” I soon found that I had to make some major adjustments to the way I make plans to accommodate for my parents. When I am with my friends, we want to pack as much into each vacation day as possible and all at the lowest costs. However, when I told my parents that hostel prices must be up because of the Chinese New Year and was a 100 kaui Hostel ok, my dad responded we were not staying anywhere that was only $15 US! Then he added that maybe we should be searching for a “hotel” rather than “hostel”. I laughed that I hav...

I will admit I was pretty stressed out about my parents staying with me in my apartment here in China. I even confided in my new Irish friend on my Chengdu trip that I was afraid my parents were going to take one look at where I live and drag me on a plane back to the USA. She had some very good advice, “You are full grown now, if they start pulling on you here’s what you do: excuse yourself and take a shot of your favorite liquor. Anything they don’t like just say it is a cultural difference, take another shot and embrace the culture!” I have got to go to Ireland! I am proud to say that I didn’t have to take a shot the whole time my parents were here! My stress turned into excitement when I got back to the Shenzhen Airport from Chengdu. My parents would fly into the same place the following day. As I walked through baggage claim there was a glass separation that I could see everyone’s family members pressed up against. A little baby boy broke through the security check point and run...

I love pandas so much that I woke up at 7am to take a bus to the panda research center! Apparently pandas are most active in the morning and that is the best chance to catch them up movin around and being cute! We booked the trip through the hostel so the driver come with us and took us on all the short cuts around the zoo. Kaye loves us so much he come on his day off from the hostel to hang out with us… or maybe it was because he loves the pandas so much, either way it was great! We walk in and a group of foreigners is all crowded around the red pandas but our guy sprints right past through them saying we don’t want to miss the giant pandas! The baby pandas and red pandas are more active but the full grown pandas are only active when they first wake up and we didn’t want to miss it. I was expecting it to be like the Washington DC zoo where it is one huge cage for one panda and it’s so big that all you can see is a black and white blur off in the distance. China knows how to do it! May...

The Hostel we stayed at, Lazy Bones, was awesome! It made me want to change my career path and work there forever. It was exactly how I imagine I would have things set up. It had a very hip bohemian feel; there where book shelves over flowing with a simple sign that said, ”Not for sale, book swap only.” There was also a box of items left behind by travels free for anyone who could use them. The owner is a young girl that runs the front desk and handles the money. Then the rest of the staff is all recent college graduates. They clients are mostly foreigners and everyone spoke beautiful English. There was a big living room that the guest and staff could hang out in, use the internet, play pool, watch movies on the big screen and order food or drinks from the bar. The tables where decorated by postcards from previous guests and drawings of everyone’s home town; which gave it a homey feel. They also offered tour packages like most hotels in China, but these were all for low budget. I feel...

One of the privileges of being an oral English teacher is no written exams!!! So my school let me out on weather holiday a week early while the students had final exams! I took advantage of this by traveling to Chengdu with 4 or my American friends. Why Chengdu you might ask, PANDAS! Big, beautiful pandas! My friends had studied Asian history and were excited about the city’s history in explaining all their plans I took away a few key words and I was sold. You can hold a baby panda! The trip started off in a rush, we all live in different parts of Shenzhen so we were on our own getting to the airport. The flight was leaving at 10am so I was told I needed to be on a bus by 730am. I had never been to the airport before but like most places in Shenzhen I figure I am an hour away by bus. I sit up front looking at the signs and studying my watch starting to get nervous after the first hour. I relaxed a bit when we got on the highway and I saw signs for the airport, not 2 minutes later we we...

It still hits me so hard every time I realize how different life is here. Its hard for me to imagine a place where people have never heard the name of Jesus but its true. I am living there! The Shekou fellowship, underground church had the children’s Christmas play and it brought me to tears. I don’t know why an Indian girl playing Mary is so much more moving next to a Chinese Gabriel and an Australian Joseph. But it was! It was beautiful and unexpected. Almost as cute was one of my friends who was sitting behind me with her student that just become a Christian. I could hear her say, “so this is a play? Jesus is a baby? Her mom is very lucky, look how happy!” The preacher got up to speak and pointed out a boy my age in the audience that was a first time visitor. He said that he had spoken to him before the service and the boy asked what the sermon was about and then responded, “Who is Joseph?” The speaker was an American and talked about how he knew the story of Christmas long before h...

So for Christmas this year we find out at the last minute that the Chinese education bureau wants to throw a Christmas party for all the foreign teachers. They have rented out a hotel and a santa suite for the occasion. So I went with a few friends to get hair washes to relax before the party. The guys there let us give them English names. We took our responsibility very seriously and want them to have cool names not the standard John and Matt like every other Chinese man. So in honor of my favorite Christmas song the crazy haired guy is now DOMINIC ( like the donkey hee hee) and the other guy had the pucker lips so he needed a gangster name, JAMAL! So if you are ever in Shenzhen and meet 2 Chinese men named Dominic and Jamal you can know I have left my mark! Apparently our contact teachers were invited to the dinner as well and were encouraged to drive us. My teacher however was relieved when I said I was meeting up with friends earlier, to which she responded, “good I won’t have to ...