Hello Everyone!
Greetings from China!!
All is well here. We are trying to have spring, but I don’t think winter wants to quite let go. We have gone through quite the mix—very cold and wet—mind you, very cold for here is about 55 to us….I know, I know, I can here you people in the Midwest now….ha ha! Then, we have been as high as the upper 80’s and low 90’s—almost TOO hot. Today it is quite cool—high of 66 and rain forecasted. I do feel that spring is almost here!!
Most of you know I was home for Christmas. It was a wonderful time to spend with my family and I got to see so many friends. It was just marvelous!! I was home for 1 month, and came back to China on January 24, which just happened to be Chinese New Year’s Eve. My plane landed around 10:30 in the evening, so the festivities were well going on, and there were fireworks going off all round us. I couldn’t help to think that it was China’s way of welcoming Princess Chef Gail back into the country!! (HA HA!) Rocco was there to pick me up at the airport, along with our good friend, Lynette. We grabbed the bags and headed straight for Crazy English Camp, which was bout 1 hour away and had already been going on for about a week. We still had about 6 days to go to finish the camp. Camp was at a campus in Chonghua, in the countryside. As we drove further away from the airport and the lights of the big city of Guangzhou, we were greeted with more and more fireworks and lots of LOUD explosions. The Chinese of course invented the fireworks, and LOVE to let them off for their Spring Festival. We saw spectacular displays every night. The actual festival lasts 15 days, and it is so similar to our Christmas and New Year celebrations—lots of eating, being with friends and family and just enjoying the time off. Of course we were at English camp and we had WORK to do, students to teach...there were about 1000 of us there—students, Chinese teachers and about 25 of us foreign teachers.
Rocco was in charge of the foreign teachers, and did a great job organizing, keeping everyone in line and making sure we all got to work on time. Crazy English says it was the best group ever, and we didn’t have to fire anyone and no one left, so that is good. Camp can be pretty intensive, especially for the students—12 days of ENGLISH only, and not a lot of free time for goofing off. But the payoff is amazing for those that “put their nose to the grindstone”….we met some more wonderful people from all over China and had a successful camp, and it feels good to do our little part to help make the country’s English population stronger!!
After camp, we needed a break, so we came home, unpacked and packed and headed straight for Thailand. Clark, our Chinese friend, went with us. It was Clark’s first time out of China, and we had fun taking him to some places we went last year. We arrived in Bangkok, with the intention of "overnighting" it, and heading straight for an island and some sun and sea. We got 2nd class train tickets, that included a bed, and started the 10 hour trek to Surat Thani, where we would catch a ferry and then head to Ko Samui—about 1.5 hours away. We left at around 5 at night—and after stopping at every little town along the way, we arrived around 5:00 am. The train was much older and worn than the trains we have been on in China, but the bed was comfortable and as we walked through the train to the dining car, I became more thankful that we had more then just a seat to sit on for that length of time. It was February 3rd and it was close to 90 degrees outside, and fun to ride with the windows open and fans going. It made me think how much my nephews would have loved to stick their heads out the window and watch the Thai countryside go by!
Once we arrived, we had a couple of hour wait for a bus to take us to the ferry, "unbenounced" to us that the ride to the ferry was ALSO a couple of hours away. We were pretty tired, but once we arrived and saw the COLOR of the water, we were convinced the worst was behind us—and it was. The landscape became more beautiful as the time passed—the most gorgeous hues of turquoise water, connecting with the equally gorgeous sky and rocky islands in the horizons in many different directions. We finally arrived on the island—mind you, not knowing exactly WHERE we were going and where we would stay, but when you are on an island with white sand and palm trees, does it REALLY matter?? We hopped in the back of a sawngthaew taxi—which is like being in the back of a pick-up, with a canopy, and 2 benches facing each other. It took us about 40 minutes to reach the other side of the island, where the beaches were supposed to be the best. We arrived in the town of Chaweng, and the beaches were so stunning. There were a lot of tourists, from all over the word—all wanting the same thing as us—beach, sun and fun. This part of Ko Samui proved to be a little too busy for us, so after one night there, we headed for Lamai, about 25 minutes south from Chaweng Beach. Again, all the way, such amazing scenery…it’s all the same in a way—beach, palm trees, white sand, blue water, mile after mile—but so so so so pretty. We found Lamai to be a bit quieter. We spent the next 3 days there enjoying swimming, eating delicious Thai food and wonderful seafood, having massages on the beaches and just enjoying the warm fresh air. We took one trip to go snorkeling, which included boat, driver, a stop at a tiny deserted island with hammocks, and a dinner. Such a GREAT day. The 3 of us shared the boat with 2 other girls—one, a teacher from Hong Kong, from Great Brittan and another from New Zealand. After our swim, and hanging out on the small island, we looked in the distance at this big orange ball in the sky, slowly sinking into the calm blue sea. You know, this kind of thing happens EVERY day, but to actually stop—we had the driver stop the boat and we just drifted there for about 10 minutes as we watched the sun hit the water and then go off to other places…truly amazing and it made you just appreciate the beauty of nature. So hard to describe, but I’ll bet you have all seen the sun rise and set and it is truly breathtaking….oh I miss the island life!! Ha ha!
We arrived back in China after one more day in Bangkok. At this point I had been living out of a suitcase for over a month and I was ready to be HOME. We still had about 2 weeks before we had to be back at school, so we spent many lazy days doing whatever we felt like. Sleeping late, watching movies, walking, riding bikes, reading, visiting friends….it was so relaxing. We went back to school on February 23rd, and it was good to be back on a schedule and see our lovely students. By this time, I had been off work for 8 weeks—WOW!! I tell ya, this teaching in China bit has spoiled me rotten!!
So school is going well for the both of us. I still have my same students from my first day of teaching and I am as thrilled to have them as they are to have me. I am still on my schedule of 3 full days—all day Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and one class on Thursday. I am done by noon Thursday and then free on Friday and the weekend. Rocco has close to the same schedule as me. I am actually teaching a few more hours and classes then he is. He was asked to teach 3 classes in the English Major program, along with the other program he teaches in. The English Majors is the same one I teach in, but I have the sophomores and juniors and Rocco teaches the freshmen. They ADORE him, and I think he enjoys teaching the oral English a bit more then the writing he was doing last semester. I had the freshman last year—which are now my sophomores—and we both agree that the drive and enthusiasm of the freshmen just can’t be beat. I am so thankful to have my students again, but the freshmen are just fantastic.
We haven’t been doing too much traveling since we have been back at school. We have found that we are just so busy with some of the weekend gigs we have been picking up. It is a lot to teach all week, and then do a few more classes on the weekend on one hand…but when you ENJOY what you do, is it really work? We have been doing some weekend teaching in Shenzhen (about an hour away by train), and that means some travel, and an overnight stay in a hotel, eating out, shopping…so not ALL work. One weekend was exceptionally fun. I had a visit from a childhood friend that was in town for the weekend. Eric and I hadn’t seen each other in possibly 25-30 years—we couldn’t remember, like anyone our age can remember that far anyway….we had the best time reconnecting, and we did some exploring of Shenzhen.
Eric came with a co-worker, Paul, who wanted to visit a part of town famous for artwork. This place was so incredible and if any of you are interested in artwork you would go mad in this place!! It is a village where many artists live and work, and it is shop after shop after shop after shop of mostly paintings—mostly oils—some original and some reproductions and even some artists that specialize in painting a pictures from photos. It was astounding to see some of these artists paint with oils to exactly duplicate a photograph and do it so well that it was hard to tell that the painting was just that—a painting. I mean, jaw dropping. And the prices—you all would just FLIP at how inexpensive this amazing art was. I went a little crazy and bought 4 pieces—3 were prints, in amazing frames and settings and one was a small canvas piece, about the size of an average computer screen—an “original” oil painted copy of Van Gogh “Terrace at Night” that was about 3 dollars. The artist in this shop actually only painted copies of Van Gogh and Monet, and his shop was FULL of theses pieces that were just eye-popping gorgeous—in many different sizes, some framed, some not. PLEASE come visit—I am dying to go again!! There were some sculptors, and a few other types of art, but it was mostly oil and canvas. The whole area smelled like an art studio. You could be there a whole day and still not see the area….truly amazing!! After each day of shopping and exploring with Eric and Paul, we would eat delicious Chinese food, and laugh and tell stories. I PROMISE if you come visit Rocco and me, it will be a time you won’t forget!! It was fun to see Eric after all these years and talk about all the silly stuff we did as kids.
It looks like Rocco and I will take the weekend off and maybe travel to Hong Kong for a couple of days. We haven’t been to Hong Kong in a while, and we both just added close to 25 more blank pages to our passports, so talk about burning a hole in our pockets—we have empty pages that need to be filled!! AT ONCE!!
Rocco has started a blog and it pretty good about updating it every few days WITH pictures. You can simply go to Google—or whatever search engine you like and just type in “The Gail and Rocco Show in China” and it should come right up….
Here is the address as well:
http://gailandrocco.blogspot.com/Rocco is a really great writer and it is fun to read from his point of view.
I hope this finds all of you happy and healthy. We so appreciate hearing from you—e-mail, facebook, whatever……we do think of you so often, and are so thankful that we have such good friends and wonderful family that think of us. It seems like hardly a day will go by that we feel so blessed for all of you, and for this excellent opportunity to be in China.
Loads of Love from us here in the East!!
Xoxoxox
Gail and Rocco
