Dali: Day 2

Day 2 Felix drove us around in his father's Jeep Cherokee! Which saved us a great deal of money and time... Felix got his license recently and so he taught me a little bit about the way getting your license works in China. In China to get your license you don't have to take a driving test but a detailed written test right down to questions of mechanics to naming the different parts under the hood! Also the rules of the road, at least from my perspective, are radically different from America. You can pass whenever you want as long as you beep your horn and let the person know.

In fact it seems that the general rule is to try to beep the horn as much as possible in order to let everybody know where you are. Also later that day I would find out first hand how an accident is handled, when Felix got in a little Fender bender trying to get out of the parking lot. At first it seemed like he was going to try pretend like nothing happened and just drive off; until the guy from the other car came running up to him and shouting at him in Chinese. Though most of the time I was clueless as to what was going on, I spoke to Felix afterwards and he explained to me in English that the person we hit was wanting 200 RMB (about 27 US) for the damage to his van. But, the cop agreed on 100 RMB (about 13 US) and Felix paid the man and everything was settled right there and then.

On Tuesday we went to the 3 towers and the temples, here is the view of the three towers from the outside. These towers as well as the temples are all symbols of Buddhist worship, these in the past were the places of worship for royalty. However, now it is a park.







Here is the sign at the entrance to the park. Though I'm not quite to the point yet where I can tell you what it says I know the last two big characters are 三 San, which is 3, and the last one is 塔 ta, which is pagoda or tower. If you can read the rest of the characters and let me know I will add it here and put your name in my blog! (These characters were translated by...) - your name could be there!


Here is the towers from the inside of the park along with a mob of people. This week is one of the few weeks of the year where just about everybody does not have to go to work. Thus everybody is traveling and the sites are crowded.







Theres the 三 中国 牛仔 san zhong guo niu zai, or the three Chinese cowboys, in front of the three towers!








China has some of the coolest signs in English! This is the first one I've put up so far but theres certainly more to come! In case you can't read this one it says "The unselfish human world of flowers and plants is in love."




































































When asked Leo and Felix claim to be Buddhist because they have both grown up in Buddhist homes where that was all that they knew. We saw maybe twenty different Buddhist temples where at each one Leo and Felix both bow downed to worship idols of many different kinds, as is the tradition. They also lighted incense and even paid money to worship the Buddhist Gods.



















Leo is crazy

























































This was the largest temple we saw and holds the most important of the God's in Buddhism. After him comes the fat Buddha that we so often see.
















Here is the bathing Buddha...













This was the last temple which actually had a second story with stairs and a pretty cool view.


















Well that was Day 2 of Dali, keep a look out for day 3 in our climatic trip to the famous mountains of Dali!

Dali: Day 1

After English Corner Saved my life and I was finally able to get into my apartment. The next day we set off for Dali! Dali is a very famous city in the Yunnan Providence, about 300 years ago the Dali Kingdom covered the entire providence of Yunnan and even parts of Vietnam. Now whats left of it is a preserved historical city, with a lot to do and plenty of good sites. From where we are its about six hours by bus to Dali, so we took a one hour bus to Kunming and five hour bus ride from Kunming to Dali.


We Spent the first day venturing into the Ancient city of Dali, here on the left is the South gate.




I went he wo de hao zhong guo pengyou Leo and Felix. (With my good Chinese friends) Leo I had met at English corner on campus and Felix I met through Leo since he is Leo's roomate. It really was because of Felix that we went on this trip on the first place since he is a native from Dali. We owe a lot to Felix since he showed us around the city and also helped us save a lot of money. Not to mention the fact that his family bought us dinner twice and put us up in a Hotel room the last night.









On the left is Felix and on the right is Leo.









Here is another important Person I have named the boat lady. Every where we went this lady followed us through the entire Ancient city of Dali trying to sell us a boat trip to some Island somewhere.









After Leo stopped stealing hats from little boys we decided we needed to go get our own Chinese Cow Boy Hats!







Here is me standing in front of the entrance to foreigner street.




















The characters read yang ren jie or westerner/foreigner street.












Here is the view from the North gate over looking the temples and the mountains.
















What can I say! Just look at those cool guys!













Here is a view of Er Hei Lake also from the North Gate!










































































So that was Day 1 at Dali in a Nut Shell, Day 2 we went to the 3 pagodas and the temples that are in the picture above, but that will be another post!

The Day English Corner Saved My Life

I bet your wondering about how English Corner saved my life. Some maybe even wondering what English corner is. Well, there are two English corners that I go to normally one is on campus on Thursday nights from 6-8pm and there is another one off campus at an English Training Center on Saturdays from 8-10pm. At English corner as a foreign English speaker I go and others come to practice there conversational English.

Well it was Saturday, and I not only was planning to go to English corner, but was first going out to eat with a Chinese friend then to teach some little kids English at one English Training center then going to another English Training Center to do English corner. As I was stepping out the door to my apartment I went to check my pockets to make sure I had my keys and just as I realized that I didn't have them the door slammed behind me.

So locked out of my apartment I started to think about how I was going to get back in. Just about all my foreign friends had left town for the National Holiday so I couldn't call them. Then I tried calling the lady in charge at the foreign affairs office on campus, Kerry. When I called She said one sentence and we got disconnected and when I tried calling back I found out the phone was disconnected. So with no other options I went out to eat with my friend at the cafeteria on campus. He then told me of our plans to leave for Dali tomorrow mourning, so if I was going to have any clothes to bring with me on the trip I was going to have to get in my apartment some how.

Afterwards I went to teach the kids, which was a nightmare! Then I went to English corner. Everywhere I went I told everybody about the ordeal and just about everybody responded the same way laughing and then not helping me at all. Till Finally when I got to English corner, that night it turned out that all the students had classes (yes they had classes that they had to make up for the vacation before they could be off, at 8pm)! So after we talked for about an hour with just a local high school English teacher another foreigner there to help with English corner and the manager and a teacher there at the English training center I finally told them of my predicament. Immediately the other foreigner offer to let me stay at his place, then the High School English teacher offered to go find a locksmith for me. He came back in about 20 minutes and we all went back to my apartment to see the locksmith open the door to my apartment. The English teacher had translated a little for me from the locksmith and I found out that the Locksmith had already been here several times to this apartment building so I had a sense of I wasn't the only one. Anyways as you can see in the picture below the teacher held the light as the lock guy somehow opened my door! That was the day English Corner saved my life!

An Awesome Birthday

Wo de sheng ri!

On Wednesday September 26 my friends Flood, Mudslide and Tsunami threw me a great birthday party with all kinds of surprises. It was a good retreat from the chaos of the week before it, and great surprise. We started out by going out to dinner to the local Yi restaurant and then went to Flood's new apartment for the after party! A night full of food, fun and Karaoke!



After a few songs of Chinese karaoke, Mud Slide brought out my brownie cake hand made by Tsunami and with toothpicks in the shape of the number 20! Then later when I was about ready to go home thinking this was the best birthday party I ever had in China, then they brought out my birthday present that they all chipped in to buy!



They bought me a Chinese Johnny Cash impersonator! Ni Hao! Wo jiao Johnny Cash!

Just kidding, they got me a guitar! Plus a yue bing and Cheddar Sun Chips from the import store in Kunming!

All in all it was a great birthday party, one I had not expected coming here to Asia not knowing anyone and on the complete opposite side of the world from my family. However, I have found some great friends!

Classes begin

Classes began on September 10 here for all the foreigners who are studying Chinese. It has recently become a requirement that all beginning students must take at least 15 credit hours a semester so currently I am taking 15 credit hours of listening, Speaking, and Comprehensive with three different teachers which don't necessarily teach any of the above areas but they often switch. All of the teachers have been very helpful so far in the past 3 weeks of classes 2 of which are really nice and the third is a little bit more challenging... I will discuss the latter in more detail in the next post, when culture shock finally begins...

It is about a 20-30 minute walk to class which is probably pretty close to the same as last year at Liberty in comparison with the distance from East campus to Demoss.

However, it is a little bit different from walking on a bridge over a busy high way...

Half of the way is on the normal campus through the dorms and the cafeteria and the main class room buildings. Then the second half is on a dirt road through farm land. Once you get to the dirt road there is the sound of constant dynamite blasting as a bunch of construction is taking place at this end of the campus, which causes some humorous times in the middle of class...


At the end of the dirt road, as shown above, is the new foreigner branch of campus; which once was less than 2 minutes from most places on campus and now is a 20 minute walk separated from the rest of campus... This is also the area of my classroom as shown below.

In side on the left is my good friend from Thailand hes my only classmate who knows a little English. He is a medical doctor in his 40's who knows over seven languages and is studying the trade between different minorities in the area. Up front is one of five of my Korean classmates. The Korean students speak very little English so I have not gotten to know them well however, my Thai friend "Song ba" has been a great help to me.

Thank you, for your support I should have a lot more posts coming up soon to catch you up with the past few weeks of whats been going on here in Asia!